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 1012 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
As you know, I have been calling for universal swimming lessons all along, so I welcome the narrative. However, those are not being offered during the school term. I think that we should take sport to the kids, not wait for the kids to come to the sport. If they are offered only during the holiday period, how will kids access them? There is a potential problem there, because there has to be a swimming pool that is open and kids have to be able to travel to it. If our goal is to teach kids to swim, why are we not doing it during the school term when we can, to coin a phrase, fish where the fish are?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
You touched on legacy, which is an important tool for engagement. In 2014, the Commonwealth games were in Glasgow and they showed Scotland at its very best through some phenomenal sport. However, the legacy of the games is not evident. Facilities have closed down and, as I have said many times, access to sport and physical activity has become the bastion of the middle classes and those in private education. You will be aware that I have been a coach for longer than I was an athlete, and I have that concern.
We have a fantastic summer of sport coming up and Scotland will, once again, be shown to be a key deliverer of major events. Given the issues that I have talked about, how will we ensure that we maximise and deliver that legacy?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
Much as I feel that I am just getting started, convener, I realise that we are running out of time, so I will leave it there.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
Will Healthcare Improvement Scotland have an input into that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
Cabinet secretary, on the point about how we are seeking to fill the many spaces in our social care sector—I have raised this with you before—we have pupils who want to go into that sector and who are applying to colleges across Scotland yet are being turned away because the colleges lack funds. Ayrshire College has had to turn away 71 applications for its social care courses, and colleagues from across the chamber have highlighted similar issues across Scotland. Surely we should be tackling that if we have such significant need in social care.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
The cost of recruitment if we do not go through colleges would be offset if you allowed more college places. If we are short of places and we have home-grown people who want to work in our social care system, surely the best route for access to staff would be to allow and fund more college places.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
I was really interested in Joe FitzPatrick’s questions, and the fact that the Government has been looking at how to develop preventative spend approaches since 2007. How are you measuring the impact of preventative spend?
10:30
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Budget Scrutiny 2026-27
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
I have to disagree. You will not be surprised to hear that I was going to come on to sport, but I would point out that we have decreasing life expectancy; we are one of the unhealthiest nations in Europe, and we are getting worse; we have, crucially, high levels of drug and alcohol deaths and other issues; we have the highest obesity level in Europe; and we have really high levels of mental health issues. That is how you measure preventative spend. At the end of the day, those are the things that we are trying to prevent, and we are not doing that.
As for sport, you are right to say that we agree on the impact that sport, and physical activity in general, can have on health, mental wellbeing and, indeed, overall wellbeing. When I came into Parliament, the sports budget was £44 million, and last year, it was £36 million. I note that it is now increasing—and you will never hear an argument from me with increasing the sports budget. However, the devil is in the detail, and some of the funding is for one-off activities related to the Commonwealth games and the FIFA world cup. I will also be interested to see whether sportscotland delivers extracurricular activity in schools. Again, that will be very welcome, because I think that it is hugely important.
However, the reality in sport is that people on the front line are really struggling to develop even basic programmes. You have told me that you are looking at the sports budget in the round, but the fact is that you have not doubled it in this parliamentary session as you said you would in your last manifesto—the budget is going into the next session. I note your commitment to sport, but how can you claim that what has been done so far in this parliamentary session has been beneficial to it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 27 January 2026
Brian Whittle
Finally, if we are looking to establish national guidance, how will consistent implementation be supported across Scotland?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]
Draft Climate Change Plan
Meeting date: 20 January 2026
Brian Whittle
I accept that the NHS should be an anchor, but I am saying that, in a lot of cases, it currently is not an anchor when it comes to food procurement. More concerning is the impact that that has on patient health, given that the quality of food is not as high as it should be and that more than 50 per cent of it is thrown away. If the NHS is supposed to be an anchor institution, why is it not, and who has the power to make sure that it is?
