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 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.
Displaying 737 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 June 2022
Brian Whittle
Indeed. There is one more thing that I was going to raise. It is something that I never thought I would be raising, but a constituent has brought this to my attention and it speaks to the communication. My constituent is a nurse of 26 years’ experience, and she has raised the issue of VITT—I suppose that I will have to say out loud that that stands for vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis . Did I do that right?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Brian Whittle
We do not hear much nowadays about the continuing risk of Covid for certain elements of society. We talk about new normals and about going back to what we used to do before the pandemic, without recognising that some people in society are still at risk. What does the new normal really look like for those who are still at risk? Will we require a societal reaction to that? Should we all be asked to adjust our behaviour to protect those who are most at risk? Adam Stachura has been sitting there quietly for a while, so I turn to him first.
10:45COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Brian Whittle
I was hoping that you would solve all our problems in a couple of minutes. [Laughter.]
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Brian Whittle
Good morning. I want to wind back a little and ask about communication again. Especially early on, the information that we received evolved and changed. Obviously, I am not in a vulnerable category, but I sometimes found the information to be difficult to follow and I was not quite sure what I should do when I was in public, then eventually when I was not in public. Did that have a disproportionate impact on people in the most vulnerable categories? The impact of Covid on people who are clinically vulnerable is much greater so, potentially, the uncertainty about the information was much greater.
I want to get a bit of background on that; I will start with Professor Pell.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Brian Whittle
Gillian McElroy, it strikes me that that kind of evolving situation would create issues for the organisation that you look after.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 June 2022
Brian Whittle
The information evolved, so what was right at the start of the pandemic became wrong as our knowledge improved. Initially, a simple thing like wearing a mask was not proved to have an impact, then it was proved to have an impact. That was difficult for somebody like me, who is not in a vulnerable category, so how difficult was it for people who are clinically vulnerable to accept that kind of change? How could Government change its approach and what lessons can we learn to make the messaging clearer?
I am afraid that that question is for Dr Witcher again.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Brian Whittle
I am not a silver medallist myself.
As the convener alluded to in his question, what people often share with me is the lack—or the feeling of a lack—of consultation with local communities, as well as their being bullied and steamrollered. In addition, even when the council declines to give planning permission, the decision is often and routinely overturned by the Scottish Government. There is just a lack of connection between local communities and the planning decision itself.
With regard to Mr Ewing’s point, communities have to benefit. The current situation has been described to me as the energy being taken on motorways away from where it is generated and into the central belt, leaving the communities where it is generated running on B roads. It is a very good analogy. It is extremely important that communities feel engaged and that they benefit, which brings us to the point that has been discussed about community shared ownership and whether it should be made mandatory.
I was interested in Mr Ewing’s questions, which I want to follow up on, about using the planning process to encourage wind farm operators to ensure benefit to the local community. Andy Kinnaird responded by highlighting the fact that planning decisions relate to the use of land. Surely the use of land requirement is there for the benefit of the community at large, so I do not see how the two can be divorced. If planning applications were passed, or not, depending on whether there was a shared community benefit element to the proposal, that would surely encourage wind farm operators to follow that route.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Brian Whittle
It was the biggest, but I have since been corrected, as there is apparently now a bigger one in Holland.
Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Meeting date: 15 June 2022
Brian Whittle
Thank you very much, convener. I would just start by getting the committee to recognise that I represent the South Scotland region, which has, as my postbag reflects, a high propensity of wind farms. I was very interested in the question of the 50MW limit, given that we have Whitelee wind farm, which is the second biggest in Europe and sits just down the road from your constituency, convener, and up the road from mine. It is therefore obviously perfectly feasible to—
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 9 June 2022
Brian Whittle
The point is that, especially around health, somebody has to gather and assess information and it should not be ministers who do that. You would rely, specifically, on your CMO to gather that information. Ultimately, when assessing a threat from, as you said, a multitude of potential inputs, surely it should be your CMO who advises you on the gathered evidence.