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 1114 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Sharon Dowey
I have some more specific questions on governance and capacity. You have touched on some of the areas in your previous answers, but I will go through them anyway.
I do not underestimate how complex the lines of accountability are, because they cut through different directorates. However, they mean that cross-Government collaboration is required in order to progress climate change policies and manage competing priorities. To what extent is effective cross-Government collaboration taking place to progress climate change actions and management of competing policy priorities?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Sharon Dowey
So there are enough meetings for people to put their points across.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 7 September 2023
Sharon Dowey
When new developments come out, is that brought up at meetings? I am thinking about heat in buildings, for example. There were reports in the press recently about whether heat pumps are any good in the Scottish climate. Would such issues be brought up at your meetings? Would you discuss whether to progress with, or to do more on, a particular development?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Which specific programmes are likely to experience lower than expected spend or to require extended timeframes to achieve delivery on the scale that was originally anticipated?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
The report explains that
“The issuing of a disclaimer on the audit opinion, means that the auditors cannot provide assurance on the use of public money by Scottish Canals during 2021/22.”
As a disclaimer was also issued for the 2020-21 accounts, what are the wider implications of not having assurance on Scottish Canals’ use of public money over the past two years?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
I have a quick question about target setting. When you set targets for transport or any kind of infrastructure, who sets the targets and ensures that they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound, rather than being pulled out of thin air? I am looking at some of the figures—for example, it was initially planned that £495 million would be spent on bus priority investment but, so far, only £26 million has been allocated. I know that you say that you are still reviewing things to see where you can make savings.
On housing, there seems to be an 11-year plan to build 110,000 houses by 2032, which works out at about 10,000 houses a year. According to that, it looks as though we are 12,517 short, although I recognise that we have still to get to the end of this financial year. Are there workings in the background that show how many houses you expected to build each year? Is there more information that can be shared so that we know where we are in the investment programme?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
What are the consequences for Scottish Canals if it continues to fail to meet its public accountability responsibilities?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. In the third year of the IIP timeframe, reported spend on the programmes under the net zero and environmental sustainability theme appears to represent only around 13 per cent of total planned expenditure. Is spending expected to reach the amounts that were envisaged when the IIP was published, even with a one-year extension to the programme?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
Has progress on net zero and environmental sustainability programmes been affected by lower than anticipated uptake among private sector and local authority partners? If so, what is being done to address that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 29 June 2023
Sharon Dowey
In your view, has Scottish Canals already failed to meet its public accountability responsibilities to comply with the financial reporting manual requirements in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 reporting years? Is the same conclusion of failure likely to be reported for the current financial year?
