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 1955 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
You do not need to press your button. Just let the technician do that for you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Including financial responsibility, you mean?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
My esteemed colleague, Mr Beattie, will talk to you about technical issues in a moment. I will focus on the money aspects, which, since we are the Public Audit Committee, we have a responsibility to look at.
In your representations, you have made some specific comments and expressed some views about the repair costs of the funicular. We do not really have the time to revisit the history of that, nor do I wish to do so. However, it is significant to us, as the Public Audit Committee, that the repair costs rose substantially from around £5 million or £6 million to £25 million and, perhaps, rising. I appreciate that there are some live matters that we might not wish to go into around who is paying for what, so we will try to avoid that.
In your view, what was the underlying reason for such a substantial rise in costs of repairs to the funicular?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Again, Mr Beattie will cover some of the technical aspects, so we will park that for a second while I finish asking about the financials.
As you know, we have spoken to HIE and visited the site. I have two further questions, one of which is about your more recent engagement with the new management team at the resort. We had the benefit of meeting and chatting to them, and we also met some of the staff, and what was clear to us was the passion exhibited by those who choose to work on the mountain. They love the environment that they work in and they are very passionate about delivering for their local communities.
Do you feel that, despite your reservations about HIE's involvement, the resort is now in a better place or that it might have a better future as a result of the change of personnel?
11:30
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you for your brevity. I hope that I did not cut you short. I am willing to go over time if you have more questions, Joe.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
On that note, I appreciate that time is tight, as there is only so much that we can pack into a one-hour session, but the committee was in agreement, given that your written submissions were so comprehensive, that it would be best to get you in to give some oral evidence.
That evidence will now form part of the Official Report and our evidence gathering, so we are extremely grateful for your time and for the effort that it has taken to come to us. The committee will consider your evidence and the next steps that it will take in due course.
We thank all of the witnesses for their work—and their blog—and for being a meaningful part of our considerations this morning.
12:02
Meeting continued in private until 12:47.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
In your comments, Carole, it would be helpful if you could tell us what conversations you had with the Scottish Government, including any directorate or sponsorship team members, in advance of the production of the section 22 report, so that we get a feel for what the Government’s response was to the questions that you put to it.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Who was the lead Scottish Government sponsor who would be directly responsible for deciding to move the rating from red to amber to green? Who, in your understanding, provided oversight of the body’s sponsorship arrangements?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
That is helpful. Auditor General, I have a final question before I pass on to my colleagues. The issue regarding the accountable officer seems to be the key one. We want to get our heads around why there was no accountable officer, even one who was appointed or internally chosen on an interim or substitute basis. Who was the actual principal accountable officer at the time of the external audit that your report is based on? Was any explanation given to Audit Scotland, either by HES or the Scottish Government, as to why there was no accountable officer for six months? What was the formal explanation?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Yes, you have a moment or two, if you have another question.
