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
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is 18.2 per cent, and the Scottish NHS is fully devolved. Why have you not improved that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
This is different from a child going to school, because the funding goes over 52 weeks. In other words, if your child is born in February, their place will be funded for the six months up to August. However, that is not the case for a child born between March and August. That is different from what you set out in your answer. Why is that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you, minister.
I move on to my questions on the theme. Do you feel that there is systemic racism within the Scottish NHS?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
For clarity for everyone, will you define smoking? Obviously, using cigarettes is smoking, but does smoking include use of heated tobacco and vaping? Some people would say that there is no nicotine in their vape, so they should be allowed to do that. Can I have some clarity on that, please?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I just reiterate that it is important that we include all products including vaping.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I agree. I said earlier that I agree that vaping has an important potential role to play in the reduction of cigarette smoking. I do not know of many things that could be worse than cigarette smoking when it comes to harm, quite frankly.
We know that vaping will cause less harm, but the point that I am trying to raise is that vaping produces a big cloud of smoke. You might not be one of the people who does that in certain areas but, if I am walking up to a hospital, through hospital doors or in the grounds, I do not want to be faced with that big plume of smoke. Even though we do not have a lot of evidence about its effects, I would not like to be walking through that. If everyone is vaping outside the entrances, that is absolutely not what I would like to see.
I think that we could have a balance. We heard from the minister that we cannot put vaping in, because that needs primary legislation—that is absolutely fair enough—but we should be looking for a way of ensuring that there is clarity that people should not smoke on hospital grounds and that they do not vape there, either, because I just do not want to be walking through a cloud of smoke.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Before I get into my questions on systemic inequality, I wonder whether the minister would join me in asking anyone who is available for any screening programme to attend it.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
As a doctor, I am obviously supportive of the idea of not smoking around the entrances to hospitals. I have seen people smoking outside the children’s hospital in Glasgow, with the smoke going up to the children inside.
I have a few questions. NHS Forth Valley has been trying to enforce no-smoking areas. It has introduced big cross hatches, and somebody goes around telling people not to smoke. That person gets an awful lot of abuse. I understand that we will allow environmental health officers to issue fixed-penalty notices, but how do we prevent such abuse?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 28 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Good morning, minister. What is the gender pay gap in the Scottish NHS?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 21 June 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Dr Cawston, you said earlier that there is a standard amount of money going into general practice. Was I mistaken in thinking that, initially, GPs who worked in areas of high deprivation actually got more funding but that, following the introduction of the new GP contract, although there is an element of the funding allocation that concerns deprivation, more money is going to the care of those who are elderly and living with complex needs, which has reduced the money that is going into areas of deprivation?
