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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 1174 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
The witnesses have already talked about people presenting at A and E departments. Among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Scotland has the highest acute hospital expenditure but the lowest preventative and community-based expenditure. The equation seems to be very lopsided. There are worrying metrics that show that there is, for example, low provision of key diagnostic equipment and beds per capita. Do you tend to keep track of those metrics? For example, do your boards keep track of how the provision of MRI or CT scanners per capita compares with international benchmarks?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
I recently met people from Boxing Scotland, which is based in Glasgow. They told me about their work in trying to get women and girls into sport, particularly into sports that are traditionally male dominated, such as boxing and football. There was a feeling that, if you do not get young people into a sport early in life, it is harder to encourage that engagement once they are young adults. Do panel members have a view on what steps can be taken to encourage women and girls into sport at a young age, especially in ways that encourage them to participate and stay involved in physical activity in the longer term, and how you can make that introduction to sports that are traditionally male dominated such as boxing?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
I wonder whether Mr Murphy might have a view on why South Lanarkshire took that step.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
Those are really helpful insights. There is a balance between passive advertising of availability versus engaging with groups of people—young women, in particular—who might not feel comfortable and who could feel intimidated by a sport such as boxing, and encouraging them to do a taster of it and have a go at it. Maybe the active schools programme could be looked at as an opportunity; it certainly sounds interesting.
We have heard stories about young people in physical education classes being split into groups to do stereotypical sports. The girls would go off and do dancing and the boys would go off and do football. That stereotypical streaming of different sports can be extremely counterproductive. Have you observed that happening, and how do you think the active schools programme could address it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
Okay. That is interesting.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
That is good to hear.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
Planning is a major factor and it plays an important part in making women and girls feel safe. For example, I know that Sustrans’s submission indicates that just 39 per cent of women in Scottish cities feel safe cycling in their area. Planning can be a male-dominated space and it can often be confrontational and egocentric. Do Living Streets Scotland and Sustrans have any suggestions on how we can make sure that gender concerns are considered and that women are adequately consulted on planning decisions and on active travel, particularly with respect to the new development plans that have been drawn up by local authorities in the wake of national planning framework 4?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 21 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
Are there any ways to try to codify that so that there are clearer rules on design for urban spaces? Are there exemplars that could be used to create national standards?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
It is interesting to follow the conversation around sex-segregated sport, in particular in educational settings, and the context in which misogyny can come into it, especially in team sports with the introduction of the element of competition.
I was reflecting on your point about public facilities such as parks and accessibility in that respect within a feminist town-planning perspective. One initiative that has been quite positive, certainly in Glasgow, has been the parkrun initiative. It has been quite successful at seeding community-based sporting activity in otherwise sterile public spaces. In that context, it is a mixed-sex activity.
You made an important point about the appropriate context depending on the type of sport that is involved, and you talked about the idea of tasters for different sports that are perhaps not traditionally female oriented. With gender, there is a bit of nuance needed about what might be more appropriate in different contexts. For example, a mixed setting might be appropriate for the parkrun, but there might be other instances such as swimming—Glasgow has traditionally had female-only swimming evenings—where nuance might be needed. Have you identified certain areas where a mixed setting might be more appropriate than it would be for others? Is that something that you have looked at?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Paul Sweeney
That is helpful. Are particular messages needed to offer reassurance around managing diet and activity, so that those things are not seen as some sort of self-flagellation exercise to chase an unobtainable image, but are instead about the person taking control. Is there a powerful public health message that we could push more?
I have previously mentioned in a debate on vaping in the chamber the iconic public health advertisements in the 1990s. I wonder whether we can revisit the ideas behind that, because the advertising was highly effective.