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 3154 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
John Mason
That is great—thank you.
I notice that, in the medium-term financial strategy, you specifically say:
“For the first time we are also presenting information on ... contingent liabilities”.
The committee has previously raised questions about the cumulative effect of such liabilities. I was just interested to see that sentence in the document, and I wondered whether that meant that the Government was a bit concerned that such contingent liabilities were getting quite big now. Normally, we in the committee talk about them secretly, but obviously they are out in the public domain here.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
John Mason
And housing would fall into that category.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Scottish Government and Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 2 September 2025
John Mason
The convener touched on quite a number of issues. I will go back to one or two of them, particularly the potential £851 million negative reconciliation in 2027-28.
I accept that the situation is uncertain. In the past, we have been warned about bad news but things have then improved. Does that mean that I can be relaxed about that figure? If not, what will the Government have to do? If the figure is £851 million, do we do nothing this year but, when we come to the 2027-28 budget, there will have to be a reduction?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Can you give us a picture of the situation when decisions were made on capital expenditure or the staffing position? Was there a lot of challenge? Was there a big debate? Did the finance director come to you and say, “We have to make more cuts more urgently,” or did the chair of court say, “We need to be more urgent about this?” Alternatively, was the situation broadly that there was agreement and things drifted along?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Do you think that all of them had been slightly overpromoted?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
You used the word “betterment”. It is not a word that I was familiar with, but I accept that I am not up to speed on all the latest accounting terms. Will you tell us what you understood by the word “betterment”?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
In one sense, it could be said that betterment was a delaying mechanism. Is that right? They were savings that had to be made, but it had not been decided where specifically they would be made.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
The impression that I am getting is that everybody realised that there was a bit of a problem, but no one in the system—I accept that it did not have to be you; as I am from an accounting background, I might have expected it to be the finance director—really drove this or underlined the urgency and spoke to the court and the committees. That just was not happening, was it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Did the internal or external auditors have direct discussions with you?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
I would say, by way of comment, that my experience of covenants is that they are varied. Sometimes banks insist on them, and sometimes they do not. Sometimes they are more relaxed about them—but they can catch you out.
