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 800 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Bòrd na Gàidhlig is the principal public body for promoting Gaelic development. We note that the leadership team role of head of communications and promotions, which was previously vacant, has not been incorporated into the new leadership team structure. That is an important function, so who is now responsible for that work at a senior level? Are you comfortable with that decision, Auditor General?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
I turn to financial management and stewardship. Paragraph 15, which is on page 5, says:
“NHS Highland delivered a break-even position ... while operating in a period of considerable uncertainty and while responding to the ... operational and financial challenges”
that the Covid-19 pandemic has posed for service delivery. Given those circumstances and the backdrop, how much of an achievement by NHS Highland do you consider that position to be?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
The report explains that the board delivered total efficiency savings of £20.7 million in 2020-21, of which £5.4 million, which is 26 per cent, were recurring savings. Does that mean that 74 per cent—nearly three quarters—of the total savings can be counted as non-recurring?
10:45Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Joanne Brown might be able to answer this, or perhaps you may be able to flesh it out. How were the non-recurring savings made? Do you have any insight into how the board plans to move forward in making planned savings in future financial years?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
That is similar to the position in many local authorities in many respects.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
I will hand back to Richard Leonard.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
It was encouraging and reassuring to read that performance appraisals have been introduced across the organisation. What proportion of the workforce has received a performance appraisal? Have you had any opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the process?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Instruments subject to Made Affirmative Procedure
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Craig Hoy
[Inaudible.] I do not want to rehearse the discussion that we have just had with the Deputy First Minister, but I agree with Graham Simpson and Paul Sweeney that the instruments, and the regulations that they bring into effect, would have benefited from scrutiny so that some of the negative unintended consequences would not have occurred.
The justification for bringing in the regulations through the made affirmative route is that, in some cases, the regulations had to be implemented the very next day. However, again, we did not have the justification from the Government for why it had to be the next day and not the next week or 10 days later. On that basis, and given that Parliament was sitting when the regulations were first laid, I support the suggestion from Graham Simpson, and perhaps Paul Sweeney, that the affirmative route would have been the better one to use in the circumstances.
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Could it not be argued that your somewhat intemperate and bad-tempered response to legitimate questions proves my point that you are not overly happy with parliamentary scrutiny at the moment?
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Made Affirmative Procedure Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Deputy First Minister. I welcome you and your officials.
If we can step back from the pandemic for a moment and think in slightly more abstract terms, do you think that the increased use of skeleton legislation and the widespread and now relatively common use of delegated powers within that is consistent with the need for parliamentary scrutiny and accountability?
