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 1250 contributions
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Meeting of the Parliament
Decision Time
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Carol Mochan
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted no.
Meeting of the Parliament
National Health Service and Social Care
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Carol Mochan
Will the member take an intervention?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
It is only fair to ask the cabinet secretary directly about the petitioners’ request for an agency for engagement with service users to find out exactly what his view on that is. I was very interested in the discussion about a rural commissioner. It might be useful to discuss that with the petitioners, as well. What is your view on an agency?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
My question is about workforce training, which is quite a wide subject. I understand that the cabinet secretary will not be able to answer all aspects of the question, but I am interested in whether NHS Education Scotland has done a lot of work on rural training and clinical places. I am interested in the notion of local places, because I believe that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, if people can be trained locally and we can get people into those areas, we will be able to retain staff, because the jobs are interesting. There is a wider issue relating to the different professions—AHPs and nurses, for example—but I am interested in what engagement you have had with NHS Education Scotland.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
Good morning, and thanks for coming to the meeting.
I am very interested in exploring the experiences of people in remote and rural areas, and how they interact with services. The Government often repeats its commitment to and engagement with service users and people with lived experience, but there is a sense from the petition and from other action groups that that engagement does not happen particularly well. Will the cabinet secretary speak a little about how he thinks that that is going? I know that there is a responsibility to do that and that Healthcare Improvement Scotland monitors that. However, how does the cabinet secretary feel that the engagement in relation to the petition has gone in remote and rural areas?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
I laid out the figures, which are quite stark. Public Health Scotland data that was released in 2021 highlighted:
“There was convincing evidence that socio-economic deprivation increased the likelihood of being diagnosed with more advanced cancers of the ... prostate.”
In further data, published in 2022, there was a 10 per cent fall in the number of people diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was linked to underdiagnosis caused by the pandemic. It is absolutely essential that the Scottish Government acts decisively to ensure that men across the country are made aware of the options that are available to them in terms of tests, checks and online tools, which can both protect their health and combat the impacts of health inequalities.
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to comments by Prostate Cancer UK regarding reported figures showing that men in Scotland are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer too late for it to be successfully treated than in any other part of the UK. (S6T-01104)
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
Does the cabinet secretary accept that he must take those figures seriously and make sure that those items are in place?
Meeting of the Parliament
Topical Question Time
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Carol Mochan
It is important that we look at the figures. The figure for individuals being diagnosed too late to be successfully treated is 12.5 per cent in London. In Scotland, the figure is not far off three times as high, at 35 per cent. The cabinet secretary must accept that that is an extremely concerning gap, creating a picture that the chief executive of Prostate Cancer UK has called “particularly shocking” in Scotland. Does the cabinet secretary accept the Government’s responsibility for addressing health inequalities in Scotland and that failures by the Scottish National Party Government are now leading to unnecessary and avoidable loss of life?
Meeting of the Parliament
Caledonian Sleeper Service
Meeting date: 12 January 2023
Carol Mochan
Conservative members have to understand that it is necessary for us to nationalise the sleeper. Neil Bibby mentioned that we have always subsidised our railways, and rightly so. As Mark Ruskell said, we want to integrate ourselves into Europe and be part of that service. There is an opportunity for us to do that and we can do it. The privatisation of the railways has been a disaster in the UK and throughout Europe. Other European countries have done much better, having retained public ownership.
The current operator, Serco, is paid by us to run the service while, at the end of the day, we take the risk that is associated with that anyway. It is an incredible situation in which private enterprise can extract fees to run public assets and, if anything goes wrong, just send them back to the public sector anyway.
When the railways across Britain were privatised, we were told that it would increase competition and drive down costs for the consumer. However, there is zero competition and zero risk to the companies while customers are paying increasingly high prices and shouldering the long-term financial burden. That cannot go on.
The sleeper is a fantastic service that should be in public hands. If the Government is serious, it will soon take it back into public hands in the way that has been described.
13:27