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 1109 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
Fine. With regard to exemptions, if there is a greater number of exemptions or a wider scope for them, the levy will bring in less income. Given that there is an acute rural housing crisis, we have heard from several stakeholders that exempting one part of rural Scotland—for example, the islands or hard-to-reach geographical territories—will not take account of the fact that the levy could have significant consequences in other rural areas. You mentioned thresholds in the levy, but would it not be simpler to identify a definition of rural Scotland and to exempt that entirely?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
Last week, Scottish Land & Estates put forward what it thought would be a good working model for a definition of rural Scotland. Would the Government be prepared to look again at the exemption to give clarity and surety to areas where there is an acute housing problem?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
Okay. My next question is about the funds that the Scottish Government has already received for remediation. In 2021, you received £95 million from the £1 billion building safety fund. What has that money been spent on?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
At the heart of the issue is public safety—people’s lives in buildings that are presently unsafe—and people’s livelihoods, because there are people who presently cannot or find it difficult to sell their property due to the cloud that hangs over them. The UK Government has said that, by 2029, 95 per cent of buildings that are taller than 11m will either have been remediated or a date for completion will have been set. What is the Scottish Government’s target in that respect?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
The developer community is saying to us that construction and product manufacturers and companies that have produced cladding are effectively getting away scot free. I recognise that many of them will have disappeared from the scene in the past eight years. What consideration has the Scottish Government given to extending the scope of the levy to include those who manufacture the products?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
One of the critical elements, particularly for ADS, is the concept of being in an economic unit, which means, for example, that cohabiting couples will incur ADS even though one partner will not be on the title deeds of their partner’s property. That will be very complex for you to unpick, will it not? With ADS, there is an element whereby, if someone chooses to pay it, they are choosing to pay it.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
Are you aware that some couples are considering trial separations for the period when the transaction goes through, in order to avoid the tax?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
That is helpful to hear. The industry is also concerned that there is no sunset clause in the legislation. In evidence from architects and fabricators, we have heard concerns that, in any 10-to-15-year window, another scandal could come along. They have identified a couple of potential areas where we should have cause for concern. To what extent should the developer community assume that this is a tax that is here to stay, or would you support their calls for a hard stop to be put in at a certain point, even if that is 10 or 15 years from now?
12:15Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
Good morning. I have a brief question on organisational culture before I move to something more substantive. You have implemented a 35-hour working week. How is that panning out? Are you finding that some staff cannot do their job within that 35-hour working week? For example, Ms Lorimer, are you working 35 hours and capping it, or are you working more?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Craig Hoy
If the legislation specifies what a small development is and exempts that, how, in practical terms, could you get around a developer who does a 20-property development under the guise of four corporate entities that develop five homes each?
