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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 3264 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Mr McColl, if there are any points that you want to address in writing to us after the committee, please do not hesitate to do that. We welcome further written submissions.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. I am going to move on. I ask Willie Coffey to ask a couple of questions that he has, and I will bring other people in if they want to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
You had agreed the builders refund guarantee.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
He is the chief executive, and this is about the board.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Was that by 31 August 2015?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
I think that they are, but we are also paying attention to the outcomes here. Here we are, all this time later, and there are still no ferries. This guy may have been the world expert on naval procurement and ferry procurement, but the fact of the matter remains that this contract is two and a half times over budget and five years late.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
MSP, I think.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
However, from the perspective of the negotiating position, the First Minister—the head of the Government and the leader of the Scottish National Party—comes along and announces Ferguson Marine as the preferred bidder. She would have been made to look pretty foolish, would she not, if five-and-a-half weeks later it was decided to put the contract back out to tender? That must have strengthened any negotiations that you were having with CMAL about the builders refund guarantee.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
What do you mean, then, by a parent company guarantee?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 16 June 2022
Richard Leonard
Do you mean state aid rules?