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 3298 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
That is fine. That would be helpful for us in navigating the myriad of organisations, committees and boards that are supposed to be working together to further the skills alignment agenda, but are not in all cases doing so.
A proposal to increase the funding to the Scottish Funding Council and the advanced learning and science directorate in 2022-23 was also mentioned in the report. Is that money that has been ring fenced to boost the skills alignment agenda or is it additional funding that will be given to the directorate and the agency?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
The report covers the year 2020-21. Will we at some point—even if it is three years hence—see signed off accounts for SEPA for 2020-21, or is that possibility gone forever?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
The next item on our agenda is consideration of “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”. We are joined by the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, and, via videolink, by Morag Campsie, who is a senior manager of audit services in Audit Scotland, and Joanne Brown, who is a partner in Grant Thornton UK LLP and carried out the audit.
I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
That is great. Willie Coffey, who joins us online, has a question.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Auditor General, one of the striking things in your opening statement was the fact that the auditor issued a disclaimer of opinion on SEPA’s annual report and accounts for 2020-21 and, therefore, the accounts have not been signed off. You used the word “unusual” for that choice, and it is extremely unusual. You also said that that was principally because of unsatisfactory records or evidence around a notional £42 million of income from fees. Who takes the decision to put in that disclaimer and not sign off the accounts? Is it Joanne Brown at Grant Thornton, or is it you, the Auditor General, at Audit Scotland? At what level is that decision taken?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I presume that that means that you—I do not know whether it is just you or a team—have to work closely with SEPA’s finance people and audit committee to ensure that things remain on track and go at the fastest pace that can be done while retaining the integrity of the accounting systems. Are you devoting a lot of your time to developing the situation from where it has been?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Willie. I will come back to you before the end of the session for the other area of questioning that you have.
Craig Hoy wants to explore SEPA’s response, both immediate and in the medium term, to the crisis and attack when it happened.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you for clarifying that. That is helpful.
You have inferred this to an extent, but one thing that comes out in the report is that temporary arrangements have had to be put in place for things such as paying staff salaries and paying suppliers. From your auditing perspective, were you satisfied that those temporary financial arrangements were sound?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Willie—I will come back to you.
For me, there is a stand-out feature of the report. Over recent weeks, we have looked at section 22 reports on organisations that are quite small and have fairly limited resources, budgets and staffing levels. Here, we have two premier agencies of central Government—Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council—which have a combined budget each year of £2 billion and more of public money. Despite that, the story in the report is that, going back to 2016-17, they have failed to agree, and therefore things have not happened. That is quite staggering.
The report infers that the Scottish Government has failed to provide leadership to address and rectify the situation. There have been a few reheated attempts to set up various committees and bodies to co-ordinate things, all of which—according to the report that has been laid before the committee—seem, largely, to have failed. Why do you think that is, Auditor General?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I turn to the skills alignment actions, which are, as you say, the principal focus of the report that we are considering. The report notes that in 2018-19 the Scottish Government said that it planned to issue the same strategic skills guidance, through letters of guidance, to the boards of Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council in order to support delivery of the enterprise and skills strategic board’s strategic plan, once that was published. Has consistent and complementary guidance ever been issued by the Scottish Government to those agencies?
