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: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
But there is nothing on the website.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Thank you.
One of the issues that I will come back to in a minute is the need for openness and transparency, and the need to address the very many issues that there are. As has been said, we have seen allegations of racism and other impropriety, concerns about financial mismanagement, and concerns about a culture of fear, a culture of spin and a culture of secrecy. We have used the word “culture” a lot, and it is clear to me that we need a review of the culture in HES, which, as Mr Kerr said, should be an independent review.
You mentioned earlier that a culture review would not take place until the individual processes were resolved. When do you expect those processes to be resolved?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Sporting Events of National Interest
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Good morning, Mr Maxwell. I see that Calvin Harris is doing a concert in the summer at Hampden park. That was announced yesterday. It is great news.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
The next couple of months—okay.
Now that there is an intervention from Audit Scotland, which is doing its section 22 report, and Parliament is asking questions, do you not think that HES should be ordering its own independent culture review?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
I have a couple of follow-up questions on that. My understanding was that a presentation was given to senior managers in August of this year referencing that 2 per cent increase and the 3 per cent increase in public sector pay policy. When I asked that question and we got a follow-up letter, why did we not get the response that you just gave me? Why did the committee just get a one-liner that said, “We always adhered to the 3 per cent policy,” and which did not talk about the financial strategy being 2 per cent—
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Sporting Events of National Interest
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Thank you.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Well, I certainly cannot say why that happened.
I am here to ask questions on behalf of the committee. My original question was about financial management and financial strategies. Clearly, budgeting for 2 per cent and increasing it to 3 per cent suggests that the financial strategy that was in place was not sufficient, because the budget had to be increased to 3 per cent. That was my original question.
My subsequent question today is that there are not only financial management issues in that regard but transparency issues. Parliament is asking questions about the financial strategy and public sector pay, yet we are given one-line answers that do not go into what was clearly an increase in the budget in line with public sector pay policy, which was not originally budgeted for. You may not be able to comment on the specifics, but clearly there are concerns about financial management and transparency within the organisation. Would you agree?
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
When you are trying to find a solution to any problem, you need to understand that problem first. I think that having that culture review and addressing the issues needs to happen as soon as possible.
I want to go back to the issue of transparency. This very much relates to the Parliament and scrutiny by the Parliament. In September, I put a question to Alison Turnbull from HES. I asked:
“I understand that, in June 2024, HES budgeted for a 2 per cent increase in pay despite the Scottish Government having set out a public sector pay policy just two months before that suggested an increase of 3 per cent in the public sector. Is that correct? Is that your understanding? What does it say about your organisation’s financial planning if it is not adhering to the Scottish Government’s pay policy?”
The response was:
“We do adhere to the Scottish Government’s pay policy. I am not aware of the instance that you mention. We will get back to you on that.”—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 11 September 2025; c 29.]
HES sent a letter after the meeting and gave us a one-line response on that. It said
“For 2025-26 HES budgeted a 3 per cent annual cost of living pay increase in line with Scottish Government pay policy.”
That may predate your time, Sir Mark. Mr Davis, did HES at any point budget for a 2 per cent pay increase in 2025-26?
09:15Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Historic Environment Scotland
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
I have a clear answer now, but I do not have a clear answer on the issues around transparency and the culture in HES. I think that there are more questions than answers, given what I also said about the lack of statements on the website. I will leave it there just now, convener.
Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]
Sporting Events of National Interest
Meeting date: 30 October 2025
Neil Bibby
Obviously, if the situation were to change, and we did not have free-to-air broadcasts, we would need to look at it again. This is the first time that the committee has taken oral evidence on the issue.
On the financial challenges that you mentioned earlier, the Scottish Government promised to double the sports budget more generally but that has not happened—in fact, there has been a real-terms cut. That is the wider context, which I think is important. Sport is not part of this committee’s remit, but broadcasting is, and we need to consider it in that context. The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, Angus Robertson, has also said that the Scottish Government supports the men’s and women’s qualifiers being listed as category A events. Given the concerns that have been raised about funding, has the Scottish Government given an indication that, in principle, it would meet any shortfall that might arise from that listing?
