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 452 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health Inequalities
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Carol Mochan
I thank David Walsh for his contribution. I whole-heartedly agree about austerity, but I want to be clear that it is the current Westminster Government’s position on austerity that has had those effects. We have very different powers in Scotland and we can use them in very different ways, depending on which policies come to us from the UK. If policies across the UK were different from those in Scotland, could that be helpful for us in Scotland, because we could make alternative arrangements?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Social Care
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Carol Mochan
Good morning, minister. Thank you for the introductory statement. I am keen to push you on timetabling and dates. I have two questions. I would like to hear a clear commitment with some dates for or an idea of when things will progress with the overall change to a national care service through the bill.
On implementation, I listened this morning to the evidence that we took in September, when people said that we need some actions now, which you have talked about. It is great that you have allocated funding and it was good to hear that your department is very busy—that is excellent. However, it is important for people to know what actions will be taken and what the timeframe is for that. What concrete things are you working on that will enable people to see a difference in the next year of the parliamentary session?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Audit Scotland Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Carol Mochan
We obviously agree that the cost of living crisis is very significant, and we do not disagree about the impact of the Westminster Conservative Government. I thank the cabinet secretary for the commitment that we will use all the powers that we have in Scotland. That is very helpful.
The Auditor General spoke about the progress of Public Health Scotland’s work. Can you give a bit of feedback on how that work is going?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Audit Scotland Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Carol Mochan
Although the previous couple of themes have covered the issue, I note that the Auditor General was critical of the Government’s overall strategy for addressing health inequalities, particularly around disability and among people from deprived backgrounds. The pandemic is acknowledged but the report also very much acknowledges that those are on-going health inequalities.
Has the Government managed to pull together an overarching strategy to look at health inequalities? If so, what will it measure? On top of that, has the Government considered other measures that it can use—perhaps other powers that it has but is not currently using—to make a difference in an area that is of the highest importance to it?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Audit Scotland Report: “NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 10 May 2022
Carol Mochan
In the interests of time, I would just like to hear the cabinet secretary make a commitment on the important issue of allied health professional staff. They have a really important role to play in the reform of the NHS, but they face significant recruitment and retention problems. I raise that to ensure that the team sees it as an important part of the overall plan for the NHS.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Carol Mochan
No. I thank the minister for that answer. I hope that we can come back to it, as it is an issue that we should explore.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Tackling Alcohol Harms
Meeting date: 3 May 2022
Carol Mochan
Good morning. Has any research been done on reducing the visibility of alcohol in places where people who have problems may impulse buy, such as supermarkets? On the subject of reducing the visibility of alcohol, including for children and young people, I note that other countries have gone down the route of not having alcohol near the doors of shops so that it is not necessarily seen by people who are just popping in for milk. Have you thought about that? Is there any research on it that you are looking at?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 19 April 2022
Carol Mochan
As quite a new committee member, I am finding that it is taking a while to process all the information. I am quite interested in issues around health inequalities and life expectancy, but I would say that we have known about all these things for some time now. How often have we tried to pull together this kind of data, and, if we have tried to do that in the past, what barriers have we come up against?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
“NHS in Scotland 2021”
Meeting date: 19 April 2022
Carol Mochan
With regard to making this particular transition, we have talked about who is responsible in health and social care services, but do we need leadership at Government level to really push for this to happen?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Carol Mochan
Do you have a plan within your department for equality proofing policies?
