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
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
I do not think that “speeding up” and that sentence really fit. Not for the first time, the committee is hearing about a structure that has been established that is not really meeting, which rather belies the priority that it is being afforded, I would have thought. Are the minutes of the board published?
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I have a couple of final questions and I think that Graham Simpson also wants to come in. I will bring him in shortly, but I want to touch on a couple of things. We think that it is important to get your answers to these questions on the record.
One of the weaknesses that you cite is the way in which equalities and human rights impact assessments are dealt with and whether or not they are built into the beginning of decisions about public service reform. Do you want to outline for us how you think that decision making is being enacted and whether or not equality and human rights impact assessments are part of that or an afterthought or are not given sufficient priority at all?
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
One of the things that really struck me was what you say a couple of paragraphs later. You say that, despite the Scottish Government contacting public bodies three times since January 2023 to assess their ability to carry out reform,
“These requests did not generate concrete information on the quantity, quality or anticipated impact of public bodies’ collective work on reform.”
Again, that is a fairly basic requirement, is it not? What is your understanding of the reason why the requests did not elicit any useful answers from the public bodies that the Government spoke to three times?
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
Again, you reference in the report that there is a lack of data on workforce, estates and so on. I know that it is not completely analogous and I may be stretching things a little bit, but Scottish Canals was in front of us a couple of years ago, in consecutive years, because it failed to carry out a proper asset audit to comply with the standards expected. Yet, in a sense, in your report you are saying that the Scottish Government does not know what assets and what estate it has, never mind the valuation of it. There appear to be big gaps in information here.
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
You will be delighted to learn that I have only one budget-related question for you before I move on to some other final areas.
Earlier, you touched on the ScotWind leasing revenues. Yesterday, it was announced that over £300 million of those revenues will be spent on their intended purpose, which, presumably, is reinvestment in the green agenda, renewables and so on. However, in exhibit 5 of your report, you identify that the revenue raised from that was not £300 million, but £756 million. Therefore, my question is this: what is your sense of where the rest of the money has gone? Has it been spent as part of general in-year expenditure, or has it been earmarked for something else in the future?
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
I am sorry, but I was never very good at arithmetic. You mentioned £200 million and £460 million, but the figure in the report is £756 million. Is there a missing £100 million somewhere?
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. That brings to an end this evidence session. Thank you, Auditor General, for your time and input. I also thank Carole Grant, Fiona Diggle and Richard Robinson for their contributions. It has been greatly appreciated and you have set a useful platform for us upon which we may stand and ask some questions of the Scottish Government. Again, thank you very much indeed for your evidence.
I move the meeting into private session.
10:48 Meeting continued in private until 11:14.Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
Forgive me, these are matters that we will probably raise with the Scottish Government, but to help us to understand what the answer might be, we have some questions that we are putting to you.
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
Our main item is agenda item 2, which is consideration of the section 23 report “Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”, which has been produced by the Auditor General for Scotland. I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning. We have Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, who is joined from Audit Scotland by Carole Grant, audit director; Fiona Diggle, audit manager; and Richard Robinson, senior manager.
As usual, Auditor General, we have some questions to put to you, but before we get to those, I invite you to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
“Fiscal sustainability and reform in Scotland”
Meeting date: 5 December 2024
Richard Leonard
A couple of weeks ago, the committee took evidence on digital exclusion, which you produced a report on several months ago. I would have thought that, if a public body had been asked by the Scottish Government three times to give evidence of the action that it was taking to implement public service reform, it would have at least looked at digitalisation or a change in the way that services are delivered, whether we agree with that or not. I would have thought that that would be an obvious go-to place for lots of the public bodies that were asked for information about what they were doing to reform the services that they provide.
