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 700 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 19 April 2022
Gillian Mackay
The report notes that data on primary care needs to be improved. For example, it says:
“Data on the number of GP appointments carried out is not available”.
How important is it that that data is collected and what impact would that have on how services are planned?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
Good morning, cabinet secretary. Witnesses have told the committee that a culture change is needed with regard to social prescribing, because many patients are still not comfortable with the idea. Some organisations heard that people felt short-changed when they were redirected to links practitioners rather than a GP, and GPs also made the point that time constraints limited their ability to explain social prescribing to patients. What action is being taken at the national level to facilitate that sort of thing and to promote and explain social prescribing and its benefits to the public?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
In a previous meeting, I asked witnesses about the inverse care law and how, as the system becomes more complicated to navigate, with people being expected to self-refer to different services, we mitigate the risk that those with lower levels of health literacy might become less likely to engage with health services. Witnesses highlighted that “targeted communication” is vital, in addition to
“detailed analysis of the data that is being collected on ... who is accessing different services directly instead of through GP referrals”.—[Official Report, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, 8 March 2022; c 25.]
What action is the Scottish Government taking on that, and what plans are there to collect and analyse that data?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
We know that, in urban areas, there are sometimes barriers to people attending different sites for appointments and so on. Could geographical variations in the provision of alternative pathways exacerbate inequalities, particularly for people in rural areas, where the distance between appointments might be significant?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
Do you see any difficulty around enforcement if a 15m no-smoking zone encompasses areas that are not part of hospital grounds, such as public footpaths?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
Good morning, panel. Social prescribing covers a wide range of activities and organisations, as we have heard from all of you this morning. Do community link workers have time and capacity to engage with all aspects of social prescribing? Is there a risk that they are being asked to help people with an ever expanding range of issues, from mental ill health to financial concerns, together with the many other things that you have all detailed this morning, but without any increased capacity and support?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
In its submission, NHS 24 highlighted that, in stressful moments, when people are feeling unwell or in pain,
“figuring out ... what is available ... can be a new pressure”,
which often results in them reverting to the use of traditional access points such as general practice or accident and emergency.
That suggests that we need proactive communication so that people are already aware of what is available before they reach that stressful point. How successful has proactive messaging been, and what more needs to be done to ensure that people are fully aware of where they should go when they need unscheduled care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
As we have picked up on already, not everyone has access to the internet or to electronic devices that will allow them to quickly visit NHS Inform, for example. During the pandemic, we have seen reactive and quick changes to capacity and to where people should receive care. How do we communicate changes in how care should be accessed to people who are experiencing digital exclusion?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Mackay
Of course. As we have picked up on already, not everyone has access to the internet or to electronic devices that allow them to quickly access NHS Inform. During the pandemic, places where people receive care have had to change quickly and at short notice. How do we communicate changes to how their care should be accessed to people who are perhaps digitally excluded?
