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 1965 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Yes, it is.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
We will see some of that detail in the response from the minister. That is useful—thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Minister, you have already set out some of the long-term challenges in setting up the Thistle, and we have had exchanges previously on drug-checking centres. Where are you with drug-checking facilities, with particular reference to Dundee? I put it on the record that I was previously the deputy director of the Leverhulme research centre for forensic science at the University of Dundee.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
That is great—thank you so much.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Dr Priyadarshi, I want to take you back to some of your earlier comments about medical emergencies. You mentioned that there was a spike, probably when the nitazenes were in the supply. From the figures that we have, that looks like it would have been in March and April 2025. Would that be correct?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
That is very useful, and it tallies with the evidence that I have received from people in Dundee, including clinicians, about an increase in chaotic and sometimes violent behaviour among the drug user community but a potentially declining number of emergencies. Taking that up to a national level, could that shift in the usage be tied to the reduction in the number of deaths?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Minister, you mentioned the systems for understanding data. Will you tell us what the current time lag is for a forensic toxicology report?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Yes.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
I appreciate that, and we will have a more detailed conversation during that meeting, but I would like to get something on the record today. This has been a long-term project. I understand the challenges when it comes to licensing across the UK, and it is right that we are getting to the point of completion. I hope that that will make a big difference.
In Dundee, are any particular challenges arising with the university in getting that progress? Is there a sticking point that you would like to be unpicked in the next couple of weeks that would allow there to be an announcement, perhaps even prior to the recess?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 October 2025
Michael Marra
Okay. You also said that you felt there had been a decline in medical emergencies of late, and I think that you referred to the shift into cocaine. Can you set out in a little bit more detail for us why that would be the case?
