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
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
A number of witnesses have commented on the potential for alternative pathways to increase—[Inaudible.] We have heard that in many of the answers.
I want to get a sense of the mitigations that we can put in place. We have heard about some of those, particularly digital mitigations, although it is still not clear how we can ensure that people have digital access. That is a bigger question and goes beyond health. Do the witnesses have ideas about any mitigations that could be put in place immediately?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
Yes. Thank you, convener.
11:15Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
Margaret McKay’s observation was helpful, because public transport is a key issue in reducing isolation. However, does anyone else have a reflection on the digital element? We see challenges with library services and other places where people normally access IT if they do not have regular access. Obviously, the situation has been compounded by the pandemic, but there are challenges with the availability of services that are run by local authorities. Macmillan Cancer Support offers a cancer service in many libraries, which is helpful and welcome. Do we need more engagement with library services and more funding for them, perhaps from the health stream, to support libraries as hubs?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
Good morning, panel. The theme that I am focusing on is the patient perspective. You have already said a lot about that in your answers, which is most helpful, but perhaps I can drill down a wee bit into what patients said in response to our call for views. One thing that they highlighted is a negative perception of reception teams in general practice. We can all probably relate to some of that. When we consider people’s attitude towards those staff, they are often seen as gatekeepers or, negatively, as barriers to seeing a GP, which is often wrong.
How can we communicate better on the triage pathway that now exists in many practices? Triage pathways are perhaps clearer in emergency medicine than they are in general practice. I am keen to understand your experiences of that and how we can continue to communicate with patients.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
That was a helpful answer. You mention how to create space for training, perhaps by diverting people to other pathways, and NHS 24 having a bit of a support role. What are your experiences of things like NHS 24? I know that people are directed there more often as an alternative to presenting at accident and emergency but, in the past wee while, we have seen frustration with the accessibility of that service, with 240,000 unanswered calls in a two-month period. The convener mentioned frustration with phones ringing out at GP surgeries, too. Are our alternative systems for phone advice up to par and able to support people?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
I will follow on from many of the points that have been made. Alison Douglas talked about the importance of reporting. Other witnesses talked about knowing what is working. In September, I asked the minister about alcohol and drug partnership reporting. Previously, we broke down information on the granular spending for ADPs by IJB. That certainly happened in 2016-17 and 2017-18, but we have not had that level of detail since, so is there enough certainty on funding to measure how effectively approaches are working?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 1 March 2022
Paul O'Kane
I mean certainty that funding is available and that we are not seeing gradual cuts or more top slicing, which has been referred to. From that, how can we measure the effectiveness of the interventions that the spend pays for? Does that make sense?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Social Care
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Paul O'Kane
My follow-up question is about next steps. Some of the respondents have asked for a clear road map for how we are going to get to the legislation and for implementation. Annie Gunner Logan has talked about addressing some of those points. Are people keen for the short-term solutions that we have just talked about to be set out clearly, as well as the longer-term piece of work?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Social Care
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Paul O'Kane
We now have the analysis of the responses to the consultation on the national care service. There is obviously a clear degree of support for moving to a national care service, but much of the information in the analysis poses more questions. It is quite interesting that 33 per cent of respondents said that they were dissatisfied with the consultation process. I am keen to get a sense of your and your members’ experience of that process, but also of the next steps that you would like to see as we go into the longer-term work on the national care service.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Paul O'Kane
I have a technical question about Barnett consequentials—in particular, the Barnett consequentials from the UK council tax rebate and their most effective use in relation to the cost of living. What is the Government’s view on how they will be used? Are there plans in place?
