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 3682 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Am I right in thinking that NHS Tayside is still at level 3 in the escalation process?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
I will invite Joe FitzPatrick to come in in a second, but I have one last question before I do that.
One of the features of the earlier phases of the reviews and the responses from the health board was what David Strang described as overreporting of progress and an optimism bias. Rachel Browne talked about realism and so on. What is your sense of whether the board is being given an overoptimistic picture of what is changing on the ground? What is your sense of whether the board is being presented with cold, hard facts about where things have reached? As I mentioned at the beginning, the section 22 report mentions a whole series of areas where things are not going as they ought to go.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I invite Joe FitzPatrick to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I now invite Michael Marra to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay—thanks for clearing that up.
Mr Anderson, from the point of view of the Oversight Board, do you have any view on whether the report makes a useful contribution, and do you accept its findings and conclusions?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay. One of the things that the report talks about is the confusion around governance, and Mr Anderson also referred to that in one of his submissions. I was interested in paragraphs 13 to 16 of the Audit Scotland report, which try to explain the different hats that people wear. Fiona Duncan is not here today, but it is catalogued there that she chaired the care review, which we know, because it is a matter of public record. She became the independent strategic adviser. She chaired the Oversight Board until 2024, then became its co-chair. She held a post—as chief executive officer, then strategic director—at the Corra Foundation, which is the body that dishes out the money. As well as being the independent strategic adviser to the Government, she is also the chair of The Promise Scotland. I am a little bit confused that one person has had—and continues to have—all those roles. Mr Rennick, could you explain that to us?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay, thank you very much indeed. I invite Colin Beattie to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Again, just for the record, the September letter was submitted to us on 1 December. Her 1 December submission not only attaches the September letter—about the pre-publication review of the clearance draft—but clearly reinforces the views that were in that September letter. She uses expressions such as:
“Although I agree with several of the recommendations, overall, I believe both the performance audit and the subsequent Report are missed opportunities.”
I will invite Colin Beattie to put some questions to you.
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay, thank you very much indeed. I invite Graham Simpson to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
I welcome our witnesses, who are with us in the committee room to give evidence on the Auditor General for Scotland and Accounts Commission report, “Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”. From the Scottish Government, we have Neil Rennick, director general education and justice; Andrew Watson, director for children and families; and Gavin Henderson, deputy director for care experience, children’s services and the Promise. We also welcome the chief executive of The Promise Scotland, Fraser McKinlay; and David Anderson, chair of the Oversight Board for keeping the Promise. Finally, from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, we are joined by two witnesses, Nicola Dickie, director of people policy; and Fiona Whitelock, policy manager for the Promise.
We have a number of questions to put to you, and I say at the outset that you do not all necessarily need to feel obliged to answer all the questions that we put. However, if you feel as though you have something relevant to say, please indicate and we will do our level best to bring you in. Before we get to any questions that we might have, director general, I invite you to make an opening statement.
