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 3443 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks. That would be helpful.
I move on to another area. A couple of minutes ago, Mr Johnston, you said that fewer people are carrying out the role and that it is about how that workload is managed. However, at the same time, new public bodies are being created.
I am interested in the railways, for example—I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. As I understand it, under the structure from 1 April this year, Scottish ministers act through Transport Scotland, which has oversight of Scottish Rail Holdings, which in turn has oversight of ScotRail Trains Limited, and—who knows?—after this weekend, maybe the Caledonian sleeper will be added to that list. How does that relationship work in practice? I know that it is not within your directorate, but I want to understand how the sponsor arrangement operates when a new public body is created.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
We are living in times that are quite different even from those in 2017, when the legislation was drafted.
Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
In our first evidence session this morning, we will consider “Progress Review of Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies”. I am pleased to welcome the Scottish Government witnesses in the committee room. Paul Johnston is director general communities; Mary McAllan is director of Covid recovery and public service reform; and Catriona Maclean is deputy director public bodies support unit.
Colin Beattie, who is the fifth member of the committee, is joining us remotely. I will bring him in shortly.
I invite the director general to make an opening statement, after which we will have questions. We have copies of the review report that was produced for you and your response to the recommendations in it.
Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
Finally, we turn to questions from the committee’s deputy convener, Sharon Dowey.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everybody to the 24th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.
Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to do that?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thanks.
I want to pick up on the last point and will bring in Andrew Burns to answer. There are four indicators, and the report calls for consistency in their application and use. Perhaps that suggests that, currently, they are not used consistently. For example, I do not know whether some local authorities, with health boards, rely on only one or two of the indicators and not on all four. There might be reasons for that. The committee is interested to understand whether your calling for consistency of application of the suite of indicators at Scottish Government and local government levels implies that that is not happening at the moment.
The Auditor General can start; maybe Andrew Burns can then come in.
Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
In the end, the test will be how many section 22 reports are brought before us by the Auditor General and whether Mr Johnston has to come before us to defend a situation that arises from failed sponsor arrangements. We have found it really enlightening to hear about the work that is being done to prevent recurrences of those. What I take from the evidence that we have heard is that you are looking in detail at instances in which things have gone wrong to learn lessons from that and to build those lessons into the training that you give to the people who are responsible for ensuring good relationships between sponsor departments and public agencies, non-departmental public bodies and so on.
We are out of time. We would like to follow up on some areas to get more information from you. You have not withheld anything from us; it is just that we have run out of time to get some of the detail that we are looking for.
I thank Paul Johnston, Catriona Maclean and Mary McAllan for their evidence. I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:18 Meeting suspended.10:22 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
“Tackling child poverty”
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
We now go to questions from Colin Beattie, who joins us remotely.
Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you—that is very helpful. I have other questions in my head. However, because of the time constraint that we are under, we could maybe set those out in writing for you to follow up on to get a bit more—as I think that Mr Johnston described it—granular detail on some of those areas. That would be helpful to the committee.
10:00Public Audit Committee
Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies (Progress Review)
Meeting date: 6 October 2022
Richard Leonard
I will bring Willie Coffey in shortly—I just have a final question first. This might be for Catriona Maclean to answer. To some extent, you described the difference between the public bodies unit and the public bodies hub, which is alluded to in the report and on which there is a related recommendation. Can you comment on where that lies?
I am also interested in understanding this: you described how you are 80 or 90 per cent of the way through training people in sponsor roles in the Scottish Government. To what extent are you involved in the training of the members of those boards, and the people in agencies outwith central Government who are oftentimes involved in making operational and strategic decisions for the non-departmental public bodies and agencies and so on that they are on the boards of? Will you tell us a bit about the extent to which you have a training programme or have any other interaction with those people?
