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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1195 contributions
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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
On your point about mental health systems, in Glasgow, CAMHS and the general psychiatric service have different systems. Therefore, when I was covering CAMHS, I could not see patients’ records. I needed my nurses to open the records so that I could read them, and I needed my nurses to type my notes into the system because I did not have the ability to do that. Worse still, GPs cannot read what the psychiatric service has written. You will appreciate the importance of GPs and psychiatrists being able to read each other’s notes. I feel that that is a dangerous situation. What can we do quickly to overcome that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
What assessment has been made of the link between access to alternative pathways and digital exclusion?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I will talk a bit about innovative practice, which we have heard a bit about, especially in rural areas. I know of amazing work that is being done in NHS Grampian, and I would like Julie Mosgrove to tell us a little more about that and about barriers to rolling that out across Scotland. Does anyone else have examples of innovative work in rural areas that makes life better for our patients?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Always, convener.
This question, which is for Clare Morrison to start with, is about MDTs and the data that drives decisions. Now that all members of allied healthcare professions are to be fully included in the workforce plan, what would need to happen for you to get the appropriate data that you need? Obviously, as far as training and financial support are concerned, a lot of these groups are businesses, but you will need access to patient data to be able to perform those functions.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is important to hear from everyone, but I will start with Jess Sussmann.
10:45Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
Dr Marshall, I want to pick up on David Torrance’s question about the abuse that reception staff take. I, too, am a jobbing GP; receptionists allow us to do our job, and without them we simply could not function. I remember coming through to reception and seeing one of my receptionists in floods of tears over something that had been said to her. Every time I am at work, I hear about things that have been said that have made our reception staff feel hurt and upset. Demand and frustration are leading to that. Abuse is completely unacceptable, as you rightly said. What more can be done to make that clear and protect our reception staff?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
I will pick up on that. I recently visited a citizens advice bureau in Glasgow and was told that it is embedding its services in GP practices. It has found that its engagement and the work that it does are better when a healthcare professional tells a patient that they have to see the citizens advice bureau than it is when citizens turn up to its office to ask for help. If we were to extend putting CABs in GP practices, especially ones such as Dr Marshall’s, would that free up time not just for GPs but for allied health professionals, because the social aspect would be being provided by a specialist service?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is Sue Webber who has the follow-up question, convener, which I will—
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 15 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
It is for Clare Morrison.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Dr Sandesh Gulhane
For anyone who did not watch the first evidence session, I declare an interest as a practising GP.
My question on our first theme is about the new GP contract that came in in 2018. The idea of the new contract was to widen services and allow people to get more without necessarily seeing their GP, and the GP was very much supposed to be the expert general practitioner. However, what we have found with the contract is that there seems to be huge variability across the country. My question is especially for Dr Yadav, as he is from a more rural community. Has the contract impeded your ability to work and access for patients?
