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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1752 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
I might pick up on some of those points again in a little while, but I want to follow up on the point about the sense of community. How do you respond to what we have heard from DUSA that students are concerned about the impact that they see that all this is having on the people who are teaching them, supporting them, making sure that the labs work, and so on? What would you say to DUSA, either directly or indirectly through us?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
I want to go back to the issue of the university engaging with staff and building and sustaining relationships with them. What is your understanding of fair work?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
So, will there be a £50,000 grant and a £12,000 loan?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
Okay. My final question comes back to the point of culture. You have talked about the personal and professional trauma that staff have gone through. UCU told us that around 70 per cent of staff who completed the survey are seeking support for poor mental health. We have heard that critical views are being silenced through acts of intimidation, including being identified publicly, that decisions continue to be made behind closed doors and that proper procedures are not always followed.
Those are just some examples, but there are more. I think that staff feel gaslit sometimes, quite frankly, but I know that that is not your intention. We have heard fine words in response to questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy and others today. How are you going to turn that around? It seems that we need to move beyond fine words about what we want in the university community—dignity, humanity and trust—but the question is, how do we do that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
People who have raised issues are being picked on or identified so that they could be picked on. They now feel more vulnerable than they did before.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
Thank you very much, convener. Before I start, I put on record my entry in the register of members’ interests as rector of Dundee university and, therefore, a member of court. I will keep my questions within territory that does not overlap with that interest.
Good afternoon, and thank you both for your contributions so far. We have heard about a range of topics, and I want to pick up on a couple of different areas, the first of which is finance. I do not know whether this question is best directed at Lee Hamill in the first instance, but I note that you have talked about the areas where you can cut costs—capital investment, operating costs and staff—and have not really talked that much about income generation. What conversations have you had within the university community about income generation that is not about international student numbers, bank loans or money from the Scottish Government?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
Sorry—yes. I left off three zeros there.
Are you able to provide updated student numbers? Everyone has gone through matriculation, and my understanding is that the numbers are better than expected or are not as bad as projected.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
Okay. My follow-on question, which I appreciate you might not be able to answer, concerns what role the unions had in the discussions around the creation of that statement. I ask that because, at a meeting to discuss the fair work statement, union representatives pushed back and challenged it, because it did not refer to the Gillies report and the clear recommendations therein, and did not mention the need to improve relationships with the trade unions. However, those discussions have been ignored—those points have not been incorporated into the statement or into the recommendations that flow from that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
Okay—thank you. I could go on, but I will not.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 29 October 2025
Maggie Chapman
That would be helpful.
My next question about numbers is on job losses. Nigel Seaton spoke earlier about the total difference in staff numbers being 275. The numbers that I have been able to get, looking across the past 15 months or so, show that, in August 2024, there were 4,367 staff and that, after the voluntary severance scheme this year, there were 3,698 staff, which is a change of 669. I appreciate that some of those staff will have been part time, so the headcount does not equal FTE posts. It would be helpful if the committee could get clarity—not necessarily now, but in the coming days—on that detail. What role will the more than 200 unfilled vacancies play in the figure of 669, or in the way that you describe or define the 275 figure?
