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 1234 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Willie Rennie
If you remember by the end of the meeting, will you take the opportunity to correct us? I would be grateful for that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Willie Rennie
While the committee has been meeting this morning, the individual who complained about you at the NERC has communicated back to me. The individual says:
“THANK YOU. I did not move to another research council. I left completely and went to a university, completely broken. I lost a lot, including my final salary pension.”
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Willie Rennie
What about when you were at the University of Leicester?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Willie Rennie
To be honest, yesterday was quite sad, because the people who were before the committee clearly struggled with their jobs. It was notable the number of times that they said, “I wasn’t aware of that information at the time.” No one had an inquiring mind, and Peter Fotheringham in particular clearly struggled in his role, which he admitted yesterday. If you had watched the evidence, you would have seen that. Similarly, the chair did not have a financial background and she was not inquiring.
Were you not aware of the fact that your team was not up to the job? It was your job to ensure that you had a proper team around you. Were you not aware of any of that? You are passing the buck to everybody else. You say that you were not told and you were not aware, and that the fact that you did not have a grip was because other people had not told you what was happening. However, it was your job to know those things.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
Willie Rennie
Or whether you were delusional. That is what I asked. Or was it something else? I just do not understand it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Willie Rennie
You were also president of the Law Society of Scotland. The turnover for each organisation is as follows: £1 million for Samaritans Scotland; £11 million for the Law Society; and £300 million for the University of Dundee. Given that, do you think that you had the experience to take on this particular role?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Willie Rennie
But we cannot go back.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Willie Rennie
Dr McGeorge, did you want to come in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Willie Rennie
Okay.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Willie Rennie
Dr McGeorge and Mr Fotheringham, my question is on the banking covenant and the arrangements around that. The Gillies report sets out that the Funding Council was not informed of the potential breach of the banking covenant as at 31 July 2023; the university finance and policy committee was not told of the actual breach on 10 October 2024; the audit and risk committee was not told on 22 October; and the Funding Council was not informed on 13 November. Is that your understanding of the banking covenant events?
