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 2025 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Ministerial Code (First Minister and Deputy First Minister)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Emma Harper
We must remember the work of Nicola Sturgeon and, of course, Jeane Freeman, Jason Leitch and Gregor Smith. They put work in every day when we were witnessing on our television screens what was happening with the pandemic around the globe.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Ministerial Code (First Minister and Deputy First Minister)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Emma Harper
I was reflecting on the fact that the Scottish Government has a policy for mobile phones and records management. It says:
“Mobile messaging does not change your responsibility within Scottish Government to maintain complete and comprehensive records of key conversations and decisions.”
All that information is already there.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Ministerial Code (First Minister and Deputy First Minister)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Emma Harper
Both inquiries will help to determine what could have been done differently and will serve to improve Government decision making in any future pandemic, viral outbreak or other crisis. We want to ensure that we focus on how we save lives and prevent suffering in the future. As the First Minister said, the Scottish Government will examine and consider closely the recommendations that the Scottish and UK public inquiries make. We need to let the inquiries progress. That would be the normal thing to do.
Contrary to what the Conservative motion states, the Scottish Government has fully complied with both inquiries and will continue to do so. Scottish ministers, including the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, and officials have already provided a large volume of information. Members have outlined that. The Scottish Government has provided 25 detailed corporate statements and has been involved in the request for 89 individual statements in support of module 2A of the UK inquiry.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scottish Ministerial Code (First Minister and Deputy First Minister)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Emma Harper
In contrast to the UK Government’s attempts to limit the requests for information from the chair of the UK inquiry, Baroness Hallett, the Scottish Government has already committed to fully co-operating with the UK inquiry.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
Sheila Duffy will know that Dr Jonathan Coutts came to a meeting of the cross-party group on lung health, which I co-convene. We had a presentation on vaping, especially among young people. Given the targeting, I am really concerned about a raft of new interstitial lung diseases—I raise that because I have close links with Phyllis Murphie, who is a nurse consultant in respiratory medicine and who happens to be my sister.
We have explored future lung ill health among young people. Dr Coutts talked about the alarming rise in the number of teens who are using e-cigarettes, from 3 to 43 per cent, which has reversed a lot of the work to eliminate nicotine exposure and then addiction. Whether or not use is illicit, how concerned are you that young people are being exposed directly to nicotine, which will harm them?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
Do we need to revise how we support people to quit smoking? The NHS “Quit Your Way Scotland” service is part of that support.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
I said interstitial lung disease, not pulmonary fibrosis, and I was not talking about nicotine but the other inhalable substances or components that are in there.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
Good morning, everybody. I want to pick up on a question from Ivan McKee about data. As a registered nurse, I understand that when somebody comes into the hospital through a medical assessment unit they are asked, “Do you smoke—yes or no?” If it is yes, they are offered a smoking cessation pathway. Is that question extended to ask, “Do you smoke or vape?”, with smoking cessation then offered in that way?
Also, what do we do in paediatric admissions? It is rather difficult to ask paediatric patients that question, especially if their mum or dad is sitting there. For example, when they come in with shortness of breath, the first thing that we think is that it might be an asthma attack, but it might not be; it might be as a result of high doses of nicotine in vaping, for instance. Are we pursuing that now? I understand that people in some health boards ask about that, but others do not.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
Jonathan Coutts’s work shows that a lot of companies quote research by Nutt et al that says that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer than standard cigarettes, but that study involved 12 people who were invited to take part and it was not peer reviewed. Two of the people who participated also had financial links with the vaping industry. Will you jog my memory on the argument that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Vaping (Public Health Impact)
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Emma Harper
Is there a danger that a flavour ban could deter adult smokers from switching to vapes? I know that encouraging people to stop smoking is very complicated. If we banned flavours, would that make it harder for people to stop smoking?
