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 740 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 24 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
I go back to Adam Stachura from Age Scotland. We have had positive feedback there on what is being proposed. Are you generally satisfied with what is in the bill around the issue, or do additional measures need to be put in?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
Consistent with the view that we have taken on other occasions, I oppose the motions. We have been round the houses on this issue a number of times, so I will not tire the committee by going over all the arguments again.
The instruments seek to extend by another six months the emergency powers that were taken by the Scottish Government to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. We had some discussion earlier around the paper in last week’s Lancet, which, as the first peer-reviewed global estimate of excess deaths, observes no clear relationship between levels of excess mortality and different levels of restrictions. In addition to that, given that we know that the public adhere quite strictly to public health guidance, my view is that we should proceed to address Covid through public health guidance rather than through extending those extraordinary and emergency powers by another six months, as the instruments seek to do.
I recognise that some aspects of the instruments are beneficial, such as the provisions to allow nurses, rather than doctors, to administer vaccines. As ever, the classic challenge for an Opposition party is that we cannot amend the statutory instruments before us; we must either accept them as a whole or reject them as a whole. Given the extent of the emergency powers that they seek to extend, we must, in this case, reject them as a whole.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
Good morning. Professor Leitch, I was glad that you mentioned The Lancet paper, which is a very interesting study that gives us quite a lot of reassurance about the choices that we have made about tackling Covid. Another interesting aspect of the paper is that it argues that there is no clear relationship between levels of excess mortality and the different levels of restrictions that have been applied; it puts the emphasis much more on vaccination. However, I suspect that we will have that debate later this morning.
I will go back to the committee’s inquiry. We have taken a lot of evidence over the past few weeks on reduced access to services. At the core of many of the issues is the fact that people have not been able to see their GP or access basic screening. Cabinet secretary, do you agree that that has had an impact on patient outcomes? Are there particular parts of the patient pathway, such as primary care, that have been the major cause of problems leading to the current level of excess deaths and that will cause future excess deaths?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
Good morning, cabinet secretary and colleagues.
I have a couple of questions about the vaccination programme. Earlier, Professor Leitch mentioned the recent report in The Lancet, which was very significant in highlighting the importance of the programme in suppressing the virus. However, a report in The Scotsman this morning states that 27,000 doses of the vaccine were thrown away in February after fewer people than expected came forward to be vaccinated. Is that report accurate? If so, should we be concerned about it? Are we seeing a drop-off in the number of people coming forward for vaccination?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
Thank you for that very helpful response. Going back to the question of GPs, as I said, I am a patient at that GP practice, although fortunately they do not see me very often—
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
We are both happy. [Laughter.]
One issue that has come out of our inquiry is access to GPs. We heard from Dr Andrew Buist from the British Medical Association, who pushes back really strongly on the notion that people have not been able to access GPs, but we still hear that anecdotally from constituents. Is the position with GPs now back to where it should be or are we still facing challenges?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
I want to pick up on the issue of emergency medicine, which we have not touched on much this morning. Some of the most striking evidence that the committee heard was from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which told us that, in 2021, there were 500 excess deaths related to people accessing emergency treatment too late. That is 10 people per week dying because the ambulance does not turn up on time or because, although the ambulance turns up on time, when it gets to the hospital, it cannot get its patients out into the emergency ward in time. That was really striking.
The royal college highlighted the continuing lack of capacity in the workforce. On Friday, you announced a new national workforce strategy, and I was interested to see the comment that the royal college made to the press on that yesterday. Although it welcomed the strategy, it said that it was
“disappointed … not to have been consulted”
on it
“and by the limited mentions of Urgent and Emergency Care.”
Will you meet the royal college to discuss that and take on board its real concerns on the matter?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
Will you give us a sense of where we are now on the delays with ambulances? Clearly, there is a lot of pressure on NHS emergency wards. Are those issues still happening?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
The top line of the story in The Scotsman this morning was that fewer people than expected have come forward for vaccination. Is that correct?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
Murdo Fraser
I am a patient there.