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 1514 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Jamie Greene
I look forward to that.
At this point, I have to ask you to help me to understand what is reasonably complex auditing language, and to put it in layman’s terms for politicians and the wider public who, perhaps, are not qualified in that regard. I am looking at exhibit 2, which is about the specific strategic commercial assets—that is, Glasgow Prestwick Airport Ltd, Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Ltd and, of course, the Liberty Steel smelter and Burntisland Fabrications Ltd. I wonder whether you can help me to understand what you are reporting there, given the strong interest that this committee and others have shown in the matter for a number of years.
Each of the entities will have a perceived value, as the Government has stated that there is an intention to return them to private ownership in the future. Alongside that, though, there is the issue of the money that has already been invested by the public purse in those businesses, normally by way of loans, some of which appear on the balance sheet in the consolidated accounts. Can you talk us through what you are seeing at the moment? What is the bigger picture with those assets? Shall we start with Prestwick?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Jamie Greene
To put it in simple terms, what rationale would the Government present for the increase in the numbers? The value of Prestwick has doubled whereas, for Ferguson Marine—albeit that it is a small percentage of the money that has been invested—the £304 million that has been invested now sits at a value of £94 million, which is less than a third. What factors are you seeing that give you comfort that those are true and accurate assumptions?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Jamie Greene
This is reminding me of “The Antiques Roadshow”, because things are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. How do you marry that with the value of the loans in the consolidated accounts? At what point would you, as auditor general, say that the Government is not being realistic about the opportunity to recover its investments? It could very well just say up front, “Look, we’re going to write these assets off, because we don’t expect any future owner of the assets to give us any of the money back.” Is there some pretence that it might get some of the money back, and this is just a risk assessment of how much it might recover? It just sounds like a very subjective approach to what has been invested and how much might be lost.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Jamie Greene
I see from your report that, as of the end of March this year, the total outstanding capital borrowing was £1.76 billion, and the amount that was borrowed for capital projects was less than the cap. Therefore, there is still a bit of wriggle room, so if the Government wanted to borrow more money for capital projects, more money would be available.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 7 November 2024
Jamie Greene
That is helpful feedback. You mentioned the concept of borrowing. We are frequently told that the Scottish Government has no ability to borrow money, but can you talk us through the national loans fund and how that is used? The presumption is that the Government cannot get itself into debt per se. However, it has an ability to borrow when that is required. Where does that money come from and what can it be spent on?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 31 October 2024
Jamie Greene
I will have to choose between the two questions that I had shortlisted, but that is fine. I will ask about rural connectivity, which is an important area and one that is of particular relevance to Scotland. The report hones in on it in a whole section and particularly in paragraph 21, on coverage in urban areas versus rural areas.
On the back of what Geoff Huggins said, I appreciate that getting to the last couple of per cent of people is always the most difficult and often the most expensive as well, from a technical, physical and logistical point of view. However, I am aware of the Scottish and UK Government schemes and the work in the private sector. Lots of activity is taking place on things such as the broadband voucher scheme, the shared rural network and so on. Can you give me an update on the progress on that? When do you think you might hit 100 per cent to ensure that rural communities have access to 4G and broadband that is as good as the access that urban communities and cities have?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 31 October 2024
Jamie Greene
Others will ask about access to local services, particularly through local authorities, and some of the difficulties that people face. You have talked about Denmark, Singapore and other countries. Is anyone at any point a little bit embarrassed by the lack of progress in Scotland? Do you not feel that, as a nation, we should be leading the way and not chasing?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 31 October 2024
Jamie Greene
There might be some disparity in the figures. I am just quoting from the Auditor General’s report, which quotes directly from the Scottish Government’s figures. The Scottish household survey was last published on 23 December. I appreciate that another one is probably coming out soon, and it may show that that figure of 91 per cent has gone up; I hope that it does.
Notwithstanding that, having technical access is not the same as having the knowledge to use what you can access. It remains a fact that 15 per cent of our population lack basic foundation digital skills. The number of people who have the skills to use high-speed internet is disproportionate, relative to the number of people who can access high-speed internet. What work are you doing to benchmark that against other parts of the UK or countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development region of which we are a part?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 31 October 2024
Jamie Greene
Why do one in 10 households in Scotland still have no access to the internet?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 31 October 2024
Jamie Greene
That demonstrates my point. You want to tackle digital exclusion and improve access, and you made a commitment to distribute devices, which is a key component, but you failed to do so. Is that not why reports such as the one that we are considering are so critical of progress? Perhaps that is for you, Ms Fraser, as you are in charge of this.