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 812 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
My first question is for Dr Wright, who spoke earlier about lobbying Westminster for an increase in universal credit rates. I would certainly not disagree with that, but what about the fundamental design flaws in that system such as conditionality—I think that I have said that properly—for employed and unemployed people, the initial long waiting periods of at least five weeks during which people go without money and the length and severity of the sanctions, which, compared with the rest of the world, are incredibly severe?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I am sorry if this question seems like a little jump backwards. In talking about college student associations, Eve Lewis mentioned that students have a diverse range of views on digital access to courses, where courses are and so on. There is clearly not a one-size-fits-all approach across the student population. It seems to me that there is a real need for personalisation and for choices and options for students in order to improve their ability across the board to be able to sustain places. Are student associations advocating for that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is really interesting, because my other question is about the management boards and whether students’ views get parity. Are students influencing changes that are improving their experiences and their outcomes? You talked about students being involved in strategic discussions with college leaders and the fact that there needs to be a little bit more support around that for students who are inexperienced. How can we make that happen and get students involved in the design element in order to improve things?
10:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 8 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I appreciate those comments. My other question is about diversity. Across student representatives on boards and the college student associations, are there attempts to make sure that there is balance relating to women, minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities and so on?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I will direct the question at Nora Senior. We are talking about student experiences, so I feel that my question will fit in well, here. We have achieved the access target of 16 per cent of students coming from the most deprived areas, but what progress has been made in improving access for people with disabilities, including learning disabilities, and those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Do you have any recommendations on how that could best be taken forward?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 1 June 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
That is great. Thank you. We all have an issue with thinking of young people.
What progress has been made in ensuring that students’ voices are listened to? How do students influence the sector’s future priorities? Is the drive towards net zero and the need to prioritise green skills for the future a priority for students and the sector?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 31 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I have a question for Gill Bhatti on employability. There are specific barriers in relation to neurodiversity and a lot of anxiety and mental health issues are prevalent in the neurodiverse group, too. Quite often, the job interview process screens out neurodiverse people because of the eye contact and social communication skills that are looked for. How is that being monitored? What is the evidence actually saying? What steps are being taken to address that gap?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 31 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Danny Boyle, I heard from a patient who had requested access to her medical records and found that many of the medical professionals she had been in touch with had recorded her under different ethnic backgrounds—rather than asking her directly, they had made a decision themselves. Further, assumptions were also made around her diet, for example, because of her ethnicity, but they were not correct. Is that something that is an issue that you are aware of? Is it quite common? Obviously, it has implications for the data that we have. How much of a role does that issue play?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 31 May 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Apologies. My specific question was about the national health service and the series of different health professionals and consultants recording different information. How much of an issue is that? Is that being looked at?