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 1195 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Common Frameworks
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I think that we all agree that collaboration across the UK on blood, tissues and organs is vital. Divergence is an option in the framework. Can you give us an example of circumstances where Scotland may diverge?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Dr Booth would disagree with what you have just said. We need to be clear that, without good data—data that we are able to use and which look at how your policies are enacted and the differences that they make—we will not really go further forwards.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Common Frameworks
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
As Sue Webber said, organ donation is the greatest gift that somebody can give, and we do not want to waste organs. Is there a risk of that if we have divergence? What impact might divergence between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom have?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have questions around data and our children’s health. In your opening statement, Minister Todd, you made reference to obesity and said that Scotland has the best qualitative data, but Dr Booth told the committee about the inconclusive data on many health issues. Data on diet, fitness and obesity stood out as lacking in the “2021 Active Healthy Kids Scotland Report Card”. How will you get the report card to look at diet, fitness and obesity?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Minister, I listened to everything that you said.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I want to pick up on the issue of eating disorders, which Emma Harper talked about. The highest rate of death from eating disorders is in adolescents, and the suicide rate is 23 times higher in people with eating disorders than it is in the general population.
Minister, you said that referrals have rocketed, and that is, indeed, true. The Royal College of Psychiatry vice-chair for CAMHS said that services were struggling pre-pandemic. There is a lack of beds, and people are having to go to England or having to be treated privately. How can you increase the number of beds, to prevent those at the top end from going down that horrible route?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
If we have all the data that you think we need, why are we not seeing an improvement?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee (Virtual)
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
When a housing development is greenlit, an assessment is carried out of the impact that it will have on schools, but there is no assessment of whether primary care will be able to cope. We know that there is a historical lack of staff in rural areas and that the lack of homes and transport infrastructure makes it less likely that those areas will attract staff. Should the framework include an assessment of a minimum requirement for the health and care services that should be provided alongside new developments? I have a supplementary question that I will ask later.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee (Virtual)
National Planning Framework 4
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I see that Professor Pearce is back.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee (Virtual)
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Mike Corbett has just spoken about physical health. We are in an obesity crisis in Scotland, with a 6.8 per cent increase in one year in the number of primary 1 children who are at risk of being overweight. Covid has undoubtedly had an impact on that. The Observatory for Sport in Scotland has told us that general sport activity has been reducing among children from the age of 11 upwards, and there is an understanding that council-owned sport infrastructure might be too expensive for inclusive engagement. My question is for Jacqueline Lynn. How can we combat that worrying trend, which our current policies do not seem to be tackling?
