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 3298 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Is the Government looking at primary legislation or at making changes to the oversight and delivery model?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
This goes back to at least 2018; I remember raising the matter in Parliament back in the spring of 2018. The last time I spoke to families with lived experience, they were still perplexed, at best, that insufficient progress appears to have been made and that people are still not getting access to the services that they need. Do you recognise that picture?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
In the interests of time, I will move things on and invite Colin Beattie to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I will finish up by asking a little bit more about the funding situation, but I have another question before I get to that. You mentioned that many mental health issues are not, at the end of it, directly your responsibility as the director general of health and social care, but are a function of inequality in society, of economic and social deprivation, and of a lack of access to services. Will you tell us a bit more about what the Government can do, or is doing, to take a more whole-system approach to the matter?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
That is the community wealth building model, is it not?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Can you give us reassurance that that is not just a passing fad and that it will be part of the approach to health and social care?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
When I see a figure of 10 per cent being set out as a goal in Government policy, I do not see that as just being about amounts; I see it as also being about proportions.
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2024-25
Meeting date: 11 December 2023
Richard Leonard
So, what happens between now and April 2025?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2024-25
Meeting date: 11 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That would certainly be a useful thing to do.
One of the other areas where I was struggling a bit to make the comparisons and to understand the narrative that is in the submission to us is around the estate strategy. I think that Stuart Dennis might have clarified matters a little for me earlier, but just so that I am clear about this, if I look at the overall figure for property, we are told that there is going to be an estimated financial saving of in the region of £2.2 million over a 10-year period. That is an average saving of £220,000 a year. We are also told in paragraph 78 that the Glasgow accommodation cost rise is in the region of £298,000. I want to make sure that I am comparing apples with apples. That is a one-year figure versus the 10-year figure for the net saving. It is helpful if the units are immediately comparable, but I am not sure that they are in that case. Could you develop that and explain to us what the increased costs are, what the decreased costs are and what the net position is over a one-year, a three-year and a 10-year period?
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Budget Proposal 2024-25
Meeting date: 11 December 2023
Richard Leonard
You are talking about a revenue to capital budget transfer during this financial year to help to meet the cost of that change. How will that be funded in future years? As I understand it, any savings that we get will not really start to accrue until 2025, so it will not be next year but the year after that. Is my interpretation correct?
