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 3405 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Sue Webber
Will the member take an intervention?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Sue Webber
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app was not working. I would have voted yes.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Sue Webber
I cannot understand what is going on in the head of our cabinet secretary. Surely an appropriate level of funding ought to be provided to support the development of a solution to present to the people of Scotland.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Sue Webber
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the chance to speak in this much-delayed debate. In the motion that is in front of us today there is absolutely nothing that could not have been presented to Parliament before 5 May.
The SNP Government is failing to treat long Covid with the seriousness that it deserves. SNP ministers must urgently get on top of long Covid now, before it spirals out of control and has serious knock-on consequences for other services in our NHS.
The Office for National Statistics estimates that 151,000 Scots are suffering with long Covid; that number is rising. Additionally, 64,000 Scots have been experiencing long Covid symptoms for more than a year, which is more than double the number who were suffering just six months ago. Also, 36,000 Scots are reporting that long Covid is having a significant impact on their daily activities. Mr Cole-Hamilton spoke about how debilitating it is and how it is ruining people’s livelihoods. Huge numbers of people are suffering while the SNP fails to act.
The figures include constituents of mine; we have heard many constituents’ stories. One constituent has contacted me with a heart-breaking story. She is a nurse in Edinburgh and is suffering from long Covid. Her story certainly breaks my heart. After contracting Covid in 2020, she was signed off work in August that year and was not able to return until February 2021. When she returned to work, she managed to maintain herself at work until August 2021, when she then went off sick again with extreme fatigue, constant headaches and continuous dizziness. Her job is now at risk because she is still not well enough to return to work, despite the fact that she is still waiting for further assessment and referral. There is no primary care pathway for GPs to access services.
My constituent feels very strongly that the system does not work. As I have said, there is no clear pathway to referrals for services. A network of long Covid clinics would ensure that we would reach everyone who is struggling with the debilitating condition. Patients cannot wait for years for action. Too many of the people who have fought Covid are still suffering with the consequences months after they caught the virus. Without proper long Covid clinics, many of those people will continue to be missed.
Aside from clinics, we need the Government to ensure that there are better guidelines for support across health and social care. My constituent said:
“Long Covid is not going away. I do not appear to be getting better and I am not getting any kind of meaningful treatment. I do not appreciate being left to rot, having done my duty, and attended work during the pandemic to support my frontline colleagues in my nursing role. Nor do I appreciate being written off due to others’ ideas of disability and capability.”
It was quite humbling to get that email.
Physical health conditions can have negative impacts on a person’s mental health. Financial stress is also associated with poorer mental health, and long Covid is documented as affecting people’s ability to work. Stress, fear, and the trauma of having long Covid, and uncertainty about the future are also noted to have exacerbated poor mental health.
Everyone knows that people who suffer from long Covid are likely to experience mental health problems including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Recent research into long Covid mirrors that finding; it has determined that there is a high probability that suicide rates will increase among people who are experiencing long Covid. That is a result of the psychiatric, neurological and physical symptoms of the virus. However, suicide is not even mentioned in Scotland’s long Covid service document.
The Scottish Government’s motion refers to the need to develop models of care that will
“benefit the management of other long-term and complex conditions”.
Therefore, as John Mason did, I want to make reference to the similarities between long Covid and ME and how those conditions have been recognised.
Attitudes to ME have been changing with the emergence of long Covid. The two conditions have many similarities. Like long Covid, ME is a post-viral disease, and it has many identical fluctuating symptoms. The hallmark symptom of ME is post-exertional malaise, which is a worsening of symptoms that can follow minimal cognitive, physical, emotional or social activity. Many people are extremely concerned that doctors who treat long Covid patients are not aware of the dangers of exercise for patients who are suffering from fatigue.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline on ME, which was published in October 2021, has not yet been implemented in Scotland, which has led to a void in guidance on treatment of ME. Long Covid patients who have ME face the prospect of being treated by doctors who have little knowledge or understanding of ME and who, at worst, will recommend treatment that will harm them.
