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: 23 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Do the organisations need to spend that money by the end of the financial year or can they roll it over?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Good morning. I will start with a question that is probably best directed to Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak or to Euan Dick from the chief scientist office; it is about the research into long Covid that you have been funding. Could you tell us a bit about how you have taken decisions about the areas in which to fund research and what you view as the priority areas for research to be done in?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
So what you are saying is that you have done some research, but you have only skimmed the surface, in effect, and a lot more work needs to be done in that field,
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Thank you—that is very helpful. We have your written submission, which provides some more detail on the projects that you are funding.
Can you tell us about the findings that are emerging at this stage? Are there any themes that are coming through from the research that has been done so far?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
I have one more question on that before I move on. Are there any gaps in areas of research that you need to address through future funding rounds?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
That is very helpful.
I have a question on a slightly different topic for Professor Cooper and Professor Duncan. I was interested to read the comments in your written submission about self-management strategies for people with long Covid. You suggest that the evidence base for the effectiveness of those strategies is “limited”, and you say that your study
“found that many people who present for assessment for Long Covid Rehabilitation are considered unsuitable for self-management”.
That is interesting, because it reflects some of the feedback that we, as a committee, have had from long Covid sufferers. Will you elaborate a little bit on what your research in that field has been telling you?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
I am asking only about research on long Covid.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Good morning to the panel. I want to follow up on some of the issues that you have highlighted. I was interested to hear that the three of you are putting forward three different approaches.
As a committee, we have found that, when we speak to long Covid sufferers in Scotland, there is a persistent theme coming through. They feel that the services are not there to support them, and a lot of them have latched on to the notion of long Covid clinics, which we do not currently have in Scotland, as a solution. However, we have also seen some evidence to suggest that those clinics have quite a mixed response from patients, with people complaining about long waiting lists or appointments being available only remotely rather than face to face. I would like to understand from each of you how your approach is positive and is working; what the pros and cons are; and what evaluations are being done of the patient experience.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 2 March 2023
Murdo Fraser
Before I bring the other witnesses in, can I ask whether you have involved sufferers of Covid or long Covid in the design of the plans?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Murdo Fraser
Does anyone else want to come in?