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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1936 contributions
|
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
What the minister said from a sedentary position is not correct in relation to the balance of the Scottish economy against the UK economy.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
One of the pieces of evidence is something called the Laffer curve, which, as some of the member’s predecessors in the Government knew, is a diagram that shows that when you increase tax, sadly, at one point, the revenue starts to go down.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
I am not usually someone who gets confused, but—my goodness—I am confused today. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government is very fond of asking Opposition parties to spell out exactly what we would do differently, but, when we do, she objects. She dismisses all our accusations of SNP waste, but she has now admitted that we are right.
As for Lorna Slater’s speech, I have to say that I am very glad that it has been a short debate.
I will set the debate in context by acknowledging some of the fundamental weaknesses in the Scottish economy, which have been much debated by the independent analysts. As well as flagging up the extent of the fiscal predicament in which the Scottish Government finds itself, the analysts have made it clear that that is largely a result of the Scottish Government’s own decisions. They have highlighted the failure to deliver sustained economic growth; concerns over tax structures, especially differentials; and issues with the delivery of more efficient public services, which, as we know, is a subject that has been exercising the mind of the Finance and Public Administration Committee for many months—although I am not sure that members would have got that impression from what the committee’s convener said in his speech.
The bottom line is that Scotland has not been creating the growth that it desperately needs to create to pay for the increasing demands on public services. Senior figures in business—people such as Sandy Begbie—are all telling us—
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
In Mr Hoy’s speech, he spelt out exactly what measures the Conservatives are going to take. Why can the cabinet secretary not admit that?
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
I am sure that we can debate that offline—I have gone with the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s statistics.
On the question of universal payments, the minister asked me what I would do. I think that we have to look at the areas of universal payments in which, quite clearly, the payments are not all being taken up. That is an area of overspend. It is also a case in which we should be targeting those who are most in need and not giving out a whole range of benefits to people who do not necessarily need them. That is a way forward and, on that point, I will finish.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
There are two points there. Economic inactivity is the key issue. As Willie Rennie rightly pointed out—
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
I am not sure that there is time—I am about to finish.
Meeting of the Parliament
Economic Performance (A Better Deal for Taxpayers)
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Liz Smith
Will the member give way?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Public Inquiries (Cost-effectiveness)
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
I will begin by putting on the record that I am representing some former patients of Eljamel in the public inquiry. Will either of you give a view on why you think there is an increasing demand for public inquiries?
