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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2597 contributions
|
Economy and Fair Work Committee 6 March 2024
Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 March 2024
Colin Beattie
We have heard a great deal about accessibility being an issue, particularly for smaller businesses that do not have the resources to fill in your forms and comply with all the requirements. Are you satisfied that what you are doing is sufficient to open up that process?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I hear what you are saying—that training has been provided to the board over a period of years, that there is induction, and all the rest of it. However, that did not work so well. What is the point of training people and giving them all that guidance, when it appears on every side that that did not work and they did not take any notice of it? Where is the scrutiny? Where is the challenge?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
The governance review and the overall picture here at my desk do not look too good.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
That is a relatively short time.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I am pleased if the situation has improved but, as we are an audit committee, we look backwards. We look at what was, not so much at what is, and we try to get to the bottom of it—to drill down as to why something happened and how it can be prevented in the future. That is our role.
It appears that there have been significant gaps in governance. We want to get to the bottom of that and find out how we can ensure that it does not happen again, because there is a pattern—this has happened elsewhere, albeit not necessarily to the same extent. We want to know, therefore, whether there is an endemic problem. For example, is there a problem in the recruitment processes? We look at everything.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I will return to a point that I made before. Training is fine and necessary for a board when that is to keep members up to speed about new requirements or about how a process develops, but, when a board member is appointed, I would expect that person to have the skills, experience and ability to be a board member without needing a huge amount of training. If not, what is the point of appointing that person?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
For example, to what extent is the private sector going to be involved in just transition? Just transition implies helping those who are less well off to make the transition without getting into financial difficulties or fuel poverty, for example. I am struggling to see a role for the private sector in that, because the private sector requires a return. How does that work with public sector funding?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
Focusing on just transition, the Scottish Government already has some financial support schemes for individuals in place. Has the Government actually estimated how quickly those current schemes will become oversubscribed? It is clear that there is a limited amount of public funding available.
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
That figure—35 per cent in fuel poverty—is certainly very startling. The Scottish Government will obviously have to find more money to enable those individuals to make the transition, and that is a huge task.
How challenging is it going to be to actually achieve a just transition in decarbonising heat for homes? Thirty-five per cent is a huge amount of people in fuel poverty.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I was going to ask a question about improving training for board members. Having read the Auditor General’s report and the corporate governance review, frankly, I think that the level of incompetence in the board is breathtaking. There is no challenge and very little scrutiny and there seems to be no understanding of proper governance. To me, an induction for board members is an induction, rather than training. Board members should be chosen for the skills that they have and the expertise that they can bring to the board, and not because they come in needing training.
Is there a problem with our recruitment process for non-executive directors? This is not the first time that the committee has looked at problems that have arisen in the public sector and found at least some issues with the way in which non-execs have approached a situation. I am not blaming the board solely—there are other issues—but I am focusing on the board. Is there a problem with our recruitment process?
