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 1656 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
Okay. I am afraid that I now have some questions that are more icky. They might seem personal, but they relate to matters of public record. Mr Denham, you have resigned from your position. When did you do that? Are you serving your notice period at the moment, and what are the formalities around it?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
—but I see your point about attracting good talent. In addition, the big difference here is that, if someone wants to be paid a big-bank salary, they can go and work for a big bank. There is a burgeoning private sector that people can go and work in, but we are talking about a very different environment.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
Before I move on to the next issue that I want to discuss, can you confirm that all members of staff at the Scottish National Investment Bank are resident in Scotland and pay taxes here?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
I am sure that you do.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
As a result, it is very good to see you here today. When you handed your notice in, did you have to give six months’ notice?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you for setting me up nicely there, convener.
I will caveat my questions by stating two things. First, as the Public Audit Committee, we have a specific role in scrutinising the numbers. We make no apologies for that, but please do not take any of our questions personally.
Secondly, I would note that, overall, the Auditor General’s report was perhaps at the more positive end of things, given some of the reports that we have seen in this room. I think that that is commendable and should be acknowledged at the beginning. I am not saying that just because you made a substantial investment in XLCC in my home region—although that, too, was very welcome—and I should also say that that will not influence my tenacity when it comes to asking my questions.
Let us start with your operating costs, gentlemen. My understanding is that, since 2020, you have spent around £41 million in operating costs—I have a little table that shows how much money you are spending on running the business. When it comes to income—and I appreciate that that is different from the profit that you will make from future equity or future exit strategies—the figure is £32 million, which makes a difference of about £9 million. You could argue that that is a loss, although I appreciate that, in 2023-24, the trend reversed. Is that normal in the first five years of a bank, first of all?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
People who are watching this meeting might argue that £250,000 a year is a lot of money as a salary.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
I have a follow-up from my last line of questioning. I know that you have a £1 million threshold, which you will go below in the right circumstances but, from a public relations point of view, if nothing else, would you consider opening seed funding opportunities at the sub-£1 million investment level if you could demonstrate that the successful applicants would be subject to further tiers of future investment as they grow? Alternatively, could you offer some sort of match funding opportunity? The big issue that is often highlighted in the feedback that we receive is that, as you say, grant funding is limited and is becoming more scarce, and private banks are saying no to higher-risk start-up seed funders. Is there an opportunity for SNIB to get involved at the lower end in the hope that those companies will scale up?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Jamie Greene
Good morning. You have just been asked about the lessons that were learned from the experience with Circularity Scotland, and I listened with intrigue to your responses. What I heard was a summation of what went wrong with the deposit return scheme and Circularity Scotland. We already know what went wrong with them; what I did not hear was what went wrong in your internal decision-making and risk-assessment processes. Mr Denholm, you said that you were confident that robust processes were followed in the decision making that led to the initial investment. Mr Watt, you seemed to suggest that you were somewhat surprised by the politicisation of the issue. The scheme had been highly political since it was first mooted by the Government, and anyone worth their weight in research would have been able to tell you that, so I am still struggling to understand who in your organisation made the decision that the risk was low enough. In what way was it not going to become a political issue? I ask because I am particularly nervous that 50 per cent of your investments are in the net zero space, and we all know that there are shifting sands around these issues.
