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 656 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
The minister will be aware that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee met on Tuesday. There was no time for the committee to consider a written report on the issue, and there was no opportunity for us to scrutinise the LCM. The Parliament has been asked to approve an LCM that many members have been unable to find the full details of and to ask the appropriate questions about. I appreciate that there has been a consultation with those outside the Parliament, but members in the Parliament seem to have been left behind. Why is there such urgency to get the LCM through today, and why could it not wait until September? Could he also confirm that the approach that has been taken is not good practice and should not be seen as such?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Martin Whitfield will be aware that the legislation that we pass does not last just for the duration of the current Government; it lasts for years to come. I am happy to accept what the minister says, but we do not know how the legislation could be used by future Governments, which might have a very different view. Is Martin Whitfield not concerned that, if there is a Scottish Government policy change, the legislation could be used in a way that would have a damaging effect on young people in Scotland?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
Is the member arguing that everybody in the care sector should be on £32,000 a year? That is the pay threshold that his party at Westminster is setting for people coming in. We must either increase wages dramatically or we must reduce that figure. We cannot do both.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I am happy to give way, but I think that Christine Grahame was first—my apologies.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I want to begin by recognising, as many members have today, that immigration is a sensitive topic and that we owe it to our constituents to refrain from reckless generalisations. There has actually been a fair amount of consensus across the whole chamber. I suggest that, instead of making such generalisations, we ground our arguments in facts, as Liz Smith and others have done, reflecting the world as it is, not as we idealise it to be or fear that it might be.
In that spirit, I associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues and others when they acknowledged that illegal immigration should not be accepted or—what is worse—encouraged. I fundamentally disagree with Maggie Chapman. Illegal immigration has harmful effects in all the areas that are dealt with by Government portfolios, but especially in social security, which is already at breaking point in Scotland. It is clear that the matter needs to be addressed swiftly and effectively.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
We must also admit that the previous Government did not get it all right.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I am grateful to Michael Marra for taking my intervention. One of my concerns with the white paper from his colleagues in London is that it does not recognise that in some sectors, such as the caring sector, there is a massive shortage because of the income that individuals in that sector earn. Is there a danger that people who give valuable care to disabled and older people in Scotland will be cut off from coming?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I absolutely agree with Christine Grahame on that point. However, it is a fundamental role of the state to ensure that we have secure borders, so I support efforts to curb the number of people who illegally enter the United Kingdom.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Migration
Meeting date: 12 June 2025
Jeremy Balfour
I think that it was one of the factors, but I am not sure that it was the only reason, which is why we need to look at the issue as a whole. Therefore, I support the curbs on the number of people who illegally enter the United Kingdom.
That said, I also agree with a number of speakers in the debate that legal migration can be a real positive force in the United Kingdom. Bringing in skilled workers from other countries helps us to build world-leading industries, which should be an ambition of all political parties in Scotland. We want to attract talented people to Scotland. We want to see people coming to contribute to our economy, whether they are doctors, engineers or scientists. They all contribute to improving standards across the UK.
At the same time, we should recognise that other sectors benefit from an increase in their workforce. As I said previously, and as Daniel Johnson debated, jobs such as care work do not require high levels of education, and the sector is not currently attracting enough people into that workforce in Scotland. Even if we could bring everybody who is currently economically inactive into employment, that would not solve our long-term problem.
More and more care organisations are struggling to provide suitable packages for disabled and older people because of staffing pressure, and the truth is that people in this country are not going into the care sector in the numbers that we need them to. I accept that we need to look at conditions and pay, but, if we are serious about ensuring that disabled and older people’s rights are respected and that those people are treated with dignity, we need to fill those jobs. The easiest and best way of doing that is to make allowances in the immigration system for carers to take up the jobs. I can personally vouch for the fact that carers from other countries can be excellent, as is demonstrated by the number of wonderful people who help me each morning.
To be clear, I am not saying that we should totally outsource those jobs away from British and Scottish people. I am in favour of any efforts that either Government can make to encourage more British young people into the caring profession, which is an incredibly rewarding career path indeed. However, unfortunately, any such scheme would take a number of years to bear fruit, and we have a short-term problem.
In the meantime, we have to play the ball that is on the pitch, not the ball that we wish was there. We have a need, and the rest of the world can help us with it. To bring in people who are ready and willing to contribute to our society and meet the needs, who can also help with the taxation system—is that not how any successful immigration system should function? However, at the moment, we are turning away people who could fill those jobs. It seems to me that a good way for the Scottish Government to promote more migration into Scotland would be to work to make it a more attractive place for people to move to, instead of pursuing anti-growth and anti-wealth policies.
The Scottish Government does not and should not have the powers to act on immigration law. What it does have is the power to make Scotland as attractive a place to live and work in as possible within the United Kingdom. It has the levers; it is time that it started to pull them.
