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 3697 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
That is correct. That is great. Does Hannah Axon want to come in?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
I think that Hannah Axon wants to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
We are having technical difficulties again. I will go over to Simon Burt, who can hear us loud and clear. If we can fix Jillian’s connection, we will do that. Simon, you have some views on that IJB structure thing.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Simon was nodding during that answer from Hannah.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Great.
Willie Coffey has another area that he wants to explore with you, so I hand over to him.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Finally, last but not least, please introduce yourself, Tracey.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Does Public Health Scotland dig into the reasons why there are such stark variances in areas that cover similar population types?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
I do not know whether you saw the evidence session that we had last week. Kirsten Urquhart from Young Scot took part and, regarding young people, said:
“going on TikTok is not the same as knowing where to find and how to use a mental health support tool.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 9 November, c.9.]
In other words, she was saying that, among younger adults, there were issues around whether they could access online appointments or whether they, too, would prefer face-to-face appointments.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
It is also in line with the Christie commission principles about early intervention being absolutely critical, which we talk about so much at the Public Audit Committee. Thank you for that. Simon Burt and Jo Gibson want to come in on that question, too.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 23 November 2023
Richard Leonard
A couple of you have mentioned funding. That leads me to ask about the impact of last year’s emergency budget review, which led to a £38 million cut in mental health funding for 2022-23. There was also a £65 million cut in funding for improving primary care services. We know that primary care GPs are principally—almost always—people’s route of entry to adult mental health services. Does anyone want to reflect on how you have coped with that, the impact of the cut and whether it has affected your ability to provide sustainable and effective adult mental health services, including at a primary care level? Simon Burt can start off on that question, and I hope that others will contribute after that.
