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 1267 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
In response to Tess White, you spoke about preventative medicine and, obviously, as a GP, I will come on to talk about that. We must transform the way in which we think about and deliver healthcare. We cannot keep focusing on health in the way in which we do just now. We cannot treat the NHS as if it were a bike repair shop where people just come in to get repaired. We need to get them better beforehand. Organisations such as the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine are advocating for such a preventative agenda. You mentioned it earlier, but I would like you to expand on what you said and give us some tangible examples of where we could implement preventative spend and the things that we could do within healthcare budgets to achieve that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I could not agree more with what you said about GPs. It is so important that, when I am doing my job as a GP, I am sure that I am helping people’s health and not focusing on their social issues, because there are probably other people who are better placed to do that.
You mentioned community link workers. In Glasgow, we are going to see deep cuts made to their numbers. I have received a lot of correspondence from community link workers. I have also spoken to deep-end practices and to GPs—GPs are stopping me in the street to talk about this. The good that community link workers do is huge, and the worry that a lot of them communicate in correspondence is that, if they are cut, they will have to go from working in one practice to working in three practices. They will have maybe a day a week in each practice, which will significantly hinder the work that they will be able to do for the community. What value should we place on community link workers, especially in our most deprived areas?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I am aware that other people want to come in. This is my last question—I am sorry, but I am sticking with Philip Whyte.
About 80 to 90 per cent of all patient contacts happen in primary care; that is where people access healthcare. You are right that we are not quite there when it comes to resourcing, which is dominated by secondary care. We saw a £65 million cut in the primary care budget last year. With that happening, how are we expecting our GPs to provide a service that enables the preventative agenda? How can we give our GPs the time to ask about things such as alcohol or cigarettes or other questions, as opposed to only the thing that brings the patient through the door? Do you have any ways in which we could do that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
My second question is for Carmen Martinez. Social care is often seen as a Cinderella service, whose sole job is to prop up the NHS, allow speedy discharges and allow hospitals to work more efficiently, but it needs to be seen as a vital part of the care that we provide. When it comes to looking at how social care data is used to see how we can make improvements, do you think that we have adequate data? If not, what is missing?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you.
My last question is for Philip Whyte. As a taxpayer, when money is spent, I think that it is important that we know where it is spent and that there is an audit trail of that spending. When it comes to health, is it too simplistic to want to know where our money is being spent and how?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you.
I have a second question. I recently visited Possil pharmacy, which is investing in technology to benefit patients. It has automated dispensing machines that allow it to provide out-of-hours prescription collections. It has invested in a robot to help to create blister packs, which many patients are now unable to get help with. Obviously, that is very expensive, but it helps the local community significantly. Would the Scottish Government be able to make money available to help pharmacies that want to invest in those technologies for their communities? Could you create an environment where single pharmacies could group together to do such a thing?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I just want to declare my interest as a practising NHS GP.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
You are right to say that it affects young people. Has the Scottish Government made any assessment of the economic impact of long Covid?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
There are health boards that do not have a long Covid pathway in place. When do you expect that to happen, and will you be putting pressure on health boards to come up with those pathways quickly?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Programme for Government 2023-24
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
A constituent of mine, Stuart McGrow, is a dentist who lost his associate during the Covid pandemic. He stepped up to perform more than double his workload to serve patients in his community. However, the funding model did not recognise his individual case, which has meant that he has had to move in with his parents while he tries to keep his practice afloat. Are you willing to consider his case and help him?
