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 861 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Keith Brown
You rightly mentioned the huge uplift in culture funding in Scotland, not least as it compares to England and Wales. We have all supported that. You also mentioned the extent to which you are focused on multiyear funding, but that is utterly irrelevant in places such as Clackmannanshire, which receives no multiyear funding.
In the previous session, we had a little hint about why Creative Scotland believes that to be the case. It implied that it was down to those areas, because they cannot get their act together and make applications, which is an explanation that I find completely unacceptable. I hope that Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government will consider that because, although I understand the constraints on the Government when it comes to specific applications, it cannot be acceptable for those areas to get no funding whatsoever. More applications are being granted and more money is being given to organisations outwith Scotland from that funding, than to four local authority areas in Scotland.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Keith Brown
I take it from that that you cannot give an account of the shape of Creative Scotland funding in Clackmannanshire. Was it in 2010 that Creative Scotland came into being?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Keith Brown
Can you give an impression of what the spend has been like over the past 16 years?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Keith Brown
It is far from perfect—with regard to Clackmannanshire, it is as far from perfect as you can get. Given your comment that Creative Scotland is a responsive organisation, I say that it must do a lot more than respond; it must be a body that encourages applications. I could list the number of people in Clackmannanshire who no longer make applications to Creative Scotland because they have been beaten down over the years by defeats, and who feel that there is no point in doing that any more. That has had a big effect in a small local authority area.
Creative Scotland must surely have a bigger role to play than just waiting to see who makes an application or implying criticism of those who do not have the capacity to make an application. It has to be a bit more than that if Creative Scotland is to properly represent the whole of Scotland.
10:00
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
I will just add, convener, that it relates to this inquiry because there is every reason to suspect that HES might take a risk-averse approach when it gets through this and, if that is the case, it will be a continuing failure.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
What is crucial to having that serious, grown-up conversation is an understanding of the general financial environment, and I do not get the sense of that, to be honest. Nobody—neither you nor the previous two speakers—has mentioned the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions, which I cannot imagine will have had no impact.
I cannot speak for the Greens, but no other party in the Scottish Parliament suggested an amendment to the budget that would have increased the local government settlement, so there seems to be tacit agreement in relation to that. Did COSLA have conversations with any Opposition parties on the budget?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
Thanks.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
The cabinet secretary is providing answers.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
Cabinet secretary, as we have heard—it is in the budget—you have taken action to lift the restrictions and to give a signal that HSE should do that. However, it is one thing to open the door and another to see others going through it. I will cite a couple of examples. This is the last point that I will make.
Back when I worked in the council, we took the Wallace sword across to New York. It had huge TV coverage and queues around the block. Because of the surrounding publicity, it substantially paid for the refurbishment of the Wallace monument centre.
There was a fantastic BBC Four programme about John Logie Baird. We have completely failed to exploit the fact that he was born in Scotland. The house where Alexander Graham Bell was born has never been used. There are two visitor centres in Canada and one in the States for him, but we have done nothing in this country.
I am currently trying to get the oldest football in the world taken to the world cup, to show that football was born in Scotland. I do not see, and have not seen for a long time, any such initiative from Historic Environment Scotland.
I do not doubt what you say, cabinet secretary. Very good people are working there. However, they, too, have to be imbued with that spirit of knowing that that can happen, to come up with ideas and to start monetising what is probably the biggest set of assets of the country. I want the assurance that, despite all that we—rightly—have to deal with, that fundamental point is not lost.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 29 January 2026
Keith Brown
I will just confirm that no Opposition party came to the Government, with the possible exception of the Greens, and asked for more money—or, in fact, asked for anything, which is quite astonishing.
Can you say something about the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions? I know that that was last year, but this will be the first full year that you are having to find that money. What kind of impact has that had?
