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 1225 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 February 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Was it statistically significant?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 February 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I declare an interest as a practising NHS GP.
Can I come back to you, please, Dr Cheema? We looked at Public Health Scotland’s modelling—it was modelling, because we all know that the number of deaths has gone up—and saw that it modelled against England. If it had modelled against Wales, we would have seen no difference, which is what Wales has found. If we had modelled against Northern Ireland, we would have seen that MUP exacerbated the number of deaths. Therefore, the way that the data was collected is a bit of a concern. What are your thoughts about that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 February 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The evidence shows that dependent drinkers are spending more on their alcohol consumption.
I will come back to Alison Douglas. What has been done to help dependent drinkers, who are spending more money, to come away from alcohol? How have measures such as alcohol brief interventions worked for dependent drinkers who have sought treatment?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 February 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I believe the evidence. I want to make that abundantly clear. That is why I am asking the questions. I asked you specifically what effect MUP has on dependent drinkers, which you have not answered yet.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Post-legislative Scrutiny)
Meeting date: 6 February 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
We will certainly come on to those questions, but, again, you have not answered my question about dependent drinkers, because—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
No—and the work that I do with my MDT, including our pharmacists and nurses, is absolutely vital. In fact, my practice nurse handles diabetes better than I do, because it represents is a lot of what she does. However, my argument is that, instead of looking to get doctors into practices, we are seeing expansion of the PA role, and thereby creating that dichotomy.
I have also heard of reports of PAs setting up privately and saying that they can offer all the same services. It is difficult to regulate if we cannot define the supervision level or the scope of practice. They have to be very tight and defined, in the same way as the situation that Emma Harper spoke about when we were talking about what happens in the US.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
What about my point about the cost of regulating a PA being half that of regulating a doctor?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
In order to regulate, it is necessary to have very tight definitions of what it is that the profession is doing. There are very tight definitions around nursing and expanded roles and around what doctors do. Given the scope of practice of AAs and PAs, 69 per cent of respondents to a BMA survey said that they were concerned that their role had been expanded more than it should have been. An example that I have heard of is the medical registrar bleep being held by a PA. The holding of that role is one of the most senior positions in a hospital. What is the scope of practice for a PA when it comes to the complaints procedure and the regulation process?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
We have seen a significant reduction in mental health across our country. We have also seen significant increases in waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services; the longest wait in Glasgow was 37 weeks to be seen. The reduction in budget will surely impact and harm mental health.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 16 January 2024
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I am not sure whether I need to declare my interest again, but I shall do so. I am a practising NHS GP.
I have met the Association of Anaesthetists, the British Medical Association and the General Medical Council Scotland on multiple occasions to discuss physician associates and anaesthesia associates; I have a number of concerns about their roles. There is a really important point to be made when it comes to regulation: we cannot regulate a body if we do not know what people’s roles are and what the scope of their practice is. “Supervision level” has not been defined. Is supervision on a one-to-one basis, a two-to-one basis or a three-to-one basis? The numbers could go on. In her questioning, Emma Harper spoke of the tightly defined role of an anaesthesia associate in the US.
Let us consider two issues. First, the fit and healthy patients whom Emma Harper spoke about are exactly the type of patients whom our junior doctors are required to deal with during their training. When junior doctors start their training, they cannot start by treating really complicated patients; they need to start by anaesthetising—obviously, with supervision—fit and healthy patients. That is really important. Therefore, there are impediments to training and, potentially, other issues.
I have also heard of—
