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 1244 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
I find that a bit concerning.
I want to come to an issue that is troubling the committee a great deal. It relates to transparency and good government. Let us be honest: our job is to scrutinise both of those things as they relate to the spending of public money. The context is that an increasing number of framework bills are being introduced to the Parliament. Due to the bills’ very nature, it is very difficult for a minister to put the full cost on the table, because stakeholder engagement is on-going. In turn, that has led to a number of financial memorandums, which this committee has not been at all satisfied with, and we have sent several of them back. Is the growing number of framework bills a problem?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
To ensure that it does work well, the committees must work well. The bigger our frustration, particularly from a financial angle, the more difficult it is for us to carry out effective scrutiny. With all due respect, I do not think that that is our fault. We try our best to ensure that we have all the facts to hand and that we scrutinise as much as we can, but we are frustrated due to a number of aspects of how the legislation, especially the financial memorandums that accompany it, is presented to us.
We recommend that a big discussion on that be had with the Scottish Government. If that were done it would be greatly appreciated.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
Might I ask for a clarification before I come to my questions? Mr Griffin, are you advising the First Minister that the higher education sector has significant issues, or are you waiting for Mr Swinney to come back to you?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
Is a conversation going on between you and your officials and the Scottish Government about the need to upgrade some of that process in the Parliament?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 24 June 2025
Liz Smith
That is helpful. Nonetheless, there is a structural issue. Due to how they operate and by their very definition, framework bills make it much more difficult to provide an accurate financial memorandum, because engagement with stakeholders is on-going and, therefore, it is very difficult to calculate future costs.
The committee is concerned because we have recently received quite a number of financial memoranda that are nowhere near accurate. In turn, that makes our scrutiny of the public money spend that is involved very difficult. Is that a matter that concerns you and your officials?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
I will begin by putting on the record that I am representing some former patients of Eljamel in the public inquiry. Will either of you give a view on why you think there is an increasing demand for public inquiries?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
Mr Sturrock, do you have a view?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
To pick up the points that you have both made, in the current environment, there is—sadly, in my opinion—an increasing mistrust in some public bodies because they are not as efficient as they should be and, therefore, are not dealing with some cases effectively. The Government and its agencies are not able to get the answers that they should get to genuine questions, and that is the main reason why the demand for public inquiries is increasing.
That trust element is interesting. The public are looking for trust, and I sometimes think that people trust a judge-led inquiry because they feel that it is the right form for an inquiry to take. However, you are suggesting—again, rightly—that there are other ways of doing inquiries. It is just about how—
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
The issue involves marrying together those two difficult issues with an opportunity cost and Government efficiency, and they do not quite fit together. That is one of the big challenges for the committee as to how we go forward.
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 17 June 2025
Liz Smith
You have both mentioned the NHS Highland inquiry. I know that that was done slightly differently to other public inquiries, but did you feel that, at the end of the day, those people who had been clamouring for a public inquiry felt more satisfied than has been the case with other public inquiries, where people have been dissatisfied with the result?