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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1648 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
There were various situations in which leadership, management or strategy decisions were not made by the university executive group but outsourced to consultancy companies and other organisations, because of existing relationships that they might or might not have had with the university.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
I might come back to that.
Perhaps this will be a more productive line of questioning. Earlier, there were discussions about the relative growth of certain parts of the university while other parts were struggling. We have heard quite clearly that the finance team were underresourced and struggling to cope with their stretched workload, but, at the same time, the executive and strategy office was ballooning. Given your provision of leadership of strategic development and effective and efficient management, was there ever a point at which you challenged why so many jobs were being created in some parts of the university while other areas were really struggling and being targeted for cuts?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Who should take responsibility for the failure of the Blueprints admissions software?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Given that there was a clear breach of the regulations, it might be useful for the committee to have that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Almost 700 members of staff faced compulsory redundancy earlier this year, and that is still on the table. It is they who will pay the price for your and others’ failure. Is that right? Is that justice?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Amanda Millar, do you recall the phrase “rogue employer” from April 2023?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
What training and support were given to court members on the understanding and assessment of risk?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
I have similar questions for Jim McGeorge. What was your expectation or understanding of the support that was available for court members? As secretary, that was obviously a role that you should have been involved in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
Do you know what was number 1 on the risk register for the institution at the point of your departure?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
University of Dundee
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Maggie Chapman
When we had the then acting chair of court before us, cybersecurity was highlighted but there was nothing around long-term financial sustainability in her answer, which was worrying. That gives me cause for concern about how you, and now the university executive group and the governors, have assessed risk and whether you feel that you were assessing risk.
You have all said in different ways, over the course of this morning, that you acted on the information that you had. However, do you think that there was a lack, or a gap, with regard to your being able to forecast the consequences of certain things and turn those forecasts into risks, whether in international student recruitment or the long-term financial problems of the institutions, to which Peter Fotheringham referred earlier? Amanda Millar, do you want to comment on that?
