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 3728 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Maternity Services
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Sue Webber
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Sue Webber
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill to determine whether there could be any unintended consequences. (S6O-05090)
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Maternity Services
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Sue Webber
It is a fact that there are huge inequalities when it comes to women’s health. Today, we are considering the failings of one critical element in women’s health—the state of our maternity services in Scotland. The failings in our maternity services have not happened overnight. They are a symptom of years of mismanagement, neglect and lack of investment.
The NHS in Scotland has been under SNP management for circa 20 years, and it is a grim fact that maternity services continue to fail women and families across Scotland. Like many others, I believe that its plans to cut the number of neonatal intensive care units are dangerous. Women in rural areas are already forced to travel long distances to give birth, thanks to the downgrading of local maternity units across Scotland. Journeys that I have made on numerous occasions in my life before coming to Parliament—from Raigmore hospital to Caithness general hospital, or from Dr Gray’s hospital to Aberdeen royal infirmary—are challenging to drive at the best of times, never mind when an expectant father is driving his pregnant partner, with all the pressure that that entails, yet the SNP plans to cut the number of neonatal intensive care units from eight to three. Why three and not five? That would force families to travel to Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen in order to seek treatment for the most pre-term and most sick babies.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Maternity Services
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Sue Webber
Lothian MSPs—including your colleague Lorna Slater—received a briefing in September that spoke of training on culture that was provided to NHS Lothian staff in May 2025. However, in June, when the HIS inspection took place, we heard that nothing had changed. How can we, as elected members, have any confidence that we are not being taken for fools by some of these people?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
Sue Webber
The bill could seriously impact the deer management sector, allowing NatureScot’s overreach and conflicting powers to be enhanced while eroding the trust of those who work in the sector. Meanwhile, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and NFU Scotland have expressed significant concerns about unintended impacts of the bill’s mandatory training provisions, which come without any grandfather rights on lowland deer management. That could create barriers to entry and reduce the pool of active deer stalkers, despite a lack of evidence indicating that it is required.
At a time when the Government is legislating for more deer to be culled across Scotland, why is it simultaneously ignoring such concerns?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Sue Webber
It was reported three weeks ago that the Scottish Government had agreed a price with Peel Ports for the sale of Ardrossan harbour. However, what analysis has the cabinet secretary undertaken to gauge how much additional investment will be required after the sale goes through to modernise the harbour to ensure that ferries can—finally—sail from Ardrossan again?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Sue Webber
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Sue Webber
Mr Simpson, will you comment on the provisions that now make it clear that councillors should give up their allowances when they are in those dual roles? Could you also refer to and comment on your position?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Maternity Services (Safety)
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Sue Webber
We have known about these issues for more than a year. In August 2024, new mother Louise Williamson spoke about her “horrific” labour after she was “repeatedly ignored”.
In December, in a verbal briefing given to Lothian MSPs and MPs on women’s services concerns, NHS Lothian advised that action was under way. Further assurances on progress were given to the same group on 20 June 2025, yet, three days later, on 23 June, an unannounced HIS inspection confirmed that nothing had changed.
Women deserve to know that their maternity services are safe. Today, NHS Lothian told MSPs that the issues
“will take time to resolve.”
What confidence can families have that, this time, there will be real, tangible changes?
Meeting of the Parliament
Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 9 October 2025
Sue Webber
I thank Clare Haughey for taking an intervention. Would she not concede that, right now, the Scottish Government’s focus is on harm reduction and that there is not enough focus on providing the rehabilitation and recovery that the bill would allow us to provide?
