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 1420 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
I know that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport said that he did not want to
“clutter a landscape”
that
“already has a fair bit of bureaucracy around it”—[Official Report, Health and Sport Committee, 17 January 2023; c 14.]
through the organisations, agencies and institutions that we already have. I am aware that the establishment of an agency is not the route that the cabinet secretary wants to take. I suppose that the big issue is how we ensure that rural voices are heard. We have raised the issue in debates and through questions in the chamber, but how do we get rural voices heard if we do not continue to pursue evidence taking?
I know that the petition calls for the establishment of an agency. I need to understand whether we need the petitioner to submit a new petition that addresses the specific issues with remote and rural healthcare rather than calling for an agency.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
I am interested in the panel’s thoughts regarding the patient safety commissioner having sufficient powers to bring about improvements in patient safety. We already have the Scottish patient safety programme, which has been widened to look at maternity and neonatal primary care, paediatrics and medicines. I was part of the surgical safety stuff when I worked in the operating theatre in California, implementing the surgical safety checklist and things like that. Will the patient safety commissioner have enough powers to make safety improvements?
I do not have anybody in particular in mind.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
I have a quick question. Looking at the report on your first 100 days, I see that concerns have been raised about electroconvulsive therapy and Covid vaccination. I am the co-convener of the cross-party group on mental health, and the ECT issue has come up with us, as well. There is a lot of fake news out there about Covid vaccines. Will your role help with concerns where evidence issues need to be addressed? Will it combat fake news, for instance?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
Earlier, you talked about the value of your independence, and you are talking about listening to people and hearing their concerns. Are you already finding that people are engaged with and have trust in the role of patient safety commissioner for England that has been created?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
In a previous evidence session, one of our panellists spoke about the Health and Safety Executive, enforcement orders and fines, and the patient safety commissioner’s potentially having those sorts of powers. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on whether the patient safety commissioner should be able to act in that way?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Emma Harper
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
Dr Lamont, I want to pick up on what you said about amplifying the patient’s voice and about avoiding harm in the first place and addressing concerns. I will use an example that I used last week. People in the south-west of Scotland get radiotherapy in Edinburgh, which means that on their way they pass within 4 miles of the Beatson cancer care centre. I think that it is a 240-mile round trip. People’s voices in the south-west of Scotland are not being heard when it comes to cancer pathways, for instance. Harm has not necessarily occurred, but the simple fact of being those miles away from their family, Monday to Friday, might lead someone to drop out of radiotherapy. They might say, “I’m fed up. I’m no doing it any more.” Is that something that the patient safety commissioner could consider? They could go to NHS National Services Scotland or Healthcare Improvement Scotland—whichever pathway it is—to help to sort it out.
11:30Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
I am also thinking about what you said earlier. In my notes, I have written “listen, advocate, champion”. I am thinking about risk assessment and risk management, and about being heard. I do not know if that has been missing in the past. That might have been Fraser Morton’s experience.
One of the first things that the website of Healthcare Improvement Scotland says is that
“the affected person receives the same high quality response”
and that
“organisations are open, honest and supportive towards the affected person, apologising for any harm that occurred”.
That information was an update about adverse events that had happened previously. I am interested to hear about your experience of interacting with the current systems of scrutiny and clinical governance. Where are the gaps and weaknesses in the current systems? How will the patient safety commissioner help to fill those gaps? Perhaps Fraser Morton would like to come in on that.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming. What are your thoughts on whether the patient safety commissioner for Scotland should have a wider remit than that of the commissioner in England, for example? That would go wider than mesh, sodium valproate and Primodos.
