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 1524 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I do not know whether whichever of the officials is most familiar with that can recall.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Clearly, there are lots of lessons to be learned from the process and from the conclusions of not just your committee’s report, but the Auditor General’s report and the REC Committee’s report.
I think that, reading that exchange now, it is quite clear that the then minister for transport was reflecting factually on what had happened before. There had been instances at the yard, which FMEL would have known about, where things had developed without a builders refund guarantee. That was a reflection. It was not advice as to what would happen in another procurement; instead, it was reflecting on the past.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Those issues would relate to future procurement, depending on who had that. Therefore, you would be looking at the people who are bidding for the work having that underpinning and guarantee, in which case it would relate to a yard.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
That is why I thought that that was a good recommendation. We want the Government to respond to it. In my detailed examination of your report, as I went through what the conclusions and recommendations were and what we have to act on, that is something that, in my new position—obviously, at the time that you produced the report, prior to my being in post, I would not have looked at it in that level of detail—I feel is a good and useful recommendation, and my officials will act on it.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Draft press lines are not necessarily the same as meetings or decisions. I can see how that might have happened, but I think that records were kept of everything significant. That is the point. It is about what is significant in terms of decision making and who knew what and when, et cetera. There is far more acute awareness of that now than there would have been previously.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Again, that is the committee’s conclusion and position. Obviously, it is part of your responsibility to set out your position and your view. You went into some detail about the appropriateness of that with the former First Minister, and you have good evidence as to where things were, which has been laid out a number of times.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I will need to reflect on the chain of events and the evidence that you have on that. It was not a recommendation to me, as the current Minister for Transport, for action. I do not know whether officials have better recall of it.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
So many things are judgment calls. With hindsight, there might be a lot of things that people would not want to do or that they would want to rethink.
I try to avoid communicating during live procurements, although I have not had many in recent times. There is the “safety first” thing, but there are also MSPs who demand responses to their letters, and if they do not get them they will stand up in Parliament and ask why a minister has not responded to their letter. That is the call that we have to make. We want transparency and openness—that is what the committee is asking for—but it is a judgment call. He made that judgment. Looking back on that, knowing what he does now, would he have done the same thing? I do not know.
The content was a factual reflection on what had happened, as opposed to an opinion on a procurement, and he probably saw it in that way. I do not want to second guess how somebody decided on things or judged them, but that is my reflection. I think that the committee is looking for some reflections on your conclusions, as opposed to asking us to respond on what we are being asked to do as a Government now.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
It was a special adviser.
Public Audit Committee
“New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
In terms of how we would normally operate and, to be fair, as was set out in the evidence sessions, the Scottish Government has been as accessible and approachable to interests as it can be, but in an appropriate way as long as things are documented. Clearly, the meeting was documented but not in the form that it would currently be done, which would be an official minute.
