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
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Craig Hoy
I will turn now, in some detail, to governance and oversight. I accept that you were not in post in 2017 when the Scottish Government established the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board. The view of the Auditor General is that
“The ESSB lacks the authority to hold the skills agencies to account”.
In 2020 the Scottish Government proposed a new skills alignment assurance group to replace the governance arrangements. In 2021 the Scottish Government wound up the SAAG. Here, in 2022, we have the shared outcomes assurance group. It strikes me that we have more groups than Eurovision and more directors than Hollywood, but this document might now be the one that works.
Looking back at that history, could you say what issues affected governance and what steps the Government is taking? Is the document the one that will get us to the point at which there will be sufficient assurance that appropriate governance and oversight arrangements are in place?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Craig Hoy
Okay. Obviously, you will have looked at the directorates and the SFC. Do you believe that they have sufficient internal staffing capacity to support the skills alignment activities?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Griffin. Before we go into issues of oversight and governance, I will echo the convener’s remarks about the late emergence of the shared outcomes framework. You have pulled the rug from under our feet to some extent in this session, because we have not had time to study the framework, but yet you are referring to it, almost like Chamberlain, saying, “Here it is, peace in our time between these two bodies”. On the announcement yesterday about the independent adviser’s report on education, if that is the sort of slap-dash, last-minute and inconsiderate way that the Scottish Government is operating, it is perhaps no surprise that we are increasingly seeing reports coming to the committee that identify serious and systemic failures in the operation, delivery, governance and oversight of key public services.
Before I turn to the questions that I have prepared—which I think are now redundant, in some respects—I want to go back to leadership, because I do not think that you fully answered the question from Mr Beattie. The second key message of the report says that
“The Scottish Government has not provided the necessary leadership for progress”
and that
“Many obstacles remain and present risks to progress. The Scottish Government now needs to take urgent action to realise its ambitions for skills alignment.”
Do not forget that we are talking about £2 billion of taxpayers’ money and two very large organisations—SDS and the SFC. I am looking at exhibit 1—the organogram. At the top of the tree is the Minister for Further Education and Higher Education, Youth Employment and Training. Is the failure of leadership ministerial, institutional or systemic, or is it a combination of all three?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Craig Hoy
We might have you back at committee.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
Are you saying that it is politically unpalatable to extend the legislation beyond those points?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
The measures in the bill on early release from prison and young offenders institutions are exceptional because they specifically relate to Covid and they are time limited. I go back to your opening remarks. If you want a statute that is fit for purpose, why would you not want to have the capacity to release prisoners early in another pandemic situation, or beyond 2025?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
If your first priority is to safeguard the public, including those who are in prison, surely you would want to keep that power on the statute book to utilise at some point in the future.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
I am not sure that I necessarily follow the logic of that position.
Mr Simpson referred to the measures on private sector tenancies. The draft strategy consultation paper “A New Deal for Tenants” is out for consultation until 15 April 2022. I am slightly at a loss in working out why provisions that effectively pre-empt that consultation are included in the bill. Would it not be far better to remove those provisions from the bill and include them in future housing legislation, so that you can be cognisant of the consultation responses?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
Do you accept that it is difficult to legislate on a Donald Rumsfeld approach of known knowns and known unknowns? There has to be some specificity, so is there more that you could do in the bill to flesh out what you mean by a public health emergency or threat? It could otherwise be open to misinterpretation by future Administrations.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Craig Hoy
The Parliament will do that, but the courts might also scrutinise the legislation or the implementation or enactment of that legislation at some point.
What seems to distinguish the bill and the measures that it would effect is that we are passing it into law on a permanent basis. We could have tried to challenge many of the measures that have been brought in during the pandemic, but article 15 of the European convention on human rights gave you the safeguard and the certainty that the measures could not be challenged, because it says that Governments can act
“in exceptional circumstances ... in a limited and supervised manner,”
free
“from their obligations to secure certain rights and freedoms under the Convention.”
One element is the “limited and supervised” aspect, but passing the bill as permanent legislation will mean that you lose the time-limited element. Are you certain that article 15 would give safeguards if the bill was passed into law?
