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 474 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
My last question on food education in the broader sense is about staff—whether they are in schools, hospitals, care settings or other parts of the public sector. Food education is not just about basic skills but about the approach towards the different food culture that we are trying to create among the staff in those organisations. How does the plan engage with an empowering and respectful approach to changing what we expect from people who are working in food and in those environments?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Thank you very much.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Good morning. We had quite an interesting exchange in the previous session this morning, when I was asking about the role of schools and food education. There was a little bit of a tension between the idea of food education as involving a reductive approach to cooking skills and knowledge about what is healthy and unhealthy food, as opposed to the wider role that education settings play. I think that there was some pushback against the idea that the focus should be on cooking skills and some criticism that the plan places too much emphasis on that, but I think that, at the same time, there was a clear understanding that education settings have an important role to play in shaping attitudes to food and attitudes to how people consume. Could you reflect on that balance between the slightly narrower—or reductive, if I can use that word—approach to food education and the wider responsibility of education settings in relation to food culture?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Part of my concern is whether the stated ambition will genuinely be delivered. We have already acknowledged that it is just over 10 years since the first good food nation strategy or document was produced—I forget its title. In the previous evidence session, I was reflecting that it is nearly 20 years since legislation was passed on public health and nutrition in schools. Already at that point, some of the schools that we visited were going way beyond better nutritional standards—it was not instead of, but as well as. They were building a relationship with local farmers, so that the farmers got a sense of the schools that they were supplying to and the children got a sense of where their food came from.
The schools were going beyond nutritional standards in relation to the environment of the school canteen. They were considering whether it felt like a burger joint or like something a bit more down to earth that related to how people eat together. What are young people learning from that environment? It is almost about seeing the canteen as an extension of a classroom, not because it is teaching a curriculum about food, but because it is exposing young people to a food system and to a set of cultural expectations.
Already at that point, some schools were doing great stuff, but a lot of schools were not engaging with that at all, and that is still the case 20 years later. How can you reassure us that MSPs will not be sat around this table in another 10 years saying, “Remember that good food nation plan? It set a lot of ambition, but not much has changed”?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Too much?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
I have a supplementary question on the connection between human health, climate and environmental health and animal health and wellbeing. If we accept what you say, achieving what you described as a more plant-forward diet—and perhaps a less meat-intensive agriculture system and diet—will need a considered, nuanced approach. In making the case that that can be done in a way that is beneficial to the rural economy and is in keeping with the direction towards which many people’s diets are gradually changing anyway, do you agree that public attitudes are more receptive than some political attitudes at the moment? We have seen, for example, the right-wing press and some politicians react in an opportunistic way—with a “We can’t do this; there would be a mass cull of all the animals and it would destroy the rural economy” kind of approach.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Sure—thank you.
10:30Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
Can you give an example of how catering staff have shaped the plan or of how responses from unions or others have meant that those voices have been heard in that shaping?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
So that I understand the Government’s position, is the Government saying that it wants a less meat-intensive diet, a balanced approach to achieving, not a wholly plant-based diet, but, as was described in the previous session, a more plant-forward diet, and emissions reductions, but that that can be achieved without any reduction in meat production in Scotland?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
National Good Food Nation Plan
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
Patrick Harvie
My question leads on quite well from that. I will talk about food education—a lot of that is about schools, but not exclusively so. At the highest level, is there enough ambition for food education in the plan? That may include cooking skills, but I am thinking about education around our relationship with food in a broader sense, whether that is in the curriculum or through education more widely.
