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 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome to the Public Audit Committee’s fourth meeting in 2023.
The first item is consideration of whether to take agenda item 3 in private. Do members agree to take item 3 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
I hear that but, just from my simple perspective, are you saying that there has been a reduction in the size of the senior management team but that it is costing more money?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Willie Coffey has some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The principal item on our agenda is consideration of the 2021-22 audit of the Crofting Commission, which has been laid before Parliament and about which we have an evidence session. I welcome our three witnesses: Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland; Pat Kenny, a director for audit and assurance at Deloitte LLP; and Kirsty Ridd, an audit manager at Audit Scotland.
We have some questions to put to the witnesses, but before we get into those I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
I re-emphasise the point that it would be useful for us to see what interaction there has been between the commission and the crofting communities. Although many of us would welcome the arrangement of direct elections, it has to be more than that and an on-going relationship. It may be that we need to speak to the Crofting Commission itself about that, but any perspective that you could give would be very helpful.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Sharon Dowey has another question to put to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
But—sorry, Auditor General, I will bring you in in a moment—is that a net increase in the budget, to pay for senior management, or is it just a rebalancing of the existing budget?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes, that is quite reassuring. For the purposes of today, you said that you did not think that the majority of it had gone on to the senior management team. In rough terms—or exact terms, if you have that information—what is the division of additional resource that is going into those front-line posts versus that which is going into the senior management team?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thanks very much. As none of the committee members has any more questions, I am going to draw this meeting to a close. I thank Pat Kenny, Stephen Boyle and Kirsty Ridd. We appreciate your input this morning. There are some things that we might want to follow up with you and the Crofting Commission.
I now close the public part of this morning’s meeting.
09:44 Meeting continued in private until 10:58.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 19 January 2023
Richard Leonard
The principal item on our agenda is consideration of a section 22 report, “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. I am pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning: the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle; Michael Oliphant, audit director at Audit Scotland; and Helen Russell, senior audit manager at Audit Scotland. We have an extensive range of questions to put, but before we get to that, I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.
