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 1293 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
Good morning. Dr Lesley Graham, you are absolutely right that a lot of the discussion about prison management has been about drugs, and it is really important that you are here to talk about the prevalence in issues around the management of those people who are dependent on alcohol.
The committee has been trying to learn a bit more about how prisons run and how drugs get into prison. We know a lot more now, but I wonder whether you want to comment on how it is happening. Is it happening a different way? For example, we know that drones are used for drugs. The general public are always mystified; people think that it is easy and ask why we cannot just stop drugs coming in. However, we realise that it is a really difficult thing. The comings and goings in the prison service—the deliveries for the kitchens for example—and the advent of drones make the job of the prison service much harder. I just want to get your views on that.
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
Can you tell us anything about how alcohol gets into prisons, rather than drugs?
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
Yes—I want to ask Marianna Marquardt a question.
You talked about trauma and boredom, which are running themes. The committee has been exploring issues around the availability of rehabilitation programmes and individuals having things to do in prison. I get a lot of letters from prisoners who say that they are not getting access to rehabilitation. We know that prisoners are spending too long in cells because of overcrowding. Is it time to try to solve that side of the problem by giving them things to do and to aim for? That could make a difference to the demand for drugs in prison.
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
Giving prisoners something to do is not just about rehabilitation. You talked about boredom. Presumably, if we are interested in getting people off drugs in prison, ensuring that they have something to do might be an aspect to look at. Is it fair to say that?
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
From memory, the figure that we currently have for capacity at Barlinnie is 900. Is that right?
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
I used the example of drugs, because we have been hearing about that.
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
Meeting date: 3 September 2025
Pauline McNeill
Does that mean that someone who comes into prison who is dependent on alcohol but does not have access to it is likely to find something else?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
The offenders who would be on the register would be those who were convicted on indictment and those who served—
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
I will finish on this. Ms Gosal, I hope that you would agree—feel free to disagree—that, rather than being prescriptive and specific about what is required in schools, as you have done in the bill, we perhaps need to have a wider discussion about what would be the right type of educational programme to provide to boys to tackle the issue as they grow up.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
You mentioned a separate cohort that would be covered by MAPPA. They would be the most serious offenders. How would you define them?