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 2424 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
I will focus on three areas. The first is in connection with the exit from the European Union. In your opening statement, you made some comments on that but, on the business planning day, you said that you were still waiting for clarity on where audit responsibility would lie in relation to the changes that are going to occur. That is still an on-going process, because parts of that agreement have still come into play.
The UK internal market and some of the existing devolved areas are currently in a little bit of limbo. What discussions have you been having with the National Audit Office, or whomever, about how those responsibilities will be divided up and whether you will still have a role in things such as the UK shared prosperity fund? It is certainly unclear to me at this point how and where that fund will be administered. All of that leads on to the question about who does the auditing. How far along are those discussions? Is there any clarity at all or are you in limbo, the same as everybody else?
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
No doubt, your reports in the coming months will reflect some of those strains.
I will conclude by raising the matter of the national fraud initiative, which is due next year. As you know, the committee has, in the past, offered Audit Scotland support to strengthen its hand on that issue, because there was a perceived weakness in the fact that a fairly useful tool is, in fact, not mandatory. It seems extraordinary that councils and so on can decline to take part.
We also talked about other public bodies that might benefit from being part of that initiative but that are not included. You do not have the power to compel, but I think that the committee had the feeling that maybe you should have. Have you had further thoughts about that and about how you will make NFI effective next year? How will you deal with bodies that cannot be bothered to take part? Given the Covid pandemic, those bodies have been under stress and strain, and the NFI may not be a priority for them. How will you handle that?
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
At this point, therefore, you are unaware of what your future role will be, once all this settles down.
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
The committee will be very interested in finding out how the audit structure will work. There seem to be an awful lot of gaps, and you seem to be in the same situation of uncertainty that we are in at the moment.
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
Perhaps we can follow that up, convener.
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
On a slightly different issue, I am guessing that Covid-19 has kicked the national performance framework into the long grass with regard to measuring outcomes and so on. In your submission, you talk about
“financial pressures”
that are having
“an impact”
on the performance of
“some public services”
and the impact on delivering the national outcomes. Given the comprehensive impact of Covid-19, that is probably not surprising, but can you give us a bit more background on that?
Public Audit Committee
Audit Scotland Strategic Priorities and Future Work Programme
Meeting date: 2 September 2021
Colin Beattie
If there is some clarity somewhere down the line, are you ready to carry out any additional work that might be necessary? That, of course, assumes that you will have a role and that there will be some function in Scotland in that respect.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Economic Recovery
Meeting date: 1 September 2021
Colin Beattie
That would be helpful. The second topic that I will talk about is labour shortages; perhaps they are part and parcel of the supply chain difficulties. We have all seen media reports that we are 100,000 truck drivers short and that 2,000 are leaving the trade every week with only 1,000 being recruited. I cannot guarantee those figures from the media; maybe Dave Moxham has something to say on the topic.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Economic Recovery
Meeting date: 1 September 2021
Colin Beattie
Can Rose Marley tell us about the trade environment and how skills shortages and supply chain difficulties are impacting it?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Economic Recovery
Meeting date: 1 September 2021
Colin Beattie
Is there anything that the Scottish Government can do, either immediately or in the long term, to create better resilience in supply chains? Is it completely outwith our control? Is there nothing we can do? Are the levers to make the decisions all in the hands of the UK Government? Perhaps I can bring Barry McCulloch back in on that.
