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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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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Displaying 3231 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canalsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That was really helpful.
I understand that Scottish Canals changed its status from being a public corporation to being a non-departmental public body, which led to a change in its accounting requirements, but does Scottish Natural Heritage or Scottish Water have a fixed asset register? Will ScotRail need to have a fixed asset register in the future? Where does Scottish Canals sit in the spectrum of organisations in that regard?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canalsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Colin Beattie has a couple of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accountsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Is there a cast-iron guarantee that those accounts will be published, or are you now caveating that? I am bound to say to you that your predecessor sat before this committee’s equivalent in 2016 and gave an undertaking to provide whole public sector Scottish Government consolidated accounts, and we are still waiting in 2022.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accountsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I am sure that we will reflect on your evidence on that subject and we will decide what we think the next steps should be.
Permanent secretary, you have mentioned the national performance framework a few times. What plans do you have to improve performance reporting in the consolidated accounts?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accountsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
We are coming to the last lap, permanent secretary. Sharon Dowey has a couple of questions to put to you, and then Willie Coffey will come back in before we finish.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accountsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
For the final question or two, I hand over to Willie Coffey.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canalsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Joanne—do you want to come in?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canalsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
There are still quite a few unanswered questions and we will need to consider how best to respond to them. Willie Coffey has questions to raise.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canalsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
That would be helpful.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accountsâ€
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I do not think that anybody disputes that, Mr Cook, and I will call on Jackie McAllister in a second, but the facts of the matter are that, in the past couple of weeks, the GFG Alliance has been brought to book by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and it is the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation. As you said earlier, permanent secretary, Greensill Capital has collapsed, and there are question marks around the GFG Alliance’s governance structure. Given that the Scottish Government is almost a partner in the enterprise, as it is party to a deal with the GFG Alliance, what contingency plans are you making?
