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 3424 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
Do you expect that, by the six-month mark—10 October—there will be an announcement about who the new chief executive officer for the Scottish National Investment Bank is?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
You said—and I think that it is recorded in the Auditor General’s report—that the bank is well governed. However, when the Auditor General gave evidence to the committee on 28 May, he also said that overgovernance is
“a real risk to be managed.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 28 May 2025; c19.]
I have listened to the description of the various bits of apparatus, some of which are described in exhibit 3 of the Auditor General’s report. There is a business investment group; a Scottish Government ministerial advisory group; the board of the National Investment Bank itself; and there is this figure who acts as a provider of independent oversight and who, as you have described it, liaises. There is a danger, is there not, that, at a strategic level, and even possibly at an operational level, there are lots of cooks who might spoil the broth?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
But you are vigilant, no doubt.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
I do not want to labour this point but, just for clarity, my understanding, from reading the Auditor General’s report and then from the exchanges that we had with the chair of the bank back in June, was that the Treasury was undertaking a discrete review to look at the rules, and possibly the legislative framework, around these public financial institutions, which are presumably the PuFins that you are talking about—the National Wealth Fund and so on.
Has such a discrete review started? Has it been completed? Have recommendations been made and are the chancellor or Treasury officials now musing over those, or have they decided, or what? When Mr Beattie asked Mr Rollison about the timetable, it was all a bit woolly. However, the recommendation in the report is that, within three months of those recommendations, action should be taken.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
That is less than clear, is it not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
Are you going to meet the three-month timetable set out in the Auditor General’s recommendation?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
I am still none the wiser as to whether the Scottish Government’s position is that it wants the Scottish National Investment Bank to be a perpetual investment fund or not.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
Why does it take so long? The announcement was made in April that Mr Denholm was standing down. I think that he was very generous in saying that he would hang around to make sure that there was a transition and that he was in no rush to get out of the door and so on, but you might be trying his patience if you are saying that it will be another couple of months before somebody is going to be in post.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
Yes, there is patient capital and there are patient men. However, on a serious note, from the point of view of the good operation of the bank and the maintenance of the leadership of the bank, surely there should be a little bit more urgency and an understanding that, presumably, whoever is appointed will need to give notice to their current employer. You could be looking at next year before someone is in post.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Richard Leonard
Those were our final questions this morning, so, with that, I take this opportunity again to thank you, Gregor Irwin, for the evidence that you have led this morning. Mr Hogg and Mr Rollison, you have both been very—what is the word that I am looking for?—comprehensive contributors, so we thank you very much indeed for the evidence that you have given us. The session has been very informative.
I move the committee into private session.
11:06 Meeting continued in private until 11:37.