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 3801 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
I do not know whether you can answer this. Why was it that, when the Audit Scotland report was published, a joint press release, or a joint response, was put out by COSLA, the Scottish Government, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers—senior local authority officials—and Fiona Duncan? Does COSLA not have any differentiated analysis of what has happened, where responsibility rests and so on?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Your example of the homelessness pathway was very clear. If we have time, we will come back to your other example.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie, do you have any further questions?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
I am rather surprised at the analysis that, if you have a timeframe of 12 months for a review, it means that everyone is sidetracked into doing only that for 12 months. The whole basis of the Promise is meeting a promise by 2030. That is based on a date target, is it not?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you, director general. For the record, could I ask whether the Scottish Government accepts the findings and recommendations of the Audit Scotland and Accounts Commission report?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
I ask because I noticed that you issued a press release in which you said that you take the report “seriously”, and that
“As an organisation we will make sure to review all the recommendations.”
What does that mean?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay, but, again, to be clear about it, the recommendations that are contained in the report set some very clear actions to be taken over the next six months, the next 12 months and so on. Do you intend to implement those recommendations?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
You will know better than most, Mr McKinlay, that there is a process involved in the production of one of these reports. I think that Ms Duncan refers to it in her letter of 4 September, which she has kindly shared with us and in which she talks about a “clearance draft”. She has given commentary on a clearance draft, pre-publication, as part of the process in which the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission very nobly invite the organisations that they are reporting on to give them any comment, presumably to fact-check and so on.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
You will understand that we are here this morning primarily to discuss the report produced by the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, but if you wish to refer to other reports, we will, of course, listen.
Mr McKinlay, from the point of view of The Promise Scotland, do you accept the findings and recommendations of the report?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
“Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”
Meeting date: 10 December 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay—thank you.
I said earlier that one of our committee members—Joe FitzPatrick—will be putting his questions to you via videolink, and I now invite him to ask his questions.
