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 2845 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
The report shows that mental health delayed discharges generally decreased, but delayed discharges in learning disability services were high. Is there a reason why the figure is particularly high compared with regular mental health delayed discharges? I am not sure whether you would say “regular mental health discharges”, but you understand what I am getting at there. Why the differentiation, and why is there a specific issue with learning disability services?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Presumably—Eva Thomas-Tudo might be able to comment on this—it is not actually a systemic problem; it is simply supply in the community that is the problem.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
You will be pleased to know that I will not be referring to the letter. However, I do want to look at governance and implementation, which is clearly an area that has been shown to have certain weakness.
There seems to be no doubt that members and organisations are all committed to the Promise—that does seem sure—but the Auditor General’s report makes it clear that there is a lack of
“a consistent and shared understanding of what delivering The Promise would look like, and how this would be achieved, by 2030.”
There seems to be no real shared understanding of what the Promise is, in some ways, or how it will be delivered. The different organisations seem to have different nuances in that respect. What is being done to enable that shared understanding of what the Promise means across the different organisations?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Is there not a risk of huge fragmentation?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
I do not think that what has been said in the report is a reflection on the commitment of different organisations to deliver on this; it is perhaps more about the need for a common understanding to get the outcomes—I was going to say “targets”, but that is not right—that are required in the different areas. There has to be some common understanding, policy or approach, even with the diverse units that you are dealing with.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
The Auditor General’s report draws attention to the Scottish Government’s efforts to “streamline ... governance and accountability”, but those changes have not yet been achieved. What is being done in that respect? Why have we not made the progress that is needed?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
Perhaps your colleagues could also comment on the lack of a plan to reduce the delays and what more could—and should—be done in that regard.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2024/25 audit of NHS Tayside”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
I suppose the word I keep coming back to is “complex”. You talk about streamlining and so on. Have the organisations involved recognised that the change programme is overly complex?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
The comments about complicated accountability and “multiple routes of governance” are not good ones to get. How can you implement policies if the network that you are trying to deliver through has different frameworks and sets of guidance?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Colin Beattie
But we are moving into 2026 with a supposed delivery date of 2030, and all that we are seeing so far, according to the Auditor General’s report, is how slow the progress has been. Why is that?
