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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 2341 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
There is a vice-chair, surely, and the audit and risk committee is pretty autonomous and able to act on its own behalf and of its own volition. Why on earth did the board and committee not meet? I cannot understand why the meetings did not continue. As you have said, that is a requirement of good governance. Is there a vice-chair? Why were meetings not convened with the vice-chair stepping in?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Do the minutes—I presume that there are minutes—from the meetings when it met subsequently refer to the gap? Has anyone explained the reason for the gap? Did the audit and risk committee catch up on the business that had not been done in the six months that had elapsed, and did it report that formally in the minutes? Were the minutes published?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
What is Alyson Stafford’s view on that? Do you mirror those estimates? Are you similarly confident that there is a possibility of a better outturn than was first anticipated?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, Auditor General. I want to drill down a wee bit into the non-compliance issues that you raised. I realise that you might be limited in what you can tell us; nevertheless, we have to try to get to the bottom of it.
Your report and comments have told us that the audit and risk committee and the board suddenly stopped meeting around May or June 2021, and that there were no more formal meetings of either body. What explanation has been given for that? The staff and the wider student body must surely have been aware of that and asked questions about it. Were any explanations given to anyone about why they suddenly stopped meeting?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Finally, according to our papers, you have opened 29 per cent fewer civil compliance cases, which is much fewer than before. Can you say a bit more about the possible impact of that on tax revenues?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
But you do not have a figure.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
The board and committee did not meet again for a considerable period. Is it correct that five or six months elapsed before they decided to meet again?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
I understand that. Has anyone assessed the wider impact on students and staff? Is an examination of that within your scope? Is the board looking at that issue? Has anyone come to a view about the impact that the hiatus has had?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
The report also says that
“Papers for board and committee meetings held after June 2021 were not publicly available on the college’s website at the point the auditor signed their opinion on 24 March 2022.”
Has that been corrected? Is material now published online so that people can see what is going on in the college?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee [Draft]
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Willie Coffey
There remains the issue that Chris Ashurst perfectly described of people having their homes valued at £0 because of a process. What is your view on that, Chris? How can people find themselves in those circumstances because of a process that is not statutory?
