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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 321 contributions
|
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
We do not know Audit Scotland’s view on that, and I understand that it did not respond to the consultation. Such an approach would mean that additional duties would have to be given to Audit Scotland. I am not ruling anything out, but perhaps that fact shows that it is not the route to take. We do not have a fixed view on that. I am just explaining that additional duties would require to be given to Audit Scotland for that to happen.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
My instinct would be to say that it shows that we do not need a new commissioner, and that we should avoid creating one if at all possible. As I said, it would be very much a last resort, and we should explore non-legislative routes to address some of those issues.
09:30The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland told the committee that she was concerned about “duplication” and the risk of
“overlaps with existing offices ... undermining effectiveness and efficiency.”
That quote speaks for itself. A new commissioner would lead to a lot more confusion.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
If the bill were to proceed, that should be looked at. However, I do not know the answer to that question, because I cannot see how it could be achieved. Given that there is so much potential for overlap, how could we completely avoid that happening? I do not know the answer to that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
Our non-legislative route is to enhance the national performance framework and how that is scrutinised and accountability is built in. That is our preferred route.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
I am happy to write back to the committee. We are undertaking work with the advisory group just now to look at those issues, with a view to publishing proposals in early 2026 and having final proposals ready for the incoming Administration after the next elections. If I can shine any light on what the advisory group is looking at in terms of potential routes forward, I will write back to the committee on that.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
As I said, we currently have mandate letters that go to public bodies with the NPF and outcomes built into them, and there are existing duties on public bodies in current legislation. It is clear that there are mechanisms already in place, but we want to make them work better.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
I, and other ministers, want to wait for the outcome of the advisory group’s work, which is currently under way. As I referred to already, we have existing duties, and the national performance framework is reflected in the mandate letters that are sent out from ministers to public bodies annually; the Scottish public finance manual also refers to it. The key for us is how all that is followed up and how we make sure that it is as effective as possible. That work is currently being undertaken by the advisory group, so it is difficult to give a view on anything until the proposals are before us.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
I will take a step back first. When the NPF was introduced in 2007—I was in the Cabinet at that time—it was seen as groundbreaking and pioneering. As you have acknowledged, it involves a long-term approach; the whole debate is about how we bring about long-term change and draw up guidance for public bodies to create a better Scotland.
There are 11 national outcomes, and some go up and some go down. We pay attention to those over the long term, but, over the past few years, we have recognised that we need to look at the accountability and scrutiny issues in order to make the NPF more robust. At the time that the Government proposed its bill, that was seen as a potential way of addressing those issues, but, having listened to some people and thought about it, it is clear to me that the non-legislative route should be further explored first, and that work is currently under way.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
I disagree with none of that, but we cannot allow an assumption to sink in that everything is bad at the moment. Since 2007, Scotland has made a lot of progress in promoting sustainable development and wellbeing, which are reflected much more across legislation. Earlier, I said that 30 bits of Scottish legislation refer to sustainable development; I am sure that, pre-2007, the figure was not nearly as high.
Progress is being made, and I hope that things are better in a number of areas, but we recognise that there is a lot of room for improvement. We need to issue better guidance, look at ways that we can improve things and learn from how other Administrations, such as Wales, do things. Canada, the Netherlands and Finland have well-regarded frameworks that are not reliant on legislation, so we should also learn anything that we can from them.
Social Justice and Social Security Committee [Draft]
Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 13 November 2025
Richard Lochhead
I have seen some organisations and commentators expressing that concern, and I share it. Again, those issues are already covered in the national performance framework. Therefore, if the bill were to pass there would be two different sources, one of which would include that reference and one that would not. Our approach goes back to the need to avoid duplication or confusion.
