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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 685 contributions
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
My question comes off the back of Stephanie’s questions on facilities and how we maintain diversity in them, notwithstanding that some are up for closure because of budget cuts. I have heard from hockey clubs and various other clubs in my local area that 5G pitches are easier to rent but are not suitable for some sports. There could therefore be a slow creep into other sports that are more generally dominated by boys and men, thus shutting off some sporting diversity for others. Have you a view on how we might not only maintain that diversity of facilities but expand it to ensure that we have as wide a range of sports as possible available for people to try, as well as facilities that allow for general physical activity? As Emma Harper mentioned earlier, the Scottish weather is not always the most inviting for going out for a walk. We see that in cycles of people perhaps becoming less active over the winter compared with the summer.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
My question is particularly for Pamela Dudek.
Given the number of older buildings, local hospitals and so on across Sutherland and Caithness, and right across NHS Highland, what programmes are under way to keep those facilities in good condition and open in the first place so that people have those services close to home? What is under way to also ensure that all services are not centralised in Raigmore hospital?
Some of those buildings are very old—some of my family are from Sutherland, so I know how old those buildings are. How is the progress of work to make sure that they can take some of the new equipment that they were never built to take?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
I will follow up on something that Dr Stark said, which others might have an opinion on. She talked about strength training. When I was at school, we did a lot of sport-based PE, but not much gym-based PE. We did not learn how to do a squat, a deadlift or any of those things. That is not for every child, but those exercises underpin much of the training required to get better at the sports that people are doing, and much of that is based in the gym. Are we doing enough of that? Most people now get some of their activity in the gym, but there is a lot of misinformation online. Do we need to do more for younger people, so that they can learn to do that safely? I learned a lot of how to do that properly from my peers at university, when I was in my late teens or early twenties. A big opportunity is being missed earlier in life.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
On this committee, and on many committees in the Parliament, we agree that lived and living experience should be at the heart of every service that we design but, given the intensity of being involved in this work and the long-term nature of service change and evaluation, how can we ensure that people with either lived experience through loved ones—which Justina Murray spoke about—or those who have previous or current substance use issues are able to engage in the work meaningfully and in a way that does not cause them further harm?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
Thank you, minister—I absolutely appreciate that. I asked the previous panel about contributing to service design and how we ensure that that is sustainable for anyone who is engaging. I previously asked witnesses how we do that in relation to the national care service, because it is often an onerous and time-intensive thing that asks people to relive trauma. How do you think we can make sure that we take on that valuable experience and that those people can contribute fully to service design, while not negatively impacting their recovery or wellbeing?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
I have another question, convener, but perhaps I can come back to it at the end.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
That is great. I want to touch on something that Karen Reynolds said earlier about people’s expectations for the end of the journey. For the Parliament, the aim of a lot of these pieces of work is to reduce the number of drug deaths, but, from your service users’ point of view, what are the other measures of success that we should be looking at? After all, what one of your service users might consider a success might not be something that we have picked up on in different threads of our work. If we are missing something, or if there is a piece of success that we should be measuring from your service users’ point of view, what would that be?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
Earlier, Natalie Don touched on the family approach. Although I totally welcome that approach, there might be various reasons why people do not have their immediate family involved in their recovery. Their immediate family might be the source of trauma or they might be estranged from their family for various reasons. Do you have plans to issue guidance around that, to make sure that, whatever that family set-up is—whether it is a biological family set-up or friends that someone treats as family—that support network is around that person and is involved in their treatment?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Gillian Mackay
Lovely—thank you.
It is on a slightly different topic, and is on behalf of my colleague Maggie Chapman, who is looking for an update on the implementation of the Dundee drugs commission. What progress is being made on the recommendations of that commission?