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 840 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 19:22]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::Will the cabinet secretary meet workers and their union—the Public and Commercial Services Union—to hear their concerns?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 19:22]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::Just two years after strike action was averted, thanks to trade union negotiation, UCU members at the University of Aberdeen have voted overwhelmingly in support of industrial action. They voted in defence of their jobs, their workplace and their students’ learning conditions, because, over the past two years, more than 440 jobs at the university have been lost.
Elsewhere, the University of Dundee has seen more than 500 job losses since July 2024. Strike ballots have been held at Heriot-Watt University, the University of Strathclyde and the University of Stirling, and a new ballot opened today in Edinburgh. UCU members are having to fight the same battle, again and again, up and down the country.
I am pleased to hear the First Minister urging university principals across the country to meet campus unions. They must listen to their workforce, but what is his Government doing to address the financial crisis in our higher education sector?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 19:22]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to the outcome of the University of Aberdeen UCU ballot, which resulted in 83 per cent of those voting in support of strike action and 90 per cent in favour of action short of a strike. (S6F-04709)
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 19:22]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::In a statement to the press, the Scottish Government said that it is
“working closely with Wave Energy Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and other partners to sustain operations while future alternative sources of funding are identified.”
However, workers at Wave Energy Scotland have been unable to secure a meeting with the cabinet secretary to highlight their concerns about the withdrawal of funding, despite attempting to do so three times.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::Just two years after strike action was averted, thanks to trade union negotiation, UCU members at the University of Aberdeen have voted overwhelmingly in support of industrial action. They voted in defence of their jobs, their workplace and their students’ learning conditions, because, over the past two years, more than 440 jobs at the university have been lost.
Elsewhere, the University of Dundee has seen more than 500 job losses since July 2024. Strike ballots have been held at Heriot-Watt University, the University of Strathclyde and the University of Stirling, and a new ballot opened today in Edinburgh. UCU members are having to fight the same battle, again and again, up and down the country.
I am pleased to hear the First Minister urging university principals across the country to meet campus unions. They must listen to their workforce, but what is his Government doing to address the financial crisis in our higher education sector?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to the outcome of the University of Aberdeen UCU ballot, which resulted in 83 per cent of those voting in support of strike action and 90 per cent in favour of action short of a strike. (S6F-04709)
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::Will the cabinet secretary meet workers and their union—the Public and Commercial Services Union—to hear their concerns?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 26 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
::In a statement to the press, the Scottish Government said that it is
“working closely with Wave Energy Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and other partners to sustain operations while future alternative sources of funding are identified.”
However, workers at Wave Energy Scotland have been unable to secure a meeting with the cabinet secretary to highlight their concerns about the withdrawal of funding, despite attempting to do so three times.
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 14:31]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
According to news reports, SEPA confirmed that a specialist clean-up contractor was working to reduce the environmental impacts of the spill. That is the latest in a long line of outsourcing decisions taken by the environmental regulator, and it comes at a time when other public sector organisations such as Scottish Water have been criticised for outsourcing core work to contractors, whose workers are on inferior conditions and suppressed pay and pensions, which, according to the Scottish Trades Union Congress, leads to post-retirement poverty.
Does the cabinet secretary expect the public to believe that an individual private contractor can deliver that service more efficiently than the national body? If so, is that not an indictment of the Government’s record on public services?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 24 February 2026
Mercedes Villalba
According to news reports, SEPA confirmed that a specialist clean-up contractor was working to reduce the environmental impacts of the spill. That is the latest in a long line of outsourcing decisions taken by the environmental regulator, and it comes at a time when other public sector organisations such as Scottish Water have been criticised for outsourcing core work to contractors, whose workers are on inferior conditions and suppressed pay and pensions, which, according to the Scottish Trades Union Congress, leads to post-retirement poverty.
Does the cabinet secretary expect the public to believe that an individual private contractor can deliver that service more efficiently than the national body? If so, is that not an indictment of the Government’s record on public services?
