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 800 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
You have produced a disclaimer in two years. On the basis of your engagement to date and looking at the present situation, would you say that Scottish Canals now has the bandwidth, capacity and competence to ensure that we will not be doing the same thing again this time next year?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
Before I delve into detail about a couple of infrastructure projects, I want to go back a bit. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance has said that there will be a prioritisation exercise in relation to infrastructure spending. You have said a little bit about how you will approach that in relation to net zero and public services. Is it therefore safe to say that road projects will be given less prioritisation than perhaps net zero? Can you see a conflation of the two in relation to road infrastructure helping to achieve net zero objectives?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
Has that prioritisation exercise changed since the Bute house agreement?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
My next question might be one for Alison Irvine. You will be aware, particularly in relation to South Scotland residents in the Scottish Borders, West Lothian, East Lothian and Midlothian, of the £120 million planned potential intervention at Sheriffhall roundabout to relieve congestion at what is now a very congested pinchpoint. In 2020, it was held up quite significantly by a campaign that was led by the Green Party, with a local public inquiry getting under way earlier this year.
Do you have a revised timetable for the Sheriffhall intervention? Is it perhaps one of the areas for reprioritisation? After all, at any given time of the day, cars can be sitting idling in huge tailbacks, which will be having an environmental and economic cost. Where does something like Sheriffhall fit into the broader prioritisation exercise, given that one party in the coalition is clearly opposed to such interventions?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
As far as the presumption of priorities is concerned—and given the 7 per cent reduction in the capital budget that you have talked about—would it be safer to say that you can see investment flowing away from those sorts of projects towards public transport, net zero and public services? With regard to managing my constituents’ expectations, is that the kind of expectation management that we should be engaging in?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
I do not want to repeat or, perhaps, to labour some of the points that the convener has already made, but I note that paragraph 5 of the report says:
“The auditors reported that they had not received all information and explanations required for their audit in relation to the property, plant and equipment balances. The auditors also raised concerns about the overall quality and timeliness of Scottish Canals accounting records and working papers. This has led to significant delays to the audit process.”
I can second guess what you are going to say, given your responses to Mr Leonard, but is it safe to say that your concerns go far wider than the issues related to the property, plant and equipment balances?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Craig Hoy
Regardless of the size of the team, that sounds pretty poor, given that we are talking about the public purse. The report states that auditors did not receive all the information or explanation that was sufficient for the audit in terms of property, plant and equipment balances. Did you get the impression that the staff who were there were fully engaged with the process, and were they open and transparent with you?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Craig Hoy
You blame economic headwinds but, obviously, mistakes were made in the past. On that basis, should any of your predecessors have resigned?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Craig Hoy
On 27 April, the First Minister said:
“It is my expectation and the Government’s expectation—the chair of Ferguson Marine knows this very well—that there should not be bonuses in the current financial year, 2023-24”—[Official Report, 27 April 2023; c 12.]
However, that was flatly contradicted at this committee by the chairman of the yard, Andrew Millar. Was the First Minister overspeaking or trying to somehow exert some remote pressure on the board?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Craig Hoy
As the convener identified, it is the first time that written authority has been used since 2007. Will you explain in a bit more detail specifically why you thought that it was necessary to provide that written authority? What were you seeking to achieve and what were you seeking to avoid occurring?
