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 NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
Who would normally issue that guidance? Would it be the Scottish Government or NSS?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I will bring in Willie Coffey.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
With that, I thank the Auditor General, Ashleigh Madjitey, who is with us in the committee room, and Carole Grant, who joined us remotely, for some robust and illuminating evidence. It is greatly appreciated.
11:16 Meeting continued in private until 11:37.Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Mr Rennick. That was a very helpful and instructive answer, although it provokes a final question.
Everyone talks about the logjam in the criminal justice system because of Covid, during which the courts have operated on a very different basis. Mr Griffin, can you tell us about the department’s view of how the backlog will be managed? “Opportunities” might not be the right word, but does the current situation give you a junction in time to drive what happens in a slightly different way?
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you for ending on that very positive note.
I thank Mr Griffin, Mr Rennick and Ms Dalrymple for joining us. We appreciate your input, your candour and your vitality, at times, in responding to the questioning. Thank you very much for your time and your evidence.
I look forward to seeing Mr Griffin again soon, perhaps.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:04 Meeting suspended.10:08 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
“Covid-19 vaccination programme”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
The committee will reflect on the answers to our questions on the health inequalities impact assessment data and the fact that it has not been published. We will deliberate on whether we can make an intervention on that.
The final area that I want to ask about and which falls within your domain relates to planning and budgeting. How do you plan and budget in a situation in which a third party—essentially the JCVI—is deciding who the priority groups are, and the chronology of who should receive boosters and further access to vaccination programmes? Do you have any reflections on how well the Scottish Government, health boards and so on have responded so far in that environment? What will the future look like and what difficulties and challenges are posed to those who have to budget for and plan those vital services?
Public Audit Committee
“Covid-19 vaccination programme”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you. The committee will look forward to receiving the outcome of that work, so I am sure that we will have more evidence-taking sessions on it in the months ahead.
I thank the Auditor General and his colleagues very much for coming along and taking part in this morning’s very helpful session.
11:03 Meeting continued in private until 11:43.Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everybody to the seventh meeting in this parliamentary session of the Public Audit Committee. I remind members and guests that the Parliament’s rules on social distancing should be observed, and it would be greatly appreciated if you could wear a face covering when moving around, entering or leaving the room.
The first item on our agenda is to invite members to decide whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
We are in our final few minutes. If other members want to come back in for another go, they are welcome to do so.
Going back to the overall outcomes and where we began, it struck me that, although we have a national strategy that has been in place since 2016 and an act of Parliament that provides for a new institutional structure to deliver community justice, the conclusion of the Audit Scotland report was that little progress appears to have been made in the intervening period.
I understand the points that Mr Griffin made at the beginning about the total volumes and how that has changed. However, as the Public Audit Committee, one of our maxims is follow the money. The Audit Scotland report states:
“Community justice funding makes up less than five per cent of overall justice funding, and there has been little change in recent years.”
If we are following the money and this is a priority and everybody wants to see a change in the balance between custodial and non-custodial, why is that so static?
