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 1560 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Tess White
Did you face any difficulties or hurdles that you had not envisaged?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Tess White
Great, thank you. Dr Hughes, will you share with us your views of your first 100 days? Have there been any surprises or is there anything that you think that it would be helpful to us to know?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Tess White
I note that the petition uses the word “urgently” and that it is dated 20 December 2021. These are systemic issues and I think that we all agree that they need to be looked at. It is important to make sure that the women feel listened to and that services are not just centred around the central belt. For example, there are two mother and baby units in Scotland and they are both in the central belt. One was supposedly planned for Grampian, but it was kicked into the long grass—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Tess White
My question is for Matthew McClelland from the Nursing and Midwifery Council. You talk about whistleblowing. What mechanisms are in place for staff to raise safety concerns?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Tess White
Will a PSC add value to the processes that are in place?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Tess White
Thank you, minister. It is really good to hear that some money is on its way. It would be good to see that actually delivered. The reality is that councils have never had the money to make multimillion-pound investments to turn the tide. Now that the revenue position has worsened, the people of Montrose are telling us that there are scant years left in the dune system and the historic golf course. A few fairways have already been lost to the sea, and there are huge implications with regard to flooding. When will the Scottish Government grasp the nettle and decide whether it will support a sand motor at Montrose?
Meeting of the Parliament
Portfolio Question Time
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Tess White
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what steps it is taking to address coastal erosion in the North East Scotland region. (S6O-01888)
Meeting of the Parliament
NHS Tayside Mental Health Services
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Tess White
I, too, thank Michael Marra for securing the time for the debate so quickly after it was postponed a couple of weeks ago.
Given the findings of David Strang’s 2020 report “Trust and Respect—Final Report of the Independent Inquiry into Mental Health Services in Tayside”, it is vital that parliamentarians continue to shine a light on the provision of those services. Grave concerns were first raised in the Scottish Parliament in 2018, and I am encouraged to hear Graeme Dey’s passion for change.
I was not a member of the Scottish Parliament in 2018, but I knew about the public campaign for an inquiry into Tayside’s mental health services. I read about the tragic story of David Ramsay, who hanged himself after a second emergency assessment at Carseview. I was horrified by the 61 per cent increase in suicides in Dundee.
My own family has experienced the devastating impact of suicide. My heart goes out to all the families across Tayside who have lost loved ones that way.
As an MSP for the north-east, I have seen Carseview through the eyes of constituents and I have felt their fear as they tried to navigate a frightening system that they felt was so stacked against them. I not only looked at the final report of the independent oversight and assessment group on Tayside’s mental health services with interest but had personal and professional investment in it.
Reading between the lines, I can see that a tremendous amount of work is still to be done. I particularly struggle to understand why Tayside executive partners and the IOAG “continue to be apart” in their assessment of progress. As Michael Marra rightly pointed out, the report states that Tayside executive partners have reported 33 green recommendations, and 16 amber. The IOAG has rated 20 green, 29 amber and two red. That is a gulf in assessment, not a gully. How can that be?
There are two other areas in the latest report that I find extremely concerning. The first is on the workforce; the second is on culture. On workforce, as the report emphasises, there is still a “long way to go”. That seems to be an understatement, given that it was reported just a couple of weeks ago that
“Tayside is at the epicentre of a ‘national scandal’ in adult psychiatry care”,
with serious issues in recruiting consultant psychiatrists. I hope that the minister will address that in closing.
On culture, the report identifies an “urgent need” to improve governance and public performance reporting as a
“means of developing a more open and transparent culture”.
We have heard that so many times, and it has been raised with me by constituents time and time again. Those are fundamental points that still require significant improvement.
The essence of David Strang’s report is trust and respect. He said:
“The successful delivery of healthcare services depends on good levels of trust between healthcare providers and patients, their families and carers.”
That is the gold standard, but Tayside falls well short.
Mental health services in Tayside still have a huge way to go. This might have been the IOAG’s final report, but it is definitely not the end of the line. The process still needs oversight and accountability, from Grant Archibald and his team to the highest levels of the Scottish Government. It cannot be brushed under the carpet any longer.
19:13Meeting of the Parliament
National Health Service Dentistry
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Tess White
—with adults and children from the most deprived parts of Scotland less likely to attend than those in the least deprived areas.
Meeting of the Parliament
National Health Service Dentistry
Meeting date: 8 February 2023
Tess White
The cabinet secretary obviously does not like what I am saying.
The reality is that we are seeing a decline in dentistry under this SNP-Green Government. Dentistry in Scotland is on a cliff edge.
Humza Yousaf announced today that the bridging payment will remain in place until 31 October this year, after months of uncertainty for dental practices that feared that they might collapse. He and the SNP Government must urgently get a grip of the situation and bring forward a credible plan to restore routine dental care and the confidence of the profession.
16:24