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 1169 contributions
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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
Sharon Dowey
You mentioned the tracking of Covid-19 spend. Scottish public sector expenditure in 2020-21 changed significantly from initial plans due to the response to the coronavirus pandemic. In-year changes to budgets, which were primarily due to the additional Covid-19 funding, were reported via three budget revisions—in summer 2020, autumn 2020 and spring 2021. The summer 2020 budget revision gave a good level of detail on the allocation of the Covid-19 Barnett consequentials that had been received by that time. However, the subsequent budget revisions in autumn 2020 and spring 2021 gave much less detail on the allocation of further Covid-19 Barnett consequentials and it has proved very challenging to track how additional funding that relates to the pandemic has been allocated and spent.
I have three questions. First, the pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in tracking in-year changes to spending plans. How can reporting be improved to enable better scrutiny of in-year changes to spending plans, even if those are on a less significant scale than in 2020-21?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
The 2018-19 section 22 report highlighted issues with
“a lack of clarity over the respective roles and responsibilities of the”
leadership
“team, committees, the Scottish Government’s sponsor team and the board”,
and with
“board members”
being
“too involved in operational matters.”
That sounds a bit familiar, given another report that we have read. What evidence have you seen that the updated framework document has addressed that lack of clarity?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Colin Beattie asked when recruitment for the new board would take place, and he mentioned that five of the current board members were on the board at the time of the previous audit. How long have those board members been in position? Were you aware of how long they had been in position prior to the audit in 2018-19?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Further to that, depending on when the board members were appointed, why had those issues not been raised earlier in a previous audit? There were quite a lot of issues in the 2018-19 audit, so why had they not been raised before? I wonder whether there were quite a lot of new members on the board, and whether that was why the issues had not been highlighted previously.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Auditor General, your report provides welcome information on the progress that NHS Highland has made in tackling its reliance on locum and agency staff, which was raised in previous section 22 reports. The board has filled 21 hard-to-fill consultant positions and, in October 2022, it took the management of locums back in house to control spending and rates. Is that sufficient or is there more work to be done in that area?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Have processes been put in place to encourage people to take up the positions, or has the pandemic had a bit of an effect, with people being kept in positions as a result of not being able to move about because of lockdowns or restrictions?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Is it too early to work out whether there is best practice that could be passed on to other health boards that have the same issues?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
The work on the PMO certainly seems to have been a success. The Audit Scotland report says:
“a substantive PMO director is now in place with short-term mentoring support being provided by the previous appointee.”
Do you have any concerns about the previous appointee leaving? Will you continue to monitor progress once they have left?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
The committee notes that although the Scottish Government sponsor division is not required to attend board meetings, it receives an invitation. Going by what I read in the report, it would seem that, although the division received an invitation to the meetings and received the minutes from them, it did not read those minutes.
Based on the serious issues that were identified two years ago, would there be merit in the sponsor division attending at least some, if not all, of the meetings in order to demonstrate its commitment to supporting the board and to maintain the pace of change?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Sharon Dowey
Your report sets out the progress that has been made in recruitment to and staffing of the programme management office. Are you content with that progress? Earlier, Joanne Brown mentioned the success in delivering a number of savings, so that work seems to have been a success.
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