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 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Sorry, Mr Lowe—you froze, so we did not get the last 60 seconds of your answer.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
I remind you that if you want to augment the oral evidence that you have given us in writing, please feel free to do that. That may be useful and you alluded to that at the start of that round of questions. It would be helpful for the committee if you could give us the updated figure on the balance when you have it.
I turn to a series of questions on the management of the census programme. I invite Willie Coffey and then Sharon Dowey to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Welcome back. Item 3 on our agenda is consideration of “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. I am pleased to welcome three people from Audit Scotland to give evidence on the report: Stephen Boyle, who is the Auditor General; Michael Oliphant, who is an audit director; and Helen Russell, who is a senior audit manager of audit services.
We have a series of questions, and we will try to get through as much of the report as we can. However, it makes sense to us that we give the report due consideration, and it may be that we come back again in the coming weeks to have a further evidence session on this important report.
I begin by asking the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
One aspect that is highlighted in the report, especially in and around Covid-related payments, is the question of fraud and risks of fraud. Willie Coffey has a number of questions on that subject.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Before we finish, Auditor General, I highlight that the committee’s attention was attracted by your judgment that it was necessary to spotlight the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in your report on the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts. You identify special payments to the tune of £40.2 million that the service had to make in the financial year 2020-21, £40 million of which were payments to individuals following legal action against the Lord Advocate
“in connection with the acquisition and administration of Rangers Football Club”.
By my calculation, 99.5 per cent of those special payments went to those individuals. From an audit perspective, we are interested in finding out whether that gives you fundamental concerns about the service’s financial position.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Are you in a position to give us an estimate of the outstanding exposure to the cases being litigated, given what you have said about one of the cases being settled, two being closed and others still on-going? Do you have a sense of the value of those cases?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed.
I bring this part of our proceedings to a close by thanking Helen Russell, Michael Oliphant and the Auditor General for their evidence this morning. As I mentioned at the start of the session, the audit of the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts is an important piece of work, and there are many aspects that we have not had a chance to talk about and put questions on. I hope that, with your co-operation, Auditor General, we will be able to do so in the very near future, because the report contains some very important issues of public concern.
With that, I close the public part of the meeting and move into private.
11:17 Meeting continued in private until 11:42.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
The second item on our agenda is an evidence session with representatives of the National Records of Scotland. The session follows a section 22 report that the committee considered at its meeting on 9 December 2021 with the Auditor General for Scotland and a team from Audit Scotland.
I am pleased to say that we are joined by Paul Lowe, who is the registrar general for Scotland and keeper of the records of Scotland. Also from the National Records of Scotland are Linda Sinclair, who is the director of corporate services and accountable officer; Anne Slater, who is the director of operations and customer services; and Peter Whitehouse, who is the director of statistical services.
I mentioned that Linda Sinclair is the accountable officer, but I invite Paul Lowe to give us some opening remarks before the committee asks questions.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the second meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.
The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. I assume that all members agree to do so, unless any member indicates otherwise. Does any member object to taking agenda items 4 and 5 in private?
I see no objections, so that is agreed.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 20 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, Paul. If you want members of your team to field any of the questions, please let us know who the appropriate person is. If members of your team want to come in, they should type R in the chat function to make sure that I call them.
I will give a bit of context to this morning’s session. A section 22 report by Audit Scotland is quite a serious matter; it happens when alarm bells have been or still are ringing. This morning, we want to probe a little into the journey that you have been on and to consider how things look over the next few weeks because, as you said, the census has still to be delivered.
I will start by reflecting on the second paragraph of the Audit Scotland report, which contains this note from the Auditor General:
“I have prepared this report to draw the Scottish Parliament’s attention to the challenges facing NRS in the delivery of the census programme. This includes the significant impact the decision to delay the census until March 2022 has had on NRS’s costs. There are also ongoing risks to delivery of the programme, including resourcing and financial pressures, which NRS will need to continue to manage so that the census can be delivered successfully in line with the revised budget and timetable.”
Committee members will return to those themes over the next hour.
I want to reflect on the evidence session that we had with the Auditor General on 9 December 2021. You might have seen that one of the issues that were brought to our attention was that an options appraisal report led you, through evidence, I presume, to the decision—or the recommendation to ministers for their decision—to postpone the census for a year. That was a very big decision to make. We asked the Audit Scotland representatives whether they had had sight of the options appraisal report. They might have had sight of it, but they were not in a position to offer it to us. Would it be possible for the committee to see the full options appraisal report?
