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: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
Yes. One of the lessons that we have learned is that culture change is one thing, but it is keeping the culture change going that is probably the harder task.
My final question—I think that you alluded to this in answering Graham Simpson’s questions—is about how far there is to go through the assurance board process and so on. Again, when I had a briefing from the assurance board, which I think was as far back as May of last year, the expression that its members used was that they thought that there was a long way to go at that stage. We are now several months down the line, so that position might have been revised but, at that time, the assurance board was saying—I took a note of it—that there was no clear path to de-escalation. What is your assessment of that today?
10:30Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
I want to ask about one of those in particular: the spend on agency and bank staff. In his opening statement, the Auditor General mentioned elected representatives being briefed by the health board. I speak as one of the elected representatives who have had those briefings. One of the features of them, which I have been trying to interrogate, is the extent to which there has been a ballooning in spend by NHS Forth Valley on bank and agency staff.
Back in May 2023, it was reported that there had been an increase in spend, year on year, in the region of 70 or 71 per cent. By December 2023, at the last briefing that I attended, the figure that was being cited was a 46 per cent annual increase in spend on agency and bank staff. Could you give us your understanding of the reasons for such a big escalation in costs in that area on a year-on-year basis? What lies behind it? Do you have any sense of how that compares with the reliance of other health boards of a similar size on agency and bank staff?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
That is fine. I do not know whether I am asking you to break an embargo, but could you give us an early insight into how 70 per cent and 46 per cent increases in spend compare with the figures that you have been unearthing in your preparation of the overall NHS report?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
One of the inferences of what came out of the Healthcare Improvement Scotland report is that, because of things such as poor leadership, there might be higher-than-average levels of absenteeism, and the figure for bank and agency expenditure might be a function of that, but we are being told this morning that that is not the case. I want to try to clarify that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
I think that Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s initial report identified an excessive reliance on bank and agency staff as one concern. I think that it used the description of “serious concerns” in its report, and that was one of its serious concerns.
We now turn to Colin Beattie, who has some more questions to put, and perhaps an initial observation to start us off.
09:30Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
Did you say 8 per cent?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
Picking up on some of the themes that were developing there, Graham Simpson has some questions on the assurance board, leadership and culture.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
We are drawing towards a close, but I have just a couple of quick questions. Auditor General, you mentioned the importance of staff being listened to, and you referred, for example, to whistleblowing. However, is it not the case that staff being listened to is not just about individual whistleblowers using public interest disclosure, but that it is also about routine collective listening—for example, listening to trade unions and their health and safety forums—as well as partnership working?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
I wonder about that, though, based on your experience. I was quite taken aback when the assurance board said to me and other elected representatives who were taking part in that discussion that it could be years before de-escalation takes place. Is that the sense that you get? Is it the experience that we have had with other health boards that have been escalated to level 4?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 25 January 2024
Richard Leonard
The substantive item on our agenda is consideration of a section 22 report, “The 2022-23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”. I welcome our four witnesses: Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland; Pat Kenny, associate partner, audit and assurance, at Deloitte; Rebbecca McConnachie, senior manager at Deloitte; and Leigh Johnston, senior manager at Audit Scotland.
We have a number of questions to put to you, based on the report that was produced into the performance of NHS Forth Valley but, before we get to those, I invite the Auditor General to give a short opening statement.
