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 [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
We might need to follow up with you or NRS on elements that have arisen from the evidence that we have taken. Before I draw the public part of the meeting to a close, I thank our witnesses—Dharshi Santhakumaran, Graeme Samson and the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle—for their evidence.
10:10 Meeting continued in private until 11:24.Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much for that helpful introduction to the report. I will begin by asking a factual question. The report talks about something called the census coverage survey. First of all, could you explain to us what that is?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
Do we know, at this stage, whether the next census will be in 10 years or nine years?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
I will steer away from politics, then, and ask my final question, at this stage.
You might recall that we had some quite detailed conversations with NRS about its access to administrative data. I think that it is the case that the Office for National Statistics has much more extensive access to HM Revenue and Customs data and Department for Work and Pensions data, for example. It has access to a much broader suite of data as a result of agreements that it had entered into. We were told that those are not data-sharing agreements that were entered into for the sole purpose of the census; they were entered into for other reasons. Nonetheless, it means that the ONS has wider access to much more comprehensive data than National Records of Scotland has.
My recollection is that when we quizzed National Records of Scotland, it said that it was looking to improve access to Scottish data sources in a range of work that it does, but is still at quite an early stage in that. The committee would be interested to learn—if you can help us with this—what progress has been made in respect of the data-sharing agreements that were spoken about in January this year.
09:30Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
To be clear, are there or are there not more risks associated with relying on less primary data and more administrative data?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
You referred to this a few minutes ago. Do you have a view on the target of a 90 per cent return rate as set against the backdrop of there having been a 97 per cent return rate in the other parts of the UK? Does not that target lack ambition, when other parts of the UK managed, in a digital first census, to achieve return rates of 97 per cent 12 months earlier? Why was the ambition only to get a 90 per cent return rate?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Decisions on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
We are agreed on that, too. Thank you.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Richard Leonard
The return rates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were, from memory, about 97 per cent. Did their census coverage survey focus on the reasons why 3 per cent did not respond or did it have a wider role to play in giving more qualitative information about the census returns?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2023-24
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Richard Leonard
That would be useful.
I will move on to another area on which we want to challenge you a little. On page 6, paragraph 10 summarises the net increase that you are looking for. Roughly £563,000 is the net additional figure that you are looking for in uplift from the Parliament. By my calculations, about half of that is as a result of an increase in funding support to the Accounts Commission. Could you maybe elaborate on why that significant increase is there?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2023-24
Meeting date: 14 December 2022
Richard Leonard
I presume that there is currently a resource in Audit Scotland—that is where the post has resided, although I do not know what the current configuration is.
