Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1650 contributions
|
Meeting of the Parliament
Illegal Immigration
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Has Meghan Gallacher or her party engaged with the UK Government to release the resources that are required to support everybody?
Meeting of the Parliament
Illegal Immigration
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
As we have heard in the debate, language is incredibly important. We need to ensure that we are talking about the same issues and that we are using the correct terminology. Not doing so perpetuates the misinformation that some seek to weaponise against individuals and communities.
Meeting of the Parliament
Illegal Immigration
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Presiding Officer, can I clarify that Meghan Gallacher is taking my intervention from earlier?
My intervention was to ask whether you could give an indication of any constructive proposals that you have put forward to ensure that regular and safe routes are provided.
Meeting of the Parliament
Illegal Immigration
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
[Made a request to intervene.]
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Our population strategy sets out our ambition that Scotland is the ideal place to raise a family, where people are enabled to have the number of children that they wish to have. It is not for Government to dictate or influence whether people should have children, which is, rightly, a matter for individuals. The ministerial population task force continues to consider fertility trends, and we are engaging with the United Kingdom Government on its parental leave and pay review to ensure that any new provision supports working families in Scotland.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Kaukab Stewart
I share the member’s interesting views on our changing demographics. Falling birth rates are a trend across many high-income countries, with, as the member said, significant implications for our economies, communities and public services. We are committed to learning from other countries. In December 2024, the ministerial population task force considered potential international lessons from family-friendly policy interventions.
We are currently exploring next steps in the Scottish context, including scoping further research into the role of parental leave uptake on decisions to have children. From our 2022 attitudes to family formation research, we know that childcare is an important factor in people’s decision to have children. Through our addressing depopulation action plan, we are funding local authorities in depopulating areas in the Western Isles and in the north-west of the Highlands to scope and deliver, where possible, childcare interventions that support families to live and work there.
Meeting of the Parliament
One Scotland, Many Voices
Meeting date: 25 September 2025
Kaukab Stewart
I acknowledge that campaign, which people continue to talk to me about. Through my portfolio, I have the pleasure of meeting many faith and belief groups, older people’s organisations and disability networks, and they all express to me the point that in every aspect of our society people are feeling the rise in negative rhetoric. I am listening carefully to those groups. Although they, rightly, challenge the Scottish Government to show visible leadership and give a strong, clear and consistent message on cohesion and protecting our communities, my challenge to everybody is to fulfil their responsibilities and their leadership roles—in their organisations, on the streets with their neighbours and in their communities—and make sure that we treat people with compassion and kindness. That is how we can counteract division.
The funding will support conversations about the difficulties that people are facing because of rising food bills. We must ensure that we deal with misinformation and realise that the challenges faced by different parts of our community are actually challenges that we all face and that we have more in common than what separates us.
Meeting of the Parliament
One Scotland, Many Voices
Meeting date: 25 September 2025
Kaukab Stewart
We want to support organisations that bring local communities together to tackle exclusion and division. The additional funding stream will support grass-roots organisations working across shared interest areas such as sport, health, wellbeing and cultural activities, bringing communities together to build trust and connections through meaningful dialogue and engagement. We want to support activities that unite and that deliver outcomes that can benefit everyone, regardless of their background.
Meeting of the Parliament
One Scotland, Many Voices
Meeting date: 25 September 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Paul Sweeney picks up many threads. The big difference with the Ukrainian resettlement scheme was that Ukrainians had the right to work, which we called for. There are big differences between them and asylum seekers who have no recourse to public funds. I commend the work that Paul Sweeney did in campaigning to secure a free bus travel pilot, for instance, which we are delivering on.
I understand the point that he makes about housing pressures. This Government has declared the housing emergency, and it is investing record amounts of funding not only in bringing on new bills, but in dealing with void properties. However, the bigger issue in this context is that we must not use the unhappiness that people are feeling and pit communities against one another. We must reject that division.
