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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Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Annual Report and Accounts for the Year to 31 March 2024
Meeting date: 24 June 2024
Richard Leonard
I am not asking about year-by-year changes relating to the national fraud initiative, because those costs in your budget are entirely predictable. I am asking why you asked for a budget of a certain amount for legal and professional fees, for example, when you spent substantially less than that in that year. The issue is, in part, about transparency, but it is also about credibility when you come to us to ask for a budget this year.
Meeting of the Commission
Audit Scotland Annual Report and Accounts for the Year to 31 March 2024
Meeting date: 24 June 2024
Richard Leonard
Good morning, everybody. On that last point, we have heard figures from 40 per cent up to 48 per cent or 49 per cent. What is your target? What kind of completion rates of audits were there before the pandemic, for example? You mentioned that some of this is about catching up, as the work was knocked off its path because of the pandemic and the very difficult circumstances that everybody was in at that point. What are your targets? What would you expect?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
Why are you so resistant to doing that? Over a year ago, you were sat there and you and I had an exchange about the Auditor General’s recommendation to produce annual reports that would give greater transparency and clarity about whether progress was being made. You said—rather dismissively, I think—that you were not really interested in what you described as “a dry annual report.” Why do you have such resistance to the idea of openly publishing an annual summary of progress being made or not?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
You understand why, to us as the Public Audit Committee, it is unsatisfactory that, in this year’s report, the Auditor General had to repeat a recommendation. On the recommendation to
“Publish annual progress updates on the reform of services”,
under the heading “Limited progress”, he said:
“We repeat the recommendation in this report.”
Reform is the watchword of the new Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, so why have you not come up with the standard of reporting that the Auditor General thinks is required?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
On the 2023 report, the Auditor General, in a fairly stark summary, said that there was
“no single overall vision for how health services will look in future.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 21 March 2024; c 36.]
When I raised that with the then First Minister at a meeting of the Conveners Group in the Parliament, he said:
“I respectfully disagree with the Auditor General on that point”.
Where do you stand on that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
Okay. Finally, I will take you back to the cabinet secretary’s vision and therefore, I presume, to the Government’s vision. The cabinet secretary told Parliament that he had outlined his vision to Cabinet colleagues before he made his statement. He also spoke about the establishment of ministerial task forces, expert reference groups and stakeholder advisory groups. What are they going to do?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
Okay. I invite Graham Simpson to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
Okay. I am not sure that I entirely understand that, but that is probably a reflection on me and not you, director general.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
The deputy convener has questions on a number of areas.
10:00Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2023”
Meeting date: 20 June 2024
Richard Leonard
You mentioned general levels of inflation, which have been high in the past couple of years, although they have come down a bit more recently. However, we are talking about an increase of 400 per cent, and more, in the expected cost of the construction of seven of those national treatment centres, are we not?
