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 1225 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Okay. Both the unions want to stop the bill and concentrate on the current crisis. Cara, will you expand on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
When you say “conservative”, you do not mean the party. Is that correct?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have a final question, but would you like to come in on that one, Mary?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
When there are recruitment and retention issues, there is pressure on staff. In my experience of the NHS, one of the first things to go is training and research. How could the bill protect staff when it comes to research and training?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 15 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Tracey first, please.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Dr Williams spoke about the general medical services contract in his opening remarks. I see lots of parallels between the national care service and the general practitioner contract in relation to centralisation and there being a policy memorandum that was full of aspiration that was not fulfilled. A second memorandum of understanding was then created, but there were issues with the contract in the Highlands and other rural areas. It is obvious that detail and delivery are key. The national care service would be far bigger than the GP contract, which did not go well. Do you have any concerns that GPs being rolled into the national care service will have a negative impact on primary care?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Good afternoon. One of the interesting things that you said was about the setting up of an arm’s-length body. Having spoken to the unit that is working on the bill, it is clear to me that that is not going to happen. Audit Scotland suggests that setting up a national care service could cost more than £1.3 billion. Given that that money would be taken away from health boards and local government, do you feel that it is worth it? It could, for instance, remove the potential for local government to do certain things. We were told that one council might lose its lawyer unit because work would be taken away from it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The Scottish Association of Social Workers raised concerns that these national care service proposals could exacerbate recruitment issues, as Dr Williams mentioned in his earlier answer to me about a system that we cannot staff. Alison White, do you agree with that assessment? If so, how would the proposals exacerbate those issues?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 8 November 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Rural and island communities face significantly different challenges to the rest of the country. What impact do you anticipate that a one-size-fits-all approach to a national care service would have on those communities?
