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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 3264 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Richard Leonard
That was a public information announcement by the Auditor General. Excellent. Craig Hoy wanted to come in on this area.
Public Audit Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Richard Leonard
One of the most startling figures in the report is in paragraph 46, where you talk about the extent to which bank or agency nursing staff are being called upon. Those figures are for the three health board areas that you have looked at in most depth and they are striking. You say that the expenditure on bank nursing is up by 57.2 per cent in NHS Lothian, by 90.5 per cent in NHS Highland and, in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, by even more at 90.8 per cent. Why on earth is that happening?
Public Audit Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Richard Leonard
As a committee, we will retain a strong interest in that to see where it goes in the next financial year.
We are short of time, so I will bring in Bill Kidd, who has a number of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Richard Leonard
Thanks. We are short of time. The committee will want to return to these areas because they are worthy of further examination. Time is tight, so I will ask Willie Coffey to come in. He has questions on the use of agency nurses and so on.
Public Audit Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2022”
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Richard Leonard
The NHS is a very high priority for all of us in the Parliament and I reflect that the terms of our debate about it often contrast inputs and outcomes. Your report notes that there has been a ÂŁ4.4 billion increase in NHS spending since 2018-19 and that the budget for 2023-24 is estimated to be over ÂŁ19 billion. You assessed that level of expenditure as being three years earlier than anticipated. There is no question that there is substantial public investment going into the NHS, yet we do not necessarily see outcomes improving. The rather fundamental question is, do we just need funding or is it necessary to apply other factors in order to rise to the challenges that we are facing in the national health service?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 3, which is our principal item of business this morning, is consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s section 22 report “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”. I welcome our witnesses: the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle; Pat Kenny, director of audit and assurance at Deloitte; and Richard Robinson, senior manager at Audit Scotland. We have a number of questions to put to you about the report but, before we do that, I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. That was a useful laying out of the principal points in the report and some of the areas that we are keen to probe a bit more deeply. I begin by inviting Willie Coffey to put some opening questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Richard Leonard
Before I bring in Colin Beattie, I want to go back to the question that Sharon Dowey asked about the governance arrangements and the relationship between the SPCB and the office of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. Pat Kenny talked about the new whistleblowing arrangements, and Richard Robinson mentioned the threshold and internal outlets for people inside the organisation to raise concerns. That is right.
However, there were other warning signs, were there not, that some things were not happening as they ought to be happening? We should not have simply relied on staff working in the organisation to point those out. In last year’s section 22 report, you documented that, in 2016-17, 43 per cent of complaints against councillors and board members “were not pursued further”, but by the time we get to 2020-21, 84 per cent of the cases that were lodged were not pursued. It was not just a matter of the people who worked day in, day out at the organisation having some concerns about the culture; presumably, there ought to have been some external monitoring of the quite big change in the way in which complaints were being processed. It comes back to the root point: this is about public trust and confidence in the whole system.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Richard Leonard
You mentioned exhibit 2 in one of your answers. Craig Hoy has questions on that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes—I understand that you do not, as an auditor, want to speculate. We are very flattered by what you have just told us about our profiles.
However, the serious point is one that I made earlier: when the organisation appeared to be in some kind of crisis, one of the measures of that was the extent to which cases were not pursued. I have cited the example of complaints against councillors, 84 per cent of which were not pursued. Do you have an up-to-date figure for cases that are not being pursued?
