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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Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 December 2025
Jamie Greene
Good.
We do not have a huge amount of time, so I am going to ask about the future and about your modernisation project, which is a subject that I know you were expecting would come up today. We have looked a little at your finances, and Mr Oliver talked about the re-profiling of some of the money that you thought you were going to spend this year but now want to move forward.
I want to get this correct. There is £430,000 that you expected to spend in this financial year but are not going to spend, so you have offered to return that to the consolidated fund. However, you are essentially asking to have that looped back to you. Would there be any benefit for you in being able to hold on to money and carry it over, rather than having to do a complicated dance of kindly giving money back to us and then coming begging for it the next day? Could we do that better?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 December 2025
Jamie Greene
Just for clarification, is the £250,000 NFI money in addition to your revenue ask of us? Are you asking for a one-off payment for that?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 December 2025
Jamie Greene
We would need to identify the potential risk of that mid-year revision before we think about the overall annual settlement. It would be helpful if you had some insight, because it is a simple replication of this year’s numbers—I am always quite suspicious of forecasts that are identical to this year’s actual spend.
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2026-27
Meeting date: 11 December 2025
Jamie Greene
I was going to flag that. I recall having this conversation last year, and the increase in what was classed as income of £1.7 million in effect became a deficit to you, and that money had to be recouped through the SCF. My concern is that next year’s costs simply replicate this year’s costs. However, you have not received your statement yet. What happens if that says that that has reduced in value by £2 million? Suddenly, your £15.8 million ask will become £17.8 million. There is a huge unknown with that. I appreciate that it is out of your control, but that was a huge part of why we had to give you so much extra money last year.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
You say that progress has been made. Since the Promise was first made, a third of councils in Scotland have declared a housing emergency. Our briefings from COSLA and Shelter Scotland state that nearly 17,000 children are homeless in Scotland and more than 10,000 are in temporary accommodation. Does that sound like we are keeping the Promise for those 17,000 children? It does not sound like it to me.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
I appreciate that time is ticking on, so I will try to make my last two questions brief. Workforce is an important issue that is covered in the report. Exhibit 8 provides us with a nice visual way of understanding the scale of the problem that we have at the moment. To pick a few examples, 13 per cent of social workers who were asked were very likely to leave their jobs in the next 12 months—I presume that that is a fairly high figure—half of foster carers have considered resigning, half experience burnout and poor wellbeing and some 40 per cent of children and young people social care staff do not feel safe at work. Those startling statistics paint a worrying picture of the workforce required to deliver the Promise, do they not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
My final question is simply this. We are now five years on from the Promise being made. There is clearly an ambition and a lot of good will in the room among stakeholders to meet the Promise, but in your professional judgment are we on track to do so by 2030? I am happy to go along the panel to hear answers.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
When will the rest of it be administered?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
Where did the figure of £0.5 billion get plucked from? Who said, “That is how much we need to deliver the Promise”? It sounds like an arbitrary number. Having read the Audit Scotland report, it also sounds to me as if the Government has no idea whether that money is being effective in delivering what it has to deliver. It is virtually impossible to follow the money, so before you spend another £250 million, how confident can you be that the money will be well spent?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Jamie Greene
Good morning. I want to get some clarity on the letter from your organisation that we were given sight of. Before I do so, I should caveat this by saying that there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with an Auditor General report. If Audit Scotland has said something, and you disagree with it, that is fine, but be honest about that. Unfortunately, in the opening statements, we heard phrases such as “we welcome the report and the recommendations” and “we accept the report and the recommendations”, but that is not what it says on this bit of paper.
Rather than taking a view on it, we are trying to get to the bottom of whether The Promise Scotland does or does not accept the report. You cannot come to committee and say, “We do accept it”, but then, on paper, say that you do not. The letter has your organisation’s letterhead on it and, on the back, it says “Chair—The Promise Scotland”, so we have to take at face value that this is the view of The Promise Scotland, and not simply that of an individual within the organisation. Which is it?
