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 3405 contributions
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Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
This is the section of discussion that we have been anticipating will be a little bit lengthy, and I am sure that all members will want to contribute. My question will be quite open, to allow you to expand as much as you can.
Clearly, much of the concern is around the mechanism of the regional poll process that is provided for in the bill and the practical concerns or challenges that we need to be cognisant of. There is a lot to consider in that. Convener, you mentioned the specific challenges that a large region would face, but, being an Edinburgh-based Lothian girl, I contest that some of the cities might have different challenges that are equally challenging.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
My questions are about the mechanisms for removing an MSP and they are all for Jenny Brotchie, so Sarah Mackie can sit back and put her feet up for a bit.
The bill provides that there should be a process for removing an MSP if they fail to physically attend the Parliament for 180 days. This committee would be involved in taking a view on whether such an absence should be classed as a valid reason for removal. Does that process raise data protection and privacy issues that the committee should be mindful of?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
No, it is not you. Annie Wells coughed as you were speaking.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
You mentioned that members of the Parliament have to understand that there is a valid reason, but it is equally important that members of the public understand that.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
With complexity comes cost and all sorts of resource pressures.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee [Draft]
Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 May 2025
Sue Webber
That draws us back to your earlier comment about the proportionality of costs.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Sue Webber
I understand where you are coming from, cabinet secretary, but I point out that the key word in the amendment is “desirability”. We want inspections that are ultimately of use to the establishment and, indeed, the teachers, so that they can learn from them and improve the school or the educational establishment in question. Will you comment on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Sue Webber
My two amendments in the group serve to make clear what an inspection plan should consider. Right now, it could be argued that it is as simple as whatever is in the “How Good is Our School?” document. However, that is now 10 years out of date, and we are looking for something that will bring a bit more rigour in the standards against which establishments will be evaluated. That is why my amendment 175 seeks to add the words
“including indicators of quality and improvement”.
That wording aims to bottom out the standards against which our establishments will be evaluated. We want there to be indicators of quality and improvement within an inspection framework against which an establishment’s performance will be evaluated and then reported on.
In amendment 177, I have further expanded that with the addition of what I would like to make clear is what I define as a rigorous and evidence-based inspection. Members will note that it states what the type of inspection activities could include, so there could be other things, but we want there to be interviews, observation, data analysis and questionnaires with stakeholders. Importantly, we also want evidence to be provided that can be analysed, assessed and then triangulated to reach conclusions to form a report on the quality of the provision as determined by that inspection framework.
More importantly, using that sort of analysis will mean that we can also measure improvement from that. That is what my two amendments are here to do—to allow us to have a clear starting point and to measure progress and improvement in the establishments.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Sue Webber
I thank Stephen Kerr for explaining the purpose of amendment 170. I want to reflect a bit on what the committee spoke about earlier in relation to the frequency of inspections, the culture of inspections and how they are perceived by the teaching establishment. We are trying to shift the dial and allow people to have a much more positive view of inspections, so that they see the opportunity that inspections can present to everyone and so that there is, as the amendment states,
“the desirability of carrying out inspections that ... are detailed”
and
“consider all areas of work”.
The amendment is about considering how an inspection affects the quality of learning, teaching, assessment, leadership, support for learning and ethos of a school. Ultimately, that will impact on every learner in a school. The amendment aims to shift the dial so that inspections are viewed and presented in a much more positive manner.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Sue Webber
Yesterday, the First Minister said in his statement:
“More cancer patients are now treated faster. Compared with a decade ago, 16 per cent more patients receive care within the 31-day standard and 11 per cent more within the 62-day standard.”—[Official Report, 6 May 2025; c 11.]
However, the reality is that prostate cancer outcomes in Scotland have fallen significantly behind those in England. Cancer staging is the same on both sides of the border. Despite national health service spending being higher per person in Scotland, more than one in three men are diagnosed at stage 4, which compares with only one in eight in London. That gap is staggering and unacceptable.
Can the cabinet secretary tell us when men in Scotland can expect the same chances of early diagnosis, which helps to save lives, as those who live elsewhere in the UK?
