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 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.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 3974 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
I will move on to the section on “Victims’ rights and victim support”. I will just go through the table section by section now instead of page by page, in the spirit of time keeping. The section starts on page 19. Is there anything in it that anyone wants to raise?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
I would certainly pick up your point about legal aid. I do not know whether it is just a coincidence, but I have had a number of constituency inquiries about access to legal aid by victims of domestic abuse being challenged. It is a pressing issue, and it is important that we get updates on it.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
I wonder whether we can also ask for a written update from the inspectorate. We can see from the first couple of pages of the table that we do not have updates on quite a number of the issues relating to prisons that have been identified. We need to ask for an update.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
That is a fair point.
We have talked a little about women and children, and Rona Mackay has already mentioned the Bella and Lilias centres. I am quite keen on the suggestion that we arrange a visit at some point, if we can fit it in.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
On the Moorov doctrine?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
I thank members very much. We are a wee bit over time. I appreciate members’ comments. We will return to the action plan before the summer recess to find out what further progress is being made on the points that we have picked up and the recommendations that we previously made.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
We could ask about what recruitment mitigation is being put in place.
Is there anything else? Otherwise, we will consider the SSIs that have just gone through—
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Maybe we should pick that up. It is a good point.
Pauline, do you want to come in?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
That is helpful. I will move us on to page 18.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Audrey Nicoll
That is fine. I think that we will cover that a bit in the action plan, but that is certainly noted. Thanks very much.
Are there any other comments on the submissions in paper 1?