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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
If you search by an individual session, the list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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.
Displaying 2341 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Willie Coffey
That is a lovely story to share with the committee—thank you.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Willie Coffey
For years, have we just never asked people how they feel about the treatment and services that they have had?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Willie Coffey
I have a question about the target that 10 per cent of front-line health spending should be on mental health services by 2026. There is a lack of clarity about what counts as the front line and what counts as mental health services, and we need clarity if we are to properly report on that target. Where are we with that? Are we making any progress in making things a bit clearer so that boards can report for us?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 28 September 2023
Willie Coffey
I look forward to that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
After so many years in the Parliament listening to that argument, usually at this committee, year on year, about ring fencing, it is great to hear that that flexibility is there.
Councillor Hagmann, what is your view on that, particularly in the workforce planning area? Is the flexibility there to help local authorities with the workforce planning issues that we face?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Okay. Many thanks for that.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Thanks. Minister, do you have a view on that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Okay. Thank you very much for those responses.
Thank you, convener. I hope to come back in later in the meeting.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
I will ask a couple of questions: one on absence rates, which is probably for Katie Hagmann, and one on the ageing workforce issue that was covered last week.
Councillor Hagmann, we heard last week that absence rates, particularly among non-teaching staff—we talked about that area earlier—have significantly increased in the recent dataset. Is COSLA doing any work to understand what is going on there and the reasons for that? Is it due to long Covid, general health issues or stress? How do you gather and collate that information, and, more importantly, what are you able to do about it? If you cannot help us with the details now, the committee would appreciate any follow-up information that you have to help us understand it.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 26 September 2023
Willie Coffey
Is the picture of absence changing significantly in any way as a result of the past three years, with Covid? If so, can you pin down a particular reason for that?