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.
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Displaying 1502 contributions
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Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
The Scottish Government received a letter from the DWP on 3 July last year, noting the receipt of the policy design specification and reiterating the complexity of the ask. The letter listed some of the challenges of delivering the policy, including the potential barriers, the cost of carrying out the impact assessment of the policy and the challenges in delivering it in the near future. The Scottish Government has acknowledged that letter.
The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice met Sir Stephen Timms to discuss the review of universal credit. She highlighted the importance of the split payment policy and the need for the universal credit review to include a gendered analysis of it.
We remain committed to working with the DWP towards the delivery of split payments of universal credit.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
I am happy to pass that question to the relevant people.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
I can have a go. Where there is a lack of information and/or evidence explained in the financial eligibility form 2, SLAB can use its discretion to disregard income or capital where it considers it reasonable to do so in the circumstances or to provisionally assess financial eligibility based on the information that is available. Solicitors must explain those situations when making an application to ensure that SLAB is aware of why information might be missing and to avoid the application being rejected or abandoned. As a result of being in an abusive relationship, someone might have accumulated several debts. When calculating someone’s eligibility, SLAB will consider disposable income and debts such as loans, credit cards and store cards and it will make an allowance for the monthly payment towards those debts, but that is not unique to domestic abuse cases—
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Financial Considerations When Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Absolutely. You are right to raise that issue.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
I thank Ross Greer for bringing those issues to the chamber. I am aware that he travelled to India in April and met the Dalai Lama. The Scottish Government supports the principles of religious freedom and human rights. It believes that the Tibetan Buddhist community should have the right to choose the next Dalai Lama without external interference.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 22 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
The Scottish Government greatly values the rich contributions of all faith and belief communities in Scotland, including the Buddhist community. On the significant occasion of the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday, and on behalf of the Scottish Government, I offer my warmest greetings and best wishes to the Dalai Lama and the Buddhist community in Scotland. I acknowledge their role in promoting peace, compassion and cultural diversity throughout the country.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
Ministers and officials regularly meet a wide range of organisations to ensure that their expertise and the voices of people with lived experience inform our work. We have continually engaged with LGBTQI+ and other stakeholders as we have developed our work on ending conversion practices.
We have updated stakeholders on our intention to work with the United Kingdom Government to fully explore legislation that would cover England, Wales and Scotland, but if the UK Government’s bill does not meet our priorities or does not go far enough, we intend to publish our own bill in the first year of the next parliamentary session. We will also continue to work with stakeholders in areas such as mental health and education to develop non-legislative measures to tackle conversion practices, as well as continuing our broader work to protect and promote equality and human rights.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
The Housing (Scotland) Bill, which was introduced on 26 March 2024, includes provisions to change the basis of pitch fee uprating under the Mobile Homes Act 1983 from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index. The timetable for implementing the changes that are proposed in the bill will be decided by the Parliament; we propose to implement the changes shortly after the bill receives royal assent.
The bill and its accompanying documents have been published on the Scottish Parliament website. The bill was introduced on 26 March 2024 and is at stage 2 of the Parliament’s scrutiny.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
In 2023, we commissioned independent archival research to better understand historical policies and their impact on the Gypsy Traveller communities. That research is now complete and we expect to publish the report online by the end of May.
Alongside the archival research report, we will release a summary of findings from our initial engagement with community members who have been impacted by those historical policies, as well as our initial response. These are complex and sensitive matters, and we are committed to getting this right to provide meaningful answers for everyone who has been affected.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 15 May 2025
Kaukab Stewart
We are absolutely committed to protecting trans people and the wider LGBTQI+ community.
The Scottish Government remains committed to protecting our communities from the harm that is caused by conversion practices. That commitment includes work on the legislation that we intend to publish, as I stated, in year 1 of the next session of Parliament, should a UK bill not meet our priorities.
I reiterate that we are continuing to develop and deliver non-legislative supportive measures to end conversion practices and to support survivors, and that we will work with LGBTQI+ organisations over the next 12 months as we do that.
