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
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Reflecting on some of your earlier reports, there were concerns about the extent to which the expansion would be fulfilled, because of delays in the provision of new buildings and refurbishment of buildings, and concerns about whether the increased staffing that would be required to deliver the expansion would be met. Therefore, when I read this report, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that that appears to have happened. We talk about the ÂŁ1 billion of funding, but is that revenue funding? Does it include the capital investment that has been required to increase capacity in the public sector, for example? Can you break down those different components for us?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Who produced the report on the pilots? Was it produced by the local authorities or by somebody on behalf of the Scottish Government?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That would be helpful.
We speak about the expansion to 1,140 hours, but they are not mandatory. Do you have any data on, or have you done any work to understand, why parents and carers may exercise the right not to avail themselves of the 1,140 hours?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 report: “Early Learning and Childcare: Progress on delivery of the 1,140 hours expansion”
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
I have one final question before I bring in Willie Coffey. In paragraph 25 of the report, you refer to satisfaction surveys of parents in consideration of the flexibility of the arrangements and so on. If I have read it correctly, there was a much higher satisfaction rate among parents or carers when the children were living in households in which parents were not at work, for example. There also seemed to be a higher satisfaction rate in the more deprived areas. Do you have any rationalisation of that? Could you enlighten us as to why you think those are the results?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
In the report, you mention other weaknesses over and above the failure to carry out equality impact assessments. You set those out in paragraph 83. Again, they stand out as areas of significant concern. You say that the Scottish Government and the criminal justice board
“did not agree clear plans, outcomes and success measures”
for the recover, renew, transform programme; that
“the RRT advisory group was not given the opportunity to be sufficiently engaged”
in that programme; and that the advisory group did not seem to get full access to decision making.
You also say that
“wider public reporting of the programme was limited”;
that there was inconsistency; that minutes of the criminal justice board meetings were not produced; and that the results of a lessons-learned exercise appear not to have been adopted.
We would expect such rudimentary elements of operation to be met but, according to your report and findings, that was simply not the case. Will you elaborate a bit more on why that was?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Has work begun on addressing those weaknesses?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. We might follow up on that as well, as we consider our next steps.
Craig Hoy has a final series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
I will bring you back in later.
I call Craig Hoy to put some questions to the witnesses.
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
The report addresses the response during the pandemic and the lockdown, and all the restrictions that were in place at that time. Willie Coffey has a series of questions on that, but I will ask one before I turn to him.
One of the things that happened during that time was that the sheriff court system was consolidated into 10 hub centres and the JP courts were also incorporated into that. We had 10 hubs and they were asked to consider essential business. Could you tell us how essential business was defined?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you; that statement set the scene very well. You mention at the start of the report that you have a plan to monitor progress against the report’s recommendations. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you plan to do that monitoring work?
