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 3264 contributions

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Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Can I bring this back to something that you do have control of? You mentioned in response to Colin Beattie’s questions earlier that—partly, I presume, in the light of the Audit Scotland report—you had reviewed the governance arrangements and the balance of responsibility with regard to what was there formerly. That was described during the audit as the “engine room”—Mr Raines’s committee, the deputy director network—and you said that there has now been a shift very much towards what you keep referring to as the GCE board, which I presume is the global climate emergency board, if I understand it correctly.

Two things arise from that for the committee. First, can you send us a copy of the new governance structure as it is now constituted? Secondly—and it appears to me that you would have control over this—I understood from the answer to the direct question that the implication of that change in governance structure was that you will not be publishing the minutes of the deputy director network. Will you be publishing the minutes of the GCE board?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

The principal item on our agenda is consideration of the Audit Scotland report “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals: Governance and risk management arrangements for net zero targets and adaptation outcomes”—I might just use the shorter title for the remainder of the meeting.

We are pleased to welcome three witnesses from the Scottish Government to give us evidence on the report. Alongside Roy Brannen, who is the director general net zero, is Kersti Berge, who is the director of energy and climate change. They are joined by Phil Raines, who is the deputy director for domestic climate change.

We have a number of questions to ask but, before we get to them, I ask you to make a short opening statement, Mr Brannen.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Brannen. That sets out some helpful parameters that will guide us in asking our questions.

I ask the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, to get us under way with some opening questions.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

We have a final couple of questions, which Willie Coffey will put.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

I hear what you are saying, Mr Brannen, but I have to reflect on what the committee was told when we took evidence from the Auditor General. With regard to the deputy director network, which seems to me to be at a lower level than this GCE board, he said:

“there ought to be some formality”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 18 May 2023; c 6.]

He went on to say:

“All that requires an additional level of formality; minute-taking is one of those fundamentals.”

Question 1, therefore, is: is a minute taken of the GCE board? Question 2 is: why are you refusing to publish it?

Public Audit Committee

Interests

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Thank you very much indeed. I take the opportunity to place on record my thanks to Craig Hoy for the contribution that he made to the work of the committee over the past two years.

Public Audit Committee

Decision on Taking Business in Private

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Under item 2, members of the committee are invited to agree whether or not to take business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Mr Brannen, you mentioned taxonomy, which is the classification of spending into categories of high, medium and low carbon impact and so on, is it not? Mr Raines, you mentioned the Fraser of Allander Institute. In some of its commentary, the Fraser of Allander Institute is quite critical of your taxonomy. It says:

“These classifications are very broad. For example, all health spending is classified as neutral spending, regardless of the underlying activity. This risks misclassifying high-emission activities as beneficial, or carbon-reduction activities as harmful. It is not known what emissions impact a spend classified as ‘high’, ‘low’, or ‘neutral’ emissions actually has.”

That is a fairly fundamental criticism of the model that you are using. It says:

“Both the high-level carbon assessment and taxonomy carbon assessment of the capital budget methodologies are, in our view, unable to provide an adequate level of scrutiny and transparency.”

How do you respond to that?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

I have more questions on areas that relate to that, but I will turn first to Colin Beattie, who has some questions to put to you.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals”

Meeting date: 7 September 2023

Richard Leonard

Okay. Some of the international comparisons might be interesting. As a committee, we might have a look at what other countries do to provide EV charge points.

Before I bring in Sharon Dowey, I have a question. You said at the outset, Mr Brannen, that you welcomed the Audit Scotland report. Do you accept all its findings and recommendations?

Chamber and committees