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 February 2022
Craig Hoy
You touched on confidence in the governance process. I will turn to confidence in the board, because we know that the board became aware that limited progress had been made on skills alignment. However, despite that, requests for information were ignored or information was provided to the board at very short notice. Mr Boyle, do you think that the board is sufficiently respected by the Scottish Government and the skills agencies? If not, should its role be strengthened, or is there a case for looking again and starting afresh?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
So, you welcome the consolidation of those two elements under one minister.
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
I have some detailed questions about the ESSB. You state in the report that the board
“lacks the authority to hold the skills agencies to account, limiting its ability to support progress by SDS and the SFC on skills alignment.”
Why has that been the case? To what extent has the lack of authority contributed to the lack of progress?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
It looks as though the ransomware attack was quite carefully timed, coming as it did at midnight on Christmas eve. We are aware from the report that the staff member who was responsible was unable to contact any member of senior management to escalate the issue. Have you explored whether SEPA now has in place contingency plans to ensure that, should such a situation arise again, that channel of communication will be open and available?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
I will ask briefly about the five-stage model and the move to a three-stage or three-strand model.
It strikes me that we have a vehicle that is going in the wrong direction. We have lifted the bonnet and seen that it is overly complex and difficult to maintain and repair and we do not know what component affects what outcome. As I understand it, three pilot projects were undertaken to assess the five-stage model: in early learning and childcare, in financial and professional services and in the Glasgow College region. It seems that the early learning and childcare pilot yielded some positive results. What factors contributed to the success of that pilot and what lessons were learned from it?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
Paragraph 1 of your report mentions the skills gaps and the effects that they will have on Scotland’s labour market and, ultimately, its economy. We see those effects in the form of two costs. There are costs today, as we see in, for example, social care—your recent report identified the crisis in care and the costs that not providing preventative care causes at the other end of the spectrum. You also identify, in relation to digital and the climate emergency, a huge economic opportunity cost in not having the skills to meet the future demand in those sectors.
What confidence do you have that the Scottish Government and its partners are satisfactorily addressing the skills gaps of today and the future?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
I have one final question, on funding. Paragraph 14 states that in October 2019, the Scottish Government
“instructed SDS and the SFC to implement a new model for funding and delivering foundation apprenticeships ... and graduate apprenticeships”.
Those are two fundamental elements of what we are talking about, but your report raises concerns that sustainable funding for those two areas is still uncertain. Why has the Government not been able to provide clarity on where that funding will come from?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Craig Hoy
With regard to lessons learned, the emergency management team identified 103 projects that were to be undertaken as part of the recovery plan and were due to be completed by June 2021. Have you assessed whether all 103 projects have been completed?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning. The report examines the impact of Covid-19 on HMRC compliance activities. It says:
“COVID-19 has continued to have an impact on HMRC’s compliance and debt management activities. Across the UK, there were 29% fewer civil compliance cases opened and 26% fewer cases closed in 2020-21 than in 2019-20”.
Can you give us a snapshot of why that is? Is it because internal processes in HMRC have been impacted by Covid—for example, due to people working from home, which means that there is less capacity—or is it because the outside world has become more complex because of the pandemic?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Craig Hoy
People who struggled to pay tax during that period are now paying their present tax and have therefore almost forgotten about that period, which may impede the recovery of that tax. Do you have a concern that, in capacity terms, HMRC will be so busy in its forward-looking work that it may end up not fully delving into that period retrospectively?
