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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2336 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
I was talking about issues during the construction phase, not from the approval. Why does a project become late or over budget if everything is agreed up front and the specifications, designs, budget and so on are in place?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Willie Coffey
If and when a project begins to slip in the delivery schedule or budget, how soon does that get spotted and who gets told about it? Where does the chain of information flow go? It will eventually come back here at some point and we will see it through Audit Scotland’s reporting, but how soon is it captured that there may be an issue with delivery, timescale and budget?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Thanks for now. I hope to come back in later.
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
I will switch the focus of our discussion to look at equalities, societal issues and so on. Your report reminds us that, in April 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the Government identified four harms that it described as direct health impacts, indirect health impacts, societal impacts and economic impacts. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Are you able to say whether the Government stuck to those four key themes in its decision-making process throughout the pandemic to ensure that those particular areas of concern were adequately covered by the funding support that came through?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Social security: Progress on implementing the devolved benefits”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Will you continue to monitor the development as it goes forward?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Yes. Thanks, convener.
As the various support schemes developed, we were all aware of their huge impact on hospitality, leisure and culture. All those sectors were really hammered, and they desperately needed funding support. However, do you remember what happened with the wholesale sector? That sector was technically allowed to continue trading, but it had nobody to trade with because everything that it traded with was closed down. What is your sense of that and whether we got that right?
I also recall that people were missed out when one scheme came along. We even thought of having a scheme for those who were not in the scheme. I got the sense that we did not quite know how to resolve those types of issues. What is your sense of whether, on balance, we got the decision-making process right to support the sectors that desperately needed help?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
I have one final question on this area. In exhibit 3, Auditor General, the chart shows that, during the pandemic and from August last year, Scottish Government spend was outpacing the consequentials that were coming in. What was the reason for that? Was it the end of furlough schemes? Did we continue to try to provide support in that regard? What is the reason for the Scottish Government’s consistent additional spend over the past year?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
The differential was about £1.3 billion, so we will see in the Scottish Government’s assessment where exactly that extra spend went?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s economy: supporting businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Has that been put to the Government? Do you expect to see that when the Government finalises its report and assessment of Covid support spending?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Social security: Progress on implementing the devolved benefits”
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Willie Coffey
Could you talk to us a wee bit more about the systems development aspect of this? You will recall—and members will recall—that, at the outset of this project, which was in the previous session of Parliament, there were some concerns about the software systems development side of it, because of our previous experiences. It is fair to say that this project has gone particularly well. The Agile methodology has been deployed. Although it was deployed in another area that you mentioned and was not so successful, this one has gone very well. It is so complex. Can you unpick why this particular methodology and this particular project have gone so well compared to predecessors that we have other experience of?
