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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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Okay. I invite the deputy convener to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
We are now in the final stretch of our evidence session, and I invite Graham Simpson to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Auditor General, will you comment on the fact that the senior finance person—the head of finance—does not sit at director level? There are four directors, but there is no director of finance. Is that unusual in an organisation such as this?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
The wider-scope audit report suggests that the lack of itemised receipts related to “business entertaining costs”. What constitutes such costs?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
The framework document, which was last reviewed in April 2022—in other words, at the start of the period—contains a section on gifts and hospitality, although I think that that relates to the board of directors rather than to staff. It covers the circumstances under which people need to record accepting or receiving gifts and so on; it does not cover giving gifts and hospitality. What is the policy on giving those versus receiving them? Were some of those expenses incurred by board members, or did the chief executive incur almost half of them, or more than that, while the rest were incurred by other members of staff?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Before we leave the question of governance, what role do you see for, and what part has been played by, the board? When I look at the audit and risk committee’s list of responsibilities, it includes
“the strategic processes for risk, control and governance ... adequacy of management response to issues identified by audit activity, including external audit”,
and
“the effectiveness of the internal control environment”.
Has it measured up to its responsibilities?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Is there a transparency issue here in relation to, first of all, the previous point about what contact was made between the executive directors, non-executive directors and the chair of the board, which the deputy convener referred to, and the Scottish Government? Is that in the public domain? Is it possible to understand what form that took?
Secondly, in quite a number of the answers to the deputy convener’s earlier questions about the role of the board and so on, you said that we do not know what the board knew when, but the board publishes minutes, does it not? Is there a transparency issue that the minutes of the board do not sufficiently represent what was discussed at board meetings?
Public Audit Committee
Decisions on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the fifth meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee.
The first item on our agenda is to agree to take agenda items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Are we agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
We will want to go through the report in some detail but, first of all, I note that you mentioned towards the end of your remarks that the recommendations have been accepted and specific actions will be implemented. Can you give us an overview of those actions?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 8 February 2024
Richard Leonard
This section 22 report is based on a wider-scope audit of the year 2022-23. In paragraph 10, you capture some of the concerns that you have identified as
“widespread issues with expense claims”,
Including lack of “itemised receipts” and the purchase of alcohol “exceeding the approved rates”. Such matters are cultural and behavioural, so the other question that immediately comes to mind is whether they predate this year or whether what would seem to be sensible governance arrangements and expenses regimes were suddenly abandoned at the beginning of April 2022.
