Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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Displaying 2212 contributions

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Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”

Meeting date: 12 May 2022

Graham Simpson

I understand that, but the very commissioning of that report makes me feel that the committee needs a little bit of background to all this that it has not had.

I have the minutes from the 8 June 2021 board of management meeting. Under a section entitled, “Internal Audit Update”, it says:

“The Chair updated members ... on a number of allegations of potential staff misconduct within one of the college faculties. The allegations related to 3 separate matters:

Systematic bullying and intimidation of a number of staff over a prolonged period

Potential financial irregularities (of private businesses operating from college premises, using college materials and lecturing staff time)

Potential timetabling anomalies (fabrication of hours, of students, of classes).”

This has been reported in the press previously—I am not saying anything new. However, we have here, in black and white, in the board of management minutes, an allegation of private businesses operating from college premises.

Earlier, Auditor General, you said that millions of pounds of public money were not being overseen. That point is extremely relevant here. Were you aware of any of those allegations?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”

Meeting date: 12 May 2022

Graham Simpson

Thank you very much, convener. It is good to be back at the committee. I served on the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee in the previous session, but I should say that I have no relevant interests to declare—I do not think that what is declared carries over from one session to another.

It has been interesting to listen to the lines of questioning from members. I will pick up on some of what has been said, but I also have questions of my own. I have been aware of concerns about the college for some time now, and I have been approached by people at the college. Willie Coffey asked about the impact on staff. I have been an elected member—both as a councillor and as an MSP—for some time, and I have never come across a situation in which people are as scared as they are in this case. That applies to current staff and former staff. I have never seen anything like it. I will give the committee some background to that, because it has not had it yet.

Craig Hoy mentioned the meeting on 4 November last year, at which there were six new board members. Of course, that was the meeting at which the principal, Aileen McKechnie, and the interim clerk to the board, Brian Keegan, were suspended. There is a question about whether a board with six new members who had not gone through proper training should have taken such a big decision. A representative of the Scottish Funding Council was also present at that meeting. Was that appropriate?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”

Meeting date: 12 May 2022

Graham Simpson

So it was in November.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”

Meeting date: 12 May 2022

Graham Simpson

Okay. I think that the same point applies, though. There were brand-new members who had not gone through proper training by then, and a representative of the Scottish Funding Council was present at that meeting, so the same question applies, whether the suspensions happened on 4 November or 30 November.

Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee

Instruments subject to Negative Procedure

Meeting date: 26 April 2022

Graham Simpson

I am content with all that, but it strikes me that the very fact that the instrument breaches the 28-day rule suggests strongly that it has been rushed through, for the reasons that have been outlined. The instrument involves the use of a new test for rabies, which gives quicker results than the one that has been used traditionally, from which people get the results in two weeks—with the new test, the results come back in two to three days.

I am not sure which committee will be the lead committee but, whichever one it is, it should look at the issue and satisfy itself that the new test is up to the job. I am sure that it is—I have no reason to think otherwise—but the lead committee ought to look at that because, no matter where an animal has come from, we need to ensure that we are safe.