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 1251 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Common Framework on Public Health Protection and Health Security
Meeting date: 21 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
There are many research, cancer and other databases that Scotland does not have but that England does. If we were to combine and work together, we would have a much larger and much improved pool of data. For example, there is the fracture liaison service database, which we do not have in Scotland. It makes sense to me to join these things together and have a big database. Will that approach encourage more shared databases and more shared work between our nations?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Perinatal Mental Health
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
We know that mental health deteriorated across the United Kingdom during the pandemic, and especially during the lockdown. We also know that perinatal mental health issues have been presenting difficulties for women in Scotland and that they were doing so even before the pandemic. Those issues range from stigma to women not having a dedicated mother and baby ward that they can go to.
My questions are focused on women from ethnic backgrounds. What impact has Covid had expressly on those from ethnic backgrounds? Given that further restrictions are possibly on the horizon, what learning have we done to prevent the same issues from arising again?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Perinatal Mental Health
Meeting date: 14 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The important point is that, as we have heard, black women are twice as likely to die during pregnancy and those from ethnic minorities are less likely to get the Covid vaccine and so are at greater risk. Those things combined give cause for concern.
Specifically on perinatal mental health, stigma is a big problem, especially in minority ethnic groups. I am keen to hear that we will be able to take forward the learning from the NMPA report and put it into effect. I appreciate that the numbers are not large, but the issue really matters. We need to get our approach to ethnicity right. We have had a period of some stability, so why were measures not put in place? My question is to Kirstie Campbell. You have talked about capacity, but when do you expect to be able to start helping people from ethnic minorities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Perinatal Mental Health
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Emma Harper has just asked about training; on that, my question is about ethnicity. What training is being given to ensure that differences in ethnicity are being picked up, assessed and treated? Speaking as a doctor who was trained in the 2000s, I certainly did not receive such training. I direct that question to Dr Chopra and to Dr Ross-Davie.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Perinatal Mental Health
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I did my training at Glasgow royal infirmary, and I know from my time in the maternity and obstetrics unit that there is a separate area—a sort of closed unit—for mothers who experience stillbirth, to ensure that they do not see other people’s happiness. Would it be appropriate to roll out that kind of separate unit that sits a bit further away from the main ward?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Perinatal Mental Health
Meeting date: 7 December 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
That works quite well for me, convener, because my question is for Cat Berry. You have talked about birth trauma. We went through a very difficult birth with my first child and the support really was not there. Although we all recognise that it is the woman who goes through birth trauma, the men and partners also suffer—I suffered—trauma through difficult births. What support is in place not only from your organisation, but from other health boards for the partners of women going through birth trauma?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 30 November 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I want to come in on the level of adults’ activity and participation in sport that David Ferguson spoke about. I also want to expand on Stephanie Callaghan’s question and what the convener said.
I love sport. I played competitive sport all the way through university, but in adulthood that activity is gone. Weather and access to facilities are key factors when we leave school. Norway, which has worse weather than we have, deals with that situation well, so how can we improve it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Data and Digital Services in Health and Social Care
Meeting date: 23 November 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have a number of questions on ethnicity, which Ed Humpherson mentioned in his first response. How can we ensure that we get good ethnicity data for not just patients but the workforce?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Data and Digital Services in Health and Social Care
Meeting date: 23 November 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
My question is for Martyn Wallace, and maybe also for Christopher Wroath. It is about aim 3, which is about allowing healthcare researchers and innovators secure access to data. How can we give companies and innovators access to anonymised data to improve the services that they can provide, and how do we then get a significant benefit from giving them such access?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Data and Digital Services in Health and Social Care
Meeting date: 23 November 2021
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have a question for Christopher Wroath and perhaps Steve Baguley. Does the NHS, including primary and secondary care, have the appropriate hardware and broadband speeds to access the digital platform, cloud sharing and all the wonderful innovations that we are looking to introduce?
