Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.

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Dates of parliamentary sessions

Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 4 May 2021
Session 6: 13 May 2021 to 8 April 2026

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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.

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.

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Displaying 945 contributions

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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 3 February 2026

Ash Regan

I want to make a point to the chamber about the timing, because that is an issue that the Government has raised. We never seem to know our own history in here, so I note that the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill, which was passed in 2007, moved from introduction to enactment within a matter of months, and that was in an election year. Stage 1 was in January and stage 3 was in February. There was seemingly no panic about that bill, even though it was more complicated than this one.

We have to ask whose interests are being threatened. It is not the little girls in care homes who are vulnerable to grooming, not the women who, as we speak, are being trafficked in vans across Europe towards Scotland, not the students who are being lured in by free accommodation, not the abused, not the addicted and not the desperate women who are being coerced by debts and threats. That is the reality of prostitution.

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 3 February 2026

Ash Regan

It has been an interesting afternoon. I reiterate my point that the Parliament is at its best when we are wrestling with such debates. However, it is very clear to me that the approach that I outlined in my bill has won the argument decisively in the chamber this afternoon. There have been excellent speeches from Michelle Thomson, Ruth Maguire, Fergus Ewing and Stephen Kerr. However, we have not heard from the buyers.

The bill criminalises the purchase of sexual access, yet, throughout the committee’s scrutiny and throughout its evidence, the people whose behaviour would be criminalised are very conspicuous by their absence. There were no sex buyers—no men coming in front of the committee to account for or justify why they believe that their power entitles them to purchase access to another human being’s body. That matters because, when concerns are raised about safety, as they have been again today, we are told again and again that criminalising men will make women less safe, sellers will screen more carefully and women will be forced to vet in order to survive. Let us be honest: screening is not a safety measure; it is an attempt at a survival strategy that is used by women to try and navigate all the risks that are stacked against them—risks that are created by male entitlement, power and demand. It does not offer protection from violence.

I am sorry, minister, but if you had taken the time—

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 3 February 2026

Ash Regan

If she had taken time to listen to survivors, the minister might have heard people explaining that point.

There is a question here that is never answered.

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 3 February 2026

Ash Regan

I will not.

If men are refused by those at the very top who are able to do some kind of vetting, where do those men go next? I will tell members where they go: they just go down the chain, to women who are poorer, more desperate and more vulnerable. That is a choice, but too many people in prostitution do not have a choice. They do not have agency, and they do not have an ability to plead.

We are told that sex buyers are ordinary men, and I believe that they are. They are men who want privacy. The evidence—academic, operational and survivor led—tells us a different story, however. The Lord Advocate put this in her written evidence to the committee. She said that

“women involved in prostitution are disproportionately likely to be—”