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]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
If you take that over the lifetime of the 12 to 15 years, you are talking about the levy contributing 20-plus per cent; it is in that range. If you take the number that you have and multiply it by 12 or 15, you end up at 20 to 25 per cent of the total cost environment. The Scottish Government funding for the remediation as it gets identified and requires to be done will be a balance, and that balance will obviously change over time.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
The date we picked gives a 22-month period, which is important. It is set at April 2028, because it is the start of a new financial year. You could pick another date, or do what you suggest, but our approach gives clarity on when the date will be.
We have committed to taking forward the secondary legislation, which we believe is perfectly doable. If the bill goes through stage 3 prior to the end of March, the new Government will be in a position, when it comes back after the election, to make decisions on those rates.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
Just to be clear, we will be in a position to be able to give the 22-month notice to developers on the rates and reliefs but not necessarily complete the secondary legislation. That is a point of legal clarification—we will not have all the secondary legislation, but we will have the parts that relate to the reliefs and the rate of the levy.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
I think that we can consider that. Clearly, if a future Government or Parliament decided that a sunset clause should be repealed, it would have the ability to do that. At the moment, we have not put in such a clause, and I do not think that the legislation down south has a sunset clause, either.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
I am always interested in talking to people about solutions.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
Clearly, there are tax collection measures at the Scottish Government and UK Government levels, and mitigations and processes are in place to prevent people running a business, making money, folding a business and running away with the money. You are not allowed to do that.
There will be issues to be worked through in that regard, but it is not as though we do not collect tax from companies at the UK level or Scottish level at the moment. There are mechanisms for doing that, and I am sure that Revenue Scotland has gone through the technical parts of that with the committee. Do you want to say any more on that, Hannah?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
First of all, affordable housing is exempt from the levy. You are correct to say that all these matters have to be considered in the round as part of our discussions with the sector and others about the need to support house building. However, I take you back to the point that, if the sector did not make the proposed relatively small contribution to the overall costs of addressing cladding, those funds would have to be raised elsewhere.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
We are very conscious of that issue. We have indicated that there will be relief for brownfield sites; we just need to work through the details of the extent of that relief. In England, it is a 50 per cent reduction, so developers pay half the levy for developments on brownfield sites. In Scotland, we are very conscious of the need for relief for such sites, because of the additional remedial costs and because of their location in town and city centres, where we want to encourage development.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
It is a competitive market with a lot of different pressures on it, so it will depend on the situation for the particular developer. The market price is set by a range of factors, so it might well be that there is a mixture. How much of the cost developers absorb from their profits and how much of it is passed on will vary depending on the developer and the circumstances.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 18 November 2025
Ivan McKee
It comes back to ease of use, because these numbers are well known in the building process right from the planning stage. Architects and developers will know those numbers, so they can plan on that basis. The end price, on the other hand, might move around right up to the last minute, depending on a range of factors, so it would be harder for them to assess what the levy would be to allow them to factor it in. As a result, this seemed the most robust and straightforward methodology.
I do take your point about different types of houses and so on, but what we are doing through reliefs on the affordability element will go a long way towards addressing that.
