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 3346 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
I have one further question. After all our work and the evidence sessions that we have had with you and with WICS, I have been left with the nagging question whether we need such a regulator for Scottish Water, or a regulator in its current form, and whether it represents value for money. Is that something that you have considered?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
Presumably, an organisation such as Scottish Enterprise would operate to a fairly strict set of rules around expenditure and entertaining.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
I do not want to labour the point too much, but do we know the breakdown of costs for that travel and accommodation?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
I was looking at the annual audit report on WICS for 2023-24. I do not know whether you have it in front of you, but page 33 says:
“Our targeted regularity testing identified 18 additional items of non-compliant expenditure, totalling £23,764, between April and December 2023.”
You mentioned that already. The report goes on to list some of those 18 additional items. I will not list them all, but I will mention a few. There were:
“Travel and accommodation costs of £1,441 for the KC”
—the King’s counsel, who was on a retainer—
“travelling to Edinburgh for a meeting with the former Chief Executive which were paid directly by the Commission rather than being invoiced”.
I will take that item alone. How did they manage to rack up a bill of £1,400 for travel and accommodation?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
That would be useful.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
Thanks.
Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Connectivity
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
I congratulate Ash Regan on securing enough support to hold this debate. I might be wrong about this, but I may have been the first member to support her motion. It is certainly one of the most comprehensive motions that I have seen in some time—Ms Regan covers a lot of bases in it. I will not cover them all but will concentrate my remarks on aviation and the Clyde metro, which will impact on the region in which I live and that I represent.
The cross-party group on aviation’s February 2023 report argued for a policy regime that is “supportive of aviation”, with
“Stronger engagement around route development and airline support”.
The inbound and outbound aviation and tourism sectors are crucial enablers for the Scottish economy. Outbound travel is worth more than £3.6 billion a year to the Scottish economy and supports the employment of more than 30,000 people across Scotland. Research conducted by Edinburgh Napier University found that air links are the most influential transport factor in the location decisions of most overseas-based businesses that invest in the United Kingdom. Aviation matters to the local and national economies, and Scotland being connected to the world matters to us all.
The motion mentions the ambition of Edinburgh airport to have a US preclearance facility such as Dublin airport has. That means that we will have to work closely with the US Government and President Trump to persuade them that they should fund such a base here, in Scotland. The boost to the economy would be fantastic and, clearly, Edinburgh airport would benefit hugely. Having flown to America through Dublin, I can tell members that it is massively more convenient to clear customs on this side of the Atlantic than it is on the other.
I wish Edinburgh airport well, but I also want Glasgow airport to thrive. There is no doubt that Glasgow airport would do even better if the transport links to and from the airport were improved. Talk of a light rail link to the airport has gone on for too long. I can think of no other major airport anywhere that does not have better connections, and fixing that for Glasgow must be a priority.
It appears that that issue might be addressed through the ambitious but, as yet, quite woolly Clyde metro project. The programme-level business case for that network is expected by 2026, and it is estimated that timescales for the project could be as long as 25 years, which is way too long.
Having an integrated transport system in the Strathclyde region is too important to be kicked this far down the road. We need Governments to commit to it. It is too big for local government to fund, and we need to get moving. We know that a region with strong connectivity will enjoy increased levels of trade. The development of Glasgow airport represents a unique opportunity to drive economic growth and prosperity in that region.
Lastly, aviation needs to decarbonise. Scotland should be at the forefront of making the new fuels of the future, but we are not at the races yet. There was an event in Parliament last night looking at sustainable aviation fuel, and we really ought to be making sustainable aviation fuel here, in Scotland. I have spoken about that many times, and the cabinet secretary knows that. We need to do better. Transport can be the engine of growth, but too often it is the opposite.
I thank Ash Regan once again for allowing the chamber to discuss these matters.
13:05Meeting of the Parliament
Scotland’s Connectivity
Meeting date: 9 January 2025
Graham Simpson
Where would Ash Regan like the tram line to be extended to?
Public Audit Committee
“Alcohol and drug services”
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Graham Simpson
Do they exist?
Public Audit Committee
“Alcohol and drug services”
Meeting date: 19 December 2024
Graham Simpson
My reading is that it is all very well to have the mission, but given the figures that we have already discussed, it has not been a roaring success, so far. That is just my view.
I want to move on to discuss the clear link between poverty and drug deaths. In 2021, National Records of Scotland made clear the link between the two. It produced a report that stated:
“In 2020, after adjusting for age, people in the most deprived areas were 18 times as likely to have a drug-related death as those in the least deprived areas … That ratio has almost doubled in 20 years. In the early 2000s, those in the most deprived areas were around 10 times as likely to have a drug-related death as those in the least deprived areas.”
Things have got worse, really. Why do you think things have got worse?
