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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Displaying 1619 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
What is the answer? Should we be building more prisons or putting fewer people in jail—or both?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Do you have any powers to direct it to be closed if you are unhappy with the conditions?
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Why is that? What red flags might we see, a couple of years ahead, of projected lower performance relative to other parts of the UK or to similar economies? For example, you say that, in a productivity comparison, we are 16th out of 38 economies, which is around midway through the pack, but clearly we could do better. What is influencing that lower productivity and growth? What analysis should be undertaken of how we could make immediate improvements? That would generate more money for public services.
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
I am sure that there will be opportunities for Parliament to address those issues with the Government. Other members will probably delve into the specifics of some of those gaps.
I will conclude my questioning by making a wider point. Auditor General, you said that much of the strategy is down to prioritisation or choices. I presume that those are policy choices that are under the control of ministers. Is there an intrinsic conflict between, for example, pure economic growth and the wellbeing economy? Is it difficult for Governments to balance those two different policies? The strategies for both approaches might take them in very different directions.
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
My questions carry on nicely from the conversation that we have just had about progress on the action points. You said that you do not have a view as to whether 78 or 79 actions are enough or too many, or whether there is the right spread across the six areas, but let us have a look at where we are in terms of auditing.
I am looking at the figures for actions completed under the first four measures, which are more business orientated and are centred around specific interventions rather than things such as diversity, fairness and culture. At the risk of sounding like a football results announcer, the figures are: entrepreneurial people and culture, one; new market opportunities, nil; productive businesses and regions, one; skilled workforce, nil. The figures are pretty poor. Does your audit work lead you to be concerned that we are simply not making enough progress on some of the actions?
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
I hope that we are not saying that we will have to wait for eight years before we can determine whether the strategy has worked. I am not sure how many of the committee’s current members would be here to question you, or indeed whom we would be questioning. Surely we should have a rolling brief on that, which should be produced annually.
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
We look forward to that. There are wide expectations about whose role it is to follow the money. It is sometimes hard to follow every pound of public money that is spent by various means—for example, to see which directorate is funding what, which grants are available, where investment is made and where nationalisation has occurred. We need to follow those routes to determine whether there have been good returns on investment and whether the objectives of the NSET and other Government strategies have been met.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
My goodness, that sounds like a grim situation.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
I have heard you give evidence in previous years, and some of your warnings on the ever-increasing numbers have been borne out. However, I guess that the numbers do not paint the entire picture. Is the issue simply that the nature of the prisoners has changed over the years? We have heard anecdotal evidence that increases in serious organised crime, which you mentioned, serious sexual offences and serious violent behaviours have led to higher prisoner numbers. Of course, we also have a substantial remand population, many of whom have been there way beyond the statutory limits, because we voted to get rid of those limits in many cases.
Is there proportionality in the system? Are too many people being put in prison for the wrong reasons, or is the issue simply that the nature of crime and its prosecution are changing and therefore people have to be in prison, but we just do not have enough spaces for them?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
May I ask about the situation with HMP Greenock? It is an area of local interest for me, but you mentioned it in your opening statement, too, stating that the prison should be bulldozed. It is currently inhabited by a substantial number of prisoners—both those on remand and those being held for longer terms—and has a substantial number of staff. We would have nowhere to put those people if we did bulldoze it, so they are stuck there, presumably, with no plans for replacement. What should happen there?
