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 3154 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
I met you when the Finance and Public Administration Committee visited last summer; it was a great visit, and we saw the big picture. We did not discuss the finances, but it was all very positive at that time. Yesterday, the finance director told us that, when he—or, I should say, they—prepared the management accounts month by month, you did not look at them before the finance committee, the audit committee or the court got to see them. Is that the case?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
That surprises me a little bit. I have worked as the finance manager or whatever for organisations, albeit smaller ones, and the chief executive was all over me. As soon as I had prepared the management accounts, he or she wanted to sit down with me before anyone else saw them and go through them line by line, asking “Why this?” and “Why that?” before they went out. Sometimes I could give an explanation; sometimes, if there was an error, I had to correct it. You did not take that kind of hands-on approach with the management accounts, did you?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Yesterday, it was suggested that the finance department was underresourced. As the university grew, there was, I presume, more work. Were you aware of that? Were you ever asked for more resources for the finance department?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
We got the impression that there were some long-term sickness and other issues, so the department felt under pressure. If the finance director had wanted one or two more staff for the finance department, how would they have gone about that? Would they have come to you or the chief operating officer? How would that have worked?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
If the finance director had been working in the evening or at weekends because they were under pressure, would you have known about that? Would you have picked up on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Would you say that you were somebody who deals with detail, or are you more about the big picture?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
So when they formed a view that the university was a going concern through to July 2025, that came from other people. They were forming that view.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
I accept that we all have the benefit of hindsight now, but given the urgency of the situation, other universities seem to have been a bit quicker at making people redundant, even though they have been criticised for doing so. You have made the point that all universities have been facing these challenges, and I accept that, too, but Dundee seems to have been very slow compared to others in making redundancies.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Finally, covenants have been mentioned a lot, and Professor Gillies has put a big emphasis on them. I wonder how you thought of covenants. When a lot of businesses and organisations sign up to a loan agreement with a bank, they do not read all the small print, which is where the covenants are. It is like when most of us buy an insurance policy; we do not read the small print and, lo and behold, sometimes it comes back to bite us. Is that kind of the way that you and others approached the covenants?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 26 June 2025
John Mason
Yes, but you did not see them first, or discuss them first.
