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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1731 contributions
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
It sounds as though there is a bit of movement of professionals within the Scottish health service or the health and social care arena who will go from an IJB to an executive role within an NHS board, from one board to another, or from a management position on a board into a non-exec position on a board. Again, I can see why there may be benefits to that. People will have experience and knowledge of how things are done in other areas. However, equally, does that perhaps point to some problematic areas? People have perhaps failed in one part of the service and are moving to another, or is the predicament that we do not have enough new blood coming from outside Scotland into the Scottish health service?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
We also heard a lot in the previous session about some of the struggles that some of our more rural boards have in recruiting people. Indeed, the convener gave an excellent example of one board where some of the board members do not live in, or had never been to, the board area. Clearly, it is more difficult in a wide range of public bodies to recruit in more rural and Highlands and island areas, but how important is it that these people have local knowledge and understanding of the complexities of delivering health services outside the central belt?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Good. I think that I know what your answer will be to this, but are we struggling to get so many candidates to fill these board positions because there are simply too many boards?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you very much.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
I can tell you: it was the points. These are live conversations, which I am sure happen with sponsorship divisions as well, among the recruiting people. If someone does not get more than 70 points, and someone got 69, they are shortlisted for the next stage, and I find that an odd way of doing it.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Would it be helpful if the commissioner was able to do that as part of its role?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Is that people behaving inappropriately in the public sphere in their language or the treatment of staff?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
That is quite worrying. My last question in this session—and indeed the next one—is on NHS boards. Do you have any current emerging concerns about behaviour in boards or the quality of board members? We are trying to get as much out of you as we can about the state of the NHS in Scotland.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you, convener. I would like to talk about governance, particularly around high-level appointments and the boards of the NHS boards, if you like. Ms Lamb, you will obviously be aware of the extremely high turnover in chief executives of the territorial boards. Over the past couple of years, 10 of the 14 territorial boards have had a change at the top. Why is that the case?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Is that a good thing? We talked about that earlier in our evidence session with the Ethical Standards Commissioner. I do not know whether you watched that.