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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
If you search by an individual session, the list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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.
Displaying 2215 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Have you asked the SFC to meet?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Yes, it seems completely ludicrous that the Scottish Funding Council does not have union representation. Those are huge issues to explore, but the Funding Council will be coming in front of us, too.
My next question is for Andy Witty or Derek Smeall. Are courses being cut? If so, how many?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
For two and a half years, you have not met the Scottish Funding Council.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
The register exists. I have not seen it, but we know that it exists. I am thinking about your discussions with your fellow principals, who you represent. When you are in meetings in colleges that are at risk of, let us say, running out of money, do any of those principals put up their hands and say, “Derek, we’re really in trouble here?â€
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I think that John Mooney wants to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 30 November 2023
Graham Simpson
I know that Stuart Brown wants to come in, but first I want to explore an issue on which he might have something to say. How many job losses are we looking at in the sector? We have heard about a couple of colleges that are cutting staff, but do you see that happening across the board?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Graham Simpson
That is honest of you, Richmond. It sounds as though you recognise everything that the Auditor General is saying. There is data in one part of the system, and data in another part, but nobody is collecting it. It is probably your job to collect it, is it not?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Graham Simpson
That is good, because hospitals in Lothian deal with that on the ground.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Graham Simpson
We have set up integration joint boards, but sometimes it does not sound as if they very integrated.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Graham Simpson
Good. I think that you all need to go and see Richmond Davies and get your acts together.
Hannah Axon wanted to come in. I think that you will then want to move on, convener.