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 893 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
You came forward with various recommendations in your report. Do you think that more third-party data checks and compliance activity should be undertaken in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Craig Hoy
My concern is that, while the focus of Audit Scotland, the press and the public is on the organisation, there could be a process of quite effective window dressing. How long do you think that that quite intense process of scrutiny will last for? How long do you want to remain on the commission’s back, to make sure that it does not fall back into bad habits?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Obviously, the report is optimistic and reflects a significant amount of work that has been done by the Crofting Commission. Looking forward, my concern is how that can be sustained. Paragraph 20 of your report says:
“The progress made by the Commission over the last year is welcome. The activity and actions taken will require time to bed-in and this must remain an area of focus for the Commission to ensure that the improvement is sustained. I will continue to monitor the Commission’s progress and consider further reporting in public as necessary.”
With regard to the use of the term “bed-in”, in practical terms, what do you still need to see happening before you have surety that there has been a turnaround rather than just a good plan that could subsequently be badly executed?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Craig Hoy
Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
Okay. The capital expenditure underspend was higher—I think it was 7.5 per cent—and focused on energy and housing capital programmes. Will that underspend in any way jeopardise the meeting of targets and outcomes in two important areas of the public policy landscape?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
Do you plan to do any further work on that from an audit perspective, or will you wait to see where the Government gets to and then report through approaches such as this?
09:15Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
That is fine. I am just looking at the Covid-related funds. It appears that business support and energy programmes are two areas where there was, perhaps, a significant underspend. Does the scale of the underspend in those areas reflect any structural issues in the way that those funds were built or any weaknesses in the approaches to programme planning? I am just thinking, for example, of some funds that constituents contacted me about. The window of opportunity to apply for them was very short, and therefore there was underspend in relation to those programmes and initiatives because they were undersubscribed. Is there an issue, perhaps, in the way that those funds were constructed?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
Yes. Looking at past expenditure and as we come through the recovery, what further action would it be appropriate for the Scottish Government to take to address any remaining or on-going concerns about the transparency of the spending of those Covid moneys?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Your report identifies a £2 billion underspend across the capital and resource budgets. Is that level of underspend reasonable? Is it reasonable to reflect and expect that the reason for a significant portion of that underspend relates to the Covid pandemic and the expenditure of those funds, especially given that we are in year two or three of Covid and should have more predictability about the way in which those funds are disbursed?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Craig Hoy
Yes, and obviously there are rules governing how much can be carried over from one year to the next into the reserves. Is there a risk that any money was actually lost during that process, or can it all be redeployed into other areas?
