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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 728 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2023
Murdo Fraser
Congratulations, Jim. At this point, I hand over convenership to you.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
You have talked about a single point of access. That is a very important point, and we have heard about that in a lot of the evidence that we have taken. We have also heard that long Covid sufferers would like long Covid clinics to be established in Scotland to provide a specific service. What is your thinking on dedicated long Covid clinics being established in Scotland, as happens in other parts of the UK?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, cabinet secretary; I welcome your colleagues, too.
I want to follow on from the convener’s line of questioning. During the inquiry, we have heard a lot from long Covid sufferers about their issues in trying to access services. I want to read you an email that we received a couple of weeks ago from a long Covid sufferer in Aberdeenshire—I do not have permission to give his name—to give you a flavour of some of the feedback that we have had. Recounting his experience, that individual said:
“I’ve just been forced to make a private GP appointment ... due to the complete lack of support from the NHS. Actually, it’s worse than that as my current GP surgery is utterly dismissive.”
He has a long Covid diagnosis. He went on to say:
“In December, I was forced to take a day off work, contacted the surgery”
and
“The GP told me: ‘There’s nothing to be done for long Covid.’ ... ‘Current NICE guidelines state we are not to prescribe pain relief for chronic pain’”
and
“‘You have to take responsibility and self manage’.”
It is clear that it is not acceptable that individuals who have a long Covid diagnosis are getting that response from their GPs, is it not?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
The end of the financial year is only two weeks away. That does not give them very long to spend the money.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Right. How long before?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
If I were a long Covid sufferer in front of you, I would say that it is fine that you are talking about developing the pathways and that you recognise that there are issues, but the key question is: when will we get to a state in which we have the services that people need?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Maybe that will be a job for your successor as health secretary if you are no longer in that role. Who knows?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have a follow-up question on a slightly different topic. Yesterday, you wrote to the committee with a list of funding that had been allocated in the current financial year. Various funding streams were announced for third sector organisations, which is welcome. Is that £334,000 money that was unspent in this year’s budget?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
I appreciate that that is work in progress. We have heard that over a long period of time, but the feedback that we keep getting from people is that their experience on the ground is still lacking.
That individual said that he had to go private. That has been a consistent theme in what we have heard from long Covid sufferers. People have had to go private to try to access a GP who has expertise in the area. That is fine for those who can afford it, but many people cannot afford it. Have we therefore not created a two-tier system? Is that not unacceptable?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
The funds that have been allocated are within this financial year’s budget.