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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Displaying 3697 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
But he did not know, two weeks ago, that the release of the report—which you have just described as a report that, in its entirety, has got intellectual property rights attached to it—would jeopardise the commercial future of the yard.
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I have just got one final public audit question for you, cabinet secretary. It is on a much smaller scale, but it is quite important to us. It concerns the cost of the consultants. In the evidence session on 1 June, Mr Irwin said that the cost of the First Marine International report came in at a quarter of a million pounds for six months’ work. He described it as
“first-class external independent technical advice”,
and acknowledged that
“that sort of advice might not come cheap”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 1 June 2023; c 13.]
So that was six months’ work for the FMI report at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds.
In a parliamentary answer at the weekend, we were told that the cost of the Teneo report was nearly three times that amount—an estimated £620,000. Admittedly, that was not for six months’ work—I think that Ms Hall said earlier that it was for eight months’ work. Given that, earlier, Mr Cook said that the Teneo report just looked at value for money, why on earth is it costing such a huge amount of money? In light of that, why on earth is none of that report able to be published?
Public Audit Committee
Written Authority: Completion of Vessel 802
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
But there is not a single word or sentence of that report that you are prepared to release into the public domain.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Given the consolidation of the college sector that we have seen over the past decade, it seems a little bit excessive, does it not, to have a regional college board that has oversight of just two colleges?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
That is good. Thank you.
The deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 22 June 2023
Richard Leonard
You mentioned earlier that auditors are not prone to hyperbole, but you think that it is absolutely right to highlight that spend in your report as a matter of public interest, if not public concern.
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
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That would be helpful.
We speak about the expansion to 1,140 hours, but they are not mandatory. Do you have any data on, or have you done any work to understand, why parents and carers may exercise the right not to avail themselves of the 1,140 hours?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
I have one final question before I bring in Willie Coffey. In paragraph 25 of the report, you refer to satisfaction surveys of parents in consideration of the flexibility of the arrangements and so on. If I have read it correctly, there was a much higher satisfaction rate among parents or carers when the children were living in households in which parents were not at work, for example. There also seemed to be a higher satisfaction rate in the more deprived areas. Do you have any rationalisation of that? Could you enlighten us as to why you think those are the results?
