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 1359 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Liz Smith
That is helpful. I was aware of that circumstance, but thank you for raising it, Mr McGuire.
Witnesses who have attended the committee have put it to us that one of the reasons for the increasing demand for public inquiries is because of the failure of some public services. I think that it was John Campbell KC who said to us that inquiries are a convenient way for politicians to say, “Well, it’s not on our desk now—it’s off to a public inquiry.” Do you agree that the reason for the increase is that there is evidence that more of the public services, particularly in health, are not functioning as well as they should be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Liz Smith
My concern is that, when public services have not been functioning as well as they should have been, particularly when that is over a long period of time, the trust of the victims and people who will be involved in a public inquiry will be diminished. They will feel a complete lack of trust, which makes it difficult for the public inquiry to try to regain that trust. For a public inquiry to work well, it is essential that the victims have trust in the process. If that trust has already been diminished because they feel that they have been let down badly by public services, it is difficult to get it back.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Liz Smith
There seems to be a growing number of public inquiries in which it is a likely possibility that the terms of reference will have to be modified or expanded because of the fact that new information comes out through various victim statements. If victims feel that, over a long period of time, they have been undermined in the way that their cases have been approached, it is important that the terms of reference can reflect their interests as well as those of the Government minister who set up the public inquiry. Is that something that you are concerned about?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 7 October 2025
Liz Smith
That approach is important, so that nothing is kept under cover because of constitutional arrangements.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
I want to ask you about the second part of the statement that you gave on 2 September and what you have said this morning about identifying programmes that are proven to work. You have given some examples of where the Government has some focus. The convener suggested that there is a corollary to that. I know that you are not going to reveal any details about the budget, but if there are programmes that are clearly not working and have not been working through previous budgets, what action will the Government take in areas where the spending has not provided the outcomes that the Government would like? Is the Scottish Government in a position to say, “Here are the programmes that are working well, and here is the evidence that supports that, but here is evidence that other programmes are not working well and where money could be saved or, in some cases, transferred”? Is the Government at that stage?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
Is that with a view to making cuts in certain areas?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
Do you feel that those very difficult decisions are sufficiently transparent? It is an extremely difficult task for the Government, in tight fiscal circumstances, to make the right decisions about what is working well and what is not working well. Is there sufficient transparency in the evidence on which policies are most effective in delivering for the Government and which policies are not effective and should therefore potentially be scrapped?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
It is just like your manifesto of 2021.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
Cabinet secretary, in the first instance, I want to explore some of your responses to Mr Gibson when you were talking about some of the commitments that you are prioritising. I note that, when you came before the committee on 2 September, you said that the Scottish Government is prioritising those most in need as well as programmes that are proven to work.
Let me break that down into its two component parts, the first of which is those most in need. The convener has put it to you that colleges could, perhaps, be defined as a group most in need. What criteria is the Scottish Government using for a budget that will be presented under very tight fiscal arrangements, and what criteria are ministers using to try to examine who those most in need are when it comes to pursuing economic growth and better outcomes?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Liz Smith
There are issues around the data set. We were told at the start of this parliamentary session that certain aspects of data, in particular on the labour market, do not exist. That obviously makes life difficult for the Government.
This is my final question. On 2 September, you intimated that you would not be able to roll out policies such as free school meals on the universal basis that you would have liked to, because of fiscal constraints. Will you hold off rolling out policies in other areas, or, in some cases, will you roll policies back, because you do not have the money to finance them?
