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 1967 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you.
10:32
Meeting suspended.
10:35
On resuming—
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Good morning, everyone. I welcome you to the third meeting in 2026 of the Public Audit Committee. We have received apologies this morning from our convener, Richard Leonard—as deputy convener, I will deputise for him. We have also received apologies from Joe FitzPatrick, who is unable to join us. We are small but still quorate in number, and we have a lot of business to get through.
Agenda item 1 is to decide whether the committee will take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you. You alluded to having observed our last evidence session on this subject on 10 December. Some of your colleagues from The Promise Scotland, along with representatives of the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, were witnesses on the panel. They were asked whether they whole-heartedly accepted all recommendations contained in the Audit Scotland report. For clarification, do you whole-heartedly accept those recommendations?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
To be clear, do you mean that the report could have gone further in its recommendations or in the work that was undertaken?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
You will be aware that, at the previous evidence session on the Promise, I asked the witnesses, which included representatives from the Scottish Government and COSLA, and your colleagues from the Promise, whether they believed that we were on track to meet the Promise, and the answer was unanimously that we are not. Given that you have been in charge of the Promise for nine years and, prior to that, were involved in its development, do you accept any responsibility for that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
The report was fairly critical, though, was it not? The Auditor General highlighted a number of key issues where progress was not being made, which is the point of a performance audit. Among other issues, he talked about governance and accountability, data, measuring and reporting, the resources that would be required, the governance frameworks and the clear lack of lines of accountability and oversight. It was a robust report, to say the least. The Auditor General is identifying that things are not going so well. You say that we are halfway through the delivery period for the Promise. It is not really a good sign, is it?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
We are grateful to you for coming to speak to us as we undertake our work on this important issue.
I will backtrack for a second just to get my head round where you believe that you fit into the equation, because—I will check the Official Report on this—I believe that you said that, as an independent adviser, it is your job to advise people, but it is up to them to deliver; you are in an advisory position, and other people need to pull their weight and do their bit for all of this to work. I understand that. However, on the other hand, you are the chair of The Promise Scotland, and the public would expect that to come with a level of accountability and responsibility for the overall delivery of the Promise. Is there a conflict? You said that you are simply there to advise people to get on with the job, when actually you are in charge of the job.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
It is interesting that you say that the three key tenets of your role as chair of The Promise Scotland are the strategy for the Promise, the delivery of the Promise and the relationships. Is that correct? Is that your understanding of it?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Indeed. Mr Simpson has some questions.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 21 January 2026
Jamie Greene
I have some supplementary questions in the short time that we have left.
While I am grateful for your responses thus far during this evidence session—and I cannot speak on behalf of the whole committee—I feel that there is a general sense of frustration that we do not seem to be getting to the bottom of the question of whose job it is to deliver the Promise.
Perhaps we just need to be a bit more frank with each other. If it is not your job as chair, if it is not the job of the chair of the Oversight Board and if it is not the job of a director general in some Scottish Government department, who is responsible for producing a plan, assigning people to deliver the plan and assigning the budget that is necessary for that plan to succeed?
