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 1477 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
Sorry, yes.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
Yes. You are right that it would be helpful for organisations to be able to predict whether they are likely to have similar funding or on-going increases in funding.
My last point is about NHS boards. Are the 3 per cent recurring savings considered to be achievable for NHS boards? What conversations have you had with the boards about whether that is realistically sustainable for them?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
Okay. I have a couple more points relating to issues that are raised with the committee quite a lot. The first is about the way in which settlements are made and how multi-year is helpful. We hear that a lot from other sectors, and we have heard it in committee meetings. How are you placed to be able to offer that to some boards?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
Finally, do boards indicate whether they have reached the point that that is becoming difficult for them? Do they say that they feel that they can continue to work at that 3 per cent level?
09:45Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
It is not that I disagree with that—I was just interested in knowing whether, given that that diverse group is already a whole regulatory body, it made sense for those roles to sit with the HCPC.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Carol Mochan
I totally agree that regulation is really important. I should declare that I was on the Health and Care Professions Council, although that was about 15 years ago. It regulates a very diverse group of professionals and it is quite used to playing that sort of advanced role. Was there a debate about whether those roles sat neatly on the GMC or the HCPC, given that the HCPC is very skilled in those diverse roles with advanced practices?
Meeting of the Parliament
Public Service Values
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Carol Mochan
I start by paying tribute to all our public sector workforce, in everywhere from the NHS to schools to the fire service. They deserve our praise, but more than that, they deserve a Government that is prepared to meet the promises that it has made and that treats them with respect. The motion does not do that.
I want to speak directly to our communities, who are being let down. I understand that it is they who suffer long waits in our health service, cannot access community facilities and see no future in the education system. It is our communities who suffer as the mess deepens and deepens. We need action, and that action needs to work for our communities and our dedicated workforce.
Before my colleagues on the SNP benches start to jump up and down at me, I want to make this point: I am no friend of the Tories. I believe that the chaos that has been created by Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, on top of the constant Tory attack on working-class people, means that the Tories have undoubtedly contributed to a raid on our public purse.
However, to be clear, our job in this place is not to deflect and not just to blame—it is to deliver on the commitments that have been made and the services that are required. The reality is that, if we do not reflect on our own actions and our own contributions to the problem, we will never seek to find the solution; we will just absolve ourselves of the responsibility.
The reality is that this tired Government, as it enters its 18th year, must be prepared to acknowledge its failures. Currently, it just grasps at straws, such as trying to build a set of “values”—as it describes them—out of the wreckage of Scotland’s public services.
The Government’s motion seems to be about dressing up brutal cuts in the language of reform and values; it is about window dressing rather than substance. If we are absolutely honest, everyone in the chamber knows that, even those who sit on the Government benches. For 17 years, no priority has been given to our public services.
Meeting of the Parliament
Public Service Values
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Carol Mochan
I want to make progress.
If I speak to constituents, they say the same thing. They see a lack of investment in the public sector, particularly in their communities. They see a Government that is not capable of tackling NHS waiting lists or reducing the attainment gap.
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Carol Mochan
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether its proposed budget spend increase of £0.1 million for alcohol and drugs policy, which is reportedly a real-terms reduction, is sufficient to address the challenges faced in this area. (S6O-02956)
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 11 January 2024
Carol Mochan
We need to get some reality here. The Scottish Government declared alcohol harm as a public health emergency in its 2022-23 budget. Since then, the number of people losing their lives to alcohol has tragically increased while, since 2016-17, the number of people with alcohol problems who are accessing treatment has fallen dramatically.
Is it time for the Scottish Government to stop tinkering on the edges and instead put forward a comprehensive strategy to ensure that fewer people experience problems caused by alcohol and that people get the support and treatment that they need when they need it?
