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 1109 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
Before I ask Stephen Boyle about the audit function, I will bring in Anna Fowlie. Earlier, the Auditor General said that the audit function is far more than a tick-box exercise; it is about learning, evaluating and assessing outcomes. I think that the SCVO has about 2,700 members. Is there still a view that the audit and evaluation process comes at the end and is very much about ticking a box to close a project or to reapply for funding? Is enough learning taking place in the sector to ensure that we evaluate, assess the outcomes, and collectively learn from what has or has not been achieved?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
Welcome, everyone. There is one question that perhaps has not been answered. I want to use the closing stages to look forward and see how we can strengthen community empowerment. There are clearly still challenges, despite the huge and, at times, heroic efforts of the third sector, in particular during Covid.
It might be worth asking this question to David Allan, who could respond from a national perspective, and then to Ryan Smart, with a local perspective. Despite all the progress that we have made, to what extent is there still a hard-to-reach group that we did not manage to engage with during the pandemic? On the basis of the learning that we have and the progress that we have made, what can we do to move forward and to reach groups that are marginalised, for whatever underlying reason? How can we finally move forward and ensure that the legacy is that we reach them in future?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
Thank you. From a national or international policy perspective, to move that forward to the next phase, political will and public bodies will set the framework that allows community empowerment to thrive. To what extent are all parts of the public sector in Scotland currently supporting and empowering communities? Is there any ready-made template of international best practice or policy that we could embed in Scotland to improve that empowerment and engagement? That question is for Pippa Coutts first.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
I ask Euan Leitch the same question. You talked about the fact that your predecessor said, “We do not need any more policy; we just need practice.” How can we move forward from policy to doing, in practical terms, what Pippa Coutts talked about? It strikes me that that is very much about moving away from firefighting and starting to plan for the long term.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
I am one of the MSPs for South Scotland. I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests, as I will refer to it later. I am an East Lothian councillor.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
Perhaps Ryan Smart can comment from a local perspective. You made the point that all the members of your centre’s management board live within five minutes of each other in Glenrothes. However, sometimes the most extreme problems are the ones that are nearest to us, and yet we do not see them. Do you feel that you have made progress on the ground in reaching people with whom you had not engaged previously?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Community empowerment: Covid-19 update”
Meeting date: 25 November 2021
Craig Hoy
The convener mentioned two words that I was going to bring up: participatory budgeting. That is a concrete example of community engagement and empowerment. Given that the local government budget is £11,108 million, by my maths, about £111 million is being spent following some degree of community engagement. Auditor General, should more be done to audit that expenditure—it might not be done in a mandatory sense—not only to ensure that the public pound is being well spent but, more important, to ensure that the audit function is evaluating outcomes so that we can all learn and share best practice to allow us to accelerate the work that we have heard about today?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Craig Hoy
Once the section 22 spotlight on the commission fades, what steps will be required to ensure that the boundaries between the roles of the chief executive and the board are understood and respected? How critical will the Scottish Government sponsoring division be in ensuring that the dysfunctionality does not return in future?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Craig Hoy
I have just been to the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—so I am perhaps running the risk of being accused of greenwashing by bringing up this subject at the end of the meeting.
I would like to get your impression of how the NHS NSS procurement process took into account environmental considerations at the height of the pandemic. Now that things have calmed down, are you sighted on its activities so that you can try to make sure that it acquires a more environmentally sustainable stream of materials?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Craig Hoy
The Royal College of Nursing, the British Medical Association and care professionals raised widely reported concerns about access to, use of and shortage of PPE very early on in the pandemic. Are you aware of any on-going concerns from healthcare, social care or other professionals about access to, use of or quality of PPE today?
