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 2800 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Sue Webber
It looks like a couple of people—Scott Henderson and Paul Perry, perhaps—might want to respond to my question.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
Thank you, convener. You can see why, when I first saw Callum’s Facebook posts back in May, not long after I got elected, I was so keen to do everything I could to help this young, inspiring boy to aspire to his dreams. I followed him diligently when he walked the John Muir way. We went out and met him, his puppy and his parents in East Lothian with my old dog.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
That is right. We went out to see you as you got to the end of your long walk.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
Everyone was there. There were a lot of people.
It is tremendous that the committee has opened up and been so willing to endorse and support this young man’s dreams and to get the First Minister involved. With everything that we aspire to do as parliamentarians, when there is something as tangible as Callum’s petition, which will make a real difference to so many young people across the country, we would be foolhardy not to get on side and back it all the way.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
When we talk about inequalities, we are talking not only about patient awareness but about geographical variations in services. To what extent can equality of availability and access to alternative pathways be ensured? I am thinking particularly about some of the rural challenges that we face, and the lack of consistency.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
Yes. I was looking at Dr Williams, who is up in Grantown. Wendy Panton might also be able to help.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
Most of the people there did not have anything particularly positive to say. They were all aware of the various healthcare professionals who are out there, but they were not aware of possible pathways to access them. Everything is still coming through the GP, who is still the primary point of contact. Signposting to other healthcare professionals is also very limited.
It was quite disappointing to hear about the reality of what many people face on the ground in a number of sectors. There was no experience of self-referral to taxpayer-funded services, but there were a couple of examples of self-referrals to alternative services that are provided by third sector organisations. It is clear that a lot of improvement is needed.
Only one person mentioned a social prescribing referral. Again, that was via a GP practice. It was a referral to active gym sessions in the local authority area.
There were a lot of concerns about people’s different skill levels and abilities to navigate and find alternative services. The online approach was one of the main tools. Finding a phone line that would open the door was helpful, but a lot of the referrals were to third sector organisations or via the GP. That shows where the bottleneck is and that there is still a lot of work to do.
Like Emma Harper, I reiterate the level of frustration that many people feel about getting to see their GP and about the receptionist at the door stopping them going further.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
We have spoken about the fact that 10 per cent of people still will not accept an appointment with an alternative health practitioner, even if one is available, but will want an appointment with a GP. Why might that be? Are there legitimate concerns regarding the availability of alternative health practitioners? We have spoken about communication being consistent and national and so on, but we do not have consistent services, so we cannot have a national message. What are your thoughts on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
Patient representatives in the first panel talked about health literacy and the fact that there might be—I am trying to find the words—“savvy patients” who are able to direct themselves to alternative pathways and are more aware of their conditions. However, there are people who are not in that position who still, ultimately, need to see the GP to get a primary diagnosis. In the process of promoting effective use of alternative pathways, how can we ensure that everyone’s route into primary healthcare is protected and that we do not discriminate against the people who need to see the GP in order that they understand what is going on? I am sure that you will all want to respond to that question.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
I thank the witnesses for their comments so far. It has been really enlightening to have the reasons and justifications explained so concisely. That has made it clear to us where some of the issues lie.
Margaret McKay and Val Costello said that the long waiting times to see alternative health practitioners are also undermining the ability to alleviate the pressures on general practices, because everything is still funnelled through them. We know that patients are likely to default to their GP if they have to wait too long. What must happen if we are to make meaningful improvements to access to alternative health practitioners?
