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 3266 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
I will pick up on what Dr Williams said. I guess that giving people confidence that they are not getting a lesser service is important. Do you have any reflections on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
You made a very good point about media coverage and news stories.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Would you like to put your question to anyone in particular? Shall we go to Dr Williams first?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
My colleagues will probably ask for more details when they ask their questions. I was nodding along, particularly when Margaret McKay talked about how the approach is communicated. We have all seen in our areas where the approach is being communicated well and where there has been reactive communication about the change. It can be problematic until people actually access the service. If they get a good service, they are completely fine about it, but the initial reaction to change is that there has not been proactive information sharing about what is going on.
An issue that came up last night, and in our survey, is the role of receptionists. In many cases, people are worried that the receptionist is a gatekeeper, rather than a facilitator to their accessing healthcare. Before I hand over to Sandesh Gulhane for his questions, I will quickly go round all of you for comments on that. What are you hearing from the people to whom you speak?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Thank you, Margaret. That is very helpful.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Our final line of questioning is on health inequalities. I know that we have touched on that issue throughout the session, but I call Gillian Mackay to ask some questions on it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Do any of the other panellists want to come in on mental health support workers?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Thank you. Wendy—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Our second item is two evidence sessions as part of our inquiry into alternative pathways to primary care. They are the first of our sessions on that inquiry.
Before we start, I will mention an informal meeting that I was at last night with service users and some third sector representatives, who attended to talk about their experience of alternative pathways to primary care. I would be grateful if some of the members who attended could give a quick summary of what they heard.
Certainly, in the session that I chaired, there was a lot of enthusiasm for green spaces therapies, but there was concern that not enough patients were being referred to them and that there was a lack of understanding of what was out there, including among referring general practitioners. There was a worry that, although there were quite a lot of really good projects out there, people who could benefit from them—particularly the most vulnerable of people, who could benefit the most from them—were not signposted to them or did not have access to the information in order to access them. In short, there are a lot of good things out there but there is an issue with communication.
We heard about some good things, but one person said that she had heard about some attitude problems, with medical professionals, in particular, being quite dismissive of social prescribing as an option. That was a bit of a worry. I do not know how widespread that attitude is, but that was certainly one person’s point of view. Emma—you were in another session.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Dr Williams wants to come back in.
