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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2648 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
Sitting here, I cannot say—again, this is just the inherent limitation of trying to decide which decisions you would have made with hindsight—and cannot be sure, and I do not think that anyone could be, that retendering would have resulted in a situation where we did not have any problems. I cannot sit here and give you a guarantee on that. There is commentary in the 8 October paperwork that underlines this point. That submission says that, in CMAL’s view, some of the problems around the guarantee would have been encountered with any bidder.
It is really impossible to answer categorically, from the perspective of hindsight, what you would have done and what the consequences of it would have been.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
Again, that is one of those questions where the answer is that if I knew then what I know now, of course I would not have wanted to do that, but I did not know then what I know now. I am not telling the committee anything that it does not know when I say that it is not unusual—in fact, it is entirely usual—for vessels to be launched well in advance of them being completed. I have been at other ship launches in my political career. It is known that, at the point of the launch of a vessel, it is not completed, so there was nothing unusual in that.
I certainly was not aware of this at the time of the launch. I was aware that there was a slippage in the contract delivery date, and I think that Parliament was also aware of that at that point, because I think that Derek Mackay had already advised it of the initial slippage in the delivery date. However, I was not aware that CMAL had concerns about doing the launch at that point. In fact, having reviewed my briefing for that event, there were plenty of CMAL executives and non-executives on the attendance list. I certainly was not aware that there were concerns about launching the vessel at that point.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
Everything that I am referring to today—subject to the caveats on the processes in the Government about legal privilege and commercial confidentiality—I am happy to make available to the committee.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
I have seen the actions that I asked officials to take forward coming out of that meeting. If the committee has not seen that—if it is not in the bundle of documents that has already been published—I will certainly look to see whether it can be made available.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
Yes, I do.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
That is exactly what I am saying.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
As it happens, I raised that particular issue last night, as I was reading documents in preparation for today. That was an error, but, as I think can be substantiated by looking at the committee’s website, the letter is published in full there. The letter that was sent by Transport Scotland omitted, in the way that it was formatted, a couple of paragraphs. I noticed that last night, so I am not surprised that the committee noticed it, too. I have the full letter in front of me, and the committee has the full letter, and I am happy to answer questions on the entirety of the letter.
I do not believe that there was any intention to mislead, not least because it would have been very obvious to anybody who had any knowledge of the matter. Taking all that into account, I am satisfied that that was an inadvertent formatting error, and it does not change the fact that the full information is before the committee.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
I would thank the convener if I could complete my point. The fact that you know that underlines the point that I am making. The full letter is on your committee’s website, and therefore the idea that, somehow, that would have pulled the wool over anybody’s eyes stretches credibility.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
It would have been in what that briefing told me. I would have to go back and check, but I do not think that the term “builders refund guarantee” was used. It said that there was a preferred bidder but that, to be clear, negotiations were still on-going, which included complexities around the level of guarantee that FMEL would provide. It was very much couched as one of the things that we were talking about finalising, not as a big red flag that there was going to be a big problem.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 4 November 2022
Nicola Sturgeon
The submissions on that will have been circulated and provided to the relevant ministers, and the minister at the time would have updated Cabinet periodically on the progress of that.
