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]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
My final point is on paragraph 82, which talks about having more of a strategy for reconciliations. Will you expand on that a wee bit? In the past, we have sometimes been warned about a huge negative reconciliation but, when we have got to the time, it has not been as bad as that. It is quite difficult to predict positive or negative reconciliations. Is it possible to have a strategy?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
I want to follow up on some of the things the convener has been asking about. The word “transparency” has come up quite a lot. I wonder whether you are being a bit unfair on the Government, because the Government can produce any amount of information and you or somebody else can audit it, so it is all checked. However, if the public and, frankly, MSPs do not engage in trying to find out about it, that is not really the Government’s fault, is it? It has been said that MSPs on the whole are not fiscally or financially literate—we are hoping to build that into future Parliaments. Do you not think that it is partly the public and everybody else who is at fault?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
I accept that point, yes.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
I understand all of that, but let us take the £851 million that is mentioned for 2027-28. One strategy would be to say, “Right—let’s severely cut spending this year and next year to build up a reserve so that we’re ready for that £851 million.” However, in the meantime, the criticism of the Government for not spending its money would be horrendous—because there would be all the national health service waiting lists and all the rest of it—and then maybe the negative reconciliation of £851 million would not happen. The Government is in a no-win position, is it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
I tend to share the convener’s view that more people perhaps do not realise that they do not understand the tax system, and that the Scottish people are probably being a bit more honest about their lack of understanding than the people who were surveyed in England. That is just my opinion.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
Paragraph 32 says that
“the growth in the tax base in Scotland has been relatively slower than in the rest of the UK”
and lists four factors that explain that. I accept that the Scottish Government is largely in control of behavioural responses from taxpayers to policy changes, because it controls its policy changes. However, we cannot really do anything about the other factors, which include
“differences in the sectoral make-up of the economy”
and
“Different distribution of incomes in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK”.
Similarly, the report goes on to talk about how financial services in the rest of the UK are different from those in Scotland, and the fact that there are many more high earners in that industry outside of Scotland. As I said, a lot of that is outwith our control, is it not?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 9 December 2025
John Mason
Exhibit 8, which is about pressures on the Scottish budget, lists factors that are specific to Scotland. The second one is:
“Scotland’s population is, on average, older and sicker when compared to the rest of the UK”.
With the best will in the world, that cannot be turned around quickly. Am I right in saying that the fiscal framework does not account for need—that it does not consider that needs might be greater in Wales, Scotland or anywhere else?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
John Mason
It is sometimes said that people go to university and end up with degrees that do not get them applicable jobs. Is the member looking at that issue, too, in his amendment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
John Mason
Will the member give way?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
John Mason
Mr Briggs says that his amendment is similar to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s, but he is talking about a—that is, one—trade union representative, which I assume would cover universities, colleges and apprenticeships. Does he not agree that there would need to be a representative for each of those sectors, because they are quite different from each other? Even the unions representing college staff tend to be different unions from those representing university staff, and I think that there have been quite large differences between them in the past. How would Mr Briggs respond to that?
