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 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
So that was the clear inference. Were you invited to that event, as non-executive members of the board?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
There was an internal email, issued on 20 August, that recommended that Mr Mackay lead on the announcement, but you are saying that, by the next day, there had been an intervention that meant that the First Minister was leading on the announcement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Had you been available to attend, would you have attended?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Interestingly, since January, you have been the chair of David MacBrayne Ltd, so you have gone from being part of the client body to being the chair of the body that will receive and operate the ferries.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
I go back to what was said at the beginning of the evidence session. You were the chair of the board that signed off on the contracts—whether by instruction or otherwise—and you are now the chair of the board that will, I hope, be in receipt of the ferries.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
For us, this is not just about the contractual relationship and the business refund guarantee arrangements; it is about the fact that the ferries are five years late and counting and are two and a half times over budget and counting.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
That would be in 2023.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
We are really pushed for time, so, if you could make your final point very short, that would be very welcome.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
We have run out of time. As you say, Mr Hobbs, we might want to explore further issues with you, but I thank all three witnesses for the time that they have given us this morning and for their openness. That has been appreciated.
As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, we have been able to publish some written evidence. We are keen to publish subsequent evidence, but we have to go through a certain due process in order to put that into the public domain. We will do that and give the matter further consideration. We might come back to the witnesses with questions that arise from that process. As a committee, we will also need to consider whether there would be value in having a further evidence session, because we have covered some areas in some detail, but we probably have not had the time to scrutinise other areas as much as we would have liked—it might not feel like that to the witnesses, from their end, but that is our take. I thank them once again.
I will suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Richard Leonard
The next item on our agenda is consideration of evidence and witness information on major capital projects in Scotland, which the committee has taken a long-standing interest in. I am delighted to welcome Helen Carter, deputy director, infrastructure and investment, Scottish Government; Lawrence Shackman, director of major projects, Scottish Government; and Bill Reeve, director of rail, Transport Scotland. We have a fairly limited amount of time this morning but we will try to maximise the best use of it.
I have a couple of opening issues that I want to explore. My first question is partly for my benefit. We have received a briefing that suggests that, as far as the capital budget allocations that you have are concerned, there has been a higher than expected financial transactions budget allocation but a lower than expected capital budgets allocation over the next few years. What do the financial transactions budget allocations derive from and where do the capital budget allocations come from? Helen Carter, could you answer that?
