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 2149 contributions
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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.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
I will pick up on some of the questions about the patient safety commissioner’s remit. Baroness Cumberlege’s report wanted the commissioner to look at medicines and medical devices, which is what the commissioner in England is doing, but the remit here seems to be broader. Thinking about all the people who are involved in promoting safe patient care, there is a bit of a crossover that I am worried about. I am interested in how the panel feels about widening the remit to enable the patient safety commissioner to hear from people who have had poor experiences.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
My question might be more relevant for the next panel of witnesses. I am thinking about the system for reporting incidents, which is perceived as punitive by healthcare staff. It is better to deal with near misses than to wait for a significant adverse event. My background is 30 years of operating room nursing. It is highly technical. It is very unsafe—not in the sense of the practice, but there are sometimes so many barriers, and it is a team-driven environment. Errors are not intended, but the Swiss cheese model comes to mind when we talk about patient safety.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts about how we need to encourage the reporting of incidents so that we can put effective measures in place to prevent them and about how that would support a patient safety commissioner’s work to look at encouraging reporting so that we can develop safer methods.
Meeting of the Parliament
Levelling Up Fund
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Emma Harper
I welcome the opportunity to ask about levelling up in the chamber. It seems that one of the UK Government’s central tenets is that its fund should bypass the Scottish Parliament entirely and avoid the inconvenience of democratic oversight. That is in contrast with what happened with decades of European Union structural funding, which was allocated through co-ordination between the European Commission, the Scottish Government and local communities, and was delivered through the LEADER programme, for example. Does the minister share my concern that Westminster has encroached on devolved responsibilities and failed to engage with communities directly?
Meeting of the Parliament
Heart Month 2023
Meeting date: 1 February 2023
Emma Harper
I am a member of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and it occurred to me that we did the RevivR training during committee one morning. Will the cabinet secretary consider whether it would be worth rolling that out to other MSPs on the Parliament campus?
Meeting of the Parliament
Electoral Reform
Meeting date: 1 February 2023
Emma Harper
One of the things that we need to be cognisant of in the chamber is the need to use respectful language that is carefully constructed to convey respect for our colleagues. Do you agree that we need to use respectful language in the chamber?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Emma Harper
I have another quick question about the remit. The committee has been looking at mesh harm and issues to do with sodium valproate. That work could be expanded. I am interested to hear your opinion on whether the proposed patient safety commissioner should look at wider issues, beyond medicines and medical devices. Our bill talks about forensic medical services, but I have concerns about rural issues, including the safety of a population that has, in engaging with the health service, longer distances to travel than people in urban settings have to travel.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Emma Harper
Good morning. I am interested in the remit of the patient safety commissioner for Scotland, and in comparing it with the English commissioner’s remit. We have lots of commissioners in Scotland. According to my notes we have, for example, an equalities and older persons commissioner, a veterans commissioner and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. I am interested in how the proposed role would work with all the other commissioners and how it would be different.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Emma Harper
Thanks for letting me back in, convener.
The National Rural Health Commissioner in Australia listens to people and advocates for them so that their voices are heard. A new report has made it pretty clear that some people have been campaigning for decades. What are your thoughts on how firm the role of advocacy and listening to people needs to be in a patient safety commissioner?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Emma Harper
Could the minister give an indication of how much of the social care workforce is unionised and what benefits he thinks the national care service will bring in terms of pay, conditions and sectoral bargaining?
