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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
As there are no more questions from colleagues, we will move on to agenda item 4, which is the formal debate on the made affirmative instrument on which we have just taken evidence.
I remind the committee that, during the formal debate, members should not put questions to the cabinet secretary and officials may not speak. I invite the cabinet secretary to move motion S6M-03434 and to speak to the motion, if he wants to do so.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
The pharmacy first and minor ailments services have been more successful than other routes. Are there any specific areas where a little more work needs to be done to give patients confidence? In particular, I am thinking about those patients who say, “I need to see my GP”, and feel that they are being fobbed off when another route is suggested to them. That is a key point in the cultural mindset.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
I have one final question before I bring in Carol Mochan. You mentioned a better experience for GPs. Given that GP workload is extremely pressurised, do you think that when the model starts to kick in and there is public acceptance of the fact that there are several different ways to access care, it might make GP practice more attractive to medical graduates because they will be dealing with acute cases, which will really put their training into action, as opposed to the nurse practitioner side of things?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Thank you, cabinet secretary.
As you mentioned, it has been a number of years since 2018, when the Scottish Government started the reforms relating to pathways and multidisciplinary teams. Previously, there was a traditional model in which the GP was the first, and often the only, port of call for people to access healthcare. Obviously, the plan is to widen that out.
One reason why we decided to do our inquiry was that, from speaking to stakeholders, we got a sense that public awareness of the issue is not quite where it could be. Certainly, we had a lot of responses to that effect in our survey of patients across Scotland and in discussions with patient groups. The model that the Government wants to promote is not quite landing in every area of Scotland. What are your thoughts on how the Government can take forward the approach and create a culture change? How can you give assurance to patients that an alternative pathway is not a wrong pathway, that they do not have to see their GP for everything, and that in fact it might be better to access an alternative pathway?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Sue Webber has questions on workforce and capacity.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Sandesh Gulhane would like to ask a final question.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Awareness is one thing, but there is also choice. Digital care is not for everyone. We see that in our inboxes—we have people emailing us saying, “I’ve been fobbed off” and “I want to see someone face to face”. Are you cognisant of that?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Martin
Would anyone else like to come in on that, or are we content to move on?
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Martin
That is a good point.
I am looking at the clock, and some members still want to come in on other themes, so I ask Evelyn Tweed to direct her supplementary question to somebody.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Alternative Pathways to Primary Care
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Gillian Martin
I thank the four panel members for their evidence, which has been very interesting and helpful. We need to round off the session. We will have a 10-minute break before we come back with the second panel.
10:41 Meeting suspended.10:52&Բ;&Բ;ܳԲ—&Բ;&Բ;
