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 1731 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Let me bring you back to some financial questions. Mr Black, you have stated three times over the course of this morning—it is also in your written submission—that you are keen to stress that Balfour Beatty has absorbed the cost of the remediation work on the funicular. I presume that Balfour Beatty has not sprouted a charitable arm. In what circumstances is it undertaking that work? Presumably, it was paid to do it—that is why you are telling us that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Jamie Greene
It was paid to do the job, and it is doing the job, but who paid for it? Where did the £18 million come from?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Jamie Greene
You get the crux of my question, though. A huge chunk of public money has been paid to a private contractor to deliver the project and get it up to speed. It is clear that some work is still going on, although you say that it is minor rather than substantive. My point is that, as the Public Audit Committee, we are trying to work out what the overall potential liability to the public purse is.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Jamie Greene
I appreciate that, and thank you for the additional information.
In the light of the convener’s previous question, if the costs of starting afresh, rebuilding or building a new funicular were established, it sounds to me that the cost of doing the remediation was double the cost of putting in a new funicular. Who made the decision to remediate and why?
10:30Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Flooding in communities: Moving towards flood resilience”
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Jamie Greene
That information was helpful. The bigger concern, though—I am playing devil’s advocate here, because I have sympathy with the Government on this—is that if the original costs of cycle 1 have more than trebled to more than £1 billion, and if, as one might presume, cycle 2 is going to come with a huge price tag, where will the Government find the money to implement the cycle 2 schemes? After all, no Government can magic £2 billion out of nowhere. Where is the money going to come from? We have to invest in those schemes, so the Government will have to find that money from somewhere within its overall capital budget. We are talking about huge sums of money. Having seen eight of the previous 40 schemes being dropped, people will be concerned about the next tranche of schemes actually being delivered. When the worst happens, people will feel let down.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Thank you for clarifying. I understand that the bank has not, to date, exercised its right to exit an investment in a profitable manner. Indeed, most exits have been forced on the bank due to losses or the administration of its investments. Are you comfortable that the bank has robust exit strategies?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Will it increase the risk to the public purse? If, for example, a publicly owned vehicle that takes money from external sources made an investment that went bust and led to considerable losses, what exposure would the public purse have to that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Jamie Greene
In the real world, if I had a business unit that was losing millions of pounds, I would not be getting a bonus.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Okay, but you have no concerns.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Scottish National Investment Bank”
Meeting date: 10 September 2025
Jamie Greene
Good morning. I have a few areas to cover, so I will get cracking. Mr Irwin, can you describe, for the committee’s benefit, where you fit into the equation, in terms of lines of accountability or the oversight of SNIB?
