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 1631 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
What would your advice be to those colleges that are interested in this committee session and might be watching and thinking about their own accounting practices and the repercussions of this case?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Right. I guess that I am playing devil’s advocate here. You can perhaps see the rationale for the college saying that, as its maximum liability in the venture is £1, it does not want a figure of £4.7 million to be in any way perceived as a potential liability, should the JV fall, for example.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Auditor General, in paragraph 16 of your report, you refer to “Two further material misstatements” regarding the 2022-23 accounts, which were subsequently corrected. Do you know what those “misstatements” were and why they were in the accounts in the first place?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Indeed, and that leads me to my final question. It might seem as if we are making a lot of fuss over a minor technical point about accounting and auditing, but the fact that you have produced a statutory report is itself unusual, which is why we are dedicating a whole hour of our committee meeting to it. Clearly, there are wider implications for other parts of the further and higher education sector where there are also joint ventures. What we are discussing here is a charitable venture, but many are not; I am aware of a number of colleges that are in financial joint ventures or which have created third-party entities with private companies for, say, apprenticeships, investment in new buildings and assets and so on. There are wider implications particularly for the college sector, which, as you acknowledged earlier, is already under incredible financial stress. Are you aware of any other areas where this could come up as an issue? Might it change the auditing practices relating to joint ventures involving colleges or other public bodies?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
For the record, I wish the college the very best in its joint venture. It clearly has some admirable aims and ambitions.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
We could probably end this evidence session now, as we have covered quite a lot of ground, but it has thrown up some interesting philosophical arguments about how public bodies account, and that is what I want to dig into.
When reading the correspondence that we received from the college, I was quite intrigued by the rationale for its decision. I do not really want to talk about that particular example; my interest is more in the rationale that the management used to come to that decision.
Mr Howse, can you comment on the three reasons given for the £1 valuation? It is not that the joint venture is worth £1, because clearly that is not the case—it has been valued at £9.4 million, for a range of reasons. However, the college make three specific points regarding why it came to that conclusion—we can perhaps ask it about that in future.
10:15I am intrigued by a few things. The first point is that the assets in the joint venture are restricted in nature, which could be interpreted in different ways. The second is that there is no expectation of future economic return. That is, again, a fortune-telling look into the potential value of a joint venture and whether it will make any profit for the partners in it. The third is that the college makes a financial contribution to support the operations—in other words, it requires annual investment to maintain the joint venture.
Are those three points of rationale for coming to a £1 valuation normal factors that you would take into account in considering impairment? They seem quite rational and logical to me.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
I will ask my main questions later, but this one relates to what Mr MacPherson just said.
I assume that you engaged with the college or the now merged entity ahead of producing the section 22 report. Why is none of the content of the letter that we received yesterday in the report? Is it because the information was not provided to you or because it was provided but you chose not to include it?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
It feels as though the letter is the body’s right to reply to what you have said. Is that your impression?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
That is helpful. Thank you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“The 2022/23 audit of Lews Castle College”
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Shortly after the accounts were produced, the college merged with a bigger entity. What material difference would it have made had the £4.7 million been recognised rather than the £1? Would it have had any effect on its being able to merge or on the negotiations on the merger, or would such a consideration have been immaterial?
