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
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
One aspect that is highlighted in the report, especially in and around Covid-related payments, is the question of fraud and risks of fraud. Willie Coffey has a number of questions on that subject.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Before we finish, Auditor General, I highlight that the committee’s attention was attracted by your judgment that it was necessary to spotlight the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in your report on the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts. You identify special payments to the tune of £40.2 million that the service had to make in the financial year 2020-21, £40 million of which were payments to individuals following legal action against the Lord Advocate
“in connection with the acquisition and administration of Rangers Football Club”.
By my calculation, 99.5 per cent of those special payments went to those individuals. From an audit perspective, we are interested in finding out whether that gives you fundamental concerns about the service’s financial position.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Are you in a position to give us an estimate of the outstanding exposure to the cases being litigated, given what you have said about one of the cases being settled, two being closed and others still on-going? Do you have a sense of the value of those cases?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed.
I bring this part of our proceedings to a close by thanking Helen Russell, Michael Oliphant and the Auditor General for their evidence this morning. As I mentioned at the start of the session, the audit of the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts is an important piece of work, and there are many aspects that we have not had a chance to talk about and put questions on. I hope that, with your co-operation, Auditor General, we will be able to do so in the very near future, because the report contains some very important issues of public concern.
With that, I close the public part of the meeting and move into private.
11:17 Meeting continued in private until 11:42.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed. We have a long series of questions. I begin straight away by inviting Sharon Dowey to ask her questions on one of the themes that you have identified: financial management.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
We now have some questions on a—[Inaudible.]—area of governmental roles, responsibilities and policy, which relates to resource and capital borrowing.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
That is understood, but your door is still open to further inquiry from an audit perspective into what has happened.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Craig Hoy wants to come in on this issue of fraud as well.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie, do you want to come in on the issue of social security fraud, or has that been covered already?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
The second item on our agenda is an evidence session with representatives of the National Records of Scotland. The session follows a section 22 report that the committee considered at its meeting on 9 December 2021 with the Auditor General for Scotland and a team from Audit Scotland.
I am pleased to say that we are joined by Paul Lowe, who is the registrar general for Scotland and keeper of the records of Scotland. Also from the National Records of Scotland are Linda Sinclair, who is the director of corporate services and accountable officer; Anne Slater, who is the director of operations and customer services; and Peter Whitehouse, who is the director of statistical services.
I mentioned that Linda Sinclair is the accountable officer, but I invite Paul Lowe to give us some opening remarks before the committee asks questions.
