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 2845 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Colin Beattie
Do you agree with the assessment that the approaches of the two Governments are “wildly different”?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
What timescale are we looking at for that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
My response is that it appears, from the Auditor General’s report, to be the case that despite all the initiatives that you talk about, people are still having difficulty in accessing a complicated system. What is going to happen in the future, over and above what you have stated, to address that concern?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
Will people will still have a choice, for sure?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
How difficult is it to recruit into the workforce?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
Next year?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
Okay. Thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
I will cover access to mental health support and services. Caroline Lamb said earlier that—if I remember correctly—spending on mental health had doubled since 2021, but the Auditor General highlights in his report that many people find accessing support and services to be “slow and complicated”. What are you doing to deal with that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
Therefore, the bottom line is that we do not yet have a strategy in place to deal with the feedback on concerns about the complexities of access to services.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Colin Beattie
On another facet, in committee evidence sessions concerns have been raised about use of digital services, which Caroline mentioned. Is the Scottish Government still committed to giving people a choice in how they access services so that no one is forced to use a digital service?
In part, that arises from rural concerns. People who live in the country are away from population centres and, generally, from the sort of facilities that might be beneficial to them. They have to travel long distances for some services, so there might be pressure on them to use digital services rather than travel to the city for face-to-face services. How are you going to handle that? Digital services are not right for everybody.
