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 1733 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
Does Daniel Johnson recognise that a large portion of that increase is due to the establishment of Social Security Scotland and the devolution of welfare benefits?
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
We know the standard of what is provided by the Tories—unfunded tax cuts made on the back of a fag packet. We will take no lessons from a party that destroyed the economy. Many members on the Conservative benches supported Liz Truss and her economic policies, which hard-pressed householders are still paying for through their mortgage payments. We have had Tory economic policy during the years—[Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
Could Rachael Hamilton specify who those handouts are being given to? Who are we talking about?
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
Michael Marra seems to want to defend that for some strange reason. The Conservatives proposed almost £1 billion in tax cuts last year in advance of the budget, and the impact of that approach on our essential public services, including our NHS, would be profound.
Our progressive approach to tax underpins the entire Scottish budget, allowing us to support the most generous social contract in any part of the UK, which includes things such as free prescriptions, free higher education and support such as the Scottish child payment, all of which would be put at risk with the Conservatives’ contrasting income tax proposals, which would seek to reverse our progressive approach and give the greatest tax cut to the top 25 per cent of income tax payers.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
The investment that we are making this year in our public services is made possible by the tax choices that we have made and the vital additional funding that they provide. The Tories and, indeed, other Opposition members need to explain to the Parliament what they would cut if we had not taken those tax decisions, but instead, we hear demands for further spending and, at the same time, cuts to taxation—[Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
It is the long-term growth that matters. [Interruption.]
I do not know why Daniel Johnson and the Opposition—
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
No, thank you. I do not know why Daniel Johnson and the Opposition cannot accept that it is a good thing that, since 2007, gross domestic product per person in Scotland has grown by 10.3 per cent compared with 6.1 per cent in the UK. Why can they not simply accept that that is a good thing?
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
Their position is not credible and the public knows that it is not credible, which is why the Tories have such low support among the public.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
I will later, if I have time.
Since 2007, gross domestic product per person in Scotland has grown by 10.3 per cent, compared with 6.1 per cent in the UK, and productivity has grown at an average rate of 1.1 per cent per year, compared with a UK average of 0.4 per cent. Most recently, in 2024, Scotland’s economy grew by 1.2 per cent, compared with a UK rate of 1.1 per cent.
I will give way to Daniel Johnson.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Shona Robison
Craig Hoy talked about an economic performance gap, but Professor Graeme Roy from the Scottish Fiscal Commission has been clear that, in the context of income tax, that does not refer to an assessment of Scottish Government policy or performance—rather, it is
“purely a technical measure and is not meant to be a commentary on Scottish Government performance.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 10 December 2024; c 37.]
That is what Graeme Roy from the Scottish Fiscal Commission has said.
To conclude, last week’s spending review has not helped the position in Scotland. An increase of spending of just 0.8 per cent over the next three years, compared with an average of 1.2 per cent for UK departments, leaves us facing a £1.1 billion shortfall. The spending review was disappointing for resource and capital spend and infrastructure investment.
