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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1524 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I do not know whether whichever of the officials is most familiar with that can recall.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Clearly, there are lots of lessons to be learned from the process and from the conclusions of not just your committee’s report, but the Auditor General’s report and the REC Committee’s report.
I think that, reading that exchange now, it is quite clear that the then minister for transport was reflecting factually on what had happened before. There had been instances at the yard, which FMEL would have known about, where things had developed without a builders refund guarantee. That was a reflection. It was not advice as to what would happen in another procurement; instead, it was reflecting on the past.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Those issues would relate to future procurement, depending on who had that. Therefore, you would be looking at the people who are bidding for the work having that underpinning and guarantee, in which case it would relate to a yard.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
That is why I thought that that was a good recommendation. We want the Government to respond to it. In my detailed examination of your report, as I went through what the conclusions and recommendations were and what we have to act on, that is something that, in my new position—obviously, at the time that you produced the report, prior to my being in post, I would not have looked at it in that level of detail—I feel is a good and useful recommendation, and my officials will act on it.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Draft press lines are not necessarily the same as meetings or decisions. I can see how that might have happened, but I think that records were kept of everything significant. That is the point. It is about what is significant in terms of decision making and who knew what and when, et cetera. There is far more acute awareness of that now than there would have been previously.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Again, that is the committee’s conclusion and position. Obviously, it is part of your responsibility to set out your position and your view. You went into some detail about the appropriateness of that with the former First Minister, and you have good evidence as to where things were, which has been laid out a number of times.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I will need to reflect on the chain of events and the evidence that you have on that. It was not a recommendation to me, as the current Minister for Transport, for action. I do not know whether officials have better recall of it.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
So many things are judgment calls. With hindsight, there might be a lot of things that people would not want to do or that they would want to rethink.
I try to avoid communicating during live procurements, although I have not had many in recent times. There is the “safety first” thing, but there are also MSPs who demand responses to their letters, and if they do not get them they will stand up in Parliament and ask why a minister has not responded to their letter. That is the call that we have to make. We want transparency and openness—that is what the committee is asking for—but it is a judgment call. He made that judgment. Looking back on that, knowing what he does now, would he have done the same thing? I do not know.
The content was a factual reflection on what had happened, as opposed to an opinion on a procurement, and he probably saw it in that way. I do not want to second guess how somebody decided on things or judged them, but that is my reflection. I think that the committee is looking for some reflections on your conclusions, as opposed to asking us to respond on what we are being asked to do as a Government now.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
I might come back to you on that, because it is not an area that I have particularly focused on, and Bill Reeve may be able to give more recent information. The ban was brought in during the pandemic, because we were concerned about how people might behave and about the spread of Covid. We recognise that it was helpful in changing people’s behaviour. There are sometimes requests for the ban to be changed. The minister was quite clear the last time that request was made. Bill Reeve may be able to give you more information.
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Fiona Hyslop
Alison Irvine might want to say whether there has been contact at official level. Last Monday, I met Richard Holden MP, who is a UK minister with transport responsibilities. We discussed experience of the fare cap, so we will exchange information about that.
We also have an interministerial group. I am trying to remember its title. It brings us together with Wales, with the UK and with representation—obviously there is no minister at this stage—from the Northern Ireland Executive. I want to ensure that we learn from one another on lots of aspects of our experience, including on bus issues. Everybody is doing things slightly differently. Understandably, we have a major spend of £300 million on concessionary travel, with 84 million journeys having been taken by under-22s. Many families are dealing with cost of living issues, so that is helping families.
On what it means to individuals, I visited the Children 1st hub in my constituency, where staff told me how under-22s bus travel is helping looked-after children to access basic things such as health provision, which they might not access if it were more difficult for them to travel.
There are consequences from having such provisions. For older people, being able to visit, travel and be active is important. When looking at the value of concessionary travel, we must not underestimate the impact on individuals. We might be talking about 2 million people, but the individual whom I was told about is benefiting because, as a looked-after child, they are managing to access provision that they might not otherwise have accessed, and the value of that cannot be measured in pounds, shillings and pence.
The review is on track. After this afternoon, through officials I will have more information and output for the committee to assess on the stages of delivery. However, I can give you the sense now that the review is not just about fares; it is also about taking a view on how public transport can serve us. Perhaps Alison Irvine would like to come in on that.