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 726 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
I would have to check the record, Mr Kerr.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
Excuse me. We met at lock 16 in Falkirk at the opening of the new centre.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
Convener, I think that I have outlined to the committee at great length the interactions that I have had with the chief executive—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
Excuse me. If you will allow me, convener, I would say, again, that Mr Kerr does not seem to understand how the interaction with non-departmental bodies operates, with—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
The key determinant in relation to Mr Bibby’s question is this: do all organisations have HR issues from time to time? Absolutely. Am I aware of any other organisation that has had this range and scale of issues? Absolutely not. Therefore, we need to understand how the situation could come about and why some of the issues were not dealt with, given that much of this has transpired through the media because people felt that the processes were not in place for matters to be resolved internally. I am greatly concerned about that. The Government’s responsibility is not only to make sure that there is new leadership and that the new leadership is best supported to do what HES is supposed to do as an arm’s-length organisation, but to be aware of the reasons why the situation transpired in order to ensure that the same situation does not arise in any other public bodies.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
I think that that is part of the package of investigations that Sir Mark is taking forward. I will hand over to Kenneth Hogg in a second, in case there is more granular information that I cannot provide to Mr Bibby on that.
Sir Mark has inherited a range of inquiries. Those are on-going, and they are happening in parallel. As I said to Mr Halcro Johnston, it would be everybody’s hope that the investigations take place as timeously as possible.
As to the extent of external HR advice, I know that this is an area where we and officials have signalled to HES that the Scottish Government can provide an understanding of different external capacities that might help these processes. That is definitely something that has been offered.
Mr Hogg, do you want to add anything to my answer?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
As a general rule—my private office is not here to attest to this but I am sure that it would—when people wish to speak to me, I am very open to requests to do so. We do not always know what people want to talk to us about, formally and informally, and I want to be best informed. I am very well advised by the civil service, but I have a curiosity, as well as a responsibility, in my area of responsibility.
10:30I have spoken at great length with senior management at Historic Environment Scotland because not only are there the issues of concern but there is the big prize of Historic Environment Scotland, at all levels of the organisation, being able to focus on its primary area of responsibility. That is what I want it to do, and I want to be satisfied that it is able to do so.
Mr Halcro Johnston does not need to have any concerns about my willingness to meet people. I am perfectly willing to do so, but I am also content that the way in which we have managed our relationship through a very difficult circumstance in Historic Environment Scotland has been done in the entirely appropriate and proportionate way that it should be.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
No, I do not accept the charge. I have been involved personally. I have met the chairman and the chief executive personally and I have ensured that the appropriate officials are attending the appropriate meetings and reporting back to me about developments. As I have said, if there is a wish for me to attend a board meeting, I have no objection to doing so, but I am content that we have been attending all meetings that needed to be attended. I am not sure whether Mr Kerr wants to point to a meeting that was not attended. All relevant meetings have been attended.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
I have been advised by my senior officials about what has been proceeding in these meetings, and that has helped us to be able to make the right decisions, given the role of the Government relative to the senior management of Historic Environment Scotland, which is to make sure that they are being best supported in getting from a very difficult position to a better one.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Angus Robertson
Absolutely. It was apparent to me that there were serious issues in relation to leadership generally in Historic Environment Scotland and that those issues needed to be better understood. You will understand that, by that stage, we had a new chief executive in place and we were approaching the issue of the chairmanship of the board—that was in the first quarter of this year.
I do not have in front of me the exact timeline of when complaints were being made and stories were appearing in the media and so on, but there was a growing general understanding that there were leadership issues in Historic Environment Scotland. As we were becoming aware of that, I was extremely keen for us to be best informed about how the board intended to deal with those issues.
