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 2341 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, I am still reading the report. That status change was made only in April 2020. We might argue that Scottish Canals would struggle to be able to deliver the extent of the fixed asset register re-evaluation in that timeframe. The more important question is whether Scottish Canals is getting on with that now. Are you confident that the organisation is aware of what must be done and of the demands that you have outlined in the FReM and that Joanne Brown described to us? Does the organisation have the skills and capacity to do the work now and as quickly as possible?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning. I have a question on the Scottish Government’s investment and financial support that have been provided to private companies, as is mentioned in the Auditor General’s report. As an Ayrshire MSP, one of the significant ones for me is Glasgow Prestwick Airport Ltd. Could you give us a brief outline of why that investment was made? What would the implications have been, had that investment not been made in Prestwick airport?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
We know that there are about 300 jobs linked directly to the airport and about 1,400 spin-off jobs associated with the wider Ayrshire economy. We know that the airport is pivotal to the Ayrshire local authorities in terms of taking the Ayrshire Growth Deal forward and in relation to their hopes and aspirations for the possible spaceport in Ayrshire.
I will just ask you again—and, perhaps, your officials, who have been in post for longer than you have, Mr Marks—had the Scottish Government not made that investment, would the airport still be functioning?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
It is hugely important for us in Ayrshire, but from a financial perspective, the committee and the Auditor General are asking about the financial implications of longer-term support, in the absence of a buyer. Can you say anything about progress in that regard?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
My question is on the European structural and investment funds issue that is also covered in the Auditor General’s report. We know that the UK Government committed to replacing those funds, which came from the European Union, and that an estimated £183 million a year is coming to Scotland.
First, has that sum been confirmed yet? Secondly, and importantly for the committee, what is to be the role of the committee, the Scottish Parliament and Audit Scotland in scrutinising that spend and accounting for it in Scotland? We did that previously but, as far as I know, none of us is aware of where the scrutiny function will lie for that funding. It might fall under the shared prosperity or levelling up funds and so on, but we do not know yet. We do not even know whether the Scottish Parliament will have the same role in scrutinising the spend that we had previously. I would be obliged if you could clarify any of that for the committee.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Willie Coffey
The transition of Scottish Canals from a public body to an NDPB seems to have brought about many or most of the issues. Paragraph 10 of the report says that the decision to change the status from public body to NDPB resulted from a review by the Office for National Statistics. Did no one think that that would put a bit of a millstone around the neck of Scottish Canals? Joanne Brown described the substantial change in requirements. Being one type of body or the other makes a substantial difference to how the assets are accounted for. Did nobody think about that before the decision was made about changing the organisation’s status?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
In the absence of new proposals that might be delivered within the context of NPF4, how do we deal with the high streets that have—as we saw yesterday—empty, abandoned and derelict cinemas and shops, with trees growing out of them and graffiti all over the windows? There are no plans or proposals coming from the communities at the moment for any of that stuff. Are the planning powers that we have sufficient to deal with any of that?
Local people ask me what they can do about the problem and how they can help to improve the powers that the planning authorities need so that they can intervene and turn those areas around. There is a hope that NPF4 will embrace that and allow the local authorities to intervene more directly to improve the look, feel and vibrancy of built heritage in the urban setting that has been dormant and abandoned for so long. Anything that you could say on that would be very welcome, minister.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, minister. I want to touch on a subject that has come up time and again in our evidence sessions to date, which is how the NPF4 can influence the look and feel of our town centres. As you know, and as all members will be aware, we all suffer from complaints from constituents about our high streets, where there are abandoned or derelict parcels of land, and that also applies to shops and buildings. Multiple ownership is often involved.
In one of our sessions, we heard from Celebrate Kilmarnock about some of the good work that is going on down there to create more community spaces and dispose of old redundant properties and buildings. Yesterday, the committee met some people in Govan and we heard some of their wonderful ideas about regenerating that part of the city of Glasgow. Will you give us a flavour of how the NPF4 can influence the look and feel of our town centres to deal with the problems I have mentioned, some of which have been prevalent for many years?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Willie Coffey
That is really helpful. That has been a recurring theme for the committee, and those comments are welcome.
My final question is about how NPF4 integrates with other things. You mentioned STPR2. I am also interested in how NPF4 integrates with the city growth deals, for example. Our Govan friends talked about that yesterday. One of their onstream projects will be funded through the city growth deal. How do you see NPF4 integrating with other major initiatives such as city growth deal funding and the levelling up funding that is, as we know, coming in from another direction? How can we ensure that it is all co-ordinated and everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet as far as possible?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Willie Coffey
Before I ask a question on SEPA’s financial sustainability in light of the cyberattack, I will ask about something else about which I am curious.
What volume of data are we talking about? In the report, I can see only a reference in the appendix, on page 9, to about 1.2GB of data being stolen. Is that it? Are we talking about only 1.2GB of data? That is a tiny amount of data that has had such a catastrophic impact.
I refer to my earlier point about offline storage. You can buy data sticks that accommodate huge amounts of data for ÂŁ10 or ÂŁ50. You can put almost your entire data set on separate physical data sticks. Nothing can hack them if you do that.
Is there any information on the volume of data that SEPA lost and whether the right strategy is in place to protect it?
