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 1046 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
I will bring in Colin Cook to comment on the particulars of that figure. The future of the yard will depend on ensuring that it is productive and competitive. Some of that work will require difficult decisions to be made about the future nature of the yard, including the capital investment that will be required to bring it up to competitive standard. A request has come in from the chief executive for work that he believes is required to bring it up to standard, and we must go through a rigorous process of ensuring that we are in line with subsidy control measures to take that decision—something that both the convener and I mentioned during the debate.
I bring in Mr Cook to provide further detail on the figure of £120,000.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
There is undoubtedly a requirement to do more. The request that I mentioned earlier has come in. From a subsidy control perspective, we have to assess whether that work would be forthcoming if the yard was in private ownership, and whether, by our providing it, we would be providing a subsidy or a competitive advantage to the yard that it would not have in the private sector.
That work is on-going, but, undoubtedly, work is required to ensure that the yard is competitive going forward. That is where some of the difficult decision making will be over the coming months in terms of ensuring that the yard is in as fit a position as possible to ensure a good future.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
In relation to what we are discussing today, I took a decision on 14 May and made a statement in Parliament on 16 May—the next parliamentary sitting day. I hope that that gives some comfort to Mr Coffey and his colleagues that I am committed to providing information as quickly as possible to ensure that there can be public scrutiny and that this committee can discharge its duties as effectively as possible. We will seek to put information into the public domain as quickly as we can.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
I do not need to respond to you in writing, then. [Laughter.] Ms Hall has assisted me by saying that it will take £70 million to complete 802.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
No—and I have said why, convener. I hope that it would be understood that, by releasing the report, we would be putting the yard at a competitive disadvantage. Yards—
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
No. That decision was taken by me and Gregor Irwin.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
No; I did not. That was a collective decision taken in the Government. Gregor Irwin suggested that it was the right—
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
That decision was taken first of all by the director general, and I was asked to confirm it, and so I confirmed that that was the appropriate action to take.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
Again, I would not want to put words in Mr Irwin’s mouth, but it was not his advice not to proceed, as Mr Hoy has perhaps suggested, although I might be wrong in that regard. It was rather that Mr Irwin wanted my authority to proceed, knowing that there was not a narrow value-for-money case for vessel 802.
I think that Mr Hoy wants to establish that we have brought the required rigour to ensuring that we spend taxpayers’ money appropriately. The Teneo report gives us a significant amount of information, but we also have our assessments of the work that is on-going at the yard. We know the impact that delaying any further would have on island communities and the impact that putting the future of the yard in jeopardy would have on the local economy in Inverclyde and the workforce at the yard. Another important consideration is the need to ensure the best possible future for commercial shipbuilding in Scotland.
Those were all important considerations, as colleagues have acknowledged, and that is why I gave written authority in this case.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Neil Gray
In the written authority process, a minister does not seek to intervene in order to override a decision with written authority. Rather, an accountable officer—in this case, it was the director general, Mr Irwin—concludes through the green book analysis under the Scottish public finance manual that the value-for-money test or one of the two other elements of the accountable officer process has not been met. He or she then has to seek the authority of the minister—in this case, it is me—to proceed with the work.
There have been cases at the United Kingdom Government level in which ministers have sought to override advice from officials. In this case, however, Mr Irwin concluded that, on the narrow value-for-money assessment, he could not conclude that the work represented value for money, which is one of the three elements that he has to consider. He therefore sought my authority to proceed and I gave it, given the wider considerations that I had to take into account.
