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
“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?
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
We resume this morning’s consideration of evidence by the Public Audit Committee with agenda item 3, under which we continue our consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s section 22 report, “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”.
I welcome our witnesses. We are joined by Maggie Chapman MSP, who is a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Alongside her is David McGill, who is the clerk/chief executive of the Scottish Parliament, and Huw Williams, who is private secretary and head of office in the clerk/chief executive’s office.
We have received your written submissions in response to a letter that was sent in my name, as convener of the Public Audit Committee, and in Martin Whitfield’s name, as convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. We shall no doubt turn to some of the issues arising from that in our questions.
We have set aside some time for questions from members of the committee, but we would like to offer Maggie Chapman the opportunity to make a short opening statement.
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
Before I turn to Sharon Dowey, I observe that although this committee is particularly interested in the historical reviews, we are also interested in the history of the outcomes that those reviews have produced.
I ask Sharon Dowey to open the questioning for us.
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
That sounds like the institutions are happy, but what about the complainants? You do not need to answer that question.
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
Thank you. One of the things that we are interested in is the gap that might exist between the theory and the practice. The issue is whether the good practice that you have outlined is actually being followed through, whether it was followed through in session 5 and, if not, how we came to that situation. Martin Whitfield and I wrote to you initially about our concerns that came out of the section 22 report by Audit Scotland, and one of the underlying issues that we outlined in our letter was how things could have got to that stage and why there was not much earlier intervention.
Something else that is referred to in the correspondence is enhanced governance arrangements. The expression that is used in the report is that they had
“deteriorated to a significant degree”.
There is a record of deep-seated problems at almost an interinstitutional level. Could you outline to us what progress you have made in the area of enhancing the governance arrangements and seeking to address the clear deficiencies that gave rise to the section 22 report into the ethical standards commissioner?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
That might be a philosophical point, Mr Hoy.
I will look more closely at the pilots. One of the pilots that is highlighted in the report was undertaken in Fife Council on the national entitlement cards for travel. How long did that pilot take place for? What period did it cover?
09:45Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Yes, a single bus journey of £3.10 may not be worthy of a major national exercise in trying to understand what is happening.
Another interesting area that you mention is the pilot that is under way with Social Security Scotland. That pilot looks particularly at whether there are examples of people claiming benefits as if they are resident in Scotland when they actually are not resident in Scotland and at any cases of people who have multiple addresses and are, therefore, putting in multiple claims. How many matches have you found through that pilot?
Public Audit Committee
“National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 29 September 2022
Richard Leonard
Do you have a sense of the scale of that? Is it at the level of national entitlement card fraud in Fife, or is it much more widespread?
