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 421 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 10:31]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
I welcome the fact that the minister says that her officials are going to meet Marie Curie, because the organisation is very clear that the situation does not need to be this way and it is calling for legislation to enshrine in law a right to palliative care.
Does the minister agree that every person must have the right to dignity at the end of life and access to quality palliative care? Will the Government therefore support the introduction—at some point—of legislation that gives everyone the right in law to palliative care?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 10:31]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to new figures on unmet need for palliative care that were published by Marie Curie on 16 February, showing that almost one in three people in Scotland die with unmet palliative care needs. (S6T-02900)
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 10:31]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
Marie Curie said that, without action, the number of people dying in Scotland with unmet palliative care needs will continue to increase. I believe that, over the recent period, in relation to the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, most members in the chamber have received heartbreaking emails from constituents, telling us of their experiences when loved ones died without the right support in place. Does the minister accept that every individual who is in need of palliative care should be able to access it when they are dying?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
I welcome the fact that the minister says that her officials are going to meet Marie Curie, because the organisation is very clear that the situation does not need to be this way and it is calling for legislation to enshrine in law a right to palliative care.
Does the minister agree that every person must have the right to dignity at the end of life and access to quality palliative care? Will the Government therefore support the introduction—at some point—of legislation that gives everyone the right in law to palliative care?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to new figures on unmet need for palliative care that were published by Marie Curie on 16 February, showing that almost one in three people in Scotland die with unmet palliative care needs. (S6T-02900)
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 February 2026
Alex Rowley
Marie Curie said that, without action, the number of people dying in Scotland with unmet palliative care needs will continue to increase. I believe that, over the recent period, in relation to the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, most members in the chamber have received heartbreaking emails from constituents, telling us of their experiences when loved ones died without the right support in place. Does the minister accept that every individual who is in need of palliative care should be able to access it when they are dying?
Meeting of the Parliament [Last updated 19:31]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Alex Rowley
After two decades of broken promises, I am sure that the health secretary will understand why the people of Lochgelly will be hesitant to welcome this project. However, I hope that we are going in the right direction and that it will happen. The other health centre in Fife that is crumbling is the one in Kincardine, but there is no mention of that in any of the documents. Can he tell me what is happening there?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Alex Rowley
After two decades of broken promises, I am sure that the health secretary will understand why the people of Lochgelly will be hesitant to welcome this project. However, I hope that we are going in the right direction and that it will happen. The other health centre in Fife that is crumbling is the one in Kincardine, but there is no mention of that in any of the documents. Can he tell me what is happening there?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
General Question Time
Meeting date: 5 February 2026
Alex Rowley
After two decades of broken promises, I am sure that the health secretary will understand why the people of Lochgelly will be hesitant to welcome this project. However, I hope that we are going in the right direction and that it will happen. The other health centre in Fife that is crumbling is the one in Kincardine, but there is no mention of that in any of the documents. Can he tell me what is happening there?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
UEFA European Championship (Scotland) Bill
Meeting date: 15 January 2026
Alex Rowley
As Patrick Harvie said, the bill is largely technical, and it is difficult to get too worked up about the technicalities.
Stephen Kerr mentioned the constructive approach that has been taken to the bill. I only wish that our politics and our Parliament could take that approach more often. The great Scottish journalist Brian Taylor would say to me, “It’s politics—what do you expect?” Although I massively respect Brian Taylor, I disagree with him on that, and so do the majority of the Scottish people. When we are out and about in our constituencies, people often say, “Why can’t you just work together in the best interests of the people who you represent?”
Moving forward, I hope that all politicians, in seeing the rise of the right, ask themselves, “Why is that happening?” If it is happening partly because, as people say, the rest of us are all the same and we continually squabble, argue and blame one other while things do not get better, perhaps we should allow the approach that has been taken to the bill to rub off on us in the future.
Stephen Kerr talked about some of the great names of the past in Scottish football. I absolutely believe that we must know and learn from our history, but I also like to look forward and try to ensure that, while learning from our history, we can move forward.
How do we support football in Scotland to move forward? There will be excitement this year because we have qualified for the world cup, but we will then move on to the Euros, and I hope that one of the legacies of the Euros will be that we look at how we embed and support football at community level.
Neil Bibby talked about the increase in funding for sport coming from the UK Government and the Scottish Government. We must consider how we empower communities more. When I grew up, people played football on the streets. There were not loads of cars on the streets like there are now. Society has changed since the days when I grew up. In communities across Scotland, I see strong community football growing. That depends a lot on volunteers, including parents and grandparents who give up their time to run local football clubs. It also depends on having sports coaches who are able to support it.
I do not want us to believe that the Parliament can fix everything or that it is just about money. We need to work with local government and look at coming up with a Scotland-wide strategy that empowers communities and acknowledges that our greatest resource is in those communities.
There are smaller football teams that are struggling that have professional players and coaches who could do more with our schools. I think back to 50-odd years ago when, at primary school, the local teachers would take us up the park and we would get to kick a ball about and play a bit of football. That all stopped in the 1980s and 1990s when we had industrial action and teachers’ workloads continued to rise. However, there is a resource in communities up and down Scotland and, if it could be pulled together through politicians being willing to work together with local government, the legacy could be that we had a football team that was in every major competition and that young people had the opportunity to access football and become the greats of the future.
