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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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
I want to take you back to the point about GPs. I am at a bit of a loss to understand why the issue is so problematic. Are GPs saying, “We’re so busy getting on with it that we don’t have time to record these things”? Are health boards asking them to do that? Are GPs saying, “We are independent organisations and we make our own determinations about what our priorities are”? Is the issue at the health board level? Why is there such a long-standing problem in finding out that information?
Given that, at the moment, GPs are defending their position and are often under attack because people feel that they are not getting access to them, it seems to me that, if GPs were able to demonstrate with evidence the extent to which they are meeting patient demand, that would serve their cause better, rather than there being a complete absence of data.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. Before we begin, I remind members, witnesses and staff who are present that social distancing rules apply in the Parliament, and that they should wear face coverings when entering, leaving or moving around the committee room.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, particularly for that very helpful clarification. Indeed, Willie Coffey will be asking questions on that particular subject later in the meeting.
Sharon Dowey, who, as I said earlier, is joining us via videolink, has a couple of questions to start us off.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 3 is a discussion of the Audit Scotland report “NHS in Scotland 2021”. I am delighted to say that we are joined in the room by the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle—welcome, Auditor General. Alongside him, we have Leigh Johnston, senior manager and Derek Hoy, audit manager, Audit Scotland. Eva Thomas-Tudo had hoped to be with us, but unfortunately she is not able to attend.
I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement, after which we will ask what is quite a wide range of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
I read in the report that a short-life working group is being established. Again, is that sufficient to properly monitor the impact of the measures?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Again, I think that we will come back to that issue.
You said earlier that one of the central recommendations of your report relates to the very unequal impact that Covid-19 has had. At paragraph 58, you reflect on your “NHS in Scotland 2020” report from last year. You note that you relied on data that was provided by National Records of Scotland and the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory, and you conclude—fairly starkly, I thought—that
“Those from the most deprived”
backgrounds
“and from some ethnic minority backgrounds were more likely to die from Covid-19.”
You go on to state that
“Further data has shown that disabled people were more likely to have died from Covid-19”,
and that
“Adults with learning disabilities were also at a greater risk of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19.”
That is quite harrowing, is it not? To be frank, it is something of an indictment of our society that that is a feature of the pandemic.
You go on to say, a couple of paragraphs later, that you reviewed the situation again this year and found that there was a
“disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on certain groups”.
You say that that has led the Scottish Government to address that situation in some measure by focusing on tackling health inequalities. However, you go on to state:
“but there is no overarching strategy.”
Do you want to say a bit more about that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
I will move on now, as we want to ask questions about the “NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026”. I ask Willie Coffey to come in.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
On that note, I draw the evidence session to a close. Thanks very much, Auditor General, for the evidence that you have led, and thanks to Leigh Johnston and Derek Hoy, who have also contributed this morning. It is greatly appreciated.
I close the public part of the meeting.
11:06 Meeting continued in private until 11:38.Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
The report draws to our attention the additional funding that has been provided for the express purpose of attending to staff wellbeing. I think that the figures are £8 million and £4 million, which does not sound like an awful lot of money compared with the overall NHS budget. Are those amounts addressing the scale of the challenge?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Richard Leonard
I am sure that this committee and other committees in the Parliament might well return to that point in the future.
I will move on to another area of interest in the report: long Covid rehabilitation. The report says that
“The Scottish Government has funded nine studies to develop the clinical knowledge base”
for understanding long Covid. Could you give us a bit more information about those studies, including on timescales and how the results will be reported to the Scottish Government to inform its future decision making in the area?
