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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 2321 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 21 April 2022
Willie Coffey
I want to follow up on Craig Hoy’s question about funding and sustainability.
If you look at the figures that the Auditor General presented to us on adult social care spend, you can see significant increases in the spend over the past 10 years—in fact, it has gone up by 22 per cent. Caroline Lamb said a moment ago that we plan to spend another 25 per cent more. The bottom-line question for me is whether the additional funding and the whole-service redesign that is coming through the national care service will be adequate to address the concerns that the Auditor General expressed about the future sustainability of the service. Could you give us your view on that, Caroline, and some reassurance, if you can?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
I heard clearly and really appreciated those good, lengthy and detailed answers. I will not pick out individual projects—I think that Craig Hoy might refer to a few key ones later on—but going back to Geoff Huggins’s comments on the benefits of good design, I would suggest that, if you have good design and a clear specification for a piece of software, you are in with a good chance of delivering on time and on budget. Is that not the case? Are you able to assure the committee that we are in a good place with the range of projects that are being worked on—a figure of more than 500 was mentioned—and that we know that the design, specifications and skills mix are good enough to deliver those projects on time and on budget? In short, are all the projects that are on our books well defined and capable of being delivered on time and on budget?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Can you assure us that we are not likely to see another i6 project any time soon?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
That would have to happen during a discussion about ICT, wouldn’t it, convener? [Laughter.]
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
You also note that the Government has not been particularly clear on the level of spending that is being targeted at early intervention and prevention. Can you say a few words about that? What should the Government be doing to clarify or improve that aspect?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you very much for that. Back to you, convener.
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
That is a really important point. I know from local experience that, during Covid in particular, when people were coming out of the criminal justice system, they were finding it difficult to access support services. If we can do anything to reinstate and recover that aspect of the service, that would contribute, at least in part, to turning things around.
My last question is about the governance aspect. Your report reminds us that
“The Scottish Government and COSLA agreed eight recommendations to improve the governance and accountability”
of various services, leading to the development of the partnership delivery framework for alcohol and drug partnerships. Could you say a wee bit more about how that has been progressing, please?
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you, convener. I hope that the videolink will survive the next five minutes or so.
Auditor General, I have a couple of questions on early intervention and prevention, and I will perhaps ask one on governance arrangements.
Over the years, I have worked with a number of drug and alcohol projects in my constituency. If the people there had one key ask, it was to have a flexible and quickly accessible service that they could call on to get help when they needed it. There has been good progress in reporting on this matter, certainly in my constituency. Do you recognise that as an issue that has popped up in your discussions and analysis? How does it fit in with the work that the Scottish Government is trying to do on early intervention? It seems to me to be a huge issue for the people in Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley. It is leading to more suicides than we would like to have, obviously. It is a serious issue. It has been raised with me several times that direct and fast access to help and support services is crucial.
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
Good morning, panel. I want to ask a couple of questions on progress with the technical assurance framework.
The witnesses are bound to recall the factors and key reasons for ICT projects failing in the past: project planning, the lack of application of quality-management processes and skills identification. Indeed, skills problems and the skills mix have always been problems. The committee felt that there were a number of issues that, over the years, have led to projects running over time and over budget. The i6 project, for example, was particularly bad in that respect. We saw how things tended to be rushed from the start, how projects were poorly defined and how too many changes were made along the way, all of which led to overruns. As I recall, the i6 project itself was abandoned altogether.
I wonder whether Geoff Huggins and Donny McGillivray can give us an overview of where we are now with all those issues. Have we captured the problems? Are the processes that we embraced and the various other frameworks in place and working towards successful delivery?
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Willie Coffey
You also note that there are a number of competing projects locally. I am sure that there are projects in all members’ constituencies that are competing for support and funding to tackle these issues. To what extent is that a problem that is preventing us from getting to where we need to be? I encounter it quite a lot in my area; groups are almost arguing with one another that they should be receiving financial support to deliver these services. There does not seem to be any clear way through this in relation to who delivers the best solution on the ground.
