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 3298 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I will move on in a second, but I underline the fact that it is a quadrupling, within the space of a year, of the assessment of the exposure to risk. If that was my personal financial situation, I would be alarmed at such an increase in my expected or assessed exposure to financial risk. Is the Scottish Government not alarmed by the quadrupling of that exposure?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
To move things along, I invite Craig Hoy to ask some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
There has also been considerable public interest in another one of the Government’s financial arrangements—the one with the Gupta Family Group Alliance. The Audit Scotland report focuses on the Lochaber aluminium smelter deal. What is the Scottish Government’s total financial exposure in relation to that deal?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That was really helpful.
I understand that Scottish Canals changed its status from being a public corporation to being a non-departmental public body, which led to a change in its accounting requirements, but does Scottish Natural Heritage or Scottish Water have a fixed asset register? Will ScotRail need to have a fixed asset register in the future? Where does Scottish Canals sit in the spectrum of organisations in that regard?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Colin Beattie has a couple of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
The first principal item of business this morning is agenda item 2, which is consideration of Audit Scotland’s section 22 report “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting, particularly our newish permanent secretary, John-Paul Marks, in what I hope will be the first of a number of appearances before the committee in this parliamentary session. He is joined in the room by Jackie McAllister, who is chief financial officer, and Colin Cook, who is director of economic development, and, virtually, by Lesley Fraser, who is the director general corporate, and Alyson Stafford, who is director general Scottish exchequer, Scottish Government.
As I have said, I welcome John-Paul Marks to his first meeting, in his new role, with a Scottish Parliament committee—in this case, the Public Audit Committee—and I invite him to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Permanent secretary, we cannot hold you individually accountable for this either, but one of the other things that the committee, the Auditor General and the Auditor General’s predecessor have waited for for a long time is the publication of whole public sector consolidated accounts. We understand that they will be produced in two stages, and I think that the stage 1 account is due to be published this spring. Will you bring the committee up to date on what progress is being made on that? Do you expect that target date to be met?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. Before we begin, I remind members, witnesses and staff who are present that social distancing measures remain in place in the Parliament’s committee rooms. In addition, face coverings must be worn if you are entering, leaving or moving around the room, but you can take your face masks off when you are at the table.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 4 and 5 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much.
I also wanted to ask you about one quite specific area. At our previous evidence session on this report, on 27 January, we took evidence from the Auditor General on the overspend in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which arose as a result of special payments of £40.2 million in connection with the acquisition and administration of Rangers Football Club. We are interested not only in the impact of that overspend on the service itself, but in the decision making around those payments, particularly the role of the Lord Advocate in that respect. At the previous evidence session, we were told that there were two cases still outstanding. The Audit Scotland report tells us that the Scottish Government authorised the overspend. Can you tell us who did so?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Just to conclude, I think that you undertook to give us some information in writing about fraud, payment and recovery, decision making relating to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service overspend and so on. That would be helpful. When we survey the Official Report of the meeting, we might find that there are other areas that we want to follow up with you, too.
Thank you for your time this morning and for your thoughtful contributions. I also thank your team: Lesley Fraser and Alyson Stafford, who joined us online; and Jackie McAllister and Colin Cook, who joined us in the committee room.
With that, I suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.
10:33 Meeting suspended.10:36 On resuming—
