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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 3805 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
No one is casting any aspersions on you or on Thompsons, but there is a strong case whereby legal costs seem excessive—certainly to laypeople. For example, Police Scotland’s direct costs in supporting the Sheku Bayoh public inquiry—I understand that you were not involved in it—are £25,409,629, of which £18,087,494 is directly attributable to legal costs. So far, the cost of that inquiry, which has run for six years, is £51 million. The Scottish Police Federation has said that the police contribution to that is equivalent to employing 500 police officers for a year.
Although justice for the alleged victims in any public inquiry is important, the opportunity cost is something that we, as representatives of the Scottish Parliament, have to consider. Is that public inquiry more viable than, for example, another 500 police officers on the streets—or whatever else? We are not saying that we should throw the baby out with the bath water and that there should be no public inquiries. The committee is not saying that that public inquiry should not have happened or that another one should have. We are asking how we can deliver the same level of justice or, indeed, better justice more efficiently and effectively and at lower cost to the public purse.
We have seen in the evidence that some inquiries go on for some time—I just mentioned the Sheku Bayoh inquiry, which has gone on for six years. They go on for years and there is a law of diminishing returns—in terms of public interest, apart from anything else. Public interest goes down, the reason for holding the inquiry becomes more obscure and the cost goes up.
In weeks to come, we will be looking at systems in other countries but, given your wide experience, I would like to hear your views on the level of justice that you are seeking. I am aware of the points that you have made about, for example, the inquiries into infected blood—you believe that one was inadequate, while the other was done more thoroughly and produced a better outcome. With the system that we have, how can we become more efficient and effective in delivering what everyone wants—that is, better outcomes?
11:00Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
So—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
The next item on our agenda is an evidence session on the Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Jonathan Henderson, assistant chief officer and director of prevention at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and Peter Drummond, trustee of the Scottish Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and chair of its practice committee. We have around 90 minutes for this evidence session.
I thank you both for your written submissions. I would like to ask Mr Drummond about his submission. The content was excellent, but the size of the typing was a wee bit small for my liking—I had to get the magnifying glass out. In it, you said:
“Whilst Scotland’s more robust regulatory framework has helped limit the extent to which we are affected, there nonetheless exist a significant number of cases where householders find themselves facing very significant remediation costs through no fault of their own.”
Can you give us some examples of that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
The only reason that I am asking you about that is because it is in your submission.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
It would not derail an inquiry as such. Our inquiry is not about whether an inquiry should or should not take place, but about how to make inquiries more efficient and effective in delivering justice and value for the taxpayer at the same time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
You have talked about bricks-and-mortar inquiries. I highlight the trams inquiry, which took nine years and cost £13.8 million, and then came out with a report running to 30,000 pages. Who read them?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
My mother had dementia, but you could have a conversation with her, and she was still doing sudoku and reading the papers every day. Then there was lockdown, and six months later, she was unable even to speak. Obviously the disease was advancing, but isolation was a factor, too.
Theoretically, then, I could give evidence to the Covid inquiry; I am not intending to, of course, but the bottom line is that we are talking about a huge number of people, and it just becomes very difficult. You get what is called in economics “diseconomies of scale”. The quality of the inquiry is at a certain level, but then you get so much information that the quality ends up going down, and all that happens is that the time for deliberation gets extended.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
So, you have one person speaking on behalf of 50 people.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
A maximum number, then.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Kenneth Gibson
I understand that, but when you get to 500 or 1,000, it becomes—
