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 986 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Paul O'Kane
What has been said about the commissioner’s independence is helpful. I want to pick up on what Dr Lamont said.
Do you see the patient safety commissioner having a wider role in social care? Given the debates that we are having in Parliament around a national care service and the potential for the provision of care to change, do you think that the commissioner might be able to go beyond their present scope? How would we hold the commissioner and ministers accountable in that space?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
A number of respondents to the consultation on the Scottish bill felt that the patient safety commissioner should also cover social care. Indeed, social care is topical given the challenges in that sector. Also, as we have come out of Covid, there has been a renewed focus on safety in social care. Baroness Cumberlege, do you think that there is a case for including it in the patient safety commissioner’s remit?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
I am grateful for that. I was keen to understand the challenges that might exist in including social care in the commissioner’s remit, so it was useful that you followed on from my question.
I appreciate that this is a known unknown, but is there any sense that, further down the line, there might be a distinct and separate commissioner for social care? Is it your sense that it would be better to try to separate out the two and have cross-cutting issues but not necessarily the same person doing it all?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Independent Review into Racism in Scottish Cricket
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
Okay. You mentioned trying to assess where the barriers are and how they can be tackled. In our previous exchange, we spoke about the barriers that young people experience, and Gillian Mackay has picked up some of those issues. The last time that we had a discussion, you spoke about young people leaving the sport because of the pressure that they experienced from their family to do well, to get qualifications and
“to go to university and become a doctor or lawyer”—[Official Report, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, 4 October; c 12.]
There is a perception that that is quite a stereotypical view of Asian families in particular. Would you accept that that comment could have been perceived as being stereotypical in itself? Those are barriers that would often be universally experienced by young people, so what work has Cricket Scotland done to speak to young people? I think that you were saying that that is what you had heard anecdotally, but what work has been done to understand whether those are significant issues, regardless of who the young people are and where they come from?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
That is interesting. On your last point, about working to advance the agenda of Food Standards Scotland, we did not take evidence from you or from anyone on the bill. Were you disappointed that you were not specifically referred to in the legislation? Did that concern you?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
I assume that those discussions are at an early stage, but do you sense a willingness to find better understanding of the roles and, perhaps, look at how that might be enacted?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Food Standards Scotland
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
That is useful for us as a point to follow up, because it is important that we have those connections.
I will touch on the availability and accessibility of food. In the debate, there were amendments, particularly on access to food being a right. That debate will continue, because it was not concluded in the legislation. Should we continue to look at how we can create that right and that better access?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Independent Review into Racism in Scottish Cricket
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
You recognise that there is a wider issue of institutional racism in the sport, which has proven to be challenging because of those aspects that you have just mentioned.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Independent Review into Racism in Scottish Cricket
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Paul O'Kane
Okay—thank you. I am sure that committee members will feel that that clarification has been helpful.
We know that training will be crucial across the board in cricket. There needs to be, for example, awareness, understanding and recognition of those microaggressions that you spoke about, with racism, particularly casual racism, being called out when it is present. What are the timescales for rolling out the training, and how is the development of that programme is progressing?
