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 3334 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
I will let Tom McNamara speak in a second, but one suggestion was that the reporter might end up having to meet two or more groups separately, even within a family, before they went forward.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
I did not ask specifically about that, but that concern was raised with us.
With regard to controlling profit, I am sceptical about whether that will happen UK-wide or indeed elsewhere, because I know from experience that big companies are very clever at manipulating profit, charging management fees and so on.
On the night when committee members met the young people here, I met only a few of them, but it was interesting to hear one or two say that they were relaxed about whoever ran their care home making a bit of profit, as long as it went back into making buildings better and so on. They were more concerned about the possibility of the director or chief executive officer—whoever they might be—driving around in a really fancy car. If the director had a really nice car, that would reduce the profit—and that is my point. Once you get into such minutiae, it is almost impossible to control that sort of thing.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
Okay. We will keep an eye on that.
Building on that, I note that a slightly different approach has been proposed with regard to fostering, because the fostering service has to be a charity. First of all, can you explain the difference between the two approaches?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
I am interested in the term “statistical figures”. That suggests that they are definite and historical, as compared with forecasting—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
Okay, thanks very much.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
You will not be surprised to hear that I want to look at money, finances and so on. First, I have a question about profit limitation, which is a phrase that is used in section 8 of the bill. As you might have seen, in our previous evidence-taking sessions we have talked about excessive profits, superprofits and things like that. Can you say something about your thinking on that aspect, especially the definition of the term “profit”? I am not an expert, but I am an accountant, and I know that it is possible for people to interpret the idea of profit in many different ways.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
I suppose that that is one of my concerns—that this is so complex that we might be better just focusing on the price that somebody charges and the quality of the product that we get. When we buy, say, the Forth road bridge—or anything—with public money, it is all important, as is this. Is it not just the quality of care and the actual cost that we should focus on? I have forgotten exactly who it was, but when I asked, “Where is the quality of care best?”, at least one witness answered that it was better in the private sector than in the public sector.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
Do you mean that they are historical figures?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 November 2025
John Mason
I see that there has been an equality impact assessment, but I note that there are five men and two women, which is not ideal.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
John Mason
So, whether it was a trainer, an individual, a couple of folk within a local authority or an external provider, they would all go through the same training or have the same qualification standard?
