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 938 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
My next question is about alternatives, because your staff say that there is a different way forward. You have set out this morning, principal, that £49 million will be required in one way or another. The bulk of what you do requires staff, so the main costs are for them. Is there any way of avoiding the 632-plus figure—whatever the actual number is—in any staff reduction? Is an alternative possible? When you say that you are interested in alternatives, are you really?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
It sounds quite threatening when you say that the university might not exist. Is that the kind of approach that we should adopt?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
We know that you are restricted in what you can say, but my concern is that, in a year’s time, we may be back here with another institution—perhaps not in exactly the same circumstances—and that you will regret not raising the alarm to ministers about the current funding model. Although you are restricted in what you can say, you know exactly what is going on in our institutions, and we all know that the threats and headwinds are enormous.
My concern is that everybody is tiptoeing around this when, in fact, we need to have an open discussion about a more sustainable model, because if we carry on as we are, we may end up with more cases that are not exactly like Dundee, but are pretty much like it—and the workers who lose their jobs will feel exactly the same as those in Dundee. So, if you are not prepared to tell us the exact situation today, I hope that you are telling ministers in private, because they need to fully understand the consequences of their inaction. I do not expect an answer.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
How close is Dundee to collapse?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
If the 632 full-time equivalent jobs do not go, do you think that the university will collapse?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
Before you do that, I want to say that the warning signs about the whole sector have been there for a long time. Various reports have noted concerns about the rise of international students, the volatility of the market, the fact that we get more money from international students than we do from domestic students and the falling returns from the research excellence funding at UK level.
All the signs were there. The fundamentals for the whole sector have been very weak for a long time. It was only a matter of time before it led to risky behaviours in institutions, and we have seen that happen in Dundee.
Were you speaking with this intensity not just to the University of Dundee but to all the institutions about their funding arrangements?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
Should the inquiry, led by Pamela Gillies, include the Scottish Funding Council? Should you be under inspection?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
I have a final, quick question. Is the Kirkcaldy campus under threat?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
Principal, you or your colleague referred earlier to a modest increase in home student fees. However, those fees are cross-subsidised by international students, and if the international student numbers stay as low as they are, then is it not a greater cost to bring those students in? I suppose that I am leading to my question about the wider financial model in Scotland: is your recovery dependent on a changed model for the finances of universities as a whole?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 19 March 2025
Willie Rennie
I am curious about the lost month. If you had indicated to the SFC—and, I presume, to the Scottish Government, too—that you had requested the £22 million, why did it take so long for the £10 million and then the other £15 million to arrive? You had made it clear what you required. Why was a month lost?
