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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1225 contributions
|
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 28 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
You have made an interesting point, Dr Makin. I have been told of rural patients who decided not to get their children’s measles vaccinations because it meant a three-hour round trip and, quite frankly, they did not see anyone, so they just said, “What’s the point?” It terrifies me that we are not getting measles vaccinations done.
Another aspect of primary care that I have been looking at is the percentage change in income allocation under the new contract. In general, if you are in the urban belt, you have seen an increase in the amount of money that you get, while in more rural areas, that increase does not seem to have happened. It almost seems as though we are trying to promote general practice and primary care in urban settings. Admittedly, 80 per cent of the population live there, but a substantial proportion of people—20 per cent—live in rural areas. What do you propose that we do for primary care to make things better for people who live in rural areas? That question is open to anyone who would like to answer.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I want to ask a direct question about the 2018 GP contract. Was the Scottish Government told that the GP contract would negatively impact rural and island GP and primary care settings?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
We have talked about all of those things, but I asked a very direct question. If you do not know the answer to it, perhaps Stephen Lea-Ross does. Was the Government told back in 2018 that the GP contract would negatively affect rural and island communities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
There was certainly a lot of discussion at the time—and at this point I should declare an interest, not just as a practising NHS GP, but as someone who sat on the BMA Scottish general practitioners committee at the time of the contract. I know that rural GPs were making a lot of noise about the contract negatively affecting those areas. How much of a gap was there between the introduction of the 2018 contract and the putting in place of all the things that Siobhan Mackay mentioned?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
That would be very helpful. Thank you.
My next question is for Stephen Lea-Ross. Tess White asked about numbers. What are the numbers of physician associates in primary care in the Highlands or in other rural settings?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
But that number is growing.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
What is the role of a physician associate in primary care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Women’s Health Champion
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Potentially. I suppose that the question is about getting that knowledge into communities that traditionally do not have it, so that they are better informed and are able to champion their own health.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Women’s Health Champion
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I, too, will pick up on Ruth Maguire’s point about menopause. Being a GP, I am lucky enough to go to multiple different practices. In my experience—although Ruth said that she does not like us giving examples—people in the better-off areas in which I work know about menopause. They come in, having done some reading and thought about it, and having decided that it is likely that that is what is going on. We then have a discussion about menopause, whether it is an appropriate diagnosis and what treatments may be appropriate.
Those from more deprived areas do not come in like that. I have not seen a huge shift in terms of women in deprived areas coming in with more knowledge about menopause. You said earlier that menopause is now more spoken of, but is that what we are seeing? Is that happening in better-off areas rather than in deprived areas? If that is the case, how do we get the message to those women in deprived areas?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Healthcare in Remote and Rural Areas
Meeting date: 21 November 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I will ask about alcohol services. When the committee put out a call for views, some of the biggest respondents talked about alcohol services. Obviously, you will be aware—as everyone is—of the large number of alcohol deaths in Scotland. What increases or improvements have there been in alcohol services in rural areas?
