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 1517 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Do you think that the current statutory provisions give you enough independence, or are there any limitations?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Why would people be segregated during coffee breaks?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Do you mean mitigation measures such as making sure that accident and emergency teams have some SCOTTIE-ED—Scottish core obstetric teaching and training in emergencies for emergency departments—training for pregnancy emergencies, or something like that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
I think that we are almost at the two-year anniversary of the publication of a report by the Patient Safety Commissioner in England, and it was the fact that people such as mesh survivors felt that they were never listened to that led to the establishment of the Patient Safety Commissioner in England. We have also taken evidence on sodium valproate and Primodos and how they have affected people. How do you support and give confidence to people who have been failed previously and who feel they have not been listened to? How do we take that forward?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Finally, has there been any movement on redress, or is it just not going anywhere? Is there a reluctance to address the issue of redress for sodium valproate?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
We heard this morning about the diversity of the people that would be required in order to ensure that there would be proper representation of those with lived experience and so on. Not all non-voting members are included in the order, so I am interested to hear about the decision to include members with lived experience but not staff representatives, who have been omitted, although, when I look at the membership of Dumfries and Galloway’s IJB, I see that there is a staff representative on the NHS part of that list. I would be interested to hear about the inclusion or otherwise of certain groups in the order.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Good morning. During the whole process of establishing the Patient Safety Commissioner, it was stressed that public confidence in Scotland’s healthcare system was a core reason for establishing a commissioner who was independent. Therefore, I would be interested to hear how you can demonstrate independence from Government in order to pursue your Patient Safety Commissioner role.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Okay.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Going back to Stranraer, I remind everybody that I am still a nurse. I trained in NHS Dumfries and Galloway and worked in NHS Dumfries and Galloway, and Stranraer is the town that I was born in, so I have a particular interest in the maternity services there. I have been working with the Galloway community hospital action group, as have other colleagues at this table. We have been campaigning with that group and helping them to look at options for a long time now, since 2017, when babies stopped being born at the Galloway community hospital. I am interested to hear your current position on that. Is there a way forward? Some action has been taken in that there are overnight stays when early labour is presented, instead of women being sent back to Newton Stewart or Glenluce, but I would be interested in an update on the current situation.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland
Meeting date: 3 February 2026
Emma Harper
Thank you.
