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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 2597 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Colin Beattie
On the back of what Anne Rowan is saying, it is worth highlighting from the report that there is huge variability in primary care and mental health services, third sector services and peer support across Scotland. I do not know to what extent that arises from greater or lesser knowledge and awareness of the different forms of support that exist, but I would be interested to hear any comments on that and to hear about anything that could be done better. How do we join things up? Anne Rowan has highlighted the point that not everything is joined up. How do we fix that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Colin Beattie
I want to look at some aspects of access to support. I will start with GPs, so I will put Chris Williams on the rack first. In my experience as an MSP, we get people coming in who have mental health issues, to a greater or lesser extent. Usually, we pass the information back to their GP surgery, and we get zero feedback, for confidentiality reasons. Often, the same person is back a month later, still with the same problem, and we never know what has happened.
Although we do not hear in the majority of cases, anecdotally, we hear that, as long as the person is not a danger to others, the surgery is not fussed. However, someone who has a belief that they are under surveillance by the police or MI5 or whatever may be very distressed, because they truly believe that. It seems that nothing is being done in that respect.
I am asking about the role of GPs. What support do you need to better support the mental health needs of patients? Where is the break there?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 16 November 2023
Colin Beattie
I will come back on one or two of those points. Between primary healthcare and moving into secondary care, who does the triage? How does it work? Who decides on the priority for a particular case?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
I would like to touch on one or two issues around skills and expand a little bit on what has been discussed so far. There has always been an assumption that the transition from the energy sector into the renewables sector will be smooth, and yet evidence that we have taken in this committee previously indicates that that is not happening at the pace that was anticipated. It leads us, then, to other industries and other sectors needing to develop skills such as, for example, the construction industry for retrofitting the built environment.
The Construction Industry Training Board estimates that to meet net zero targets, an additional 4,600 project managers, as well as 4,300 plumbers and heating, ventilation and air conditioning workers will be needed in Scotland by 2028. That is a lot of bodies. The other sectors in the industry are all showing huge deficits in the number of bodies that they can recruit versus the number that they need. Is the skills pipeline that has been set up to deliver those wider skills requirements across the different sectors working? Is it up to the quality that is needed? Where will the workers come from, given the acute shortage of workers, particularly skilled workers, across the economy? John Boland, perhaps I can ask you first.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
You spoke about electricians there. One thing that has been at the back of my mind is how transferable to the renewables industry all the jobs that are available in the oil and gas sector are.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
Emma Harrick, can I turn to you?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
For those of you who were present during the previous witnesses’ evidence, I note that the questions that I asked I did not get definitive responses, so I am hoping that I will get better answers here. We have talked about the energy sector and the anticipation that people will transition from jobs in oil and gas to jobs in renewables, although in recent times certainly, according to the evidence that we have received, that has not been as quick and has not been at the volume that was expected.
On skills in other industries—for example, construction and retrofitting the built environment—research from the Construction Industry Training Board estimates that to meet net zero targets there is a need for 4,600 project managers, as well as 4,300 plumbers and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning workers by 2028, which is not long. We know from other evidence that 30,000 engineers are needed for maintenance of heat pumps and solar panels.
Does the skills pipeline that has been set up have the capacity to deliver the required volume in the timescales that people want? Secondly, do the required people exist—in other words, do they exist physically? There seem to be shortages in almost every sector, so how will we get the people? Are we going to buy them in from elsewhere, in which case we would have a price issue around scarcity? Perhaps Gordon McGuinness can come in.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
Is there or is there not capacity within the pipeline, as it is?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
The pipeline cannot be delivered without more money.
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (North-east and Moray)
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Colin Beattie
Almost every sector of industry is talking about a lack of resources and a lack of physical bodies.
