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 3314 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Richard Leonard
You mentioned commissioning, the workforce and reward, and we have a series of questions on those issues, which we will come to.
First, a striking thing about the briefing is that you say how important it is that service users’ perspectives and voices are seen and heard. There is a suggestion that, at the moment, those are not seen or heard as much as they might be. Are you aware of work being carried out by the Scottish Government that seeks to bring in the views of service users, their families and people who receive care, so that, in turn, they can inform the strategic planning of social care in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Antony. That was helpful.
Another piece of legislation that Parliament passed on which you also reflect in the briefing is the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016, which provides for rights for unpaid carers. In your briefing, you reflect on a survey—from 2019, admittedly—that was carried out by the Coalition of Carers in Scotland. We should, of course, bear it in mind that there are 700,000 unpaid carers, so we are talking about a huge part of the population. The survey found that of those 700,000 people—or, I presume, a sample of them—
“only 16 per cent ... knew of the Act and what rights it provides; 33 per cent had heard of it but did not know what it was about; and 51 per cent had never heard of”
the act or the rights that it bestowed. Does not that highlight an issue that clearly needs to be addressed? What, as far as you are aware, is the Government doing to address the fact that, although there is an act of Parliament that gives unpaid carers rights, many of them are ignorant of those rights?
Public Audit Committee
“Social care briefing”
Meeting date: 3 March 2022
Richard Leonard
We have questions covering the range of issues that are raised in the briefing, which is extensive and raises matters of concern. Not least of those is the fact that about £5.2 billion of public expenditure is currently invested in social care, yet we have the issues of concern that the report highlights and draws us towards. You say that we have increasing demand and demographic changes, and that there is still a lot of unmet need.
I want to begin by looking at the sustainability of the social care system. You make it clear in the briefing that, although the Parliament in this session will legislate for the creation of a national care service, there is a degree of urgency around the action that is needed to tackle some of the unmet needs and some of the challenges that social care providers and the social care workforce face. In fact, at one point, your briefing says that the system is “near-crisis”. Is the Scottish Government putting sufficient resources into social care?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I think that it would be helpful. I know that other processes are under way, but there is an important aspect to the issue for the Public Audit Committee, which is about the decision-making process. The Lord Advocate admitted liability in court, which therefore had financial consequences. If you could get back to us on that, that would be very helpful.
I will move on. Colin Beattie has a series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 3 is a review of the section 22 report arising from the 2020-21 audit of Scottish Canals. I welcome our witnesses for this part of the meeting. The Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, is joining us in the committee room. Graeme Greenhill, who is senior manager in performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland, and Joanne Brown, who is a partner with Grant Thornton UK LLP, are online. I think that Grant Thornton UK LLP carried out the audit on the ground with Scottish Canals.
I invite the Auditor General to give an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Is there a cast-iron guarantee that those accounts will be published, or are you now caveating that? I am bound to say to you that your predecessor sat before this committee’s equivalent in 2016 and gave an undertaking to provide whole public sector Scottish Government consolidated accounts, and we are still waiting in 2022.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I am sure that we will reflect on your evidence on that subject and we will decide what we think the next steps should be.
Permanent secretary, you have mentioned the national performance framework a few times. What plans do you have to improve performance reporting in the consolidated accounts?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
We are coming to the last lap, permanent secretary. Sharon Dowey has a couple of questions to put to you, and then Willie Coffey will come back in before we finish.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
For the final question or two, I hand over to Willie Coffey.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Joanne—do you want to come in?
