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 1396 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
The investment zones are focused on specific areas and technologies—the one in Glasgow is centred around advanced manufacturing and AI, so it is quite a specific focus. The green ports are very much focused on supporting the offshore sector and the roll-out of floating offshore wind platforms in particular, so they have different specific areas of focus with regard to the type of technologies and industries that they are trying to attract.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
We have seen a number of significant investments, with jobs running into the hundreds. They were really just at the start of the process.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
Not to my knowledge, no.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
That would be assessed at the point at which those businesses make the application for the tax relief benefit.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
Exactly. That is the answer to the question.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 6 January 2026
Ivan McKee
As I said, anyone who is taking advantage of the incentives and investing in those areas has to comply with all legal requirements.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 November 2025
Ivan McKee
Absolutely—it is a very important topic.
Technically, the instrument is a continuation of what we have been doing. It puts in place the regulations that allow us to continue to do what we have done up to now, which opens up procurement more broadly. What does that mean in practical terms? Obviously, if we are putting out bigger contracts—which is what happens when they are amalgamated across a wider geography—we run the risk of there being bigger suppliers bidding for them.
There is a separate but very important focus of the Scottish procurement policy on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises to access public sector contracts. That is thoroughly embedded in the process—and I think with some success. We are now at the stage where 47 per cent of Scottish public sector procurement spend went to SMEs in the last published data. That compares with a number of around 20 per cent across the whole of the UK.
We have made some significant progress, but there is always more work to do.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 November 2025
Ivan McKee
I will ask officials to come in on the specifics.
If we look across the public sector landscape, a huge amount of work has been done over recent years to encourage the use of framework contracts in procurement. We have saved hundreds of millions of pounds by doing that in the Scottish context, with different public bodies co-operating on those frameworks. The same can apply across the whole of the UK, where it makes sense to do so.
That has been the case up to now, and all that the instrument does, given the new UK procurement legislation, is enable the process to continue. It dovetails in the different procedural requirements so that co-operation continues to be technically possible.
I will ask officials to come in if they have any specific examples. If there is any more detail that you need, convener, I am happy to come back.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 November 2025
Ivan McKee
Officials can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think that there are any instances of Iraqi firms bidding into Scottish public procurement as yet. This instrument is just to add them on to the list of countries that can do so.
Economy and Fair Work Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 19 November 2025
Ivan McKee
As committee members know, while the negotiation of international agreements is a reserved matter, implementation can occur in devolved areas. In particular, agreements often include provisions providing for reciprocal access to public procurement. Accordingly, Scottish procurement regulations set out that bidders from countries to which a relevant agreement applies are entitled to equal treatment when bidding for contracts in Scotland.
The instrument updates the list of relevant agreements by inserting a reference to a new agreement between the United Kingdom and Iraq. The effect will be to ensure that suppliers from Iraq will be entitled to the same treatment as Scottish or other UK suppliers when bidding for contracts that are covered by the agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Scottish bidders will be entitled to equal treatment when bidding for contracts in Iraq.
It is worth noting that the agreement is based on the agreement between the European Union and Iraq, which ceased to apply to the UK after Brexit. In that sense, the instrument can be largely regarded as a restoration of rights and obligations that existed until that point.
