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 3287 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
So it is not something that you would prescribe in the job advertisement and the job description for people applying for the post. I have not looked at the advert. Does it say “You will be the accountable officer”, “You might be the accountable officer” or “You might not be the accountable officer”?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Can I infer from that that your expectation is that the new postholder will be the accountable officer?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
I will pick up the point to which Willie Coffey alluded. Paragraph 18 of the Auditor General’s section 22 report points out that, in 2016-17, 43 per cent of complaints against councillors and board members were not pursued further, but, by the time we get to 2020-21, 84 per cent of cases lodged were not pursued. There might have been an increase in vexatious cases that inflated that number, but the Auditor General’s conclusion talks about a “loss of corporate memory” and “significant staff turnover”, and it says:
“it is likely attributable to a change to the way in which incoming complaints were initially assessed.”
I hear what has been said about taking legal advice and not being able to reopen cases. However, someone might have lodged a complaint about the misconduct of a councillor, an MSP, an NHS board member or whoever with an organisation that was clearly malfunctioning, so why is it so categorical that the door is closed to them raising their complaint with an organisation that has now been made fit for purpose but which, according to the section 22 report, was not at that time?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
I am anxious to move on, but I have one almost factual question. Since April 2021, the head of corporate services has been the accountable officer for the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. We understand that you are in the process of recruiting a new commissioner. Will that new postholder also be the accountable officer?
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Willie Coffey wants to come in at this point.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Members of the committee will ask further detailed questions about some of the areas that you have identified.
One thing that you mentioned, and that Anthony Clark mentioned in his opening statement, is alluded to in the report. There appears to be greater reliance on external agents this time. I presume that that is a euphemism for the outsourcing of some of the data matching work. First, do you have any reflection on whether that affected the quality of the data matching exercises? Secondly, was there a pattern? For example, did smaller local authorities struggle more with the effects of Covid and therefore have to rely on outsourcing some of that work, or did big local authorities and big public agencies also do that?
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions to get us under way.
It struck me that the cases that were identified—I think that they led to four prosecutions by the police—are largely small-scale, household-level examples of fraud or individual fraud. Is part of the exercise designed to look at the wider spread of organised crime fraud or at examples of much bigger, co-ordinated attempts to defraud the system?
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
I will now bring in the deputy convener, who wants to follow a particular line of inquiry.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
I want to inject a sense of perspective. The pilot was presumably intended to understand whether that line of inquiry was worth pursuing and whether the resources invested in it will reap a significant harvest. The report says that, of all the cases in Fife during that year,
“Thirteen matches showed cause for concern as the NECs appeared to have been used after the death of the cardholder. Two of these cards were used for journeys to the value of almost £2,300 for one”—
I do not know where you can go to from Fife for that kind of money—
“and £240 for the other. The value of the journeys for the other 11 cards varied from £3.10 to £69.00.”
First, that seems to show how honest the good people of Fife are. Secondly, does that indicate that there is a major problem that would require lots of resources to be turned over to extend the pilot into a national-level scheme?
