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 812 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Fantastic. Is it more about having a cloud-based system so that all the different systems that are used by different health professionals—and beyond that, as well, into alternative pathways—can connect into one cloud-based platform, rather than having one system that runs right the way through and is the same everywhere?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you, convener. I want to pick up on some of what Roseann Logan said and I was going to direct my question to Christiana, although both of you might want to comment. How widely is the ALISS database being used? Is it the right system? Should we be investing in it and ramping it up, or should we look at whether something more local would work a bit better?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I would like to come back on that answer. Dr Perry addressed many of the points that I had written down. It is interesting to hear that work is already being done to look at a central, cloud-based platform.
At last week’s meeting, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society talked about the need to be able both to add information to the patient record and to access information on it. Is the ability to do that included in the pilots that are taking place?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I want to dig a wee bit more into the issues that Paul O’Kane has raised. The big picture really matters. The GP relationship is established over many years, and it is important to many patients. GPs know their patients and their circumstances, and that relationship allows GPs to have the sensitive discussions that patients might otherwise be unwilling to have.
We have talked about the fact that there should be no wrong door. This might be a question for Clare Morrison and Jess Sussmann initially. Is it realistic for a variety of organisations to have someone who is the key person—the trusted person—to the individual patient, who offers continuity and helps the patient to get access to all the primary care services?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
I am not undermining the GP’s place at all, but we tend to find that individuals will have a particular person whom they connect with, especially as they get older. That will be their go-to person for advice, who could say to them, “You really need to see your GP about that,” or “It would be a really good idea to go to your pharmacist.”
We have talked about link workers. We do not have them everywhere just now, and that is perhaps part of the issue. Realistically, patients will probably choose their own key person or go-to person.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Thank you—[Inaudible.] That is great. It is helpful to know that those referral pathways work in primary care services and beyond.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
They trust that person, and they feel that they can rely on them.
How realistic is it for that to happen? Is that understood, and is that part of the system? We talk about the no wrong door policy, but there is also a push to get patients to go in the right direction, either on their own or through a link worker.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Yes, I do. It is clear that all the witnesses agree that such a record would be transformational and a massive benefit. Where are we right now on patient record sharing? What progress do you see on plans to improve that? What plans are coming along in the future, and what has come in so far?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
Is there any sign of those issues abating? Are there any plans to rectify the situation, as far as you are aware?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Stephanie Callaghan
The Healthcare Improvement Scotland practice administrative staff collaborative has seemed to improve triage and referral to the appropriate professionals. Could that be rolled out more widely?
