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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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
The remit for the Scottish commissioner is already a bit bigger than yours. A lot of people have come to the committee and asked for other things to be included in that remit, so the role seems to be expanding. Do you feel that our current budget and resource will be enough, or do you feel that it will be okay for the initial phase, with an agile team, but that we would need scope for future expansion?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
My first question is very straightforward: do you feel that you have enough resources?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Do you have enough resources to be able to expand as you want to?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I have a couple of questions. The first goes back to the voices of staff, and is directed to Shaun Gallagher. Matthew McClelland spoke about whistleblowing legislation, but my understanding is that people who sit on health boards are not covered by that. Does that not create an issue, especially when we are talking about a blame culture? Should we take steps to include members of health boards in such legislation?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is reassuring to hear that you are all speaking—one would expect you to, of course, but it still reassuring.
I suppose that the question is about the investigation. You said that you had previously been in areas where a lot of investigation was done, and that takes a certain amount of skill, time and resource to do. I appreciate that you have been in post for only 100 days, but do you feel that your role is to find those themes and perhaps pass them on to the relevant organisation, or do you feel that your job is to move on to the ones that you want to investigate further?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Thank you for your answers. We would love to see that information, Simon.
I return to what Rosemary Agnew said. I know that I am veering outside of the resource theme, but this is important. If we set up an organisation that had the scope to expand, what would our measure of success be that would indicate that it needed to expand?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I asked this question of the patient witness panel, and I am keen to ask you the same and also to bring in the threads of what has been said already. Dr Lamont talked about the fact that the commissioner will need to hear from individual patients. Simon Watson spoke about capturing patterns and about how, ideally, individuals will speak to the commissioner. The policy memorandum estimates that the commissioner will have four staff. Clearly, a lot more individuals will come forward, and, if patients are going to go directly to the commissioner, the numbers could be in the thousands. Do we need to significantly increase the number of staff and, if so, do we need to significantly increase the budget?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I want to pick up on something that Rosemary Agnew said in her opening statement about patient whistleblowing. I am not talking about the extreme situations that Simon Watson mentioned. Before the pandemic, my experience in hospital was of long waits or of patients who were in wards that were particularly hot in the summer and they were feeling overwhelmed. They would tell me, as their doctor, and they would tell our nursing staff, but they would not put in a complaint because they were too worried about the staff. They saw that they were working as hard as they could and that it was not their fault. I found that, despite our raising those points, it did not make a difference until patients complained. Therefore, we were encouraging patients to complain.
Do you feel that having a patient safety commissioner would be a good way for stories like that to be picked up? We have heard about the golden thread. Alternatively, is the local complaints procedure the best place for such issues to be dealt with?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Before I ask my question, I will touch on something that Bill Wright said. With regard to the culture of defensiveness, what happened in the past is very different to what goes on now. Doctors certainly do whistleblow, and we have seen that on a number of occasions. As a doctor, when I make a mistake, one of the first things that I do is apologise. We all make mistakes, because that is the reality, so I hope that that comment was about the higher board level rather than about individuals.
NHS Scotland—and the NHS in general—is fantastic, but I am realistic enough to know that improvements can be made. From what I have been hearing, it seems that everyone is keen for the commissioner to take and listen to evidence from individuals, but we need to be clear that, potentially, thousands of people will be writing to or seeing the commissioner. My question is based around the fact that the current budget is for four members of staff plus the commissioner. Do you want to see a significant increase in the budget and, thus, the number of staff who work for the commissioner? That question goes first to Bill Wright.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 31 January 2023
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Do you feel that it would be useful to have powers such as the ability to fine a public sector organisation?
