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 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.
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Displaying 1673 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I am happy to go first. There is a lot in both letters. Are we taking both at the same time?
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I know that this is primarily about pensions but other issues are referred to. David Page mentions—this is near the top of his letter—the importance of being mindful of police officers’ physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. We have heard evidence of suicides among police officers and what appeared to be a lack of any meaningful attempt to get to the bottom of that. A particular phrase was used in an exchange between SPA and Police Scotland in response to the former asking the latter for some information. Police Scotland explored the issue and said:
“Based on the information available at that time, there was nothing to suggest that any of the recent cases were caused directly by the pressure of work.”
I do not think that that is the case; I think that the matter is worth revisiting. I am familiar with cases where it very much looks as though the pressure of work, the work environment and other issues around that were contributory factors. I wanted to put that on the record.
I will return to the pension issue. Will Kerr is one of two senior officers who chairs the operational priorities, capacity and resilience group, which is looking into the issue of the change in pension rights and the large numbers of officers who have left and might continue to do so. That particular officer has, ironically, just announced that he is leaving to take up a post with another police force, so it would be interesting to know who is taking his place on that group.
However, the main issue, on which I am sure that other colleagues will have plenty to say, is David Page’s very stark warning towards the end of his letter about the impact that the proposed budget will have on policing in Scotland. I will not read it out, but it is clearly extremely concerning. That comes just a couple of months after the chief constable told the SPA that the proposed budget would have a significant impact on the numbers of officers who would be serving communities.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I have just one point to make. Obviously, this is one of the most serious subject areas in which the police are working. The letter touches on the point that Jamie Greene made about bigger budget concerns. Its writer acknowledges that, given the current financial circumstances, putting in more money will probably not address the issue and is probably not a feasible option. It will therefore be interesting to see in December what is proposed. We should just put that in the diary and give it a good look when it comes along.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
Subsequent to the correspondence from the minister, we have had some correspondence from the Edinburgh Bar Association. It might therefore be worthwhile, if we are writing to the minister on that issue, to incorporate some of the points that the EBA has made in response to her.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
One point that was made to us during our trip to the new facility in Maryhill was that each health board seems to have a different approach, so the SPS was frustrated that there was a lack of consistency. It will be interesting to make that point when we write to the CMO.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
For what it is worth, I think that it is quite a useful letter. We have heard that there have been problems with or objections to the change from some quarters, but the letter lays out the benefits quite clearly, including greater consistency and efficiency. It is quite reassuring.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
Seven months ago, the First Minister and the Minister for Drugs Policy attended a fire station. The headlines stated that firefighters were to start carrying naloxone. The announcement came with £90,000 of funding to train officers. The letter tells us that 1,226 members of staff have been trained, but it does not tell us how many are carrying naloxone. It also omits to make any reference to what I believe is some form of disagreement or dispute between the SFRS and the Fire Brigades Union about the issue.
There is perhaps a sense among some officers that there is a presumption that they should carry naloxone without any reassurances about liability for use or misuse and that those questions have been unanswered. Therefore, it would be useful to ask the SFRS what is actually happening. Is naloxone being used, and what are the issues, if any?
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I agree with Rona Mackay that that is probably necessary, but that is the job of the Scottish Police Authority—or at least it is supposed to be. It should be asking those tough questions.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
It seems to be more about early intervention.
Criminal Justice Committee
Police Numbers and New Pension Arrangements
Meeting date: 22 June 2022
Russell Findlay
Turning back to the letter from the Scottish Police Federation, I know that the general secretary is perhaps not slow in coming forward, but many elements of what he says are really strong and quite concerning. To go back to two of the points that Rona Mackay raised about the intent to recruit new officers, the general secretary describes an apparent annual
“accounting chicanery of mass recruitment before each quarterly publication”.
In relation to bringing in officers from elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the language that Police Scotland used was “maximising transferee opportunities”, which the general secretary describes as “meaningless corporate language”. Such is the strength of difference between the two submissions. What underpins all this is the financial situation. The budget for the next few years is not just stagnant but, with inflation, it represents serious cuts, so that will be a huge issue for us.
