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 2148 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
I will bring in Professor Gunson. I am sorry, but we have only a couple more minutes before we have to finish.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
I will bring in Jim Fairlie, very quickly.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you. That is us at time today. I thank all the witnesses for their evidence and for giving us their time this morning. If any of you would like to raise any further evidence with the committee, you can do so in writing; the clerks will be happy to liaise with you on how to do that.
The committee’s next meeting will be in the new year, and the details will be published on our website in due course. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning. We now move into private session.
11:21 Meeting continued in private until 11:29.COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That is really helpful.
I know that I have missed most of the session, and I apologise for that. It has been fascinating to read in the papers all the work that has been going on, and I commend you for that, because, in the dark cloud of Covid, there has been a silver lining in such ground-breaking work. Thank you.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you for that. I will bring in Murdo Fraser.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
I will bring in Professor Rory Gunson.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
I will ask the first question, which is very simple. Will you explain how genomic sequencing works and what it is?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
Thank you, deputy convener. I apologise to everyone for my late arrival, which is due to my having to deal with another matter. I also apologise if I should repeat any questions.
I thank Dr Isabel Fletcher for her written evidence, which was based on research conducted by her and Professor Catherine Lyall. It noted some interesting things, such as:
“In crisis situations, people initially turn to their existing networks for assistance with unexpected and urgent tasks.”
It also highlighted that
“the climate crisis will result in increasing threats to human health (including future pandemics) demanding responses that span public health, animal health and environment. This, in turn, will require more joined-up approaches with effective day-to-day working relationships”
with the Scottish Government and other agencies.
My colleague John Mason said that it was suggested that there would be benefit in creating a post of chief scientist for public health. Are there any other ways in which such approaches could be co-ordinated by the Government?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That is helpful. Thank you.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Siobhian Brown
That is really helpful.
I will move to my next question. Do you feel that Scotland is well placed at the moment for any future pandemics, as well as for any other threats, such as antimicrobial resistance?
10:30