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 674 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
They are using it for overall wellbeing.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
Obviously, among the other barriers for women coming out of university is when they go into a working environment and have to establish new routines, as is the case when they go into a different working environment and must establish a new routine. Everyone at the table would probably say that our current employment is definitely a barrier to our getting out and getting active. Would four-day weeks, flexible working and things like that provide more space to mothers, women with caring responsibilities and those of us who are just plan busy, in order that we could get out and prioritise our health a bit more?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
I agree. It is key that we tackle the big structural issues as well as individual behavioural issues. That comes down to the planning side and to the employment side.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
My comment is not specifically on this petition; it is on the others.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
Are there any areas relating to medicines and medical devices that you would like to be included in the remit of the patient safety commissioner that are not covered by the bill?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
On the back of what Tess White has just said, I think that a wider inquiry into rural healthcare services is really important, but I propose that we defer a decision on the petition because of the current work that is being done. The best start north review is based on maternity services in particular, and the minister, Maree Todd, has other pieces of work that are looking at wider issues, including abortion care and other women’s health needs. The other pieces of work that are being done could be lost in a wider inquiry. If those things develop, we might want to take evidence on them, and other issues could arise.
Given that those other pieces of work are still on-going, particularly the best start north review, I propose that we defer a decision on the petition so that we can pick it up again if there are other things going on.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
Dr Williams, how can the patient safety commissioner for Scotland complement the work of the Patient Safety Commissioner for England and the MHRA, and how will the commissioner interact with the work of clinicians up here?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
Is there potential for conflict in the relationship, particularly given the overlap between the oversight roles of the two commissioners and the interaction with the MHRA?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
We should consider the issue as part of a wider piece of potential work. The petition is broad and covers a number of areas.
In the evidence session that we had with the cabinet secretary, we explored why some of the challenges are not purely healthcare recruitment issues but issues to do with life in rural environments in the first place. If we were to incorporate the petition into a wider piece of work, it would be interesting to hear from other ministers about how their portfolios could support recruitment in rural areas and support people to consider working in rural and remote areas. At the moment, it is people who come from or have a connection with such communities who take up recruitment and training opportunities and then go back to the community, rather than our making working in those areas an easy choice.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Gillian Mackay
Earlier on, you mentioned communication. There is an interesting line that you might already have had to walk, or that you might have to walk in the future, between individual cases that people believe indicate wider patient safety issues but the investigative body believes do not, and stories of multiple cases that patient groups have talked about happening over and over in different places. How do you see your office, and you as the commissioner, communicating to people—who have often been traumatised as a result of their treatment—where the line is between individual cases that involve an individual failing and individual cases that might have wider implications for patient safety?
