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 1496 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
We have met our target to reduce total waste in Scotland by 15 per cent against 2011 levels, and in 2022, our recycling rate in Scotland was 62.3 per cent, which is the highest since records began. The Government has made a significant investment in modernising recycling in Scotland.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 20 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
The Scottish Government supports communities by providing national guidance to Scotland’s statutory emergency response organisations, as well as advice and online learning through the Ready Scotland website and the public information campaign, and convening online and face-to-face events with communities and voluntary organisations to support the sharing of best practice.
Within Scotland’s established resilience partnership arrangements, local authorities are the main link to communities, supporting them in developing emergency resilience activities and plans, including those for significant power outages. During storm Éowyn, local authorities, power companies, voluntary sector organisations and other local responders rose to the challenge and supported communities across the country.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Powers of the Scottish Parliament
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
As I mentioned, the decisions by Scottish Water had to come to ministers for approval. On the point that the member has made about Scottish Water and the industrial action that workers have been balloted on, I urge both parties to resume negotiations to find an agreement on that.
On his wider point, I will not comment on the details of the bonuses, but it is worth saying that, despite the suggestion that performance-related bonuses are irrelevant in this situation, Scottish Water’s performance in relation to pollution, overflows and so on has improved. For instance, there was improvement in the overall number of sewage overflows that were graded as unsatisfactory in Scottish Water’s annual return. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, an independent body, has assessed 86.5 per cent of Scotland’s entire water environment as having a high or good classification, which represents an improvement since 2014. Scottish Water continues to represent good value for those who pay for it, particularly when it is compared with comparable water bodies in other parts of the UK.
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
The Scottish Government seeks to ensure that executive pay is kept under control, and I can comment on the situation in the wider public sector in that regard. As I said, public sector pay policy includes a presumption against non-consolidated bonuses. When new chief executives have come into post, we have sought controls on wages and bonuses to be put in place.
I do not dispute Richard Leonard’s central point about the scale of the bonuses, but I return to the point that I made in my original answer, which is that, contrary to the inference in the question, the bonuses were provided publicly and within the rules.
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
In his original question, the member suggested that public sector pay policy prohibits what has taken place, which is not the case. As I mentioned, public sector pay policy has a presumption against non-consolidated bonuses and suspended bonuses. However, with the agreement of the Scottish ministers, Scottish Water has had a pay structure that includes performance-related pay since its creation, in 2002. That is simply because Scottish Water operates in an environment in which the other water companies around the UK are in the private sector and Scottish Water has to recruit from the same pool of people.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft] Business until 14:43
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
As I mentioned, the decisions by Scottish Water had to come to ministers for approval. On the point that the member has made about Scottish Water and the industrial action that workers have been balloted on, I urge both parties to resume negotiations to find an agreement on that.
On his wider point, I will not comment on the details of the bonuses, but it is worth saying that, despite the suggestion that performance-related bonuses are irrelevant in this situation, Scottish Water’s performance in relation to pollution, overflows and so on has improved. For instance, there was improvement in the overall number of sewage overflows that were graded as unsatisfactory in Scottish Water’s annual return. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which is an independent body, has assessed 86.5 per cent of Scotland’s entire water environment as having a high or good classification, which represents an improvement since 2014. In addition, Scottish Water continues to represent good value for those who pay for it, particularly when it is compared with comparable water bodies in other parts of the UK.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft] Business until 14:43
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
The Scottish Government seeks to ensure that executive pay is kept under control, and I can comment on the situation in the wider public sector in that regard. As I said, public sector pay policy includes a presumption against non-consolidated bonuses, and we have sought to ensure, for example, that controls on wages and bonuses are put in place when new chief executives come into post.
I do not dispute Richard Leonard’s central point about the scale of the bonuses, but I return to the point that I made in my original answer, which is that, contrary to the inference in the question, the bonuses were provided publicly and within the rules.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft] Business until 14:43
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
As I mentioned, Scottish Water has a good story to tell about its wider performance, but I recognise Beatrice Wishart’s point about the need for continuing investment. There is continuing investment—in fact, £1 billion has been invested in the water network around the country, and we will seek to provide more investment. Scottish Water is taking action and is committing up to £500 million to improve water quality, to increase monitoring of the highest-priority waters and, as I mentioned, to deal with spills and overflows.
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Alasdair Allan
Scottish Water has a long-standing exemption on the point of public sector pay policy, in recognition of its operating model and the need to retain staff as it competes with the private sector. That arrangement has been in place since 2011.
The framework for bonus payments has to be approved by the Scottish ministers. The current framework was approved in advance of the 2021-27 regulatory period. The Scottish Government is satisfied that the correct process has been followed by the Scottish Water board. Scottish Water is publicly owned, which means that, unlike at the private companies that operate elsewhere, money raised is reinvested in our water industry, while our water charges remain lower, on average, than is the case in other parts of the United Kingdom.
