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 2603 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
It sounds like a bit of a compromise. Clearly, the original target and delivery under it have changed. To me, the changes that you have made seem to be fundamental. It will take years longer to get all the benefits that were anticipated from completion of the land register, and we do not have a target for that. You hope that, by 2024, you will get some of the benefits, albeit that how that will be achieved seems in some ways to be a little vague. Has that been discussed with your sponsor department in the Scottish Government? Is there clarity on how things are going forward?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
There is a bit of a question about that, but never mind. I will move on to something else.
You mentioned the loss of your financial reserve because, obviously, your status changed, so the difference between your fees and outgoings is now met by the Scottish Government. Obviously, there are additional costs even in achieving the more limited target for 2024 that you are looking at. Has the Scottish Government committed to funding that over the years?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Can you explain in more detail what unlocking the sasine register means?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
So just to be clear, as an alternative to completing the land register we will—semi-permanently, I presume—still run the sasine register alongside it?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
How closely do you work with the Scottish Government sponsor department on that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Can you explain that a bit more?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Therefore, one could describe that as a pragmatic compromise.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Colin Beattie
I am sure that there will be an appetite for that when the time comes.
I want to move on to fraud and irregularities around Covid-19 expenditure. Obviously, the two big business support schemes totalled nearly £1.6 billion. They responded quickly to Covid-19. Obviously, there was a need to get money to the right place at the right time very quickly, which opens up a higher-risk element.
I notice that the Scottish Government estimates that fraud and error will account for 1 to 2 per cent of those payments, involving approximately £16 million to £32 million. How does that equate to the figures that we see coming from Westminster, which are obviously on a bigger scale? We see estimates from there of £15 billion or more. Have we been better at it? Given that Westminster has had that experience, why are we better? Why is the figure not proportionately as high here?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Colin Beattie
The logical extension of that is that until you know the whole picture, you cannot know whether all the estimates that you are making are particularly accurate.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Colin Beattie
Local authorities are confirming to you the number of cases and so on, but you do not have information on what they are doing about them. You say that the authorities are pursuing cases vigorously, but you have no evidence to show that.
