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 2465 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, Auditor General and the rest of the panel.
Before I ask a couple of questions about the skills alignment assurance group, I want to pick up on the comment in your opening remarks on the pandemic’s impact on the programme. In paragraph 18, you say:
“From March 2020, much of the skills alignment work was paused to allow staff in the Scottish Government”
and so on
“to focus on the emergency response to the ... pandemic.”
What impact did that have on the entire programme? You go on to say that
“the Scottish Government asked the SFC to review the tertiary education system”
in light of all that. It seems that the impact on the programme was not insignificant, but can you tell us a bit more about the overall impact and whether the review that was initiated in June 2020 has been completed? If so, have you had a chance to assess its effectiveness?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Has the review completely reshaped the entire skills alignment programme? Has it completely changed how we think about it and what we intend to do? Is it fair to say that it has had a major impact on rethinking the direction of travel for the programme?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Will you say a wee bit more about that? There has been a skills alignment assurance group, and now there is a shared outcomes assurance group. What is the fundamental difference between the two? Do you have confidence that the new group will be an effective way to monitor progress as we move forward?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
The backup data seemed to be targeted at an early stage. I am a wee bit surprised about how easy it was to access the backup systems. From my long experience of working in computing, I would have expected it to be logical for the backup data to be physically separate so that it could not be subjected to that sort of cyberattack. It should be completely protected and separate from the main data, but that does not seem to have been the case here. Should you recommend that SEPA and other organisations look more closely at that, and that they should separate and protect any data that is essential to keeping their business running?
10:45Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Does that give assurance, though? There is bound to be another attempt at a similar attack on an organisation. In my opinion, it is still dangerous to have a direct link to the backup data and servers from the main data and servers. There should be some physical and logical separation of the two so that, if the attack is successful in one part of the operation’s data, it does not succeed in the other. Does SEPA plan to consider that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, one of the lessons from the attack is that the cybercriminal fraternity is a step ahead of the game, despite organisations’ best efforts to have the best systems, including security systems, in place. I imagine that a number of the recommendations try to address that.
The cyberattack is still the subject of an on-going police investigation, but are you able to tell us exactly where the attack managed to penetrate SEPA’s systems—the route source—or will that remain confidential?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
That is good to hear. Convener, you will be delighted to hear that, in my day, when I worked in computing, our guys used to put the backup in a case and take it to the bank. We would actually take a hard drive away and make sure that it was physically protected so that, if something like that happened, the information could be immediately restored. There is a lesson from the past in that regard.
My final query is about staff training. It is recognised that SEPA staff were well trained in all those aspects and were aware of them. Are there further plans to improve training in relation to cyberattacks and to make staff more aware of the possibilities and the risks?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning. I want to develop a discussion about how and whether NPF4 deals with not just the vacant and derelict land that Sarah Shaw mentioned a moment ago, but the derelict and abandoned dirty, filthy shops that blight our high streets. A lot of good work is being done in a lot of town centres across Scotland, with communities and councils doing a lot to improve areas and towns, where they can. However, many of my constituents often ask me, “What can we possibly do about the 18 abandoned shops that are blighting our high street?” The properties in question are mainly privately owned.
My question, therefore, for Sarah Shaw and perhaps my Ayrshire colleague Craig Iles is: what can we do about this? Should NPF4 strengthen powers in that respect, or do we already have sufficient powers under planning legislation to deal with the issue through, say, amenity notices?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Willie Coffey
We know that 54 per cent of Scottish taxpayers pay less income tax than they would if they lived in other parts of the UK. Nevertheless, identifying Scottish taxpayers is an issue for us.
We note that, in 2020, HMRC identified more than 30,000 records of taxpayers who were not registered as Scottish with S codes. In March 2021, that figure rose to 39,000. Why is that happening? A simple calculation might show that that represents £1 billion in earnings being incorrectly taxed. Give us a little flavour of why you think that those numbers are going up so significantly, and what is being done to reduce them?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Is there any estimate of the loss of revenue as a result of the issue? We read in our briefing notes that some employers might repeatedly be failing to apply the S code correctly, but we do not have any information on that. Do you have any? Are there employers who are repeatedly not applying the code correctly? Fundamentally, it is against the law not to apply the code correctly. What are we doing to encourage, let us say, employers to apply the code correctly and legally?
