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 1619 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 7 March 2024
Jamie Greene
So will nothing be built at all?
Public Audit Committee
“Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”
Meeting date: 7 March 2024
Jamie Greene
I am sure that we can delve into that further. That is a worrying response.
On the capital maintenance backlog, the one thing that struck me as really concerning is in paragraph 26 on page 18 of the Auditor General’s briefing paper:
“The Scottish Government cannot currently provide an overall figure for the level of capital maintenance backlog across the Scottish estate.”
Is that because the information is not available or because the number is available but is just too scary? We know, for example, that the national health service backlog is over £1 billion, and I have heard figures of around £500 million for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I am sure that there are figures for the prisons, the police estate and the courts. That is before we even take into account things such as uncovering reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—RAAC—in buildings, which is still happening almost weekly.
Are we looking down the barrel of a complete disaster in maintenance backlogs with which we will never be able to catch up? That is perhaps a question for Ms Stafford.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
What are the key take aways, so that a member of the public who is watching this meeting can have confidence in what is happening?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
It would be great to have any additional updates that you can provide.
It is interesting that much has been mentioned about workforce issues, and we have talked in great detail about the importance of executive leadership. The other key finding from the external review of corporate governance is about the
“root cause of many of the significant challenges”
that you face as a health board. The review states that one root cause is
“the failure to agree an appropriate business model for the delivery of integrated health and social care services”.
We have not spent a lot of time on that aspect this morning. Have things improved?
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
Appendix 2 of the report is on the delivery schemes. It seems to be a complicated and complex subsidy environment. There are a number of schemes. We have warmer homes Scotland, which is delivered by Warmworks. We have area-based schemes, which are delivered by local councils. We have Home Energy Scotland grants, which are delivered by the Energy Savings Trust, and so on. The number of households that are getting proper conversion of heating systems out of that is in the tens of thousands, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands or millions.
It seems to be quite a complex landscape, as other members have mentioned. Could it be simplified? The risk is that if you leave things to the market alone and people’s only exposure to accessing improvements is via the private sector advertising those schemes with a view to making profit in their own way, it becomes quite a dangerous environment for the consumer.
Public Audit Committee
“Decarbonising heat in homes”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
That is based on the assumption that we will have the people to do the work. As you said, there is a huge number of people out there who can install new gas boilers, but there will need to be a marked shift to installing new technologies and maintaining them on an on-going basis.
There has been a fair amount of pushback from the industry about what is on offer to incentivise it to retrain and reskill staff if the market does not exist. It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, of course. Do you think that the Government is acutely aware of that? Do you think that the plans that it has produced to ensure that we have the people to carry out the transition are robust?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
Mr Murray, did you say that you are the longest-serving member of the board or just the longest-serving member who is here this morning?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
Please do not take this question personally but, as the longest-serving board member here, you saw your health board escalated to level 4. That is one off from level 5, which is the most serious level and effectively means that the Government has no confidence in the board at all to deliver effective and safe care to patients. Level 4 is almost there. How could the board—collectively and individually—over a number of years have let things get to the stage at which the Government has had to intervene in such a fashion? Surely, the board, on an on-going basis, would be monitoring and auditing processes, outcomes and practices. If it was a private business, it is difficult to see how you would be sitting here this morning.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
We are very short on time, and I want to move on. Surely the proof would have been in the pudding, and as Mr Simpson said, outcomes for patients are what matter. Could you see a pattern of deterioration in outcomes? For example, your four-hour emergency access compliance is down at 50 per cent, which is way below the Scottish average and that dropped considerably over a period of time. Surely, all those performance issues in relation to the CAMHS statistics, the out-of-hours GP access and the 18-week waiting times for referral for psychological assessment would have been massive red flags to the board that it was in danger of escalation.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”
Meeting date: 29 February 2024
Jamie Greene
Can I move on to the present day? We could spend a lot of time on retrospect, but I am sure that lessons will be learned and that there is a lot of personal regret in the executive leadership team.
Ms Croft, where are you currently with some of the service improvements? It is still looking quite grim for patients in Forth Valley with regard to waiting times across a number of key metrics. At the risk of my questions needing a lengthy answer that we do not have time for, what are some of the steps that you are taking right now to improve, for example, performance with regard to the four-hour A and E turnaround and 18-week referrals for mental health assessments? What are the limiting factors? We have talked about workforce and finances, but what key barriers exist right now to making immediate improvements so that you can de-escalate out of level 4?
