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 1169 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 16 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
Good morning. My question follows on from my colleague Russell Findlay’s line of questioning. As he said, the amount specified in the financial memorandum has increased from £1.4 million to £5.8 million and it is set to rise substantially, judging from the evidence that we have heard. A number of provisions in the bill require more regulations in secondary legislation. Are you concerned that there is not more detail in the bill, and would you have any concern that the costs of implementing what are unknown measures will add a substantial cost to the financial memorandum, which could eventually risk the act’s implementation if the resource is not provided? You said that
“We cannot have a half-baked version”.
Would you have concerns that, if we do not put the right finances in, we will not get the right result?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
There were suggestions that the police were reluctant to give information, but, based on what you said earlier, it seems that the relationship has improved. The bill intends to give the PIRC access to the police’s electronic database relating to complaints. Will that help to speed things up?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
If you do not have any evidence, how do you know what to do?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
Is the communication with the police officer who has been accused more to do with police procedure?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
Okay. How do you decide who should investigate between the PSD, the PIRC or another police force, and why would it be necessary for a case to go to another police force and not just stay with the PIRC?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
That is fine. Why would it go to another police force?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
One of the biggest complaints that we have heard is about the time it takes to do many of those things. HM chief inspector of constabulary said that it
“takes far too long for the Criminal Justice organisations to investigate criminal complaints”
and that
“There is a general lack of pace applied to the investigation.”
He also said that there was a
“Lack of communication between the three parties involved (Police Scotland, PIRC and COPFS)”.
Do you think that the bill will reduce those timescales?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
So you have not come across anything like that when you have done investigations.
In an earlier session, we heard evidence that Police Scotland’s professional standards department should not carry out preliminary assessments of complaints against officers, because it is not independent. Would the PIRC, if it was given sufficient resources, be in a better place to carry out those assessments to avoid any perceived or actual bias?
10:30Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
A previous witness told the committee that Police Scotland took one year to investigate a complaint and that the PIRC then took the best part of a year to review it. Is there a target that the PIRC aims to meet when reviewing complaints made against officers from members of the public?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 May 2024
Sharon Dowey
Can I ask another quick question, convener?