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 2321 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Your board paper said that you had completed only five actions. That is a huge jump in one month.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Are you confident that 89 per cent of the recommendations are completed?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Thanks. I leave it at that.
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Auditor General, the public perception of all this is not great. I do not think that we should still be hearing that lot of work needs to be done. We have heard that said before, and we are still hearing it now.
Constituents who talk to me about the transition say, “What are the solutions on offer? I do not know where to find them or who to talk to about them.” They ask whether there will be subsidy or other help to install whichever devices will be used. However, their main question is, “How much is this thing going to cost me to run?”
In your view, what will be the key sea-change element that will accelerate the transition? I think that I know what it will be: the cost of electricity, which is currently four times higher than that of gas. Even if an army of heat-pump engineers were to appear from somewhere, and even if we had great subsidy schemes on offer, people will still vote with their wallets and say, “No thanks—it’s too expensive.” If someone were to switch just now from consuming gas to consuming electricity to heat their house, their electricity charge ratio would be four times higher than it is at the minute. Is that not the key challenge that we face in effecting at pace the transition that we need?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Good morning to everyone. One of the issues that were raised in the Auditor General’s report was the very high prison population in Forth Valley. You did not mention that, Amanda, but I want to give you the opportunity to share with the committee your views on the impact of having to deal with that disproportionately high prison population in the health board. What impact does that have on the health board’s finances and performance delivery? I wanted to give you an opportunity to set the record straight for us.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Amanda Croft said that you are funded for the prison population. However, you have nearly a quarter of Scotland’s entire prison population in your health board area. Does that mean that you need additional, different and more demanding skills that other health boards might not need in order to deliver care for the ageing population that Frances Dodd described?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Does the additional burden that is caused by prisoner numbers have a direct impact on your financial performance?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Amanda Croft, I listened to your comment about the progress that has been made on the 51 recommendations. When colleagues were asking questions, I was able to take a look at your escalation update report, which was given to the board only a month ago. It says that five of the recommendations have been completed, but you said that many of them have been completed. It also says that 14 recommendations have been moved into an assurance and improvement plan but that 32 are still outstanding. Would you mind clarifying what the actual position is for the committee?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
Okay. Who reviews that performance in order to be assured that the picture is genuine? Who does that verification?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Willie Coffey
That is the fundamental, bottom-line question for me. Consumers do not control the price of electricity or gas, nor does the Scottish Government. We rely on co-operation from our partners in Government. Electricity prices in the UK are among the highest in the world, and that is the bottom line here. If we tell people that they should make the transition to help with progress towards net zero, they will reply, “How much is it going to cost me?” In my view, some work needs to be done to reduce the cost of electricity.
People to whom I talk ask why, when we are producing more than 100 per cent of our electricity needs in Scotland from renewable sources, it is still costing them a fortune to use that electricity. Why is that? Energy companies are still generating and creating profits from that, but the public arenae getting the benefit. For me, doing something about the price is the key to getting the transition rolling faster. All the rest of the factors are important, but they willnae chip away at the 1.8 million houses wi gas central heating boilers if people think that the cost to replace them is going to be excessively high.
