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 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
We are joined this morning by Graham Simpson, who has a number of questions that he wants to put to you, Mr Boyle.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
If there are any live cases, I do not want to prejudice them by discussing them at this meeting of the Public Audit Committee.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Therefore, you looked at that yourself. Were you also satisfied that the director general had scrutinised and analysed that to the depth that was necessary to arrive at the conclusion that written authority was required?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
That is fine. You will be aware of, and you have alluded to, the fact that Gregor Irwin, the director general economy, appeared before the committee a couple of weeks ago. During that evidence session, we spoke to him about access for the committee to the Teneo report and the information that led to the decision to request a written authority. At the time, he told us:
“What we are doing—and what we will work through with the Auditor General and his team—is seeing what we can do to share additional information. That process is on-going and is not yet complete, but we absolutely need to get it right, because we are committed to transparency.”
Two weeks later, we got a letter back from Mr Irwin saying no to that request. What happened between 1 June and 14 June?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 19th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. We have apologies from Colin Beattie this morning; I welcome Bill Kidd who is substituting for him. I also welcome Graham Simpson, who is joining this morning’s meeting.
The first item on our agenda is for members of the committee to agree to take items 4, 5, 6,7 and 8 in private. Are we agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
The First Minister tells us in his document “Equality, opportunity, community: New leadership—A fresh start” that
“it is imperative that transparency underpins our approach to delivery. My government will ensure the people of Scotland have the information they need to hold us to account.”
How do you reconcile that statement of intent with what has happened with this issue?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Surely there is nobody in the Government more familiar with what is in that Teneo report than the director-general economy. Why would he sit two weeks ago where you are sat today and say that work was on-going, that he was having discussions with Audit Scotland and that he hoped to release at least some of the information in that document?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
That includes the rationale for the request for written authority. That is quite a narrow focus. Gregor Irwin falls back on the use of the word “narrow” quite a number of times in his evidence to the committee and in some of the written information that we have seen. That rationale is quite a narrow focus, is it not? Why would that preclude even some of the Teneo report or even some of the information that was the basis for that decision—as you said, the decision was very unusual; it was the first time that there had been a written authority since 2007—being provided?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I said that Willie Coffey would ask the final questions, but Graham Simpson has indicated that he wants to come in with a brief one.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I will get us under way and really home in on the compliance issue. When we received the section 22 report last year, there was concern that governance arrangements were way off what they should have been in relation to publication of minutes, internal audit procedures and, even, the convening of meetings. Big alarm bells were ringing at that time.
In this report, you are saying to us, in essence, that stabilisation has occurred and compliance with codes of good governance is in place. It is mentioned in the report that compliance was in place “by 31 July 2022”, which is very precise. Did things happen in advance of or in the lead-up to that date, or was that when the change took place?
