Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.

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Dates of parliamentary sessions

Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 4 May 2021
Current session: 13 May 2021 to 6 April 2026

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Select a time period

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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.

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.

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Displaying 1557 contributions

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Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”

Meeting date: 10 December 2025

Joe FitzPatrick

Thanks for that. That all sounds good. David, do you want to add your comments?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”

Meeting date: 10 December 2025

Joe FitzPatrick

Gosh, I almost want to change my questions after hearing the points that David Anderson made in answer to Colin Beattie’s questions. I will try and shift a little bit, however.

David was mostly talking about the Scottish Government’s responsibilities and how it has interacted. I am keen that we all recognise that the Promise was made by not just the Scottish Government but other public bodies, too. It was a promise from the whole of Scotland that we all need to make sure that we are keeping.

I am keen to hear how we are managing to get the joined-up working that is required. I would be keen to hear from COSLA whether there is the correct engagement across local authorities. If we could hear from COSLA first, then maybe David Anderson could talk about the experience from his perspective on whether local authorities are managing to get the engagement that they require with the Scottish Government and with other significant public authorities, such as local national health services. Would Nicola Dickie or Fiona Whitelock want to come in first?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”

Meeting date: 10 December 2025

Joe FitzPatrick

Sorry, what I mean is, on a local level, are we managing to get the people who are all committed to the Promise to work together? The Promise cannot be delivered in silos. It can only be delivered if we all work effectively as team Scotland to deliver something that we have all promised. We are all committed to this. I have not heard anybody saying that they are not committed to the Promise, so we cannot do it in isolation. Are we managing to break down the barriers that have sometimes made such a joined-up piece of work more difficult? Are local authorities experiencing that change and are they managing to work not just for the Scottish Government and not just across their own portfolios, but with big organisations such as the NHS?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”

Meeting date: 10 December 2025

Joe FitzPatrick

Thanks for that. My next question was going to be whether you were able to start doing that, so that we, as politicians, can make sure that we are putting pressure in the right place. If you have that in hand, that sounds good. Thanks very much. Thank you, convener.

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”

Meeting date: 10 December 2025

Joe FitzPatrick

Are you confident that, even where the Promise is not specifically a clear priority in a local authority area—as in written down—it is still at the fore? When we are talking about changes to policing, is the Promise still being remembered and not just put to the side?