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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2556 contributions
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
My final question is about MDTs, which were seen as a huge opportunity to improve the situation in GP surgeries. As has been touched on, the Auditor General refers in his report to the 2023 survey by Public Health Scotland, which found that
“MDTs in some cases created more work”
and increased GPs’ workload. That is partly because GPs spent more time on supervising and training.
I would like to understand what else is involved in that work, as there are obviously different strands to it. Do you have a view on that? What steps have been taken to improve the situation?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Is it not a case of short-term pain for long-term gain?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Typically, how long does it take for someone to come up the line and to become fully effective without having to impinge unduly on you, as a GP?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Do you have any last words, Dr Williams?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
I have some questions about the multidisciplinary teams and about progress in transferring services to NHS boards, which apparently has not been going well.
The Auditor General’s report makes it clear that there are still implementation gaps and that there is insufficient data about the value for money and impact of MDTs. What is the impact of not fully implementing MDTs? The ambition is to reduce GPs’ workloads and to enable them to focus on the more complex patients and on whole-system quality improvement, so what is the impact of that delay?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
I refer you to paragraph 35 of the Auditor General’s report, which says:
“While some local areas have carried out analysis of the impact of MDTs, robust, routinely available information across Scotland on the impact of the roll-out of MDTs is lacking.”
He goes on to give some more information on that. Do we have data, or do we not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Can you give some idea of the shortfall in those areas?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Have you consulted GPs to get their opinion on the transition, how long it will take and what different skills will have to be developed?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Based on the feedback from doctors, it sounds like you have a bit of work to do to understand the transition.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 18 June 2025
Colin Beattie
Okay. I will move on from MDTs and go back to the availability of data. You have been putting a new clinical IT system in place for GPs, but the supplier has gone into administration. Is the timescale for rolling out the GP clinical IT system by 2026 still valid? What is the situation with the supplier?