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 3014 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Richard Leonard
The next item on our agenda is consideration of Audit Scotland’s recent briefing on drug and alcohol services, which is an update report on some work that Audit Scotland has looked at over a decade or more.
We are joined in the committee room by Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, and, from Audit Scotland, Antony Clark, interim director of performance audit and best value, and Jillian Matthew, senior manager, performance audit and best value.
I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Richard Leonard
We may have a session in the future when we drill a bit more deeply into some of the individual ICT projects.
I will now hand over to Colin Beattie, who has a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I have to say that we are quite concerned about data gaps.
Colin Beattie has a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. We will return to some of those issues later.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Before we leave that point, Catherine Topley was asked by Colin Beattie about the support that Scottish Canals had had from Transport Scotland, but I would like to ask Hugh Gillies about the degree to which he feels any responsibility for the situation.
The Audit Scotland report is fairly strong. Paragraph 4 says that there were fundamental problems with the qualifications of the person who carried out the valuation of assets. Paragraph 18 talks about the classification of revenue spend as capital spend. Those sound like technical matters, but they are fairly fundamental failings in the approach to the accounts—to such an extent that Audit Scotland issued that rare thing: a disclaimer.
Recently, we heard from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which had a disclaimer because of a cyberattack, in which virtually all of its data was wiped out. Scottish Canals has had a disclaimer. Hugh Gillies, how do you reflect on the situation that has occurred? What lessons are you learning as a result?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
That is helpful, but I do not read the report as simply being about a narrow technical issue that has led to a snag. For example, one of the critiques in the report is that the people who were appointed to carry out the asset valuation did not appear to be qualified to do so. How on earth could that happen?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Item 2 is consideration of a section 22 report on Scottish canals that was published by the Auditor General earlier this year. I welcome our witnesses. From Scottish Canals, we have Catherine Topley, who is the chief executive; Andrew Thin, who is the chair of the board; and Sarah Jane Hannah, who is the director of finance and business services. We also have a team from Transport Scotland, which is led by Hugh Gillies, who is the interim chief executive. We are also joined by Fran Pacitti, who is the director of aviation, maritime, freight and—this fits in with the purpose of this morning’s item—canals; and Lee Shedden, who is the financial controller.
I invite Catherine Topley to make a short opening statement, which will be followed by a series of questions from committee members.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Willie Coffey has a question in the same area.
09:30Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks. I ask Willie Coffey to come in with a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Fran Pacitti, I do not want to put the blame on your shoulders at all, but I observe that your job title is director of aviation, maritime, freight and canals, which gives a flavour of the scope of the areas in which Transport Scotland is involved. I presume that, in those sectors, there are engineering-related assets as well as land and natural assets, so did you not have expertise that you could have brought to bear in order to give advice to Scottish Canals about carrying out the work?
