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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Economy and Fair Work Committee 6 March 2024
Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 March 2024
Colin Beattie
Witnesses have been telling us how complex the procurement process is and how difficult it is to access. How do you tackle that? I am thinking particularly about small companies that do not have the resources or experience to put together complex documents.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I was going to ask a question about improving training for board members. Having read the Auditor General’s report and the corporate governance review, frankly, I think that the level of incompetence in the board is breathtaking. There is no challenge and very little scrutiny and there seems to be no understanding of proper governance. To me, an induction for board members is an induction, rather than training. Board members should be chosen for the skills that they have and the expertise that they can bring to the board, and not because they come in needing training.
Is there a problem with our recruitment process for non-executive directors? This is not the first time that the committee has looked at problems that have arisen in the public sector and found at least some issues with the way in which non-execs have approached a situation. I am not blaming the board solely—there are other issues—but I am focusing on the board. Is there a problem with our recruitment process?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
Again, when it comes to the board, I would like some reassurance that proper scrutiny and challenge are in place, because—hopefully—we have learned through all the deficiencies that have been thrown up both in the audit and in the corporate governance review. What sort of reassurance can we have that those deficiencies have been rectified?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
My understanding, based on evidence that we have taken in other meetings, is that each NHS board has unique characteristics because of the way in which it has developed, and that there is a need for each board to provide some familiarisation for directors coming in. That is normal: it is not unique to the NHS. Non-executive directors are appointed to the boards of many different types of private and public organisation.
Let me move on.
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
Good morning, Auditor General.
Nothing happens without money. The whole programme hangs on whether public and private investment can be obtained in very large quantities. The fourth recommendation in the report is that the Scottish Government should
“clarify how it will use public money in the short and long term to support the delivery of its Heat in Buildings Strategy objectives, while achieving value for money”.
When would you expect the Scottish Government to be able to do that? What evidence would you expect to see in order to demonstrate that value for money is being achieved?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
To me, there are two ways that the private sector can get involved. One is by directly financing discrete projects; the other is by providing finance to householders to carry out whatever works are needed in their homes. Has consideration been given to the balance between those? It seems problematic that the facility to go into debt to do that work will be particularly attractive to households. Has any analysis or work been done on that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I hear what you are saying—that training has been provided to the board over a period of years, that there is induction, and all the rest of it. However, that did not work so well. What is the point of training people and giving them all that guidance, when it appears on every side that that did not work and they did not take any notice of it? Where is the scrutiny? Where is the challenge?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
The governance review and the overall picture here at my desk do not look too good.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
That is a relatively short time.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Colin Beattie
I am pleased if the situation has improved but, as we are an audit committee, we look backwards. We look at what was, not so much at what is, and we try to get to the bottom of it—to drill down as to why something happened and how it can be prevented in the future. That is our role.
It appears that there have been significant gaps in governance. We want to get to the bottom of that and find out how we can ensure that it does not happen again, because there is a pattern—this has happened elsewhere, albeit not necessarily to the same extent. We want to know, therefore, whether there is an endemic problem. For example, is there a problem in the recruitment processes? We look at everything.
