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: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Are you saying that multilingual information is available or that there is a gap there?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Jo Anderson, I think that you mentioned the Aberdeen example as something that is under threat because of funding issues. If you or any of the other panellists have other examples of such initiatives being at risk, it will be really helpful if you can give us a note in writing about them.
I am going to have move things along, and I invite Willie Coffey to put some questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
On that very clear note, Peter, thank you very much.
I thank all our witnesses this morning for what has been a very fruitful session. As I said earlier, the evidence that we have taken from all of you has been very rich in quality, and I want to thank Kirsten Urquhart—who is no longer here—Simon Porter, Shari McDaid, Peter Kelly, Paula Fraser and Meriem Timizar for joining us online and for their contributions this morning. I also very much thank Jo Anderson for joining us in the committee room and for the evidence that she has given us.
At future sessions, we will speak to some of the agencies and organisations that are on the front line, providing the services, and we will also speak to those who have some responsibility for the oversight of the implementation and delivery of services. We then expect to have a session with the accountable officer and the Scottish Government on the state of adult mental health services.
Again, thank you very much indeed for helping to inform our work. I also hope that you have been able to get some important messages out to a wider audience.
I now draw the public part of this morning’s meeting to a close.
10:46 Meeting continued in private until 11:01.Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Paula.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Peter—we are very pleased to have you here.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thanks very much, Simon.
Last but by no means least, Kirsten, do you want to introduce yourself?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. We are very pleased that you are here.
We want to cover some of the ground that the joint Auditor General and Accounts Commission report covered. As I mentioned, if you want to come in, it would be helpful if you could type RTS or “request to speak†in the chat box. Do not feel that you are all obliged to answer every question that we put. If you have a particular hankering to come in, we will come to you, but there might be some areas on which you do not have a particularly strong view.
First, I want to ask a fundamental question that is posed in the report, which is about what people’s experiences are and what challenges they face when they try to access mental health services. I will go to Jo Anderson first.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
One theme that the report highlights is the alarming rise in mental health issues for young people, which is why we were particularly keen to get Young Scot to give evidence this morning. I ask Kirsten Urquhart to give us her perspective and the perspective of young people on accessing the service and the challenges that young people face in relation to that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Kirsten. That is very helpful and it is good to dispel some of the mythology about where digital exclusion lies. We have a whole load of other areas to cover so I will turn now to Sharon Dowey, who is the deputy convener, to put some questions about where the demand is and what response there is from the services to that demand.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental healthâ€
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Richard Leonard
Paula, do you want to come in on that question? I apologise, I know that you wanted to come in on the previous passage of discussion that we had, so please reflect on that first.
