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 1234 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
The First Minister will be aware of the report on the unannounced inspection of Skye house in August 2025. I share the Government’s concerns about the report’s findings regarding culture, staff resourcing and the use of restraints and other cruel practices. However, the report does not address the journeys of young people and how they entered Skye house in the first place. I am concerned that, when parents and carers raise concerns about culture in our national health service and social work departments, they are being met with a defensive response and an attempt to shut down such concerns without any accountability or willingness to improve services.
Will the First Minister now instruct a review of child and adolescent mental health services, NHS boards and social work services to discover how many concerns have been raised in respect of culture, to prevent young people from being failed and, ultimately, put in institutions that risk causing more harm than good?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
The First Minister will be aware of the report on the unannounced inspection of Skye house in August 2025. I share the Government’s concerns about the report’s findings regarding culture, staff resourcing and the use of restraints and other cruel practices. However, the report does not address the journeys of young people and how they entered Skye house in the first place. I am concerned that, when parents and carers raise concerns about culture in our national health service and social work departments, they are being met with a defensive response and an attempt to shut down such concerns without any accountability or willingness to improve services.
Will the First Minister now instruct a review of child and adolescent mental health services, NHS boards and social work services to discover how many concerns have been raised in respect of culture, to prevent young people from being failed and, ultimately, put in institutions that risk causing more harm than good?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 09:33]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
The First Minister will be aware of the report on the unannounced inspection of Skye house in August 2025. I share the Government’s concerns about the report’s findings regarding culture, staff resourcing and the use of restraints and other cruel practices. However, the report does not address the journeys of young people and how they entered Skye house in the first place. I am concerned that, when parents and carers raise concerns about culture in our national health service and social work departments, they are being met with a defensive response and an attempt to shut down such concerns without any accountability or willingness to improve services.
Will the First Minister now instruct a review of child and adolescent mental health services, NHS boards and social work services to discover how many concerns have been raised in respect of culture, to prevent young people from being failed and, ultimately, put in institutions that risk causing more harm than good?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
The First Minister will be aware of the report on the unannounced inspection of Skye house in August 2025. I share the Government’s concerns about the report’s findings regarding culture, staff resourcing and the use of restraints and other cruel practices. However, the report does not address the journeys of young people and how they entered Skye house in the first place. I am concerned that, when parents and carers raise concerns about culture in our national health service and social work departments, they are being met with a defensive response and an attempt to shut down such concerns without any accountability or willingness to improve services.
Will the First Minister now instruct a review of child and adolescent mental health services, NHS boards and social work services to discover how many concerns have been raised in respect of culture, to prevent young people from being failed and, ultimately, put in institutions that risk causing more harm than good?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
That is helpful. My colleague Alexander Stewart will speak about housing supply in a moment.
Gillian Campbell, I put the same questions, on timing and on striking a balance between landlords and tenants, to you.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
Is there the risk of a challenge, given that it will be more difficult to get rural homes up to the higher energy efficiency standard, because of geography and build, rather than because people do not want to invest in them? How do we protect the housing stock to ensure that people have homes to live in?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
Let us hope that the Scottish Government takes that on board.
I saw lots of nodding heads around the table, so I do not think that anyone will disagree that the sooner the regulations are issued the better. Gillian Campbell, do you want to say anything to wrap that up?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
I will move on to the topic of geography. There are differences between homes in rural areas and homes in more urban settings. Do you think that a different approach, and different forms of engagement with landlords, might be needed in rural areas in particular to ensure that homes are made as energy efficient as possible, while recognising that some property types may not be able to achieve the highest efficiency standards?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
Witnesses on the previous panel also mentioned the lack of confirmed detail. There has been a lot of moving goalposts between where we began when we started talking about the issue and where we are now. Does anyone want to raise any other views?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Meghan Gallacher
That is helpful. Thank you.
