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
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Carol Mochan
The key thing to remember is that patients are central to this, so their experiences are really important to move it forward. I urge the cabinet secretary to make sure that there is a serious commitment to alternative pathways, because we all believe that that will ensure good outcomes for patients.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Carol Mochan
I am really pleased that you have listened to the evidence, cabinet secretary. It is clear from the evidence that patients see GPs as the gold standard, so it is understandable that they sometimes find this alternative way of working quite difficult. It is our responsibility to try to support them to use these new routes in a way that makes them feel engaged and valued and that they are getting the best treatment.
It is clear from the evidence that the committee has taken—and I hear this in my constituency all the time as well—that patients feel a bit passed around; they feel that the systems are not working very well and that there is no clear leadership at the health board level on how those pathways work. We have also heard quite a number of times about people who have gone all the way round the system and back again. I would suggest that there is some urgency around sorting that out and that it probably requires some serious financial investment. Where are you with that in relation to your plans for the next few years?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Carol Mochan
I want to take this opportunity to raise what is an extremely important issue as we change pathways. Screening definitely needs looked at, because the significant difference in uptake, particularly among women and girls in deprived areas, can lead to very different outcomes. Cabinet secretary, are you prioritising screening? Are you ensuring that opportunities are taken up in deprived groups, particularly as pathways change?
This is an important question. As it makes changes, particularly to primary care, does the Scottish Government ensure that all its policies and practices are health inequality proofed?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Carol Mochan
Yes—I will do so very quickly as I know that we are tight for time.
Is there somewhere to which you could direct the committee where we could ask for that work to be done? Would it be NES? Where could we get that work progressed?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Carol Mochan
That is lovely. Thanks very much.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Carol Mochan
Dr Marshall made an excellent point when he talked about how people’s access to money is linked to health.
My question is on allied health professionals. The evidence that we have heard today and on other days makes it clear that they can help in terms of inequalities in health. Do we have enough information about which AHPs are in primary care settings and whether there is a weighting towards areas that might need more of that support? Is more work needed on that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Social Care
Meeting date: 22 February 2022
Carol Mochan
Fiona Collie mentioned carers a number of times, and they are an important part of the discussion. We know that unpaid carers provide the bulk of our social care. There is a thought that some carers are unaware of exactly what their rights are, or of what is in place to support them. Will the witnesses, particularly Fiona Collie, share some of their thoughts on that with us? What are the key things that we should be thinking about in relation to providing a new strategy for supporting carers to ensure that they get what they are entitled to?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People
Meeting date: 8 February 2022
Carol Mochan
It is very welcome that both the minister and the cabinet secretary have indicated that, in what is a crisis, we should be dealing with things that we can deal with now.
I am interested to know their opinion on the low-income winter heating assistance scheme, which is out for consultation, although it is not pencilled in to start until next winter. Do they agree with me that that is far too late? I would be interested to know about the discussions on that. To what extent are we taking into account the views of the energy suppliers over those of the people who actually need the assistance—and who need it now, as I think we are all agreed?
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Continued Petitions
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Carol Mochan
I am quite new to the subject matter and I want to put on record that I am interested in the way the matter has progressed. Similar to other members, I have been involved in the mesh debate with women in relation to transvaginal mesh. It is important that we use the evidence that we have from other areas.
I support the overall sentiment of the petition: it is a perfectly reasonable request that a review is held and that guidelines around the surgical use of mesh are established. The petitioners have brought evidence to the minister and the committee has gone over other evidence. It is incumbent on us to ensure that reasonable requests are respected; it seems reasonable for the Citizens Participation and Public Petitions Committee to take action and at least further scrutinise what can be done to support the petition.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. I hope to keep an eye on what is happening around mesh for those people.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Common Frameworks
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Carol Mochan
Everything seems to have been put in place—quite rightly—to make things work as smoothly as they can. However, if there was a suggestion that any of the Governments wished to dispute anything or withdraw from the agreement, how would that work? How would the Scottish Government bring that to us, as parliamentarians?
