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 3180 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Craig Hoy has a series of questions. I think that he wants to make a declaration of interests before he puts his questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
I think that Antony Clark wants to come in with a few points on the same area.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
One of the things that is mentioned in the report, which I think Mr Boyle referred to, is data. Paragraph 25 of the report puts it very starkly when it says:
“The Scottish Government’s national aim is to improve outcomes for all, but it has not set out by how much or by when.”
From an auditing perspective, that sounds like quite a major flaw, doesn’t it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
We will return to some of these themes during the course of this morning’s session. As you stated at the beginning, the report takes us up to January 2021 and, obviously, quite a lot has happened since that time. Have you been able to gather any more information about where things are now? Have you been able to understand whether some of the actions that were recommended in your report, for example, have been followed up at a central and local government level?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed.
On behalf of the committee, I thank Stephen Boyle and his team this morning—Antony Clark, Tricia Meldrum and Zoe McGuire—for keeping us informed and answering the questions that we put. We really appreciate your time and the work that you are doing.
I draw the public part of this morning’s committee to an end.
10:31 Meeting continued in private until 11:20.Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Yes, I think that that is so. You have mentioned on a number of occasions in this morning’s session the £1 billion announced over the summer, which is presumably a commitment by the Scottish Government to, at least for this parliamentary session, keep investing in mechanisms for closing the attainment gap. Is that additional money over and above the core funding for education delivered by local government?
Secondly—this has been a thread running through our conversations—this is not just about where things go wrong but where things go right. What sense do you get of a sharing of good practice—of things that work using this funding? There are clearly certain stipulations about what it can and cannot be spent on, which led to some very innovative ideas, especially in the early days of its introduction. Do you get a sense that there is collaboration and sharing of good practice and that if there is an additional £1 billion in the system it will be well spent, provide value for money and have the desired effect?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I will bring Sharon Dowey back in, then, I think, Willie Coffey has a question on the area that Sharon Dowey will pursue.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Does Willie Coffey want to come in?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I begin by welcoming everybody back after the summer recess. I remind you of the Parliament’s rules on social distancing and the requirement to wear a mask if you are moving around or entering or leaving the room.
I also begin the new session by reminding the committee that our task and our job is to be the people’s and Parliament’s guardians, when things go wrong to get to the bottom of it, when public money is wasted to hold people to account and when lessons need to be learned to follow up to make sure that they are. I see the committee as being a critical part of a healthy and functioning democracy, and I think that it is even more important in the months ahead, at a time when there is renewed pressure on our public services, burned-out national health service staff, a backlogged justice system and young people who have missed out on education, that we stand up and ensure that we are led by evidence and facts without fear or favour.
The first item on the agenda is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private. Do members agree to consider our work programme in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That was a very helpful introduction to this morning’s session.
I will begin by reflecting on some of the lessons from the previous session. This is a new committee, but we need to understand where there are underlying issues of which we need to keep fully abreast. In looking at the legacy report of the previous committee, it struck me that it identified recurring themes that seemed to be common in instances in which organisations had not met the performance standards that were expected, or where something more fundamental had gone wrong. The previous committee spoke of
“leadership challenges, poor workforce planning, weak governance arrangements”
and failures—which were sometimes catastrophic—with information and communications technology projects. The committee also reflected on the absence of key data and the failure to properly measure outcomes.
Will you explain how you plan to keep abreast of those themes, and how you expect to be able to continue to explore them in the future work programme?
