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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Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 11:13]
Urgent Questions
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
What?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 11:13]
Urgent Questions
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
Come on!
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 11:13]
Points of Order
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I decided to raise a point of order to get advice from you and so that the Government front bench can listen and, I hope, respond.
The Presiding Officer will recall that, on 27 November, the Parliament had to meet in an emergency session to rush through legislation to fix a mistake in the Non-Domestic Rates (Liability for Unoccupied Properties) (Scotland) Bill that the Scottish National Party took through the Parliament. During the course of the consideration of the bill, we found out that the Government knew about the issue months or weeks before it originally said that it did. There was confusion everywhere: Graeme Dey had to correct the Official Report and Ivan McKee had to be asked three or four times before we could finally get an answer from him. I lodged amendments to the bill in order to get important information from the Government. We heard from all sides of the chamber that transparency was paramount in the issue and that we should be well informed. My amendments were not successful, because the Government whipped its members to vote them down.
From the front bench, Ivan McKee gave a commitment and a guarantee that he would publish all the information that I had requested. Indeed, he urged me not to press my amendments, because he was going to publish the information anyway.
My question is: how long do we have to wait? That was the end of November last year. We are now into February 2026, and the Government has still not provided that information. Why is that? Did the minister, deliberately or otherwise, mislead Parliament when he said that he would release it? What powers do we, as back benchers, or do you, as Presiding Officer, have to force or compel the Government to provide the information that it said that it would? Indeed, it got support for opposing my amendments through its commitment to release that information.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Points of Order
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I decided to raise a point of order to get advice from you and so that the Government front bench can listen and, I hope, respond.
The Presiding Officer will recall that, on 27 November, the Parliament had to meet in an emergency session to rush through legislation to fix a mistake in the Non-Domestic Rates (Liability for Unoccupied Properties) (Scotland) Bill that the Scottish National Party took through the Parliament. During the course of the consideration of the bill, we found out that the Government knew about the issue months or weeks before it originally said that it did. There was confusion everywhere: Graeme Dey had to correct the Official Report and Ivan McKee had to be asked three or four times before we could finally get an answer from him. I lodged amendments to the bill in order to get important information from the Government. We heard from all sides of the chamber that transparency was paramount in the issue and that we should be well informed. My amendments were not successful, because the Government whipped its members to vote them down.
From the front bench, Ivan McKee gave a commitment and a guarantee that he would publish all the information that I had requested. Indeed, he urged me not to press my amendments, because he was going to publish the information anyway.
My question is: how long do we have to wait? That was the end of November last year. We are now into February 2026, and the Government has still not provided that information. Why is that? Did the minister, deliberately or otherwise, mislead Parliament when he said that he would release it? What powers do we, as back benchers, or do you, as Presiding Officer, have to force or compel the Government to provide the information that it said that it would? Indeed, it got support for opposing my amendments through its commitment to release that information.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Urgent Questions
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
Come on!
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Urgent Questions
Meeting date: 4 February 2026
Douglas Ross
The cabinet secretary failed to answer Liam Kerr’s question, so let me repeat it. If the consultation, which lasts three days, comes back against the cabinet secretary’s proposals, will she abandon her plans or press ahead regardless?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Douglas Ross
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer—I am personally grateful to you for calling me, but we are in a terrible state in this Parliament if legislators are restricted to just two minutes to speak on an important piece of legislation.
I cannot go through the formalities, as I would like to do, of praising the member in charge of the bill, who has done incredible work, as I want to get to the root of where we are tonight and at decision time. I just cannot get my head around the Government’s position on the bill. What is being asked for tonight is simply to agree to the bill’s general principles, not to get into the detail of the bill—that comes later. Those principles are agreed to by the Government, and by the party of government, so why is the Government opposing them?
I have thought about it a quite lot, and I think that it might come down to politics, or perhaps Fergus Ewing was right that it comes down to personalities. The Government bears a grudge against anyone who steps out of line, and someone does not step further out of line than by resigning ministerial office. To say to the First Minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon, that her Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was a mess and was going to ruin the safety of women and girls, and to resign from Government, has consequences. I think that, sadly, years later, those consequences are going to be felt by some of the most vulnerable women and girls in Scotland, because the Government is still holding a grudge against the member in charge of the bill, who was brave enough to step down at that time.
I have only 30 more seconds. We have heard from SNP members tonight who are going to break the whip. We have heard, I believe, from one SNP member who has spoken up in support of the Government’s position. Where are the rest? If they are happy to vote down the bill tonight simply to say that they do not agree with the general principles, they should tell us why. We have not heard from those members—they have been silent. The Government has taken up more of its speaking time with one individual member—
Rona Mackayrose—
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Douglas Ross
They should do so knowing—
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Douglas Ross
—that their vote tonight—
