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 3436 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
John Mason
Your annual report and accounts talks about the pension benefits of the senior leadership team. Those appear to have gone up quite a lot.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Revenue Scotland
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
John Mason
I thought that might be the case.
As the convener mentioned, you have a target of 1 per cent of total revenues going to administration. Your admin costs went up from 0.87 per cent of revenues the previous year to 0.93 in 2024-25. I take your point that you are preparing for new taxes, and, as the convener also said, we will discuss the building safety levy in the next part of this meeting. However, even though the levy will be quite small, is it liable to push you over the 1 per cent?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
John Mason
That is fine—I can ask the minister about that.
One of the differences between this and the UK system is the timing of when people declare and/or pay. Have you been involved in those discussions? From an efficiency, or practical, point of view with regard to collecting the tax, is the time that we are proposing for declaration and payment good?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
John Mason
The English system—which, if I understand it correctly, does not provide developers with a certificate unless they have paid—seems quite draconian, if you like. However, it is also quite definite. It would seem to imply—to me, at least—that, if a developer wanted to sell a building, they would have to pay the tax. Is our process a bit less certain?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
John Mason
Okay. Thanks.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
John Mason
On that point, should we aim for reporting either within 24 hours or by the end of the school day, although with room for exceptions, because the point has been made that some parents might react badly if their child has been in trouble?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
John Mason
At the moment, an independent or grant-aided school does not have much of a relationship with the local authority where it is located, does it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
John Mason
If I heard you correctly, you said that it would be for the local education authority to decide what training teachers need, but the cabinet secretary, speaking as a teacher, seemed to suggest that each individual teacher should decide what they need. I presume that the middle ground would be to have headteachers deciding on the training that their staff need. What are your thoughts on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
John Mason
De-escalation has been emphasised in the evidence that we received from some witnesses. For example, a big emphasis was placed on it by Donaldson’s, which seems to have gone to the other extreme of saying, “We will not use physical restraint and it is all about de-escalation.” The fact that it has two adults for every pupil helps with that, though.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 November 2025
John Mason
The committee heard the suggestion that, because they are unsure about what they can and cannot do, some teachers hold back and do not get involved in situations when they feel that perhaps they should, and that giving training on physical techniques and so on might encourage teachers to get more involved physically, so we could see an increase in physical interventions.
