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 1153 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Emma Harper
Thanks.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Emma Harper
My question is for Philip Whyte. I have some bits of paper in front of me about preventative approaches. Henry Dimbleby has written a lot about ultra-processed foods, and Professor Pekka Puska has done work in Finland on reducing the mortality of people through a whole-system approach by getting restaurants, cafes and supermarkets involved in providing healthier choices that are affordable for people. I am thinking about having preventative spend rather than secondary care constantly fighting fires. Something has to shift in the way that we invest, in order to stop folk getting into the hospital in the first place and to stop people being sick.
I am also looking at our paper on non-communicable disease prevention. My colleagues Gillian Mackay, Carol Mochan, Sandesh Gulhane and Foysol Choudhury and I have been part of a cross-party approach to look at non-communicable diseases, which contributed around 53,000 deaths in 2022 in Scotland. Something needs to be done differently. What do you suggest that we cut in order to move funding to preventative spend? There is only one pot of money, and it is a real challenge to figure out what we need to do differently.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
You mentioned the voluntary sector in discussing the complexity of the provision of care. The committee often speaks about the third sector as it relates to social prescribing, for example. How does the Government plan to ensure that third sector agencies are supported and viable, given that they are important to the provision of social care services?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
I come back to the national centre for remote and rural healthcare, which will commence next month; I think that an announcement was made on that. My region—South Scotland—is pretty rural and remote all the way down to Stranraer. Where are we with that centre being ready for next month?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
I thought that someone else was going to kick off on this topic.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
Convener, do I have time for a quick question about palliative care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
One of our themes is how we tackle obesity. I am interested in the issue and have recently asked questions in the chamber regarding ultraprocessed foods and high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt foods. Carlos Monteiro, who is a professor of nutrition and public health in Brazil, has done some great research, and books by Chris Van Tulleken and Henry Dimbleby that talk about ultraprocessed foods have recently been popular. How can we understand more about the relationships between foods, and not just their sugar and fat content? This question is for the minister, because it is in the public health portfolio. I am interested in the powers that are available to us in Scotland in regulation of marketing and sales of those types of foods? Can you give us an update on work that is being taken forward?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
Finally, will the Scottish Government’s provision of free school meals for primary-school age children, which it is expanding, help to tackle what is being called an environment of “commerciogenic malnutrition”, because of the way in which big manufacturers are targeting unhealthy choices at young folk? Will widening of access to free school meals by the Scottish Government help to address some of the issues with overweight young people?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Emma Harper
I have a final, quick question. You will obviously be aware of the issue around midwifery in Dumfries and Galloway. Will the rural and remote healthcare centre include midwifery approaches?