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 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.
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
We will get on to data and evidence shortly.
One of the clear recommendations of the report that we are discussing concerns the fact that there is a great inequality in the impact of mental ill health. In one of the evidence sessions, we considered the impact on the minority ethnic community and other marginalised groups. Will taking money out of the mental health services budget not also have a disproportionately unequal impact on the communities that are most marginalised and probably most dependent on mental health services?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
There is a joint Convention of Scottish Local Authorities-Scottish Government mental health and wellbeing strategy that refers to the specific needs of minority ethnic groups. However, during the course of our inquires, we have been told that there is no action in the accompanying delivery plan to provide culturally sensitive mental health services. Can you explain why that is?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Those groups have said to us that a plan does not exist.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
On that point, how do you respond to the evidence that we were given by Dr Srireddy from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, who said:
“We made the shift, we shut the asylums and we have moved into the community—but then we kind of lost interest.â€â€”[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 16 November 2023; c 18.]
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
The Royal College told us about the reliance on locums and other members are going to ask about the workforce plan.
Dr Srireddy also said that governance has been a real challenge and spoke of fragmentation. You may not agree, but his view and his members’ perspective was that mental health was, in his words, an “afterthoughtâ€.
We also have a pretty clear message in the report from the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, in which key message 3 says:
“The system is fragmented, and accountability is complex, with multiple bodies involved in funding and providing mental health services. This causes complications and delays in developing services that focus on individuals’ needs.â€
Those are quite serious charges. How do you respond to those?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Without batting in defence of homogeneity, we are looking for a bit of consistency, and there seems to be a very mixed picture across the country. That is why, as a committee, we wonder whether you have thought about some of the evidence that we took, in which there was a concern about the legal framework that integration joint boards, for example, operate in. Are you considering reviewing the governance arrangements to see whether they can be simplified, be made more effective, provide better value for money and be more accessible to the people who need the services?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
Is the Government looking at primary legislation or at making changes to the oversight and delivery model?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
This goes back to at least 2018; I remember raising the matter in Parliament back in the spring of 2018. The last time I spoke to families with lived experience, they were still perplexed, at best, that insufficient progress appears to have been made and that people are still not getting access to the services that they need. Do you recognise that picture?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
In the interests of time, I will move things on and invite Colin Beattie to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Richard Leonard
I will finish up by asking a little bit more about the funding situation, but I have another question before I get to that. You mentioned that many mental health issues are not, at the end of it, directly your responsibility as the director general of health and social care, but are a function of inequality in society, of economic and social deprivation, and of a lack of access to services. Will you tell us a bit more about what the Government can do, or is doing, to take a more whole-system approach to the matter?
