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 934 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Thank you very much.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Lowe, and welcome to your colleagues.
Will you give us a bit of a flavour of the work that you did to assess the impact of the delay of the census on the delivery of public services in Scotland, and on the allocation of funding to councils and other public bodies?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
That answer was quite focused on process. We are going to be out of sync. You identified that there are challenges but said that they are not insurmountable. Can you let us know what some of the challenges are?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
I will start by focusing on capital borrowing. In 2020-21, the Scottish Government borrowed £200 million against its capability of £450 million. There was a similar picture with the use of that leverage in 2018-19 and 2019-20. Could the Scottish Government make fuller use of its capital borrowing powers to help to achieve its capital investment priorities?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Finally, I have a three-part question about resource borrowing. Can you give us a flavour of how effective the Scottish Government has been in utilising its resource borrowing powers? Has the pandemic highlighted any concerns about the scale of those powers? Looking back to 2017-18, there was an overestimate of income tax, which meant that the Government could borrow in relation to that. If, year on year, we find ourselves with the same problem, at what point does a forecasting problem become a structural problem? If we continue not to meet the income tax receipts that the Government suggests, do you have any concern that using resource borrowing to balance shortfall might become a structural issue, rather than a forecasting issue? Do you have any concerns in relation to income tax?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
On your point about how the borrowing is accounted for, would it be realistic for the capital borrowing figures to be supported and detailed in the consolidated accounts or as part of the major capital projects updates?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Craig Hoy
It does, thank you.
I have one final question before we move on to the financial impact of the delay. First, I want to put it out there that the cost of the delay was £21.6 million. Given your previous answer, would it be right to say that, even though there is a perception that that money may be lost, you have actually used it to invest in greater flexibility, agility and efficiency in the system? Perhaps crisis begets opportunity in that respect.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
Thank you very much for your time.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Craig Hoy
To put it simply, it would be CAMRA and SIBA. However, Paul Hegarty from the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group attended as a guest and would be supportive in helping us establish some of the programmes that have been very successful at Westminster—such as the awards programme—as well as in relation to the possibility of getting a guest ale or beer into the parliamentary estate at Holyrood.
