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 Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Well, I think that the people who are watching this will have a view about what has been delivered, what the performance has been like, what the outturns have been and whether those match up to people getting a 17.5 per cent “incentive payment”, or bonus—as you wish, because that will be something that people make up their own minds about.
I have a final question for Mr Irwin about something that was drawn out in the evidence session with the Auditor General but which is also contained in the report.
Earlier, you mentioned the sponsorship team arrangement. The Auditor General’s view is that there is a good deal of “ambiguity” about the relationship between the sponsorship team and FMPG and about how oversight worked. Actually, one of the catalysts for his drawing that conclusion was the fact that there was no advance clearance of the remuneration system.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. We will move on now, and I invite Willie Coffey to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Richard Leonard
In the interests of transparency, I should draw people’s attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests and my trade union affiliations.
I have one final question, as we have all four of you here. I go back to the point about the sponsor team arrangements. My question is first and foremost to David Tydeman. How well supported do you think you are by the sponsorship team in the Scottish Government?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I want to pick up on that issue. We are very interested in written authority, because we have not seen any since 2007. Therefore, you will understand why we are interrogating the procedure, who was involved, and what steps were taken. You have confirmed that the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance were involved. Do you speak to the permanent secretary about those decisions?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Forgive me. Those are steps that were taken by a minister that we have not seen for a very long time. However, rather than simply saying that you do not think that something represents value for money, full stop, in the letter you go on to elaborate about there being
“entirely legitimate and important factors that Ministers can take into account”.
Do you not think that that was straying into territory that is about Government policy? Is it not your job simply to say whether something meets the test of propriety, regularity and value for money?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Richard Leonard
There is a sense—I picked this up from your report and the Scottish Government’s just transition commission’s recommendations—that there is a degree of impatience that the climate emergency was declared back in 2019, but, in 2023, some fairly basic building blocks are still not in place in a way that we would perhaps expect.
One of the things that struck me—this picks up on Sally Thompson’s comments—is exhibit 3 in the report, which refers to what you describe as “by exception” reporting being in place between key Government groups. In other words, there is no routine, systematic or regular collaboration in that sense. I am not saying that that happens by chance, but it does not routinely happen. Do you have any comments on that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Richard Leonard
On a similar theme, you draw attention in the report to the deputy director network, which you describe as a
“key climate change governance body”.
It seems to operate informally, so I again ask the basic question: does that network produce minutes?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I will move things along now and invite Craig Hoy to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set to deliver climate change goals”
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I will continue with the theme of risk management in the final series of questions that we want to put you. Towards the end of the report, we read a reference to an exercise that took place in summer of 2022 inside the net zero directorate, which took part in what you describe as a risk housekeeping exercise. The result of that housekeeping exercise was the conclusion that the net zero directorate demonstrated a maturity level of novice to organised. My understanding is that that means that the directorate had only just started to implement processes that were in line with Scottish Government guidelines. It was at a very early stage—a novice stage—in that regard.
Do you have a concern about that, given that this is the directorate that is supposed to be showing leadership and driving forward this agenda across the whole of Government?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 18 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 15th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. The first agenda item is for the committee to consider whether to take agenda items 3, 4, 5 and 6 in private. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
