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 3298 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2025 of the Public Audit Committee. We have apologies from the deputy convener, Jamie Greene.
Under agenda item 1, does the committee agree to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Before I bring in Graham Simpson, I want to turn to something else. We are not the police; we are the Public Audit Committee, but we can reflect on some of the evidence that was presented to an employment tribunal in an unfair dismissal claim by the former project director, which was convened in June 2024.
In paragraph 29 of your report, you say—you also said it in your opening statement—that it was
“clear there was a mismanagement of funds”.
You say that that is why the police chose not to proceed. However, the evidence that was captured in the employment tribunal’s extended reasons referred to an internal audit. As it was an audit, it very much has provenance, and it is right for the committee, and you as the Auditor General, to address the points that it raised.
The internal audit, which reported on 31 May 2023, raised two quite striking points, which, in my view, go beyond the mismanagement of funds, because it concluded that there were
“false representations by words, or writing or conduct”.
It also said that
“the intention to deceive was established.”
The audit said that there was “no financial loss”, so there was, technically speaking, no fraud, but an “intention to deceive” and “false representations” are extremely damning conclusions to reach in an internal audit report, are they not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Paragraph 30 of the section 22 report makes the point that the external consultant appeared to be “managing the project director”. You would expect it to be the other way round and that the project director at the college would manage and direct the consultant. That is quite extraordinary, is it not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
There are big questions about transparency, and why there are so many big questions about it is what underlies the committee’s concern.
At the end of the report, you take us into the terrain of accounts directions from the Scottish Funding Council on something that the committee has previously taken evidence on—the job evaluation process for non-teaching grades, although I think that you mentioned middle management as well as other jobs in the college sector. The committee’s question is why that is included in the report.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
The job evaluation exercise has not yet been concluded so, although I recognise what you say about the technical issues around accounting and how the accounts of Forth Valley College—and of individual colleges across the sector, I presume—are produced, we are still waiting for the outcome of the exercise and what that means in financial terms, albeit that I think that the Scottish Government has given an undertaking that it will fund any additional costs that arise from the process.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed. You have undertaken to supply further information for the committee’s due consideration, so we look forward to receiving what you are able to release to us—that will be helpful. The committee will need to consider our next steps. There are some unanswered questions that even you have not been able to answer, so we will need to consider how best we can address them. For the time being, Auditor General, I thank you for leading the evidence giving this morning. I also thank Mark MacPherson, Derek Hoy and Michael Speight for their contributions.
11:09 Meeting continued in private until 11:49.Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
That was in April 2023, I think.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
I think that the creation of a private company in which the project director became a director and shareholder dates to April 2023.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 2 is consideration of “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”, which is a section 22 report. I am pleased to welcome our four witnesses, who join us in the room. We are joined by the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle—good morning; Mark MacPherson, audit director at Audit Scotland; Derek Hoy, senior manager at Audit Scotland; and Michael Speight from Forvis Mazars, who is the auditor who carried out the initial audit work.
We have some questions to put to you on the report, Auditor General, but before we get to those, I invite you to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of Forth Valley College”
Meeting date: 4 June 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Auditor General. That is a useful introduction to the report and to our question areas. First, I turn to the delay. Your report is a section 22 report for the financial year 2022-23, but you published it in May 2025. Could you elaborate on the complexities that you have referred to? It seems to the committee that there was an inordinate delay in carrying out the audit and signing off the report.
