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 771 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Tess White
You have talked about the importance of clinical centres for attracting and developing specialist skills, and you have highlighted that service redesign and enhanced national and regional working are also very important.
There is a concern that “redesign” is a euphemism for a drive to centralisation. Large portions of the population in the north-east, for example, are concerned that they are being disadvantaged as they are having to travel long distances. There are huge issues in the north-east with buses not turning up, which means that many people have to take taxis to travel long distances, such as from Montrose to Perth or to Ninewells hospital. That takes a day and it is very expensive to travel by taxi. How can you make sure that people in rural areas are not disadvantaged by any redesign?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Tess White
Good morning, cabinet secretary and officials.
The chief executive of NHS Grampian told the committee that her health board will still be in deficit by 2028, which means that, like many health boards, it will have to make very difficult decisions in order to plug the hole. What action is the Scottish Government taking to support health boards’ financial sustainability in the short-to-medium term?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Tess White
Thank you.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Tess White
I have a short follow-up question. I understand the need for that delicate balance. However, there are two major issues here. First, with the new redesign and the drive to have centres of excellence, people are having to travel long distances. It is not just a question of time—in many cases, people are very poorly.
Secondly, as our Green colleagues will tell us, there is an additional carbon footprint when people have to travel by car—if they are lucky enough to have one—or take extra bus journeys. It could be a day’s travel there and back for treatment. As well as the issue of the pain and upset for patients, there is the additional carbon that is used.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
NHS Scotland (Performance and Recovery)
Meeting date: 27 June 2023
Tess White
Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the Baird family hospital and ANCHOR centre. Thank you for doing so—I am glad that they are at the top of your mind—but alarming concerns have been raised about delays as a result of issues with the water and ventilation systems, of which you are aware. I would like to hear your thoughts on how we make sure that lessons have been learned from ventilation and water systems in other hospitals, and on what you can do to oversee the matter to prevent any issues from arising at those two centres in the future.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Tess White
Baz Moffat touched on the subject of boards and we have explored the importance of having role models—females, people with disabilities or people from the black, Asian and minority ethnic group—as well as the importance of data. You said that most coaches are men. In your view, how do we shift the dial on that so that we have leaders and coaches from a wider cross-section of people, including more women, people from the BAME community and those with disabilities?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS Shetland, NHS Eileanan Siar and NHS Orkney)
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Tess White
The Scottish Government put in place multiple schemes to bolster rural GP numbers. We got positive feedback from Laura Skaife-Knight on that, so I will not ask her my question; I will ask Michael Dickson. There was the golden hello scheme and the bursary scheme. Have those been helpful in Shetland and is there anything else, in addition to those, that you think could be useful?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Tess White
You are still not really answering the question about how to strike a balance between inclusion, fairness and safety, but I will leave it there.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS Shetland, NHS Eileanan Siar and NHS Orkney)
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Tess White
On the theme of consultants, Gordon Jamieson said in his submission that the board has a number of consultant roles that can take years to fill, so they are covered by agency staff. That has a huge cost. How many years would you say it is taking to recruit consultants, and do you have a view on the cost implications of that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scrutiny of NHS Boards (NHS Shetland, NHS Eileanan Siar and NHS Orkney)
Meeting date: 23 May 2023
Tess White
Rather than take recruitment outside the UK, is there work that could be done to revisit the issue, so that you could say, “We need to have modified training.”?
