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 3543 contributions
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I am sorry—when was that? Is that a new development, or was the committee previously aware of it?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Okay. Thank you. That probably strayed slightly beyond the parameters of the petition, but I can see its relevance to it. Obviously, we are coming to the issues as a new committee, and they are continuing petitions. I do not know whether those issues were previously explored or whether Mr Sweeney has identified issues that we could seek further opinions on from the Scottish Government. However, we can do that.
I should clarify that we will ask the Scottish Government—not the UK Government—for a view on the UK Government’s proposals in relation to the A75.
Are members happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I also welcome to the meeting Elena Whitham, who is engaging with the committee for the first time. What are your thoughts on the petition?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Do we know whether the round-table event took place?
The clerks are not sure. We want to confirm whether that event took place. If it did, it would be sensible to establish any outcomes from it.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
That meets with the general agreement of the committee.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
There was a members’ business debate on the issue in session 5, which, from memory, was led by Alexander Burnett.
Do members agree to take that approach?
Members indicated agreement.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
Now that we have heard from Christine Grahame and read the submissions, I turn to colleagues for their comments.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I was struck by Emma Harper’s advocacy of holding off a round-table discussion until we see a little more about where things are going. However, we can still reserve the right to come back to that. We should be clear that we will write to the UK Government about the A75. Do committee colleagues agree to that?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
The next continued petition is PE1662, on improving treatment for patients with Lyme disease and associated tick-borne diseases, which was lodged by Janey Cringean and Lorraine Murray on behalf of Tick-borne Illness Campaign Scotland. The petition calls on the Scottish Government
“to improve testing and treatment for Lyme disease and associated tick-borne diseases by ensuring that medical professionals in Scotland are fully equipped to deal with the complexity of tick-borne infections, addressing the lack of reliability of tests, the full variety of species in Scotland, the presence of ‘persister’ bacteria which are difficult to eradicate, and the complexities caused by the presence of possibly multiple co-infections, and to complement this with a public awareness campaign.”
When the petition was considered previously, in February 2021, the session 5 committee took evidence from the then Minister for Public Health and Sport, Mairi Gougeon, who was supported by Scottish Government officials Dr Gill Hawkins, the senior medical officer for health protection and public health, and Professor Tom Evans, the chief medical officer’s specialty adviser on infectious diseases. During the session, the minister stated that the Scottish Government was
“committed to supporting people with Lyme disease, finding new and better diagnostic and treatment tools, and trying to prevent it in the first place.”—[Official Report, Public Petitions Committee, 24 February 2021; c 2.]
It was revealed that the Scottish Government would soon be holding a round-table event that would bring together clinicians, patient representatives and public health experts to discuss testing, treatment and raising awareness. The minister confirmed that the Scottish Government was keen to develop an infectious diseases managed clinical network and that consideration of Lyme disease would be included in its workstream. The minister and her officials also agreed that more research was needed to underpin the development of better treatment options, particularly for people with longer-term symptoms.
Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions that they would like to make?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Jackson Carlaw
I do not think that we do that with any great pleasure.