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 3519 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
You go even further than that when you say that
“The Reserve balance is not disclosed within the Scottish Government consolidated accounts.”
It is a matter not only of where the reserve is and transparency over its movement, but of the figure itself not even being disclosed in the consolidated accounts.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
Further in, the document talks about the comprehensive business case that needs to be made in order to give the green light for Government intervention in a commercial business. It talks about the strategic case, the economic case, the commercial case, the financial case and the management case. Were any of those cases the subject of proper scrutiny for the investments that are listed in your report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
We are up against the clock a bit here, so, if it is a very brief question, I will allow you to come in and ask it.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
That very much leads me to my next question, which is about where we are with the production of the Scottish Government’s whole-of-Government consolidated accounts, which I think you said rather diplomatically are being introduced at too slow a pace. Why has there been that lengthy delay, and what justification has been presented for it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
I want to ask a final question about sponsorship arrangements—the relations between the Scottish Government and public bodies. In 2021, an external review was commissioned by the Government and produced 14 key recommendations. All 14 recommendations were accepted by the Scottish Government, and the permanent secretary gave an undertaking that all the recommendations would be implemented by the end of the 2022 calendar year. I know that we are only in mid-January 2023, but I reflect on the fact that, in your report that is before us, you went so far as to say that
“The Scottish Government has committed to improving its sponsoring arrangements of public bodies, but I remain concerned as to whether the timescales will be met and whether actions planned will fully address each recommendation.”
Where are we with that?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
To be clear, are there or are there not more risks associated with relying on less primary data and more administrative data?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
You referred to this a few minutes ago. Do you have a view on the target of a 90 per cent return rate as set against the backdrop of there having been a 97 per cent return rate in the other parts of the UK? Does not that target lack ambition, when other parts of the UK managed, in a digital first census, to achieve return rates of 97 per cent 12 months earlier? Why was the ambition only to get a 90 per cent return rate?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decisions on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
We are agreed on that, too. Thank you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
The return rates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were, from memory, about 97 per cent. Did their census coverage survey focus on the reasons why 3 per cent did not respond or did it have a wider role to play in giving more qualitative information about the census returns?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decisions on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 31st meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on our agenda is to ask members whether they agree to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. Are we all agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
