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 3519 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Let me finish, please.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
The last word goes to you, Janie McCusker.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
We have been speaking about whistleblowing, for example. I am just asking whether, if there are cultural issues that mean that you are not able to retain staff at any level, you are able to monitor that.
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
I will pick up straight away on governance arrangements, which was one of the themes in that introduction. In the report, you say:
“The Scottish Government should: finalise governance arrangements for the Heat in Buildings Strategy programme as soon as possible”.
That is the expression that you use—there is a degree of urgency. That seems to be instructive, when we look at some of the dates in the report and the scale of the challenge that is to be met by those dates. Can you tell us what governance arrangements the Scottish Government needs to finalise at this stage?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Have you had an opportunity to evaluate the evaluation framework? Do you have any sense of whether the monitoring and evaluation framework that was published back in November will be up to the job that has been set for it?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
The other thing is a delivery plan, is it not? I think that there is talk of the production of a delivery plan by the end of this calendar year. Do you consider that to be a reasonable timescale, or is it coming too late, when you look at the timescale and targets that have been set? What is your opinion on that?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
One of the factors at play relates to the on-going consultation on the proposed legislation, which I understand will come before the Parliament before the end of the year, and concerns the housing market. There is an expectation that, if someone buys a property, a condition will be put on the purchase such that, within a certain timeframe, the new owner will convert. That could have some interesting consequences, could it not?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
We will have two evidence sessions this morning. First, we will consider the Auditor General for Scotland’s section 22 report entitled “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”.
I welcome our witnesses from NHS Forth Valley, who have joined us in the committee room. Amanda Croft is the interim chief executive. Alongside her is Janie McCusker, who is here on her last day as chair of the board. You are very welcome—thanks for joining us. Andrew Murray is the medical director on the board; Kevin Reith is the director of human resources; and Professor Frances Dodd is the executive nurse director.
The committee has quite a number of questions to put to you. Before we get to them, I ask Amanda Croft to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
You refer to the note that you sent us in advance of your appearance here today. There was a lot of managerial jargon in it, and it was quite long. When it came to staff relations, it mainly just discussed whistleblowing. We all accept that whistleblowing is part of a suite of ways for the staff’s voices to be heard, but I would have thought that whistleblowing public interest disclosures were in extremis. As I read it, the point that is being made in the external reviews, including the HIS review, is that there are not good, normalised, routine communications with the staff—including through the staff trade unions, I presume. I do not know whether Mr Reith, as the human resources director, wishes to comment on that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Richard Leonard
Perhaps Professor Dodd could come in briefly on the point about staff relations under the HIS report. Other questions about the report are still to come.
