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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1225 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I would not really expect you to be able to answer that question. Individual instances of racism can be stopped through education; it does not take much to move away from that. On the other hand, it takes a lot to move away from institutional racism. Do you feel that you should be undertaking work on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I will pause you there. What is the timescale for that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Absolutely. It is not the only solution, and we need to do a lot more, but it is certainly important, and we need to spend time educating people on that.
Look at Scotland’s diet. We in Scotland are one of the fattest nations in the world. I cannot really talk, because I am overweight, but I am working hard to lose weight. I am trying to lose weight not because I want to look better but for health reasons and to make sure that I do not progress to type 2 diabetes, for example. It is important that we frame the conversation around health, not looks.
I have a few questions. Can Food Standards Scotland look at things such as meal deals, for example? I do not know anyone who would choose a banana over a bag of crisps or a chocolate bar. The cost of such things does not make sense to me. Is there anything that you could do to offer free fruit with a meal deal or something along those lines?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
One of the things that I was very pleased to hear about was the appointment of an HR team. At our meeting last October, Tess White was very clear about the importance of HR. I was very disappointed with the answers that we got back about that, so that is a very pleasing step that you have taken.
Gordon, you said that you have different districts doing things differently, but surely you accept that the unacceptable is unacceptable. It does not matter how you break it down: what happened was totally unacceptable.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
This is a leading question for either Forbes or Anjan: what is the ethnic diversity mix of your players at differing age groups?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I asked Cricket Scotland about its data on ethnicity. Do you have that data for other sports?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I asked Anjan Luthra whether he was in contact with people in other sports around Scotland. Would it be helpful to have regular meetings at chair level? Given that Cricket Scotland is going through a formal detailed process and is having to innovate on a lot of things, surely that is the type of work that should be going on throughout all sport in Scotland and, actually, UK wide.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
When I went to the Royal Highland Show, some of the producers told me that, through their work, they can tell exactly what is in the mince and where it has come from, which is quite incredible.
I am not sure whether you will be able answer my last question, but I want to ask it. Along with food safety, food security is important. With the war in Ukraine and possible future conflicts on the horizon, I am incredibly concerned about whether we can ensure food security in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Is that an area that you are working on? Can you ensure that food security?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
How can you possibly look at racism and at what is going on with the drop-out rate if you do not know about that? That is vital.
I have a final question. Anjan, what is your commitment with other sport around Scotland? Also, what barriers do other sport face?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 24 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
On the issue of choice, I often hear people saying that they struggle to know what to buy and struggle to cook. Lots of companies—we do not want to promote them, but I am thinking of companies such as HelloFresh and Gousto—create a food box to send to people. You get everything that you need, with step-by-step instructions on how to cook the meal, but they are very expensive. Would it be useful for supermarkets to create things that are easy to pick up, so that people would not have to get their onions from one place and then walk across the supermarket to get something else? Instead, the supermarket could give them a card that shows that the ingredients are all in one place and easy to find, and that shows how to cook the soup, the casserole or whatever they are looking for.