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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Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome, everyone, to the 10th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.
Before we begin, I remind members, witnesses and staff present that the Parliament’s social distancing rules apply. If you are entering, walking around or leaving the room, I ask that you wear a face covering, please. You do not have to do that when you are seated or when giving evidence.
Item 1 is a decision on whether to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Do we agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
You said that you accept the recommendations and analysis in the Auditor General’s report. That includes paragraph 5, which says:
“Scottish Canals will now undertake a new valuation process of the canal infrastructure estate in its entirety during 2022.”
You are committed to doing that, I presume. Audit Scotland goes on to explain why that is important. It is not just a technical exercise of ticking a box to comply with ONS, Her Majesty’s Treasury or Scottish Government requirements; it is about supporting
“preparation of Scottish Canals’ medium-term financial strategy”,
so it is an important and central part of how you plan for the future. You have accepted the deadline. What happens if you do not meet it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. We will return to some of those issues later.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
That draws to an end the questions that we have for you. We will reflect on the evidence that you have given and we may pursue some lines of inquiry with you after the meeting. Thank you for coming and being present in the committee room. It was good to have people sat in front of us, so that we could properly inquire into your response to the very serious report that Audit Scotland published. I thank Catherine Topley for leading on the evidence; it is appreciated. I also thank Andrew Thin, Sarah Jane Hannah and the team from Transport Scotland—Hugh Gillies, Fran Pacitti and Lee Shedden—for their evidence.
10:06 Meeting continued in private until 11:25.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. I will move things on by inviting Sharon Dowey to ask some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, indeed, for that comprehensive opening statement, which is useful. I am sure that it will provoke lots of questions.
Craig Hoy will put the opening question to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Mr McGregor. That is helpful.
I want to go back to a point that Jo Green made a few minutes ago. Jo, you told us that the public register is the one service that is not currently available as a result of the cyberattack. For the layperson, will you explain what information is captured in the public register and what we cannot see that we normally would be able to see? When do you expect the public register to come back online?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 2 is consideration of “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”. I am pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning, all of whom join us online, as does our deputy convener, Sharon Dowey. I welcome from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency: Jo Green, acting chief executive; Stuart McGregor, chief finance officer; and David Pirie, executive director, evidence and flooding. From the Scottish Government I welcome: Roy Brannen, interim director general, net zero; Helen Nisbet, director, defence, security and cyber resilience; and Kevin Quinlan, director, environment and forestry.
As we are quite tight for time this morning, I would appreciate succinct questions from committee members and succinct answers. On 31 March, the committee will take evidence on major information and communications technology projects in general, at which point we will look at some of the wider read-across from the cyberattack that SEPA sustained and the lessons that we need to learn. I encourage people to be as disciplined as possible, but I hope that our line of questioning will take that into account, too.
Jo Green and Roy Brannen should feel free to bring their colleagues in, if it will be helpful. If those who join us online want to come in at any point to give evidence in the conversation that we are having, they should type R in the chat function, and we will pick them up at the appropriate time.
I invite Jo Green, who had hoped to attend the meeting in person this morning, but is joining us virtually, to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
As I mentioned, some of those broader themes will be picked up in the evidence session that we have planned for 31 March.
That brings us to the end of our short evidence session on the report on SEPA. I once again thank Jo Green, acting chief executive of SEPA, Stuart McGregor and David Pirie, who joined us visually and by audio only at points. Thank you very much for the evidence that you have given us, which has been valuable. I also thank Roy Brannen, Helen Nisbet and Kevin Quinlan from the Scottish Government, who also joined us. If there are any points that, on reflection, you feel that it would be useful for us to have, by all means submit them to us in writing—we would receive them gratefully.
I briefly suspend the meeting so that we can have a changeover of witnesses.
09:51 Meeting suspended.09:52 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
I think that the power has been restored, Auditor General, so I will bring you back in. You were telling us about the findings and the evidence that you had looked at in the area of staff wellbeing and about the surveys that organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing had carried out on the views of its members.
