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 1766 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Our impact: Monitoring and evaluation report 2025”
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Jamie Greene
As a member of the Public Audit Committee, I am looking for trends and patterns. There is a broadly similar number of bodies and recommendations, but is there a pattern of fewer or more recommendations being implemented in the early stage or in the long term, or in those that are just completely ignored? We make a big deal of the 93 per cent figure. Public bodies sit where you are sitting now and say, “Yes, we accept the recommendations of the report,” but those are just words. It is about how many of those actually translate into action. We have a bigger remit. You have no statutory duty to follow up on the recommendations or any locus in that respect, but we do, so that is the sort of data that I need to see the direction of travel.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Our impact: Monitoring and evaluation report 2025”
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Jamie Greene
Do you think that Audit Scotland gives enough cognisance to some of the factors that may explain why audited bodies have been unable to implement recommendations? There are a number of external factors. Your recommendations talk a lot about financial sustainability and workforce issues, but there is also a wider regulatory and legislative environment that these bodies are working in, which is outside of their control. Do you think that your focus is too much on whether a body did or did not deliver on the recommendations and does not acknowledge that, even if they wanted to deliver on them, it might be impossible for them to do so?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Jamie Greene
In your experience, is it okay for an organisation to say that it is spending more money than it has? That is just being honest, is it not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 8 October 2025
Jamie Greene
My understanding is that the root factors of the deficit stemmed from three particular areas. The first related to negotiating pay settlements as part of national bargaining, which obviously had a knock-on effect locally. Secondly, there were issues relating to the Air Service Training scheme, which I will ask about separately, because that was another interesting development.
The third reason for the deficit was a drop in student numbers—the difference between the projected number of full-time equivalent students and the actual number of students who took up courses. While you were speaking, I had a look at the college’s course brochure. One could do a wide and varied range of courses, covering further education and higher education. Was there any feedback on why the number of actual students was so much lower than the number that had been forecasted?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
I think that you would find it very enlightening. We talked about that subject in great detail, and committee members raised the point that people jumping from one board to another could be seen as a revolving door, a reward for failure or the result of having a cosy club of chief executives who move on to another board for more money and leave others in the lurch.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
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]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
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]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
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]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you very much.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“NHS in Scotland: Spotlight on governance”
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.
