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 488 contributions
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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Maurice Golden
The petitioner mentions research from Australia—it has a similar healthcare system to ours—which showed that when BE FAST was used in a live medical setting the result was quicker detection and treatment and better outcomes. What is your assessment of how many strokes FAST might miss? Are we talking about one in five, one in 10 or one in 20?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Maurice Golden
I think that the nub of the issue is that James Bundy’s father received video from the Scottish Ambulance Service that ruled out a stroke, so an ambulance was not dispatched. From the evidence that we have heard, the issue appears largely to be about capacity and the need to prioritise patients. Ultimately, the NHS is free at the point of delivery, and, in my view, capacity management should not come into an evidence-based approach to triaging people. Yes, there might be people who present falsely, but that is a matter for the Scottish Government, which can provide capacity and allow people to access the treatment. I invite the panel to take a step back and answer this question. If there was capacity in the system, would your reflections on BE FAST be the same?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Maurice Golden
I think that the committee has gathered a useful body of evidence, and I hope that the petitioner is satisfied with the action that has been taken. Unfortunately, though, we now need to close the petition under rule 15.7 of the standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Government is considering bringing animal boarding regulation under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 and that, if such regulation is progressed, fire safety will be considered as part of that work.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee [Draft]
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Maurice Golden
I would like to bring in the witnesses in the room on the current evidence base around BE FAST. Sophie?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
Maurice Golden
This is a massive issue. I am aware of surgeries in my region where patients are looking at 1,000 calls to see a doctor, which is unacceptable in relation to both treating health conditions and providing preventative care. The result is that many people present at accident and emergency departments because that is the only way that they can see someone.
The Scottish Government’s response that the “information is not known” to it is inadequate. If you are in charge of delivering healthcare in Scotland and you do not know how it is delivered and whether that system is adequate, that is a big problem. Therefore, the first thing is to ascertain that information.
I will segue to the point that the petition refers to same-day-only appointment systems. In my experience, many practices largely deploy that approach but they might also have some other appointments available. Therefore, in essence, it is a same-day-only appointment system, but that might not be captured in the data, because the surgery offers a few alternatives. For example, there might be some advance appointments, or, if someone was able to speak to a receptionist on the phone, they might be offered an appointment the following day, so that would not fit in with the definition of a same-day-only system. We need to ascertain that in order to understand the information.
The Scottish Government also said that it is not looking to take a similar approach to that of NHS England. That is okay, but, in that case, what is its approach going to be?
There are almost two parts to the issue and I cannot see that the Scottish Government has provided an answer, other than by referring to some general principles that do not really help people to get appointments.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
Maurice Golden
If it would be helpful, I wonder whether we could write to some key stakeholders and then pass the petition over to the NZET Committee, so that it goes to that committee with some sort of evidence base. Mark Ruskell mentioned Professor Jill Belch at Dundee, who I think it would be useful to write to—and also the Royal College of Physicians. COSLA and the councils are key to all this in terms of air quality monitoring. I believe that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has some air quality monitors as well, particularly for schools.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
Maurice Golden
Mr Torrance has highlighted Dundee, but it would be useful to know the overall picture in every council area in Scotland because we would then be better able to ascertain where the pinch points might be.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
New Petitions
Meeting date: 22 January 2025
Maurice Golden
Yes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Maurice Golden
On your final point regarding intervention, are you comfortable with the level of oversight that the Scottish Funding Council has in relation to our university institutions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 8 January 2025
Maurice Golden
I have a final question. I do not think that it is helpful to vilify individuals or to look at the report before it is published. However, I am interested in the aspect that, in the post-Covid landscape, the unique selling point for institutions such as Dundee university was the thriving student experience on campus. That experience has drastically reduced and therefore a unique selling point to attract students to the university has been severely diminished. Will the report encapsulate that, and will it provide guidance and assistance to other institutions that rely on a similar student experience?
