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 1875 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
In your view, and without revisiting any of the ground that we have covered a lot of today already, what is the primary reason for the college’s inability to break even?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
I am struggling with the terminology. In what way is cutting staff a benefit?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
I am not criticising you for taking the actions that you have had to take. I appreciate that these were extraordinarily difficult financial circumstances, so please do not assume that any of my questions are in any way loaded. I am, however, trying to understand what drove the Auditor General to produce the report that he had to produce, given the wider financial circumstances that the college was in.
The last time that the college made a small surplus or broke even was in 2022. In order to make ends meet year on year—which is clearly where things have gone awry over the past few years—how many staff, whether academic, professional or at management level, have been cut from the college since 2022?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland 2025: Finance and performance”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
In your professional view, is there any evidence that those boards will be able to repay the loans in future? I point to exhibit 6 in the report, which indicates an on-going remaining deficit for the next three financial years within each of those boards. There does not therefore seem to be any evidence that any of those boards will either break even or make a surplus, or have any ability to repay that money without finding it from further savings down the line.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland 2025: Finance and performance”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
You have stated on the record in this committee and publicly elsewhere that you believe that there might be areas of healthcare provision that the NHS provides at the moment but which might not be offered in future. We can perhaps pick your brains on that some other day.
Going back to the finances, I was intrigued to see that you report nearly £700 million of savings in a single year across the NHS. That is a marked increase on previous years. Do we have any understanding of how boards have made those savings? Savings can sometimes be a dangerous word. What kind of things have been cut? We know that staff costs have gone up and that some salary settlement agreements have been reached, so there will have been no savings in that regard. Equally, we know that some waiting lists have come down, which will have required investment. Where are the savings being made? What do they look and feel like in the NHS on a daily basis?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland 2025: Finance and performance”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
My colleague Mr Beattie will be asking about the new arrangements that are replacing brokerage, so I will just park that issue.
What I could not quite understand from your report is the variety of deficits that the boards are facing. I note that, in the last four financial years that your report covers, at the top of the list—the worst offender, if you like—seems to be NHS Ayrshire and Arran, an area that I have represented for nearly a decade now. I find it hard to understand why it has received £130 million of brokerage, while Fife has received only £44 million, or less than a third of that. Is that because there is a view that these boards are just struggling to make ends meet? Is it because of higher demand? Do they have a different demographic from other NHS boards? Are there other fundamental reasons relating to the way in which they are governed or operated?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Good morning to all our guests. I will start with some practical questions. When was the last time that UHI Perth either financially broke even or made a surplus?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland 2025: Finance and performance”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you. I might come back in later, convener.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
That is very helpful.
This is my final question, convener. What does the future of UHI Perth look like? Many colleges have been explicit with the Parliament, other stakeholders and the Government that they may hit a financial wall and cease to be going concerns in the future. That is not a situation that anybody in any of our local areas wants to see for our local colleges, and I am sure that the same is true in Perth.
Given what we have heard today about some of the issues that are outside your control, you surely must be left in quite a perilous financial position now. I am thinking of your relationship with UHI; the top-slicing model, which has been criticised by many board members over the years; the cap on your FE credits, the flat-cash settlement from Government; your indirect relationship with the Funding Council; and the fact that you have pretty much maximised cost savings to the bare bones. What does the future look like?
11:15Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 7 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Did it break even, or, if there was a surplus, what was it?
