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: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I suppose that it also depends, does it not, on the model that is chosen? At the moment, it is envisaged that the national care service will, largely, be a commissioning model, whereas, at one time, we were told that it would be the modern-day equivalent of the foundation of the national health service, which is a very different model from the one that has been put forward in the bill.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I will take you back to what you said in reply to Bill Kidd’s opening questions. Did you suggest that the figure in the Audit Scotland report—that only three of the 14 territorial NHS boards were expected to break even—was just a snapshot at the wrong time?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
This next question might be for Caroline Lamb. One of the criticisms, or part of the analysis, in the Audit Scotland report is that one of the flaws in the NHS recovery plan, which was launched in August 2021, was that it did not come as a result of proper consultation with the territorial health boards. There was a commitment—perhaps a political commitment—that, within 100 days of the election in 2021, the NHS recovery plan would be published, but the consequence of that, according to the analysis in the Audit Scotland report, is that the health boards were not involved. Is that a matter of regret for you?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
We have been told a few times that the report is from a moment in time, but it came out in February, and we are now in May, so it was not that long ago. Before I bring in Sharon Dowey, can I just ask whether you are planning to revisit the NHS recovery plan, which is one of the headline recommendations in the Auditor General’s report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I presume, however, that you agree with the recommendation in the report that the Scottish Government and NHS boards need to work “more collaboratively” in the future.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I will bring in Craig Hoy in a second. We have spoken about the number of GPs, and about recruitment and retention and so on. Last year, the committee was quite exercised by the broader picture of GP data, which we took up with you in correspondence. I can characterise it as follows: on the one hand, we have GPs saying, “We’re seeing more patients than ever”, and, on the other hand, our postbags are full of correspondence from people saying, “I can’t get an appointment with a GP.” We were quite keen to have transparency on that. We certainly corresponded about an oversight group that you had put together that was, I think, an attempt to get into the granular detail. Can you update us on that work?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I am sorry to labour the point, but what is the budget, for example, for the Larbert site? What is the budget for the NHS Golden Jubilee site? Where do they now sit?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
The financial memorandum has been questioned by the Auditor General, and it was also questioned pretty heavily by the Finance and Public Administration Committee, which told you that you needed to go back and do your sums again and come back with a revised financial memorandum. I cannot remember a time when it was necessary for a Government department to revise its financial memorandum because it was seen to be so out of sync with what people estimated the costs would be. Do you feel embarrassed about that?
09:30Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
You accept, though, that there has been a delay.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 4 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I am sure that the Auditor General was not suggesting “a dry annual report”, but was, rather, suggesting something that would be informative and would help people to understand the progress that has been made. We have highlighted some of the areas where we have concerns, but as you said at the start, some extremely critical work is going on—thanks, not least, to the workforce. The committee adds our thanks to yours to the staff who do such incredible work and provide services day in, day out and night in, night out.
On that note, I close this morning’s session. Caroline Lamb, Richard McCallum and John Burns, thank you for your input, which has been very useful. You said that you might get back to us with a bit more detail on some areas; that would be most welcome.
10:34 Meeting continued in private until 10:59.