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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2843 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Sue Webber
You alluded to link workers reporting that there is a lack of understanding of their role—[Inaudible.]—which impedes progress on social prescribing. You also mentioned some successes. What progress has been made on raising awareness of the role and on making it a much more viable route for care and support?
The point of contact still seems to be the GP practice, and we hear a lot of frustration from people who are struggling to get past the receptionist. It seems that everyone is still having to come in to the GP practice to get a referral. It was interesting to hear from Clare Cook earlier about some of the self-referral pathways. What are we doing to address the lack of understanding?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Sue Webber
In 2019, when the Health and Sport Committee was taking evidence—I was not on the committee at the time—it heard about a number of barriers that healthcare practitioners faced in relation to their use of social prescribing. Those barriers included a lack of strong evidence on its long-term effectiveness, time constraints, lack of awareness and quality assurance, or how they could be assured of consistency in quality. Linked to that is the issue of continuous monitoring of whether services are still available in the community, because we know how transient some organisations can be due to lack of funding. Has any progress been made in tackling those barriers in the past three years?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Sue Webber
You mentioned self-referral, rather than everyone having to phone the GP practice and speak to the receptionist.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Sue Webber
Thanks, convener. I hope that you can see me this time. My signal is a bit more stable now.
The Royal College of Nursing has rightly pointed out that people with poor health literacy are less able to identify or label what is wrong with them, and are therefore less able to identify and self-refer to the various alternative pathways that we hear so much about. What is your assessment of the risk that an increase in use of digital pathways will increase the health inequalities that many people face?
Adam Stachura mentioned the scale of the issue, given the number of over-60s who do not have a device, and Chris Mackie said that digital should always be a meaningful choice, so maybe they are interested in responding.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
That is right. We went out to see you as you got to the end of your long walk.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
Everyone was there. There were a lot of people.
It is tremendous that the committee has opened up and been so willing to endorse and support this young man’s dreams and to get the First Minister involved. With everything that we aspire to do as parliamentarians, when there is something as tangible as Callum’s petition, which will make a real difference to so many young people across the country, we would be foolhardy not to get on side and back it all the way.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 9 March 2022
Sue Webber
Thank you, convener. You can see why, when I first saw Callum’s Facebook posts back in May, not long after I got elected, I was so keen to do everything I could to help this young, inspiring boy to aspire to his dreams. I followed him diligently when he walked the John Muir way. We went out and met him, his puppy and his parents in East Lothian with my old dog.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
Patient representatives in the first panel talked about health literacy and the fact that there might be—I am trying to find the words—“savvy patients” who are able to direct themselves to alternative pathways and are more aware of their conditions. However, there are people who are not in that position who still, ultimately, need to see the GP to get a primary diagnosis. In the process of promoting effective use of alternative pathways, how can we ensure that everyone’s route into primary healthcare is protected and that we do not discriminate against the people who need to see the GP in order that they understand what is going on? I am sure that you will all want to respond to that question.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
I thank the witnesses for their comments so far. It has been really enlightening to have the reasons and justifications explained so concisely. That has made it clear to us where some of the issues lie.
Margaret McKay and Val Costello said that the long waiting times to see alternative health practitioners are also undermining the ability to alleviate the pressures on general practices, because everything is still funnelled through them. We know that patients are likely to default to their GP if they have to wait too long. What must happen if we are to make meaningful improvements to access to alternative health practitioners?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Sue Webber
When we talk about inequalities, we are talking not only about patient awareness but about geographical variations in services. To what extent can equality of availability and access to alternative pathways be ensured? I am thinking particularly about some of the rural challenges that we face, and the lack of consistency.