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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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Agenda item 2 is consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s section 22 report into the 2024-25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland.
I welcome our witnesses. Stephen Boyle is the Auditor General for Scotland and Lisa Duthie and Carole Grant are both audit directors at Audit Scotland.
Before members get into their lines of questioning, I invite the Auditor General to make a short opening statement on his report.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
In your professional opinion, was the move from green to amber to red a result of a lack of action or response to issues that the sponsorship team flagged? Or was it perhaps a result of issues within the sponsorship division in relation to the way in which it oversees or governs the body? Or perhaps the blame lies in both lobbies.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Just for the record, I can reassure committee members that agenda item 5, which we will take in private, will be looking at next steps on how we may garner more information from either Historic Environment Scotland or the Scottish Government and the opportunities that are open to us to do so. We will discuss those later in the meeting, in particular around some of the areas that Mr Simpson has asked Audit Scotland about. Obviously, we will let you know if there is anything of interest, Auditor General.
I now invite Joe FitzPatrick to ask some questions.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
We will backtrack a smidge. There are one or two technical issues that I would like to clarify with you while you are here, if you do not mind, Auditor General.
I am not sure whether Audit Scotland followed the evidence session on Historic Environment Scotland that was held by the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee on 6 November 2025. I am sure that you paid attention to it. Some comments were made during that meeting that I would like to reflect on here, and I will ask you for your opinion on what was said. I apologise that I have not provided the quotations for you to look at in advance, but I will do my best to paraphrase, if that is helpful.
In that meeting, the Scottish Government’s director for culture and external affairs, Mr Hogg, was asked about the issues around the appointment of the interim accountable officer. I ask you to reflect on this response. I am partly paraphrasing, although we may put the full quote into the Official Report. Mr Hogg said that he was reassured
“that there were no upcoming decisions that required the accountable officer to exercise oversight.”
He said, referring to the former chair of HES, that he had received
“assurances from the former chair that … there were no decisions that required the accountable officer to be in place.”—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 6 November 2025; c 7-8.]
He does not say whether he was satisfied with that response. Is it normal practice to decide whether there should be an interim accountable officer on the basis of reassurances that there is no need for one because there are no decisions to be made? That sounds like an extremely unusual reason for not appointing one.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Those are questions that we might ask the Government.
Again, I apologise for quoting directly from the Official Report of the CEEAC Committee meeting, but it is probably easier if I do so. Mr Hogg said that, at one point,
“the board determined that it wished to proceed to appoint an acting chief executive”
and that he
“met the candidate and interviewed them in respect of their suitability”
and took the view
“that the individual was appointable as the accountable officer”,
and he
“told the chair and the board that.”
The next line is interesting. Mr Hogg then says:
“The board subsequently decided not to proceed with that appointment”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 6 November 2025; c 8.]
It would seem to be an unusual state of affairs for a recommendation about the appointment of a senior chief executive that has been made by a senior director general of a Government department to be refused by the board. At this point, it comes down to a question of who is in charge. What would be the normal procedure or practice in such a scenario, where there is a conflict of views?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of Historic Environment Scotland”
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you; that is noted.
My final question is a technical clarification. In the CEEAC Committee meeting of 6 November last year, there was a conversation about HES’s scheme of delegation to directors. I presume that that was an interim arrangement so that decisions could be made in the absence of senior leadership or executives. It is unclear to this committee whether that scheme of delegation would take precedent over the requirements of the SPFM.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
With respect, we had an extraordinary amount of weather in the past couple of weeks. The benefit is that it brings great conditions for the mountain ranges; however, it presents issues around access across all the skiing areas. To play devil’s advocate, is that not simply par for the course for a mountain ski resort?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Let me just summarise that, so that we can be clear about what you are saying to us. It is not just the initial design of the structure that is at fault; in addition, the design of the repairs is partially at fault.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Cairngorm Funicular Railway
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Thank you very much. That was all really interesting stuff, and we might come back to some of it before the end of the session. For now, however, I will ask Mr Beattie to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 14 January 2026
Jamie Greene
Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2026. We have received apologies from our convener, Richard Leonard, so I will deputise in his absence.
Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take agenda items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Do members agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
