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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 862 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Craig Hoy
What are the emerging trends, and what is the emerging evidence telling you about behavioural patterns in Scotland? Is it too early to capture anything, or can we see that, for example, people are not taking promotions or doing the extra shift because the rate of tax is discouraging them?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Craig Hoy
I know that you have tax design in your job title; in terms of tax design, that is a pretty clear piece of the jigsaw that you would build into the tax system.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Craig Hoy
Thank you for the clarification.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
The Scottish Government’s initial commitment was to introduce a national care service in the lifetime of this parliamentary session. It now seems that its commitment is to legislate for a national care service in the lifetime of this parliamentary session. For clarity, what timetable have you been instructed to work towards?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
Would it be fair to say that, at this point, you are not doing enough to capture the information on why people are leaving?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
I want to follow up on the deputy convener’s question on staff retention. Last year, I attended a round-table meeting with the Royal College of Nursing, the chief nursing officer for Scotland, the former Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and front-line nurses. One thing that struck me was that simple but, I presume, effective mechanisms such as exit interviews were not necessarily being routinely deployed throughout the service. Perhaps I could have confirmation that you now use such tried and tested practices more. Do you have an adequate handle on why people are leaving nursing, for example? How responsive are you to the key messages that you get about why people leave the service?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
I have received correspondence from a constituent who has had to borrow money from their children to have a hip operation. That is unacceptable, but surely you can understand why people are choosing to do that in very challenging circumstances.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
I accept that. However, the draft minutes of that meeting say that somebody gave the
“green light to present what boards feel reform may look like”.
Fundamentally, they say that
“areas which were previously not viable options are now possibilities”.
What are those viable options?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
The financial memorandum that accompanied the bill identified costs as being somewhere in the region of £1.3 billion, although that has been contested. The Auditor General said that he could not come to a final conclusion as to whether that number is accurate. Is there a concern that, if the total cost of establishing and operating the national care service—if it comes to fruition—is higher than that, we will end up cutting into health expenditure as a result?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Ms Lamb. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s fiscal sustainability report that came out last month raised serious concerns about future financial pressures on the NHS in Scotland. It identified that those pressures are due not only to an ageing population but to rises in chronic health conditions and the technological advances that are moving us forward. What are you and the NHS in Scotland doing to plan for those future financial pressures to ensure that Scotland’s NHS is financially sustainable?
