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: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
I welcome everybody to the Public Audit Committee’s eighth meeting in this session of Parliament. I remind witnesses, staff and members to respect rules on social distancing and that, if they are moving around or entering or leaving the room, they should wear a face covering.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private.
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
The principal business of the first of our two evidence sessions this morning is consideration of a section 22 report that was published on 13 October. I am delighted to welcome our witnesses: Stephen Boyle is the Auditor General for Scotland, and joining us remotely are Graeme Greenhill, senior manager for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland, and Pat Kenny from Deloitte LLP, who worked on the audit and assurance in reference to this audit of the Crofting Commission. I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement before we proceed to our questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
I am sure that we will return to some of those themes. Willie Coffey has a laser-like focus on an area of the report that caused real alarm among the committee.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
Graeme Greenhill wants to come in on this.
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 for that clarification. The question was not designed to catch you out. It is just that we want to understand better how you arrived at your conclusions.
One of the other issues that features in the report is that costings were done at pace, especially in the early days. Contract approval documents were not completed to a consistent level of detail, as you already mentioned, and concerns are raised in the report about the scrutiny of contracts before their conclusion. Will you give us a picture of the extent to which that was prevalent at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was urgency, and the extent to which it continued as a practice over the months after the initial spike in demand for PPE?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
How confident are you that the new arrangements will allow issues to be spotted and addressed early, without the need for another section 22 report from Audit Scotland?
09:30Public 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
I also note that the report mentions Scottish Enterprise visiting overseas factories, which I presume was part of some kind of due diligence process. Will you expand on that to give us a bit more sense of what is contained in the due diligence guidance that is being pursued? For example, does it include matters such as labour standards and whether forced or exploitative labour is involved or what conditions are like in the factories that it visits at home as well as abroad? Will you elaborate on that part of the report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
I am keen to move things on. I will bring in Sharon Dowey, who has a couple of questions to ask.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Richard Leonard
We will certainly reflect on that. Sharon Dowey has a final point and question.
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
For the next item, I welcome two new witnesses from Audit Scotland, who join the Auditor General. Joining us remotely is Ashleigh Madjitey. If you want to come in at any point you can put an R in the chat function. That would be helpful. My apologies—Carole Grant joins us remotely. She is an audit director in audit services at Audit Scotland. I welcome Carole, and I welcome Ashleigh, who is here with us in the room, to talk about the fuller 2020-21 audit and the subsequent, more recent, briefing on personal protective equipment. We have a series of questions to ask our witnesses. Auditor General, do you want to begin with an opening statement to get us under way?
