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 1499 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
This is my final final question. One of the challenges that any organisation faces is silo working. Are you able to ensure that the learning from the process is cascaded throughout all departments of the Scottish Government? I am willing to bet that we will be in a similar position at some point with a similar project, so is that routinely done?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
Thank you for all the information that you have provided thus far. We have covered a lot, even in this short inquiry. As my colleague John Mason pointed out, the question is: to what extent can a financial memorandum truly be accurate? We all recognise the complexity involved.
I want to give you the opportunity to reflect on the process that you have been through. Knowing what you know now, and with the benefit of hindsight, what would you actively choose to do differently? We all recognise that improvements can be made in developing these things—and, indeed, in our scrutiny of them—and I would appreciate hearing your reflections on that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
In general terms, the tension between effective accounting and scrutiny of spend—you allude to that in relation to needing more time—will never go away, because the only accurate estimates are at the end of a project, as we all know. Have you any reflections on finding the right balance on that healthy tension? That is a common problem with such things.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
It is heartening to hear about what you have built into the contracts as a protection against the increase in costs.
On labour force issues, cabinet secretary, the engineers in particular are real boots on the ground that have to be deployed. It is not like you can send in a bot. Sometimes, I look at the detailed reporting of each of the programmes. That is the standard function that pulls out issues. However, it would be useful for the committee to have more flavour of where a gap in labour availability is pushing out timescales because I suspect that that issue will continue to run when we consider other sectors. It would be useful if more information about that was made available.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
Absolutely. I know that you have raised that matter on a number of occasions.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Meeting date: 22 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
I turn back to the macroeconomic environment. As you know, consumer price inflation was at 9.1 per cent in May 2022, and we anticipate that it will peak considerably higher. In terms of supply chain issues, we have had Brexit and the pandemic, and as you know, the committee did an inquiry into those. How might the UK macroeconomic environment have an impact on rising costs for delivery or the timelines for our existing programmes?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
David, what is your view, from a council perspective?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
Matthew Sweeney, do you have any final comments?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
A lot of the areas that I might have covered have already been asked about. I have a final question that extends across the whole gamut of areas that we have discussed. Knowing what we know now, with the benefit of hindsight, what would you do differently next time to implement this national policy?
We have covered a lot of the issues around data collection. Nobody knew that the pandemic was coming, but we have touched on other issues as well. It is not just about implementation of the policy; it is also about outcomes, and we have to look at financial effectiveness. What would you do differently next time, Sarah?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
Michelle Thomson
Earlier, you mentioned the NPF. If you were reflecting on it again, would you reflect on the need for it to flow through at the start rather than with hindsight?