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 979 contributions
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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
In relation to SSI 2025/114, does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on the general reporting ground, in that the Scottish Government’s commitment of 12 September 2023 to correct, by correction slip, an error in the preamble of the Police Pensions (Remediable Service) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (“the Principal Regulations”) has not been fulfilled; that, in line with standard drafting practice, regulation 3 of the instrument should specify that the substitution is to be made in both instances where “an immediate choice election” appears; that, in line with standard drafting practice, regulation 5 of the instrument should specify that the substitution is to be made in both instances where “deferred choice election decision” appears; and that the erroneous reference to “regulation 22(3) and (4)” in regulation 7 of this instrument should be to “regulation 23(3) and (4)”?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Under agenda item 2, we are considering two instruments, on which no points have been raised.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Does the committee wish to note that the Scottish Government intends to address, in an amending instrument, the points in questions 1, 2(2), 3, 4, 5(1) and (2), 6, 8(1) and 9, and to address, by correction slip, the point in question 7?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Does the committee wish to note that the Scottish Government intends to resolve, by correction slip, the issues that are highlighted in points 1 and 4 as soon as practicable and, in any event, before the summer recess?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
In relation to SSI 2025/121, does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on the general reporting ground in that, in line with standard drafting practice, regulation 2(2) of the instrument should specify that the substitution is to be made in both instances where “deferred choice election decision” appears; that, in line with standard drafting practice, regulation 2(7) of the instrument should specify that the substitution is to be made in both instances where “compensatable” appears; and that this instrument does not fulfil the Scottish Government’s commitment of 12 September 2023 to correct the references to “immediate choice election” in paragraph 1(1) of the schedule of the Principal Regulations?
Members indicated agreement.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee [Draft]
Instruments subject to Negative Procedure
Meeting date: 13 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Also under this agenda item, no points have been raised on the following instruments.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Bill Kidd
That is very positive. Thank you very much indeed.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Thank you both for taking on board the background to the different questions that you have been asked, including many on the SFC.
I hope that my question is not as difficult as it sounds. What is your assessment of the bill’s proposals to change the membership of the SFC, including the terms of reappointments and in relation to the skills and experience of members, and to introduce co-opting powers for the SFC?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Bill Kidd
Does that apply regardless of whether the lease is for one year or 10 years?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 6 May 2025
Bill Kidd
What do you think about tenants being able to give oral notice where there is a lease term of less than a year? That proposal has been challenged to some degree by the legal profession, which says that it could create evidential difficulties should there be disagreements and so on. Would oral notice be sufficient or is written notice the direction that we should go in?
