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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Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 27th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. The first agenda item is for committee members to decide whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Do members agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed for that opening statement. We move straight to questions. I invite the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, to ask the first set of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Before we move on, I want to pick up on the theme of transparency that you mentioned in your opening remarks. Paragraph 9 of the briefing paper, which is where the deputy convener started her questioning, states:
“Details are available for only £14.9 billion of the £26 billion of infrastructure investment originally announced.”
In the same paragraph, we find expressions such as
“it is not possible to compare ... makes it difficult to compare”
and
“It does not assess”.
That is a series of criticisms of the transparency of the available data. Have you had any initial response to that from the Scottish Government?
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
We will return to some of those themes over the next 45 minutes to an hour. I will now bring in Willie Coffey, who has some questions to put to you.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
On the point that, of the
“45 projects, the costs of eight had increased, 13 had been delayed and a further three had been paused”,
that means, does it not, that fewer than half are on track in terms of cost and timescale?
We hear what you said about it not being possible to be too precise about cost and delivery dates. However, I presume that people build in a degree of flexibility, with an indicative date of completion for an infrastructure project. You might make allowances for snagging and so on as part of the process. We are talking about a substantial number of infrastructure projects that have problems associated with them.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thanks. That is helpful. Does Graham Simpson want to come in on that point?
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Just going back to the equality and fairer Scotland duty, I am looking at the Government’s statement, which was authorised in March 2021, so it has been in place for more than two years. When I read the statement, I wondered how those assessments will be made. It says that plans will have to be
“fully Equality & Fairer Scotland Impact Assessed”.
How is the Government doing that? Have you seen any evidence that it has been doing it at all?
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Our main item this morning is agenda item 2, which is consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s briefing paper, “Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”, which was published at the end of September. I am pleased to welcome the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, who is joined by Ashleigh Madjitey and Dharshi Santhakumaran, from Audit Scotland. Ashleigh is an audit manager and Dharshi is a senior audit manager.
Before we get into the questions, I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
So those are not projects with work under way on the ground or on which construction has commenced. They are in a pipeline, and that will include sign-off of the business case.
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 2 November 2023
Richard Leonard
I know that Willie Coffey also wants to come in on this point. I note that the briefing paper talks about the Scottish Futures Trust’s role in advising the Government in advance of difficult decisions on the prioritisation of projects. Its advice, therefore, is not just on the contractual terms that might be negotiated around a PFI, public-private partnership or whatever arrangement coming to an end; it also offers the Government an advisory role in establishing what is called in paragraph 10 of the briefing “a prioritisation framework”. Can you elaborate on that? We have talked about prioritisation being necessary, funding being challenging and difficult decisions having to be made, but do we know how the Government will make those decisions? Have we seen that framework, for example?
