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 1148 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
I am thinking about liaison with not just the police but the fire service. I am sure that that is part of on-going work. I am also interested in the work that is done to engage with people who use drugs and alcohol harmfully, and to reduce the stigma. Are tackling or addressing stigma and the language that we use part of the continuing professional development that is provided for Scottish Ambulance Service staff?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
I will wait and bring the issue up later, because I think that it will be worth a letter. It concerns maternity services and delivering babies in ambulances in rural areas, for instance. I can pick that up later.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
Does NHS 24 use a local information system for Scotland—ALISS—to direct folk to third sector organisations that provide help and support with regard to mental health issues, for instance? Is using ALISS or directing people to local third sector services using whatever apps are available locally part of the upstreaming and downstreaming plan?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
Good morning. You mentioned falls earlier. I am just looking at the “Our 2030 Strategy” document, which says that 12 per cent of ambulance call-outs are for somebody who has fallen, so there is work being done to look at that. However, 10 per cent of call-outs are for patients with respiratory difficulties such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—COPD—exacerbation. As a co-convener of the cross-party group on lung health, I am interested in what work is being done to help to support the respiratory patients, for instance, because they might need not an admission but a referral to an onward pathway for better management of their COPD.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
Do you monitor situations in which someone who has a mental health emergency or an urgent need of that kind is engaged with by the police rather than by the Ambulance Service? Do you track occasions on which the police, rather than ambulance crew, escort someone to the emergency department?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
In the previous parliamentary session, I was a member of the Health and Sport Committee. We heard from the Scottish Ambulance Service about how, for instance, the police ended up looking after people in emergency rooms, which took up their time. I am interested to know what work has been done to support the police in dealing with NHS calls and whether the Scottish Ambulance Service or other parts of NHS could do that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
I do. Given my interest in food standards and how we are altering and changing them as we engage in things such as novel foods, I am interested in paragraph 9 of the policy note, which is about monitoring. It says:
“Food Standards Scotland will work with Local Authorities where problems or suspected infringements of the legislation arise.”
I am interested to know—we might need to write to Food Standards Scotland about this—how Food Standards Scotland will work with local authorities. How will we monitor that? I ask that out of general interest.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 20 June 2023
Emma Harper
Thanks.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Emma Harper
Alexander Stewart mentioned the chamber desk team, which is a small team. Is it burdensome for the team members to manage motions? There are a lot of motions—some people would have certain things to say about motions that they might not find as valuable; we have covered that already—and I am interested in finding out whether that team feels burdened by having to process so many of them.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2023
Emma Harper
Like Stephen Kerr, I sympathise with what Graeme Dey’s letter is about, but, for people who live rurally and remotely from this place, a motion is really beneficial, because they feel that they are being heard and that their work is valued, whether that is in relation to a charity or to local action that is being taken forward. We all have motions related to our cross-party groups as well. For example, today, I have a motion about world asthma day, and there will be a debate in the chamber about it. I know that not all motions are for debate—some are just to recognise or to congratulate something. Therefore, I would be keen to monitor the situation and see how we get on, but I would not like to prescribe to colleagues whether they should write motions in a particular way.