Chamber and committees

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.

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 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.

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Meeting of the Parliament

Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021

Meeting date: 17 April 2024

Audrey Nicoll

Hate crime is everyone’s business and it ruins lives. I hope that the motion is more about political gesture than it is about a serious proposal. I urge members to support the Scottish Government’s amendment.

15:41

Meeting of the Parliament

Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021

Meeting date: 17 April 2024

Audrey Nicoll

Hate crime has long been a scourge on Scottish society and we all have a responsibility to challenge it. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 was passed by a majority of MSPs in March 2021, following Lord Bracadale’s independent review of hate crime legislation. In his report, Lord Bracadale reminds us that legislation will not change attitudes on its own but that clearly defined legislation and well-developed procedures will increase awareness of hate crime and can contribute to attitudinal change.

I am drawn to the definition of hate crime that was used by Lord Bracadale, which is that offences

“which adhere to the principle that crimes motivated by hatred or prejudice towards particular features of the victim’s identity should be treated differently from ‘ordinary’ crimes.”

The then Justice Committee’s stage 1 report on what would become the 2021 act outlines that evidence was taken from 35 witnesses, that over 2,000 written submissions were received and that research was commissioned to assist scrutiny in relation to elder abuse and approaches in other jurisdictions. The bill was subjected to significant amendment, as has been acknowledged today. That, in my view, reflects a very robust scrutiny process.

The 2021 act consolidates existing protections against offences that are aggravated by prejudice against the five characteristics of disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity—the same characteristics as are protected in England and Wales. The act also includes age as an aggravation and introduces the new offence of “stirring up hatred” against people by reason of their possessing particular characteristics. The 2021 act does not prevent people from expressing controversial or offensive views, nor does it seek to stifle criticism or rigorous debate—that simply cannot be part of modern-day society.

Many of us here, in the chamber, have come into politics having left behind a professional life. In my case, that included living through the introduction of many new and challenging pieces of legislation including the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007, the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000 and hate crime legislation.

The reality is that legislation takes time to bed in and that it takes time for practice to adapt, for officers to build confidence and experience in using new laws, and for the public to understand what new laws mean for them. Not for one second can we diminish the importance of making good law that is effective in its purpose, or the importance of effective training and guidance, and not for one second can we underplay the need for a communication strategy that leaves the public in no doubt about what the new law means for them—a point that was acknowledged in the cabinet secretary’s statement earlier this week.

On the motion to repeal the 2021 act, there is no context, no detail or evidence, no proposal for a replacement and no acknowledgement of the consequences of repeal on legal practice and minority groups.

The Labour amendment does not acknowledge that it is a matter for not only Police Scotland but the Scottish Police Authority to ensure that officers are work ready, well trained and competent in their application of the law. The amendment also calls on the Scottish Government to urgently review the implementation of the act, but I am really not clear what that relates to. It possibly relates to the public education point that Katy Clark raised in her question to the cabinet secretary during yesterday’s statement.

On the point about reviewing the operation of the act, that fails to acknowledge the reporting requirement in Sections 14 and 15 of the act, which require the Scottish Government to publish reports on hate crime convictions and on hate crime recorded by the police. Neither the Tory motion nor the Labour amendment makes reference to the fact that Police Scotland is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority. Indeed, the SPA has been tracking and analysing reporting since 1 April. That is its role.

Of course, as has been previously mentioned, there is a mechanism embedded in Parliament for post-legislative scrutiny, which exists to consider the effectiveness, or otherwise, of law.

In the cloudy landscape of media discourse, there have been some glimmers of positivity. Professor Adam Tomkins, who was convener of the Justice Committee during the passage of the bill, has stated that

“the new hate crime act has been misrepresented by intemperate voices on the left and the right.”

James Chalmers, who is regius professor of law at the University of Glasgow, describes the act as providing

“a more accurate label for prosecuting serious cases of hatred.”

Earlier this week, Andrew Tickell, who is a senior lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University asked:

“Can it really be Scottish Tory policy that harassing the disabled, assaulting ethnic minorities and daubing antisemitic abuse on synagogues should not be treated in Scots Law as aggravated by prejudice? Because that’s a big part of what repealing the Hate Crime Act would achieve.”

I sincerely hope not.

Meeting of the Parliament

Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 (Implementation)

Meeting date: 16 April 2024

Audrey Nicoll

The Conservatives want to repeal the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. Does the cabinet secretary believe that Douglas Ross, as an MP, should also seek to repeal similar acts in relation to religion and sexual orientation in England and Wales?

Angela Constance rose—