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 2004 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
It is interesting to talk about the release and sharing of information and the whole minutiae of regulations that allow freedom of information requests and monitoring and evaluation to be out there and shared to allow us to compare how one board is doing versus another.
We talk a lot about self-directed support, which works really well in some places but does not work well in others, so we need to be able to monitor that. Do you think that there should be something more detailed about data monitoring and evaluation of the system, such as on unmet need, in the bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
Should Anne’s law be extended to other facilities, such as hospitals? I understand that infection control and prevention guidance is important in specific areas, especially if there are outbreaks in other places. Have you considered whether we should extend Anne’s law to hospitals?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
It is for either Beth Lawton or Ken Macdonald.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
We have talked a lot about personal data, but now we have a couple of questions on the monitoring and evaluation of the national care service.
I am interested in whether the bill as introduced has suitable information on the monitoring and evaluation of care as it is delivered. Should anything be added, or will the framework legislation allow the service to be monitored and evaluated in the way that we intend?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
Good morning, everybody. Our papers contain information about the establishment of a new national social work agency. I would be interested to hear the panel’s thoughts on the proposed creation of a centralised quality improvement body in the form of a national social work agency. Do you welcome that, or would you prefer an alternative approach to be taken? If so, what would that be? Let us go to Suzanne McGuinness first.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
We have talked about advocacy and complaints. Is the bill adequate to be able to deal with that kind of support if there are any issues and we need to look at who is responsible and who is accountable? One of the issues that came up during the lockdown was to do with legal liability insurance. That was a real challenge, because care homes, rather than protecting one resident, were protecting all residents. Does that need further consideration?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
I think that Daren Fitzhenry might want to come in but, before he does so, I will pick up on the fact that things are happening right now. For example, Badger Notes for maternity services enables women who are pregnant to have real-time access to the information in their pregnancy care record. The clinical portal is another part of what is being developed to enable access to care records that the patients do not necessarily get to see but the clinicians do. There is work in progress, which can be built on. I am interested in how we can use that as a way to measure how we implement a future safe and secure data care system.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
Page 3 of the policy memorandum says that the creation of a national social work agency is part of the plan, but that is not in the bill. It seems pretty significant to create a national social work agency—if that is what is proposed—so does that need to be in the bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
I have just a quick thought. Yesterday in Dumfries, one of the people round the table said that we should move away from talking about person-centred care and talk about relationship-centred care, which is based on trust between, for example, a person and their carer at home or in a care home. What are your thoughts on the language that we use? Of course, we want a person-centred approach, because the situation is very dependent on what data is shared and who is allowed access to data, such as the combination for a key safe, as Ken Meechan was talking about. Can I have brief thoughts on person-centred versus relationship-centred care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 22 November 2022
Emma Harper
The primary legislation will state what we want to achieve and, from there, we will work back towards what the secondary legislation will need to include. Part of that is about co-design with people who matter and those who know how a co-design process can be taken forward. The co-design part relates to Ken Macdonald’s comments and the working back part relates to Beth Lawton’s comments.
