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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 1828 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
That is not what I asked. Are they committed to the 10 per cent figure?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
—which we have not asked about today. Are all the boards committed to it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
You believe that they are?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
What timescale are you working to?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
It is really important that it is available to the public so that we have total transparency.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
When I looked at the dashboard, the other thing that I came across was that, down in England, they have what are described as mental health hubs. They seem to exist across England and they are aimed at staff. Have you come across them?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
Maybe you can go away and have a look at that. They seem to be dotted around England.
You will have been following the evidence, and you have read the report. In pretty much every evidence session, we have asked about the model that exists in Trieste in Italy. Dr Cook knew that I was going to ask about that. It can be described briefly as a “one-stop shop”, if you like. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and people do not need an appointment—they can just call in. Pretty much every witness that we have had has said that that is a good model. Do you agree?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
It is good to hear that you had that session at Tulliallan. Is that because you want to get to a position Scotland-wide where the police have somewhere that they can refer people to?
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
The key thing is that they will be able to do that at all times of the day.
Public Audit Committee
Section 23 Report: “Adult mental health”
Meeting date: 14 December 2023
Graham Simpson
It is not about being able to phone somebody; it is about being able to take the person somewhere and freeing up police time. I gave the example from Lanarkshire because I speak to the police in Lanarkshire. When I say that entire shifts of police have been in A and E, it is because they have been there. I accept that there is now a local arrangement whereby, if things are getting particularly desperate, the police will phone the NHS and say, “Look, can you give us a hand here?”
