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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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I think that the answer to my question is no. Although that will be mopped up as part of the national care service review, you do not necessarily expect any fundamental reform of the architecture of adult mental health services.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I go back to a point that I alighted on very briefly, which is based on the evidence that we took from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. You seem to paint a picture of things going pretty well, but we were told that the system is hugely overreliant on locums. Do you have a strategy for tackling that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
A particular occupational group that we have not yet spoken about explicitly is community link workers. When Christiana Melam from the National Association of Link Workers gave evidence to the committee on 16 November, she basically said that link workers feel quite undervalued in the system, and cited their not even being listed as a group to be consulted in relation to statutory guidance for the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019. Caroline, what is your view on the role of community link workers?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I do not know whether you were sitting watching that 16 November evidence session with a cheque book in your hand, because the rise in funding for community link workers was announced at the same time as we were taking evidence on that issue.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Can I just clarify something for the record? We spoke at the beginning of the meeting about the £29.9 million cut, which would have an effect on primary care services and community link workers as part of that whole network. Are those community link worker positions protected from the likely cuts that are coming down the track?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I will take us back to one of the fundamentals that we have discussed a few times this morning. Do you believe that NHS boards are on track to meet the target of 10 per cent of all front-line spending being on mental health services?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
In other words, that might mean a shift from some areas of current expenditure in acknowledgment that mental health is a growing issue that should be a central part of the national health service’s work, perhaps in a way in which it has not historically been a part.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes. To go back to a point that Graham Simpson made earlier, we recognise that some of the data is required for management purposes, but the committee would strongly support the maximum amount of data being in the public domain so that people can understand what is going on and follow implementation of the policy and delivery of outcomes.
We have come to the end of our evidence session. I thank Alistair Cook, Gavin Gray and Caroline Lamb for being with us this morning. In particular, I thank you for coming to the committee room. Quite a few of our evidence sessions have been with people who have joined us remotely, which is not always easy. You might be surprised to learn that technology sometimes fails, although, on the whole, we have had really good evidence sessions.
Thank you very much for the time that you have given us this morning and for being so willing to answer the questions that we have put to you.
10:39 Meeting continued in private until 11:20.Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning. Welcome to the 33rd and, I assume, last meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023.
The first item on our agenda is a decision on whether to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Do we agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Presumably, you concede that taking nearly £30 million out of the budget, on top of taking £38 million out of it last year, will have an impact on services.
