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 875 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
When I first saw the Gillies report, I tried to find a smoking gun—when did it all start going wrong? However, there is no smoking gun. It is just a systematic failure at every point.
When you look at the collapse, you see that it is largely internal. There is poor financial judgment and failure to act in real time on clear warning signs. There are overly optimistic budgeting assumptions and weak internal controls. There is a lack of transparency and ineffective oversight by the university court and the executive. To me, those are the basics. How did you get to the stage where you ended up in a perfect storm?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
That is the bit that I cannot get. Having been involved as a local councillor with council budgets, and in other organisations, I am of the opinion that, when such savings are asked for, we get stuff back. Here, however, there was something that was complete and utter fantasy. You, or the institution, doubled down the year after. I just do not understand how you could get yourself into that position.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
In March 2024, while all that chaos was going on, there was a communication from the principal, bizarrely praising everyone for their financial resilience, but at that stage the university was in free fall. I still have a difficulty with that. Was there a culture to suppress challenge within the university? Did that come from a senior level? If so, who was responsible for that, Mr Fotheringham?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
What are your thoughts on that, Dr McGeorge?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
If you saw those things happening, did you feel that you could approach the principal and say, “Haud the bus, this is not working”?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
You are all looking good considering the bus that Baroness Alexander flung you under when she said that she was totally moved out from her post. We know that the international student numbers were part of the reason for some of the problems and challenges that you all faced. She said that she was “sidelined” and that she never had the opportunity to be able to talk about anything to do with finance. Dr McGeorge, what is your view on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
Right, but she says that she was “sidelined” and that no one spoke to her about finances.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
Okay. Finally, is it correct that the number of individuals who were employed by the international recruitment team skyrocketed in 2023? Did the team end up with more staff when you were already at the stage at which things were starting to show signs of not working?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
For issues such as the student recruitment position, you do not know where you will finally land in any one year until bums start arriving on seats in September. There is an issue around the predictability of international student numbers. As I have said, we felt that we had made appropriate allowance by looking at 25 per cent with the 35 per cent downturn. Obviously, when the numbers started to come through, it was much more than that.
It appears that, in the sector more generally, some types of institutions ended up suffering more than others in that environment. Often, we are talking about institutions that are not in big metropolitan centres and which are non-Russell group. In that regard, whatever the opposite of a sweet spot is, we were in that place.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
George Adam
Perhaps this question is for Mr Fotheringham more than anyone else. Part of the unrealistic budgets was the betterment gimmickry. In essence, those were fictitious cost reductions. Surely, when you went through the management accounts, you would notice that those reductions were not happening. In financial year 2024, £8 million of betterment was never realised. In financial year 2025, it was £23.3 million. The average business in the real world would not get away with fakery like that. How did you, as a public organisation, get to that stage?
