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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1673 contributions
|
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Yesterday, Kit Malthouse spoke passionately about the need to support people with drug problems and the vital role of the criminal justice system. For example, he spoke about a “ring of steel” being put around the community of Blackpool, as part of the addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery—ADDER—project. Every day, Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency work hard to target the organised crime gangs that make so much money from killing people in Scotland with their products.
Do you agree that it is not a question of one or the other, and will you give a commitment to Scottish communities that they will enjoy robust policing and the targeting of people who deal drugs?
11:30Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
It seems that tolerance zones would be around drug consumption facilities. Police Scotland has also expressed concern about the practicalities of those facilities. Can you expand on what those might look like? How many would there be? Where would they be?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
The Drug Deaths Taskforce has recommended the introduction of so-called “tolerance zones”. We heard that Police Scotland has concerns about those. What is your personal view? Do you support the task force’s recommendation?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Last September, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans told the Criminal Justice Committee:
“Prison governors in England and Wales have stated that it is not possible to have a drug-free prison. I would like to test that to see to what extent it can be achieved.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 1 September 2021; c 36.]
Is that realistic?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Good afternoon, Mr Malthouse and Mr Starling.
Scotland’s drug deaths crisis is—quite rightly—being treated as a matter of public health, but I wonder whether we sometimes lose sight of the fact that highly dangerous gangs make a lot of money from killing so many people. Can you explain your thinking on that aspect?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Thank you. I do not think that I can have any more time.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
No, that is fine.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
In your opening statement, you talked about the importance of joint efforts and working together, and yet the Scottish Government has rejected an offer to extend ADDER into Scotland. Can you quantify, in any way, the possible detriment as a result of that decision? Alternatively, do you think that, as the National Crime Agency operates—thankfully—at a UK level, we continue to see those benefits?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
A lot has been said about drug consumption rooms—[Inaudible.]—questions that have—[Inaudible.]—from those who zealously want such rooms to be rolled out, presumably in every Scottish town and city. It is worth repeating what Police Scotland’s chief constable said, which was that he would need “stronger evidence” before he could support that approach.
Should there not be greater emphasis on helping drug users to rehabilitate, rather than on encouraging drug taking? Is there a slight risk that, in focusing on that contentious issue, we are distracting from the Scottish National Party’s record? The SNP has presided over a doubling of drugs deaths in Scotland since 2008, and Scotland has now become the drug deaths capital of Europe.
Criminal Justice Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Russell Findlay
I am fairly ambivalent about the subject. On one hand, this is the biggest mass murder terrorist atrocity in Scottish legal history and, clearly, there are serious unanswered questions. On the other hand—the flipside—I worry about the rise in the number of judicial public inquiries in Scotland. It seems to be one of our few growth industries.
That might be a slightly flippant observation but, on balance, there is probably no harm in our keeping the petition open until the legal process has been exhausted, which is what the Justice for Megrahi group is asking for. I tend to agree with the convener on that.
