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 994 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Social Care Integration
Meeting date: 4 October 2022
Paul O'Kane
We have heard about local working at officer level, but I am keen to get a perspective from the boards themselves. How important is that democratic representation, with elected members able to scrutinise the work of health and social care partnerships and chief officers? Those people know their communities and have been elected to represent their communities. I say that as someone who served on an IJB in a previous life. I wonder whether Judith Proctor might want to share her view on that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
Obviously, there is a basket of approaches that need to be taken on capacity. However, I was concerned to read about the lack of surge capacity in beds, which has been identified across boards. A large number of beds from last winter’s surge capacity are still occupied. How will we ensure surge capacity if required when it is simply not there?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
Can you hear me? Thanks, convener.
I understand what colleagues have said about their anecdotal experience in the NHS and the comments that have been made about staff, but John-Paul Loughrey, who is vice-chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland, has said that frail elderly people are being left on trolleys for hours because of shortages and that the initiatives that the Government has taken—to move people with minor ailments away from A and E, for example—are not delivering the change that is needed. He has said that every hospital in Scotland is “under the cosh”. What is the panel’s view on those comments? What interaction has there been with the RCEM?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
I want to explore that mental health point a little further. I will ask about people who will inevitably end up in crisis due to cost of living pressures. Because it ties into trying to reduce attendances at the wrong place, I am keen to understand what work the boards have done with third sector providers on the support that they can give to deal with crisis. I am thinking about organisations such as local mental health associations, which already run some of the relevant services.
Given my local interest, I will start with Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Dr Armstrong.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
Sure.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
I appreciate what colleagues are saying about their anecdotal—[Inaudible.]
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
My question was similar to David Torrance’s so, in the interest of time, I am happy not to ask it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
I have two questions that I will ask together, if that is helpful. How resilient are boards in terms of staffing numbers over winter, given the challenges that we know persisted last winter and over the course of the Covid period? I am particularly interested in single staffing of wards and some of the data around that. Secondly in terms of resilience, staff wellbeing was alluded to, but to what degree have there been innovations such as the provision of meals for staff on night shift and rest areas?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Winter Planning
Meeting date: 27 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland—CCPS—conducted a survey of its members on resilience that shows countless examples of difficulties with recruitment. What steps have been taken to address that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 20 September 2022
Paul O'Kane
The point about the level of local innovation is well made. However, there are some national innovations that we have been waiting for for some time, such as the single patient record, new technology and digital health. Is it your sense that a lot of that has to be driven from the centre across all health boards in order to make that difference?
