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 1696 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
Is there an agreement between you and the university, to which you are a signatory? Do you understand why this is a reasonable line of questioning, given all that has gone before?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
Not rapidly enough—but we will come back to that.
There is a mismatch between the fragility of the university’s finances, which you have both described during the evidence session as a long-term structural problem, and betting the house—the whole thing—on growth. The people who are now paying the price are the at least 300 people, and potentially many more, who are losing their jobs en masse. Was that not a catastrophic bet that was placed by you as the chief operating officer, as well as by the finance director and the principal?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
That was subsequent, but the public warnings from Universities UK and others were made prior to that, were they not?
I had a direct conversation with Professor Shane O’Neill, who told me that there was a perception within the university executive group that, for some reason, Dundee would buck the trend and would be different from other universities that were experiencing large collapses in recruitment. Is it not the case that you just thought that, for some reason, Dundee university would be different?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
That strategic bet was a massive failure on the part of all three of you and the rest of the executive, was it not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
You were responsible for the budgeting of professional services in the institution, on both the expenditure side and the savings side. Am I right?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
That paper has to be signed off by the UEG before it goes to court, does it not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
The strategy was wrong.
I wish to ask, in particular, about the allocation of the money from Exscientia. A commentary in the Gillies report describes a complete lack of clarity as to how that money was allocated. Mr Fotheringham, how did you understand the exit from the Exscientia company and where or whether that money was earmarked?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
Dr McGeorge, did you believe that that money had been ring fenced?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
Thank you for picking that up, convener.
The core of the issue is that there was a minute of the audit and risk committee meeting that set out a series of untruths that was—according to you—prepared by the finance team, which was signed off by the UEG and sent to court. At some point before 12 November, the game was up, and you had to confess that what had been stated was untrue. Is that not the case?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Michael Marra
Were you surprised when it turned out that it had been spent?
