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 297 contributions
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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
You mentioned HES bringing in an independent HR team. We have talked about the need for a cultural review of the organisation and have heard about individual processes that need to be followed before that takes place. For clarity, would a cultural review of the organisation be an independent review?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
You mention learning lessons about how this has come to pass. Do you think that it is just a HES problem? Are there similar issues in other parts of the culture sector or the public sector? Maybe not to the same extent, but—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
I was asking because we have had a lot of discussion today about problems at the top, but the staff on the ground and throughout the organisation are obviously working hard in difficult circumstances. A meeting may be something to consider.
We have talked a lot about the culture in the organisation. I want to ask about financial planning and financial management. You said that the organisation is “commercially successful”. I have raised concerns previously with HES about financial planning in relation to financial strategies and pay awards, and whether the organisation was budgeting sufficiently for pay awards that were in line with public sector pay policy. Concerns have also been raised previously about changes to pay grades. To what extent are you reassured about HES when it comes to financial planning and financial management? It has, I think, a £73 million budget from Scottish Government.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
Good morning. Just on that last point, it has been reported that a group of staff is now considering legal action against HES and the Scottish Government for failures under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and the Equality Act 2010. How concerned are you that the Scottish Government could be facing legal action?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
Thank you. I have two final questions. There have been a lot of discussions about what meetings you have held, cabinet secretary, and with whom. Have you met, or are you planning to meet, the HES trade union representatives?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 6 November 2025
Neil Bibby
Thank you.
I will go back to the earlier questions about meetings that you have had with HES. I understand what you said about not having meetings with the board of HES previously. I think that you said that you would accept the invitation to attend a board meeting in future, but you have not requested an invitation so far. If one is not forthcoming, will you request an invitation to attend a HES board meeting? Notwithstanding the fact that you have not attended previously and that, obviously, your officials have been working on the issue, will you request an invitation to attend future board meetings that are coming up, given everything that is going on, so that you can see that for yourself and meet the board yourself?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Sporting Events of National Interest
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
We have talked a lot about the balance between accessibility and cash, and the impact on young people. We obviously want to showcase the game—the men’s game, the women’s game—to the next generation to inspire them to get involved in football. Equally, it is not just about that, because we want to provide them with the youth coaching opportunities to enable them to be the footballers of the future. There is a difficult balance to be struck: we all want matches to be free to air and we all want to ensure that there are proper resources for Scottish football.
At the moment, we have free-to-air qualifiers on the BBC, and we have the resource that follows from that. I think that George Adam described that as the best of both worlds. Is that the optimum situation?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Do you not think that, if Audit Scotland is looking at the culture of the organisation, it may assist that inquiry if HES showed that it was turning a corner or trying to address the issues itself and ordering its own independent culture review?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
You do not think that there are any issues with transparency when HES provides a one-line answer that does not go into the detail of the answer that you just gave me.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Good morning, Sir Mark and Mr Davis. First, I reiterate other members’ acknowledgement of the fact that you are new to your role, Sir Mark. I, too, wish you well with resolving the very many issues that there are in the organisation. However, I also make clear that I think that we need to see decisive action being taken quickly to resolve those issues.
I will follow on from Mr Harvie’s point about responding to media reports. Our Scottish Parliament information centre briefing today helpfully points out that:
“There have been a range of media reports that have highlighted concerns over governance issues and the internal culture at HES. At the time of writing, HES has not published a formal response or statement on any of these issues on the News section of its website.”
Given everything that has been in the public domain and all the issues and allegations, why is that the case? Why has an organisation that is facing so many allegations, concerns and issues not published on its website a response to the very many issues that have been raised? Is that a deliberate strategy? What does it say about the culture of HES that no response to any of the allegations has been put on the website?
