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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Displaying 2416 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
It would have been the responsibility of the convener to ensure that training took place, of course.
I want to ask about sponsorship. A bit of clarification might be needed here, Auditor General. The report states that the Scottish Government’s sponsorship division
“appeared to view its relationship of consequence as being with the Senior Management Team rather than the Convener.”
Earlier, you said that the sponsorship division’s relationship was with the CEO, which is slightly different. Perhaps you could clarify that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
Could we have clarification as to whether it is in fact a secondment or simply a matter of terms and conditions?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
The relationship between the Scottish Government and an NDPB is kind of changed if Scottish Government staff go in and hold a position in the body—at least, it is in my mind—so clarification on that would be good.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
During the height of the pandemic, some of the private supply chains that were supplying primary care providers and social care providers fell apart, and the Scottish Government stepped in to provide the necessary PPE to care homes and so on. Has the Scottish Government ever been reimbursed for any of the PPE that was supplied to those private businesses?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
Do we know whether the providers are using their private supply chains these days, or are they still accessing PPE from the hubs?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
It would be interesting to know the extent to which the private sector is still reliant on the public sector to provide PPE.
Your briefing also states that, in the first five months of the pandemic,
“had NHS NSS been able to buy PPE at the same prices as 2019, it would have spent £37.4 million less on PPE”.
This might be a daft question, but I suppose that it has to be asked. In your opinion, could anything have been done to avoid that additional spend?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
Before I ask any specific questions, I will just say this: here we are again with an NDPB in trouble. We have had a series of examples over a number of years, and they all seem to rotate around much the same issues. The big one is governance, but there have been problems with budgeting, technology and all sorts of other things. The issue comes up time and again. Is there a fundamental problem with how NDPBs are run and monitored? Is the system broken? Should we be considering something totally different?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
The biggest problem that I see has been governance. Typically, what we have is a small organisation operating out there semi-autonomously that turns in on itself and becomes a little knitting circle that gets out of control. The question is how that can be dealt with, because the organisation is semi-autonomous. What should the Government do to bring it back in and ensure that, while the Crofting Commission or Bòrd na łŇĂ ľ±»ĺłó±ôľ±˛µ, for example, retains the autonomy that it needs to carry out its job, the necessary support and overview are in place?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
I ask Pat Kenny also to touch on whether the board members, even if they did not attend such training, would have been aware that training arrangements were in place and that they should be attending.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
Colin Beattie
Therefore, given the relationship that the sponsor team had with the senior management team, would it be correct to say that the sponsor team attended meetings of the senior management team and/or the board?
