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 2443 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Is it about money? Are people simply job-hopping for more money?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
As part of the process of formulating a national care service and getting it in place, we really need good data behind it to ensure that it will be effective. Is that correct?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Auditor General, this is not the first time that we have seen adverse comments about leadership in your reports. Leadership is mentioned in paragraph 20 of the briefing. You call for “stable and collaborative leadership”. That sounds like a fairly basic thing that we would expect to be in place.
You mention that councils and integration authorities are experiencing
“high turnover of senior staff”.
In the past, you have said that the situation is the same in the NHS. Why is there such a high turnover of senior staff across the public sector? Until a few years ago, generally speaking, that was not the case, so what has triggered the change?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I have one more thing to add before Antony Clark comes in.
I can understand there being an issue with stability if there is churn in the senior staff, which can create a vacuum until the person who moves in has got up to speed and got to grips with the job. What I do not understand is the lack of collaboration. Collaboration should be fundamental and embedded, regardless of stability. Why does that collaboration not exist?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I will come back to the issue of data in a second, but I am going to ask you an unfair question that you might or might not be able to answer. How significant is the difference in the quality of leadership in social care in the public sector versus that in the private sector, or is there no difference at all?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Thank you for that. I am sure that we will pursue issues with regard to collaboration and so on as we move forward.
Auditor General, you have correctly highlighted the question of data. It is not a new issue for the committee; in fact, I cannot remember you ever telling us that data collection in any particular area was exemplary or particularly good.
In paragraph 23 of the briefing, you say that there is
“No individual social care record in the same way that each member of society has an NHS record.”
Obviously, there are difficulties with comparisons in that respect. Moreover, there is
“No consistent method for recording unmet need”
and
“No coordinated approach to anticipating future demand for and costs of delivering services”,
which is pretty fundamental.
Are we saying that each individual area is collecting data in one form or another with a view to meeting that data need, but that they are not doing so on a basis that is comparable with how other areas are doing it, or are we saying that they are just not bothering?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I have a final question for the Auditor General. We are, quite correctly, considering a national care service, which, I hope, will provide a uniform standard of care across the whole of Scotland. Without the data, how successful can a national service be?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Who needs to knock heads together to make that happen?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I am very conscious that, as the Auditor General mentioned, the issue of local collaboration has been raised several times in Audit Scotland reports during my 11 years on this committee, yet nothing seems to progress. You say that some places are better than others, but all places should have a level of collaboration that achieves the outcomes that the Government and everyone else is seeking. What has to happen?
It cannot go on that Audit Scotland churns out reports saying that there is a lack of collaboration locally that is impairing progress. I say that it cannot go on like that, but it has done. How do we break that?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Registers of Scotland
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Colin Beattie
In your opening statement you mentioned, I think, that the 2024 target for completion of the land register will be met. Is that correct?
