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 4236 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
On Holocaust memorial day, we honour the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in one of the darkest chapters in human history. As we proclaim, “Never again”, we also reflect on the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
This year, we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I welcome the decision of His Majesty the King to travel to Auschwitz to represent us all at the commemoration. This evening, alongside Mr Carlaw and the Minister for Victims and Community Safety, I will participate in the Scottish ceremony for Holocaust memorial day. At that event, we will stand united against hatred and for building one Scotland, together, for a better future.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
I welcome the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report and its analysis, which finds that Scotland is the only part of the United Kingdom that will see child poverty rates declining, thanks to policies such as the Scottish child payment.
Through the Scottish budget for 2025-26, we will go further by committing resources to develop the systems that are required to mitigate the impact of the two-child limit. The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that scrapping the two-child limit could lift a further 15,000 children in Scotland out of poverty.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
The Minister for Employment and Investment, Tom Arthur, met the industry leadership group, which involves the many retail interests, on this subject this morning. In the budget, subject to parliamentary approval, we will make £3 million available to tackle retail crime, and we commit ourselves to supporting some of the innovative work that has been taken forward by the Scottish partnership against acquisitive crime, which is led by Police Scotland and the retailers. The partnership is taking a collaborative approach to preventing and deterring crimes such as shoplifting, and we will work constructively to ensure that that happens, using the resources that I mentioned, which I hope Parliament will support in the budget process.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
What has not helped me has been Mr Findlay’s support for the economics of the madhouse, which was brought forward by Liz Truss, whom he wanted me to follow. [Interruption.] Mr Findlay wanted me to do exactly what Liz Truss had done. Thank goodness I never followed the stupid ideas of Liz Truss and Russell Findlay.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
What I set out on Monday and what have been followed up in regular engagements between me, the health secretary and health service leadership around the country are practical steps to improve the health service and to secure delivery.
We will concentrate on steps such as expanding the NHS Scotland pharmacy first service to improve access to healthcare and increasing general practice capacity in the country through a £10.5 million investment to expand its activity. We will deliver a new acute interior eye condition service, which will free up a combined 40,000 hospital appointments per year in Scotland. We will expand the capacity of hospital at home to create at least 2,000 beds by 2026. We will expand capacity at national treatment centres, and a number of other centres—Gartnavel general hospital, Inverclyde royal hospital, Stracathro hospital, Perth royal infirmary, Queen Margaret hospital and the Golden Jubilee hospital in Clydebank—will deliver extra cataract procedures. We will also reduce the radiology backlog. I hope that that is enough detail to show that, while—[Interruption.] I am very happy to go on, Presiding Officer.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
Listen—we will be here for as long as it takes for me to explain my point to the Parliament. [Interruption.] I see that Mr Sarwar’s allies have come to the rescue!
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
Presiding Officer, I see that Mr Sarwar’s allies in the Conservative Party have come to his rescue once again. There was not a single solution offered by Anas Sarwar in all of that long diatribe to Parliament, because he is high on rhetoric and low on delivery. [Interruption.]
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
Mr Sarwar promised the WASPI women—women against state pension inequality—in Scotland that he would be at their side. At the first whiff of change, the Labour Government came in and shut the door on the WASPI women. That is why Mr Sarwar is high on rhetoric and low on delivery, and why Scotland does not take him seriously.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
The Cabinet will meet next Tuesday and ministers will have the opportunity to consider the implications for the Scottish budget of the welcome agreement that has been reached with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Green Party and Alba. All that we are waiting for is some common sense to break out in the Labour Party and the Conservatives.
Meeting of the Parliament
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
John Swinney
I know that Mr Fraser was a contender for the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives, but he has just given an answer that is directly contradictory to the position of his party leader. His party leader wants us to cut the budgets of agencies—he said that he wants us to get rid of them. However, Mr Fraser has just argued for an expansion of the budgets of economic development agencies.
For the record, I happen to think that Scotland today is extremely well served by our economic development agencies: Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise, VisitScotland and Skills Development Scotland. They work very well for Scotland, in that they attract significant investment and visitor numbers. We could add to that the capital investment for offshore wind, which we are increasing to £150 million; the £100 million for digital connectivity programmes that we are rolling out; the investment that we are putting into planning services; and the support that we have put in place for non-domestic rates relief, which is worth an estimated £731 million. All those measures show that this Government is on the side of business, as is demonstrated by business’s endorsement of our budget. I think that the Conservatives should support it.
