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 1156 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. We know that the cyberattack is subject to an on-going police investigation, but are you able to confirm whether investigations are on-going to establish, as the report says,
“the exact route source of where the cyber-attack breached SEPA’s systems”?
Once those investigations are complete, will that information be shared with us or will it remain confidential?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
So you are happy that, with the new procedures that you now have in place, you will not have the same issues that you had on the night of the attack.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
I apologise for not being there in person.
According to the third bullet point in paragraph 6 of the report, the Scottish Government has committed to supplying personal protective equipment free of charge to the NHS and social care services
“until at least March 2022”,
but it is not clear what the arrangements will be after that. Do you have any update on that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Measures to reduce delayed discharges in the first wave of the pandemic from December 2019 to April 2020 were effective in the short term. Can you outline what those measures were? Given that delayed discharge continues to be a huge problem, what do you believe needs to be done now to achieve a longer-term solution to it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Paragraph 14 of the Auditor General’s report states that a
“SEPA staff member received a system alert at midnight on the morning of the 24 December 2020”
and that they
“were unable to reach the key senior management contact to escalate the issue at this point.”
The Auditor General has told us that SEPA reviewed its immediate response protocols following the cyberattack. Are you able to give us a brief outline of the changes that have been made as a result of the review?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
On workforce issues, which you mentioned earlier, paragraph 20 of the report refers to the 2021 Royal College of Nursing employment survey, which
“found that 40 per cent of staff are working beyond their contracted hours on most shifts ... 67 per cent ... were too busy to provide the level of care they would like and 72 per cent ... were under too much pressure at work.”
What steps is the Scottish Government taking to address those issues?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. I am looking specifically at funding for apprenticeships. Paragraph 14 of the report states that, in October 2019,
“The Scottish Government instructed SDS and the SFC to implement a new model for funding and delivering foundation apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships in response to the removal of European structural funding.”
Paragraph 14 goes on to explain that funding for 2021-22 was
“intended to come largely from the SFC’s further and higher education budgets and partly from SDS’s budget.”
The report highlights that work on that instruction stalled as a result of Covid-19, although it has now resumed and supports the Scottish Government’s skills alignment priority. The report, however, highlights that sustainable funding for foundation apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships remains uncertain from 2022-23 onwards. Can you tell us what the Scottish Government’s plans are for funding foundation and graduate apprenticeships from 2022-23 onwards?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Are you doing any work on timescales to try to speed things up? One of the things the pandemic showed us was that we could basically turn things on very quickly, remove the red tape and get the desired outcomes that we needed. Are we putting in timescales that mean that the skills that we need will be delivered when we need them and it will not be like the report that we are talking about, which follows a review that has been going on for four years? Are we doing things in a timely way?
Public Audit Committee
“Planning for Skills”
Meeting date: 10 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
This week and last week, all MSPs have been out looking at apprenticeships and seeing how that is a great pathway for kids as an alternative to going to university. I hope that there will be core funding for apprenticeships in the future.
Paragraph 1 of the report explains that Scotland’s labour market
“faces a combination of skills gaps, skills shortages and skills underutilisation.”
It goes on to highlight particular gaps
“in social care and demand for new skills in digital and responding to the climate emergency.”
How are you and your partners addressing the skills gaps?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Sharon Dowey
Paragraph 28 states that
“over two-thirds of Integration Authorities”
were
“unable to achieve a balanced budget without additional funding from partners in 2018/19.”
Paragraph 28 also highlights that the introduction of free personal and nursing care resulted in the development of
“eligibility criteria to manage the demand for services.”
That has led to local variations in response to financial pressures across Scotland.
Can you provide some further detail on the local variations that exist with regard to the eligibility criteria for free personal and nursing care, and say to what extent you believe that there is a postcode lottery for that care?
