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 469 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
University of Dundee Finances (Gillies Review)
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Maurice Golden
The Scottish Government providing £40 million to the University of Dundee, subject to due diligence, is very welcome. However, the liquidity gap of between £45 million and £60 million will remain across the next two academic years. Do those estimates factor in the expected recruitment challenges in the domestic and international markets as a result of a reduction in the number of courses and reputational damage? Will the Scottish Government offer any long-term assurance on that liquidity gap beyond what the cabinet secretary has highlighted today?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Maurice Golden
The landfill ban has been more than a decade in the making, with an extra four-year delay already, yet Scotland is still not ready. The 2013 recycling targets remain unmet, even though recycling is the solution, in my view. Sadly, incineration has become the default for the Scottish Government.
Next year, up to £75 million in landfill tax will be lost to the UK Treasury, £75 million in revenue will be lost from the Scottish Government, and tens of millions of pounds in cost will be lost, primarily to Scotland’s small and medium-sized enterprises. It is the ultimate farce. How is that failure to plan, invest or deliver standing up for Scotland?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
First Minister’s Question Time
Meeting date: 19 June 2025
Maurice Golden
To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to reports that up to 100 truckloads of Scotland’s waste will be moved each day to England as a result of the landfill ban on biodegradable waste. (S6F-04195)
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Maurice Golden
To ask the Scottish Government how it will support NHS Tayside to improve its physical infrastructure to help to deliver better health outcomes. (S6O-04813)
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Maurice Golden
Ninewells hospital has served the people of Dundee for more than 50 years, but the difficulty and costs of maintaining the ageing building are growing. That raises the question whether Tayside would be better served by a new hospital. Will the cabinet secretary conduct a review that compares the cost-effectiveness of continued maintenance versus a new facility?
Meeting of the Parliament
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Maurice Golden
I want to make clear that deposit return schemes can have a positive effect on the recycling rates for those items in the scheme, and a limited effect on overall recycling rates.
The schemes work well and successfully across the globe but not in Scotland, although it is worth while pointing out that Scotland—indeed, the UK—would be the first to introduce such a scheme with advanced kerbside recycling. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary is not directly responsible for the scheme as it is now, but we nevertheless have a duty in this place to stand up for Scotland’s interests, and I have several concerns.
The legislation that is before us has a registration application date before 1 August 2027; however, what if the scheme were to be delayed? Scheme materials are exempt from extended producer responsibility for packaging, which means that non-scheme articles will pay. That will be particularly challenging if there is a delay. Local authorities will lose at least £1,500 per tonne on dry mixed recyclates. How will they be compensated? How will kerbside collections be affected? What will be the impact on local authority recycling rates? Will there be job losses?
How will small independent retailers be supported—for example, by accessing reverse vending machines or incentive schemes? I note the exemption. What will that mean for using glass as a packaging product, particularly as we have a glass recycling plant in Scotland? Will Scottish waste-management small and medium-sized enterprises be part of the scheme and be able to bid to access that waste? Will waste that is collected in Scotland be allocated UK wide? That means that Scotland will not have an opportunity to utilise the value of that waste and, for example, set up plastic recycling facilities.
Perhaps the cabinet secretary would raise that with the UK Government. I have been unable to obtain a meeting.
Meeting of the Parliament Business until 17:38
Parliamentary Bureau Motions
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Maurice Golden
I want to make clear that deposit return schemes can have a positive effect on the recycling rates for those items in the scheme, and a limited effect on overall recycling rates.
The schemes work well and successfully across the globe but not in Scotland, although it is worth while pointing out that Scotland—indeed, the UK—would be the first to introduce such a scheme with advanced kerbside recycling. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary is not directly responsible for the scheme as it is now, but we nevertheless have a duty in this place to stand up for Scotland’s interests, and I have several concerns.
The legislation that is before us has a registration application date before 1 August 2027; however, what if the scheme were to be delayed? Scheme materials are exempt from extended producer responsibility for packaging, which means that non-scheme articles will pay. That will be particularly challenging if there is a delay. Local authorities will lose at least £1,500 per tonne on dry mixed recyclates. How will they be compensated? How will kerbside collections be affected? What will be the impact on local authority recycling rates? Will there be job losses?
How will small independent retailers be supported—for example, by accessing reverse vending machines or incentive schemes? I note the exemption. What will that mean for using glass as a packaging product, particularly as we have a glass recycling plant in Scotland? Will Scottish waste-management small and medium-sized enterprises be part of the scheme and be able to bid to access that waste? Will waste that is collected in Scotland be allocated UK wide? That means that Scotland will not have an opportunity to utilise the value of that waste and, for example, set up plastic recycling facilities.
Perhaps the cabinet secretary would raise that with the UK Government. I have been unable to obtain a meeting.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Maurice Golden
To ask the Scottish Government what the implications and consequences of not achieving net zero by 2045 would be for Scotland, including the economy. (S6O-04798)
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Statistics 2023
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Maurice Golden
The most popular option that was chosen during the recent latte levy consultation was “No thanks”. I recognise that some climate change policies will not always be popular, but can the minister tell the chamber what the estimated reduction in emissions would be as a result of the proposed latte levy?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Maurice Golden
I concur with that answer. The consequences of not meeting net zero would drive farmers out of business, destroy the rural economy and put our food security at risk. Does the minister agree that it is common sense to meet the target of achieving net zero by 2045 and that it would be utter madness and an act of national self-harm not to attempt to do so?
