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 ˿ 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.
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
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Craig Hoy has a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Auditor General for Scotland and members of the Audit Scotland team on the report “Planning for skills”, which was published just a couple of weeks ago. I once again welcome Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, who joins us in the committee room. We are joined online by Gordon Smail, audit director; Rebecca Seidel, senior manager; and Douglas Black, audit manager in performance audit and best value.
We have a considerable number of questions to ask about the report, but first I ask the Auditor General to make introductory remarks.
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Mr Smail. That was helpful.
Another aspect that is covered in the report, with regard to the skills alignment action plan, or strategy, is the skills committee. Someone coming to the issue for the first time might be a little confused about the skills committee. That is because, as I understand it, there was a proposal to convert the joint Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland skills committee to a skills committee of the enterprise and skills strategic board. The report is quite illuminating on that, and says that the conversion
“did not happen because of the statutory requirement for the existing committee to be chaired by a SFC board member. No alternative governance structure was introduced at ESSB level, and the joint SFC and SDS Skills Committee has not met since August 2017.”
The report was written in November 2021. It goes on to say:
“The SFC consolidated the Joint Skills Committee with another of its committees, which has since become the SFC’s Skills, Access, Enhancement and Learning Committee. SDS does not sit on this committee.”
That raises a host of questions, one of which is this: why did the enterprise and skills strategic board not seek to set up an alternative governance structure to allow the establishment of a proper co-operative and collaborative skills committee in which both organisations could have engaged?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for skills”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
That is fine. That would be helpful for us in navigating the myriad of organisations, committees and boards that are supposed to be working together to further the skills alignment agenda, but are not in all cases doing so.
A proposal to increase the funding to the Scottish Funding Council and the advanced learning and science directorate in 2022-23 was also mentioned in the report. Is that money that has been ring fenced to boost the skills alignment agenda or is it additional funding that will be given to the directorate and the agency?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
The report covers the year 2020-21. Will we at some point—even if it is three years hence—see signed off accounts for SEPA for 2020-21, or is that possibility gone forever?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
The next item on our agenda is consideration of “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”. We are joined by the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, and, via videolink, by Morag Campsie, who is a senior manager of audit services in Audit Scotland, and Joanne Brown, who is a partner in Grant Thornton UK LLP and carried out the audit.
I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
That is great. Willie Coffey, who joins us online, has a question.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Auditor General, one of the striking things in your opening statement was the fact that the auditor issued a disclaimer of opinion on SEPA’s annual report and accounts for 2020-21 and, therefore, the accounts have not been signed off. You used the word “unusual” for that choice, and it is extremely unusual. You also said that that was principally because of unsatisfactory records or evidence around a notional £42 million of income from fees. Who takes the decision to put in that disclaimer and not sign off the accounts? Is it Joanne Brown at Grant Thornton, or is it you, the Auditor General, at Audit Scotland? At what level is that decision taken?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I presume that that means that you—I do not know whether it is just you or a team—have to work closely with SEPA’s finance people and audit committee to ensure that things remain on track and go at the fastest pace that can be done while retaining the integrity of the accounting systems. Are you devoting a lot of your time to developing the situation from where it has been?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Willie. I will come back to you before the end of the session for the other area of questioning that you have.
Craig Hoy wants to explore SEPA’s response, both immediate and in the medium term, to the crisis and attack when it happened.