In Jan 2019, in response to #MEAction Scotland’s petition, Jeane Freeman told the Public Petitions Committee:
“We should not wait until we have a better research base and greater clarity on what treatment options might be appropriate. People are living with ME right now, so we need to look at the work that needs to be done to increase awareness and understanding of the condition”.—[Official Report, Public Petitions Committee, 24 January 2019; c 35.]
That statement was made more than three years ago, yet nothing has changed for people with ME in Scotland. We cannot allow there to be the same inaction on long Covid. As Jackie Baillie said today,
“we now see baby steps being taken. Snails move at a faster pace.”
My colleague Dr Gulhane made it clear that patients with long Covid want the Parliament to take concrete action. We urgently need a clear strategy for tackling the disease, and funding must be ring fenced for treatment of long Covid patients. NHS staff are going above and beyond, but they cannot provide the service that patients deserve because the SNP Government has failed to resource them properly. Although we welcome the £10 million of funding, it is spread over three financial years and, as Jackie Baillie said, will amount to only £33 per person.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Sue Webber
Tragically, two overworked Glasgow medics who worked in our NHS took their own lives last year. This week, the chair of the British Medical Association’s Scottish junior doctors committee warned that overstretched medics will be killed due to the extreme pressures and workloads that NHS staff are having to cope with.
I have two questions for the First Minister. First, does she recognise that current ways of working are risking lives? Secondly, when can we expect the Scottish Government to finally implement the safe staffing legislation—the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019—that was passed unanimously by the Parliament three years ago?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Sue Webber
I believe that the Government is spending £2.5 million on research, so there is a long way to go before we have parity with the rest of the UK when it comes to research or investment in long Covid services.
In June last year, we published a policy paper on long Covid, which raised awareness of the extent and impact of the disease and what we should be doing to tackle it. We want the SNP Government to recognise the disease and to give patients the treatment that they deserve. It should publish a clear long Covid strategy, create a specific long Covid care fund and work with health services and research institutions across the UK to find out more about the disease. It should write more than just the chapters that the cabinet secretary mentioned earlier. The Government also needs to invest in a network of specialist clinics and to adopt an app-based treatment service.
As my colleague Craig Hoy said, people with long Covid who live in Scotland are 20 per cent more likely to be severely affected by the disease in their day-to-day lives than people with the condition who live elsewhere in the UK.
In England, the NHS operates 90 specialist long Covid clinics; in Scotland, there is none. The SNP Government’s inaction is having a real impact on people who are affected by long Covid. When the SNP Government’s long Covid paper was published, the ONS estimated that 79,000 people in Scotland were suffering from long Covid. Now, that figure is 151,000 people. Six months of dither and delay have meant that 72,000 people have not been able to access the support that they were promised in September. That is why we need a network of specialist long Covid clinics.
If there was a “will”, rather than a “may”, in the cabinet secretary’s motion, then there would be a way for us to support the Scottish Government’s motion. Unfortunately, we cannot.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Sue Webber
There is a crisis in our social care service. Staff are overwhelmed, having gone above and beyond during the pandemic, but they have not been given the leadership or supportive environment that they need from this SNP Government. Quite frankly, there has been no leadership at all.
It is not just the SNP that is at fault. Instead of working to address the crisis in social care, Scottish Labour is working with and focused on the centralisation of care services alongside the SNP. That will hollow out local councils even further.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Sue Webber
I think that the minister is manufacturing a false grievance. The public want us to work together.
The UK Government has stepped up during the cost of living crisis, by providing a £22 billion package of support, which includes a cut in fuel duty and an increase in the national insurance thresholds. Instead of pressing ahead with a bureaucratic overhaul of services, the SNP should bring forward reforms now.
15:33Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Sue Webber
I have a suggestion that the minister might find will focus the Government’s mind. Will she make a commitment that, for every day that there is rail strike disruption, the ministerial limos will remain parked, in solidarity with ScotRail passengers—yes or no?