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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 2597 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
Could you not do the same thing simply by recruiting people on the Scottish Government’s terms and conditions?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
But you do not.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
The act gives the option.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
Okay. The proposals for an expanded role in grazings for the commission were not subject to final board approval before the national development plan was published. What have been the consequences of that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
How long do you anticipate that continuing?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
Does anything still need to be done to improve that relationship or to make it more effective?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
I will raise an issue that has been touched on already. Incredibly, no PPE was made in Scotland prior to the pandemic, but 88 per cent of all PPE, excluding gloves, is now manufactured here. What kind of support was given to Scottish companies? Was financial support given? Were there already specific skills in Scotland to develop that? I will pick somebody at random to answer: Mary Morgan.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
We are still some way from being able to say that the pandemic is over. How resilient is the PPE supply chain? Is it reasonably secure as far as you can project?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
In his opening questions, the convener talked about export markets. To what extent are such markets not necessarily important but significant in maintaining the viability of the local supply chain? In other words, is the production line geared to Scotland, with just a wee bit of export activity, or does its viability rely on a certain proportion of exports?
I am going to have to pick Gordon Beattie again to answer that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 2 December 2021
Colin Beattie
I have a final question that you might or might not be able to answer. The companies producing PPE have geared up their production lines in order to produce the required quantity and types of PPE. That will probably not continue at the same pace forever—at least, we hope not—and, at some point, it will settle back to what might be called a normal level. I suppose that this is a question about resilience. At the end of all this, will the companies be able to repurpose their production lines so that they can move into other areas, or will it be a case of their having to lay off all the surplus people and reduce production?
