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 671 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning 2023-24
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Gillian Mackay
Submissions to the committee highlight significant concerns about staff wellbeing, particularly the accumulation of stress over repeated years, practicalities such as staff sometimes not having access to hot food and drink and, of course, the travel issues that social care staff face. What concerns do you have about the impact of winter pressures in that respect, and how is that being dealt with by your specific services?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning 2023-24
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Gillian Mackay
Good morning. Submissions highlighted that it can be difficult to recruit staff to short-term contracts to address winter pressure, particularly given the cost of living crisis and the uncertainty of such contracts for on-going employment. Given the earlier comments on planning for 365 days rather than in response to short-term pressures, how can workforce planning and the models that we use be improved to give staff security and recruit staff according to future needs?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
Good morning. I will touch on some of the issues that Emma Harper brought up earlier in relation to apprenticeship schemes.
We heard from Professor Grant Archibald of NHS Tayside, who described the challenges that he has faced in the recruitment of healthcare professionals who are not nurses and doctors—people such as estates department staff and allied health professionals—and the effect that that has on NHS Tayside. What more can the Government do to promote those less well-known but still vital roles and the various pathways into them, such as modern apprenticeships?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
We have heard from a number of boards about the impact of stress and anxiety on staff wellbeing and, in particular, on sickness absence. Over the past few weeks, we have heard that boards are taking steps to improve wellbeing—for example, by putting in place peer-support networks and “Speak up” ambassadors.
What support can the Government provide to ensure that such schemes are rolled out nationally and that, where there is good practice, it is identified and replicated across the health service so that everyone receives the same support? Is there a minimum standard of wellbeing support that boards are expected to have in place? How is that monitored?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
Obviously, at times when people phone the Ambulance Service they are in acute distress or in acute need of help. Is there on-going assessment of how those calls are handled, the experience of call handlers, and how those response times and categorisations are communicated to people who are waiting?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
At the moment, people under 16 are advised to phone Childline. Is there a plan to expand mental health provision for children and young people? Is there a benefit in providing a dedicated mental health service, such as breathing space or the other interventions you have mentioned, for children and young people in particular?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
Given the digital literacy of children and young people, is there a smaller volume than you might expect of children and young people phoning NHS 24 versus other interventions? Does that speak to the variety of things that we need to provide?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
What assessment has been made of the public awareness of mental health services that are available through NHS 24? Do patients on the whole know that they can access mental health support through NHS 24 and is the feedback that you are getting that they are comfortable using it, or is there still evidence that a lot of people are going to their GP or other places first?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
On the clinical response model, I note that a public engagement exercise that was undertaken into the new clinical response model found that more than 90 per cent of the public supported it. That is encouraging, but what assessment has been made of the public’s on-going awareness of the new clinical response model?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service)
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Gillian Mackay
That is great. To what extent is the Scottish Ambulance Service confident that the public are supportive of the new triage system in particular?
