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: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
Maybe—or maybe not. Ultimately, if we are creating these institutions and if Parliament is legislating to set up a way of delivering services, we should expect the leadership that is necessary to drive that forward to be in place. I guess that that is what we, as the Public Audit Committee, expect, too.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
Good.
I am conscious of the time, and we still have some important areas to cover. As we are on the topic of local government, I will ask quickly about the Verity house agreement. Auditor General, I will start with you. Can you give us your assessment whether that agreement will make a difference to the delivery of mental health services?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
That was helpful.
Turning again to progress towards improving mental health services, can you tell us a bit more about the support that the Scottish Government has been providing to NHS boards to help them meet their psychological therapies waiting time targets, as highlighted in the report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
You mentioned Grampian, but Tayside is also highlighted in the report. Tayside has been the subject of not just local but national interest, because of some tragic cases of people completing suicide, for example. In that case study, you characterise things as making “good progress”. Subsequent to the Strang report, an oversight and assurance group was put together to ensure that the health board was implementing the Strang review recommendations—there were, I think, 51 of them. I read the oversight and assurance group report when it came out in January, and my reading of it was that it echoed some of the points that Strang had made, in that there was an overreporting of progress by NHS Tayside in the area. I think that, on 17 of the 51 recommendations, the group took issue with the health board’s view of how well it was doing. Basically, it said to the board, “You’re not making the progress that you are stating that you are making.”
Do you want to reflect on that issue, given that it is mentioned in the report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
I appreciate that response.
We are pressed for time. I will bring in Willie Coffey, followed by Sharon Dowey, and then I will bring in Graham Simpson if we have time.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
The deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome to the 24th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on our agenda is for members to consider whether to take items 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
The main item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Auditor General for Scotland’s report on adult mental health, which was co-written with the Accounts Commission. I am pleased to welcome our witnesses: Auditor General Stephen Boyle; Leigh Johnston, senior manager, Audit Scotland; Eva Thomas-Tudo, audit manager, Audit Scotland; and Christine Lester, Accounts Commission.
We have a large number of questions to ask but, before we get on to those, I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you for that introduction. To go back to the starting point of the audit, the question that you set yourself was:
“How effectively are adult mental health services across Scotland being delivered?”
How would you summarise your answer to that critical question?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Richard Leonard
I will come on to ask about the focus groups in a second. Before I do so, I note that paragraph 15 in the report sets out the scale of the challenge that we face. It talks about what appear to be almost epidemic proportions, in that 22 per cent of the adult population
“may have a psychiatric disorder”.
You talk about the huge expansion in pressure and demand on services. For example,
“The number of police incidents relating to mental health increased by 62 per cent ...The Scottish Association for Mental Health ... reported a 50 per cent increase in demand for its information service”
and
“The number of calls to NHS 24’s 111 Mental Health Hub increased by 436 per cent”.
Those are startling figures, which are presumably placing huge pressure on the system. We might not have measured the outcomes, but we know something about the scale of the demand that there is.
Do you want to tell us a bit more about the qualitative information that you got from the focus groups that you met and what that told you about their experience?
