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 3298 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the second meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.
The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. I assume that all members agree to do so, unless any member indicates otherwise. Does any member object to taking agenda items 4 and 5 in private?
I see no objections, so that is agreed.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, Paul. If you want members of your team to field any of the questions, please let us know who the appropriate person is. If members of your team want to come in, they should type R in the chat function to make sure that I call them.
I will give a bit of context to this morning’s session. A section 22 report by Audit Scotland is quite a serious matter; it happens when alarm bells have been or still are ringing. This morning, we want to probe a little into the journey that you have been on and to consider how things look over the next few weeks because, as you said, the census has still to be delivered.
I will start by reflecting on the second paragraph of the Audit Scotland report, which contains this note from the Auditor General:
“I have prepared this report to draw the Scottish Parliament’s attention to the challenges facing NRS in the delivery of the census programme. This includes the significant impact the decision to delay the census until March 2022 has had on NRS’s costs. There are also ongoing risks to delivery of the programme, including resourcing and financial pressures, which NRS will need to continue to manage so that the census can be delivered successfully in line with the revised budget and timetable.”
Committee members will return to those themes over the next hour.
I want to reflect on the evidence session that we had with the Auditor General on 9 December 2021. You might have seen that one of the issues that were brought to our attention was that an options appraisal report led you, through evidence, I presume, to the decision—or the recommendation to ministers for their decision—to postpone the census for a year. That was a very big decision to make. We asked the Audit Scotland representatives whether they had had sight of the options appraisal report. They might have had sight of it, but they were not in a position to offer it to us. Would it be possible for the committee to see the full options appraisal report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to check something. We were told in the evidence session with Audit Scotland that you were now planning to access some of those data sharing sources. Are you saying that you have not done that or that you have no legal basis for doing it, and that it is not happening?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you for clearing that up.
I must ask you to try to keep your answers a little briefer. I suspect that you will be able to do that in the forthcoming sections. Again, please feel free to bring in members of your team if you think that they can add useful evidence to the gathering of information that we are embarked on.
I invite Craig Hoy to ask a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Sharon.
I conclude the session by thanking the witnesses—Paul Lowe, Linda Sinclair, Peter Whitehouse and Anne Slater—for joining us. I do not think that we heard from Anne Slater, but she has been on hand to give evidence.
Reflecting on what Paul Lowe said at the beginning, we understand that NRS is not the Office for National Statistics, but it is the body that is charged with delivering the census in Scotland. We are concerned about the efficiency and effectiveness of that process. It is exactly two months to the day until census day on 20 March, and the committee may well invite the witnesses back after the census later in the year—it will be for the committee to decide that—to reflect on how it went and any broader lessons that can be learned, as well as to consider the future.
Paul Lowe said that 10 years is a long time. I am not sure whether the next census will be in 10 years’ time or nine years’ time. We have not touched on that question, but I am sure that we can return to it.
I reiterate that we welcome your commitment to give us a copy of the options appraisal. If any other aspects of the evidence that you have given this morning would be supported well by any written submissions, the committee would welcome that. Thank you for your time and your willingness to answer the questions that we have put.
I suspend the meeting while we change witnesses.
10:11 Meeting suspended.10:14 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Mr Lowe has frozen. I do not know whether we are able to—
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Yes, that is helpful. Nevertheless, I go back to the fact of the matter, which is that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the census went ahead in March 2021 and, as I read it, there was a 97 per cent participation rate. You made the point that Scotland had a different status at various points in the month of March 2021. That is clearly a factor but, notwithstanding that, we have been told that one reason why the ONS and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency were able to go ahead was that they had access to other sources of administrative data, which I presume would be there for them to rely on to add texture to the returns from census day. Can you explain why NRS did not have access to those same sources of administrative data?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
We will return to the issue of the digital dimension, which Mr Lowe raised in his answers to Craig Hoy’s questions. I will come to Willie Coffey to ask questions on that. However, before that, I will bring in Colin Beattie to continue on the theme of the financial implications of the delay to the census.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Richard Leonard
The second item on our agenda is consideration of an Audit Scotland report, “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. I introduce Stephen Boyle, who is the Auditor General for Scotland; Graeme Greenhill, who is a senior manager for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland; and Pat Kenny, who is a director of audit at Deloitte PPE.
I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”
Meeting date: 13 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Again I point out that if anybody wants to come in, they should simply put an R in the chat box.
I will round off this section of questions. Is the continuous improvement plan in the public domain, available and accessible, in particular to members of the community who have an interest in the work of the board?
I will start with Pat again.
