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 2224 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Graham Simpson
I will leave it until later, convener; the question that occurred to me may be covered by other members.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Graham Simpson
I am looking at the timeline in exhibit 1 of the report. It starts in April 2022 with a visit by Healthcare Improvement Scotland. Was that the first that anyone knew that there were problems in the health board, or would issues have been raised before that, which might have spurred HIS to pay its visit?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Graham Simpson
After that visit in April 2022, there was a period of months before, in November that year, the board was escalated to stage 4. Obviously it got to that stage because there was a lack of progress. Do we know why there was a lack of progress?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Graham Simpson
You said that the board responded
“positively to the escalation framework.”
What do you mean by “positively”?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Graham Simpson
I have a final question on a topic that has been covered before. We talked about financial sustainability, and you say in your report that there is a
“risk that the board is not financially sustainable in the short term.”
Rebbecca McConnachie talked about that as well. I want to understand what happens if that continues. If the board remains financially unsustainable, do we escalate it even further?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 18 January 2024
Graham Simpson
Yes, but we are trying to understand why you arrived at the conclusion that it was not value for money to continue with the Glen Rosa, as opposed to another option. Figures are therefore quite important in that regard. I completely accept that, if you were to go out and procure, you might arrive at a different figure, but you have based your assessment on something.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 18 January 2024
Graham Simpson
That is not commercially sensitive, Mr Irwin.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 18 January 2024
Graham Simpson
It would be useful if this committee were to have those updates.
You mentioned the Crown Office. The Auditor General mentioned the Rangers case in his report. I will not ask you about that, but I will ask you about something more topical, and that is the Post Office. Are you allocating money for potential compensation for people who were wrongly convicted in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 18 January 2024
Graham Simpson
That money would have to come from Scotland, would it not, because the prosecutions in Scotland were through the Crown Office?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 18 January 2024
Graham Simpson
The “Electronic Procurement Card Review Management Report” was published in December 2023. I think that a freedom of information request—possibly from the Labour Party—revealed a whole series of very unusual purchases that were made via Scottish Government e-cards; I do not know whether they were physical cards.
People spent taxpayers’ money on a whole variety of things, including a number of books. There were six copies of “Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Selected Speeches of Nicola Sturgeon”—I imagine that that is fairly slim. There were 19 copies of “How To Run A Government: So That Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy”—it is probably a bit late for that. There was one copy of “Taxation: A Very Short Introduction”, which tells us that people adapt their activities in various ways to reduce the impact of taxation. There was also one copy of “Marx: A Very Short Introduction”; another book called “The Blunders of Our Governments”; various self-help books, including one on irritable bowel syndrome; and a copy of “Scotland’s Future”, which is a Scottish Government book. I do not know why you bought your own book.
You say in that report that all those various books and other things, such as midge repellent and a traffic fine, are appropriate. How can those things be appropriate?
