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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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
We will continue on the theme of workforce issues.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
I want to finish the session with a few short questions. You have catalogued the challenges that the organisation has faced as a result of staff training issues and staff vacancy issues. Arguably, there continue to be significant workload burdens on the staff. There are also issues with funding, and approaches have been made to the corporate body to increase funding. At the same time, the audit report recommends that important pieces of work be carried out, which I presume would be quite substantive, such as the drafting of a full investigations manual. There is also a proposal to bring in an external investigator in order to address some of the deficiencies in the organisation.
In the light of all that, do you think that that will be achievable?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Earlier, Colin Beattie asked you about where the negotiations between the commissioner’s office and the corporate body on the release of more resources lie. I think that you said that that was still the subject of negotiation. Is that correct?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
As always, Auditor General, thank you very much for the frankness of your replies. I also take this opportunity to thank Richard Robinson as well as Pat Kenny of Deloitte, who have joined us online this morning.
That ends the public part of the meeting, and we now move into private session.
11:05 Meeting continued in private until 11:46.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
So is it that there was a policy, but it was not fit for purpose, or is it that there was a policy, but people were not sufficiently aware of it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
We will end where we started, with the comment in the Auditor General’s opening statement that this is all about public trust in the complaints system and how complaints are dealt with. What stands out in the report are recurring phrases such as “substantial weaknesses” and the need for “significant improvements”, and in paragraph 26, the report concludes:
“The overarching risk is a loss of public trust in the ability of the Commissioner’s Office to properly investigate and consider complaints made against the conduct of individuals in public life in Scotland.”
What is your assessment of where things stand today? Is there an existing crisis of confidence in the system?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
I do not want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that the risk and uncertainty is being fuelled by the collapse of Greensill Capital, which was the primary funder of GFG Alliance? GFG Alliance itself is the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation, because issues have been raised about its governance structure, which one UK minister described as “opaque”. Concerns have been expressed about changes to the accounting periods that the company is using. Auditors have resigned and finance directors have left. Is all that fuelling the assessment of heightened risk to which the Scottish Government is now exposed?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie has a series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie has a series of questions on governance.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
My understanding is that the Scottish Government is now looking at the production of such a framework. As you mentioned, there has been a long-standing call for that from Audit Scotland, from you and your predecessor. Do you know when that framework will be published?
