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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2845 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Financial sustainability and taxes”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Scotland is not the first country to be wrestling with its taxation policy and how to raise sufficient revenue to do what it needs to do. Are there any other countries that have handled it better? Have any other countries had better outcomes than we have?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Obviously, I am going to ask about the absence of a 2023-24 budget. Paragraph 10 of the Auditor General’s report says:
“Some initial work began in February 2023 to gather information for the budget. College management asked budget-holders to supply information to inform the preparation of a draft budget. The college is unable to explain what happened to that information and there is no evidence of it being collated or summarised.”
I am not sure who might want to comment on that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
I have been involved in many budget processes. The process of putting the budget together and of individuals who hold part of that budget putting in their input sometimes throws out unexpected things that can be incorporated into the budget. You see what your bottom line will be and you determine what you need to do to adjust that to where you need to be.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Another quite important point in the Auditor General’s report is where it states:
“The board’s view on the absence of a budget is not documented in the minutes of relevant meetings.”
Is that correct?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Let us look at this from a governance point of view. From what you are saying, the board was aware of the difficulties. Did any board members challenge the situation and the fact that there was no budget?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Okay. Thank you, convener.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Financial sustainability and taxes”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Auditor General, I found your report interesting. It is one of the most clearly set out documents that I have seen on this subject. I would like to look at one or two of the issues arising in connection with fiscal sustainability, which have been touched on to some extent already. Your report highlights five specific challenges that are contributing to the financial pressures, such as Scotland having a larger and better-paid public sector, the Scottish population being older and sicker, a real-terms cut to the capital block grant, slow real-terms growth in resources funding through the block grant and, of course, spending on Scottish Government policy commitments. Do you have a sense of the relative proportion that each of those elements contributes to anticipated funding pressures?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Financial sustainability and taxes”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
In past meetings of this committee, we have discussed the impact of cross-border migration, but I understand—I do not know whether this is still the case—that we can count the number of bodies coming across but we cannot work out what the revenue from that is compared with the revenue from people going the other way, so we do not have a net figure for that. Is that still the case?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Financial sustainability and taxes”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
If you decide to tax people’s assets, that will reduce the income from those assets, so income tax will go down. That is logical. It is as if you are blocking yourself into a canyon.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2023/24 audit of UHI Perth”
Meeting date: 3 December 2025
Colin Beattie
You are saying that the budget was not produced because, on the basis of your forecasts, you knew where you were going to be, and you had commenced negotiations with unions and so on because staff are one of the most expensive components.
