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 1347 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
That is fantastic to hear, but it brings me to the question of resource. After all, it is very labour intensive to listen to someone’s story, pull out the thread, catalogue it and then get it checked to see whether there are any other such threads. As knowledge of the patient safety commissioner grows and people start to go to them, might we see a significant expansion of their budget simply to deal with those patients?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I mean those who were on the advisory group.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I just want to make it clear that I would like to take evidence from Dr Baird, but as part of that wider work.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
You have a set budget and you report to the Health and Social Care Committee. Do you feel able to tell that committee what you have found out so far and what you need to be able to go a little bit further or, because your funding comes from the Department of Health and Social Care, do you have to take that route—or do you have to take both routes?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Everyone on the panel has spoken about other areas that they would like to put under the wing of the patient safety commissioner. Under the current proposals, four members of staff will be allocated to the role, and there are many other commissioners, which is very expensive. Do you feel that the patient safety commissioner will be adequately resourced to handle the situation now and in the future? I direct that question to Shaun Gallagher and Matthew McClelland, who both mentioned the possibility of the commissioner having extra areas of responsibility.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I will pick up on what the convener said about individual cases. Dr Williams, I appreciate that there are lots of different ways of doing things, but might it be useful for the commissioner to be able to hear about and log individual cases in order to find the golden thread that runs through them?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
My question is for Dr Williams. I am sorry if I seem to be picking on you. I note that, in its submission, the RCGP talks about the interface between primary and secondary care being where half of all errors and problems occur. You touched on that in response to my opening question to you.
Perhaps I can highlight as an example something that happened when I was in general practice last week. A patient came to me, telling me all the things that the hospital had said and done to them, but I did not get a discharge letter telling me any of that. As a result, I knew less than the patient did about their care. Can you give us any more examples of problems with the interface between primary and secondary care? What, exactly, do you feel a patient safety commissioner could do in that area?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Just on that point, do you feel that our current culture is one in which there is blame, so people are a bit worried, and that the patient safety commissioner might help with that situation? Matthew McClelland, I direct that follow-up question to you, too. In previous committee meetings we have heard about cover-ups, with people being very worried and using Datix forms or the words, “I’m going to complain about you” as threats to get what they want. Do you feel that we have a culture of blame, which we need to move away from?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The NMC and the GMC both undertake investigations, which involve a very different skill to that of analysis, and can be resource heavy and difficult to do. Knowing how difficult it is to do investigations, do you feel that the patient safety commissioner should highlight areas of concern but use other agencies to carry out investigations, thus making resources go further?
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