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 National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much.
I thank Graeme Samson—I am sorry that we were unable to hear you—Asif Haseeb and Dharshi Santhakumaran for joining us online. We very much appreciate your time and contributions this morning. I also thank, as always, the Auditor General, who joined us in person.
10:13 Meeting continued in private until 11:35.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I think that you also said that, because of the need to recover the census exercise, management consultants were brought in. I do not know whether it is cause or effect, but a decision was also taken around that time to widen the membership of the census programme board to include the ONS and NISRA, which oversees the census in Northern Ireland. Were they not already on the programme board?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome to the 11th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in this session. Before we begin, I remind people about the Parliament’s rules on social distancing and advise everyone that, if they are moving around, exiting or entering the room, they should wear a face covering.
The first item on our agenda is a decision on taking items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
The second item on our agenda is consideration of an Audit Scotland section 22 report on the National Records of Scotland. We have a number of witnesses with us this morning. First of all, I welcome the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, who joins us in the committee room. Also from Audit Scotland, we are joined remotely by Graeme Samson, senior auditor, Asif Haseeb, senior manager, audit services, and Dharshi Santhakumaran, correspondence manager, performance audit and best value. You are all very welcome.
The Auditor General usually invites his colleagues in at the appropriate juncture. However, if any of you want to come in but have not been spotted, please put an R in the chat room function. I also extend that invitation to Willie Coffey, who also joins us remotely. I will bring him in as we go through the meeting.
Before we move to questions, I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
However, the audit report from 2018-19 refers to a census recovery plan, and that was two or three years before the expected date for carrying out the census. Is it not fair to say that there were underlying problems, even before the pandemic struck?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
That is helpful. I will move on. We will return to some of the themes of staffing and support, and some of the implications of the delay.
The delay has meant that data will be delayed in reaching public sector planners—the people responsible for delivering services. The census is in no small measure designed to inform decision making about those services. Have you assessed the impact of the delay on the planning decisions that public authorities will need to make?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
That would be helpful. A word that we have, quite understandably and rightly, heard an awful lot over the past few years is “unprecedented”, but in a sense the census is not unprecedented. You would therefore have thought that, as a result of previous exercises, people would have known it to be good practice to include representatives from the ONS, most obviously, but also NISRA on any kind of programme oversight board.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I want to go back to the significant line of questioning that Mr Beattie pursued about whether NRS was refused access to HMRC or DWP data and whether that was requested. Dharshi Santhakumaran said that the ONS had such access because it started earlier to put together data-sharing agreements with those bodies, and she said that NRS is starting to do that. The question arises of why NRS did not start to make such agreements at the same time as the ONS, as a matter of good practice. Will we have in place, in time for the census in March 2022, data-sharing agreements that will allow the enrichment of the data that is collected through digital and other means as a result of the exercise that will take place in March?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Yes, that point is well made.
I will conclude by quoting the final paragraph of the section 22 report that came out 10 days ago and which we are discussing this morning. It says:
“significant risks remain”
in the delivery of the 2022 census
“and it is of the utmost importance that NRS continues to monitor and manage them. NRS should also ensure that it continues to act on the outstanding TAF/Gateway review recommendations. I expect the auditor to continue to monitor NRS’s progress with delivering the census programme and its management of ongoing financial pressures.”
The committee would welcome an update on that monitoring work. Is it your intention to produce a follow-up report for Parliament so that we can return to the issue in the future?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I have a couple of questions that go back to several points that have been made in passing. First, Auditor General, you mentioned the census programme board, but is that the programme board for Scotland only?
