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 2372 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
The convener led on some finance-related questions that I was hoping to touch on, but I would like to return there. The Public Audit Committee is interested in following the public pound. Caroline Lamb, you mentioned the £1.3 billion investment in mental health services. The Auditor General’s report clearly shows that there has been a significant increase in funding for the directorate in recent years but, as the convener mentioned, there have been cuts to various parts of the service. What impact does that ebb and flow of being allocated more money and then facing cuts have on you in delivering those services? Does it mean that you have to delay things? Do you have to cancel work? What are the real impacts, and what are the effects of the spending changes?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
You mentioned the distress brief intervention programme, as did the Auditor General in his report. Will you tell us a wee bit more about that? Is there a concern that we have removed dedicated funding for that, or is it continuing? Are the recommendations from the DBI programme being taken forward?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
Do you give three-year indications of funding? Do you try to do that and then have to pull back?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
We hope to get there one day, convener, on what is a big and important issue.
Caroline Lamb, an issue that came up in our discussions was how to demonstrate positive outcomes and benefits from our significant investment. Good examples are in the Auditor General’s report and were heard during our round-table sessions. How do we capture a bit more of that? It is easy to focus on the problems—funding variations and so on—but how do we capture those positive benefits in the area of adult mental health?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
Other members will have questions about data collection issues, and the convener covered the impact of the emergency budget review a wee moment ago. My final question is for Caroline Lamb. Are our NHS boards on track to meet the commitment that, by 2026, 10 per cent of front-line health spending will be on mental health?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
Will you still track that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
If we ask you again in a year’s time, will we be able to get closer to knowing whether that is on track?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
You are confident that you will not lose the intention to fund certain initiatives, but you might have to slow them down.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Willie Coffey
That is good to hear.
To turn to our third sector colleagues, the committee has had many round tables, and we always hear pleas about sustained funding for three or five years. SAMH was no different in calling for a shift to a five-year statutory minimum contract length. Caroline Lamb, how confident are you that we can get to such a place? Year in, year out, the committee hears pleas for funding to be sustained for three or five years. Are we able to get anywhere near to doing that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 12 December 2023
Willie Coffey
We understand that 105 buildings are in the pilot phase of the programme. Where are we in relation to the assessment and remediation of the buildings that have been identified?
