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 1838 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
You would agree that they should still make the distinction between criminal behaviour and gross misconduct, which might be something completely different.
Criminal Justice Committee
Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
But those are criminal cases.
Criminal Justice Committee
Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
Okay. I will ask you about the bits of the bill that you do not support. Is that because you think that it works better to have a joint role between the PIRC and HMICS?
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the amount of time that Police Scotland currently spends responding to calls related to mental health issues. (S6O-03480)
Meeting of the Parliament
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
Like Maggie Chapman’s amendments, my amendments 5, 6, 11, 12 and 14 would expand the provision for the exoneration of individuals to include those who have a close connection with someone who is alleged to have committed an offence, as the legislation previously describes.
On the case mentioned, Mr Naga and his mother appeared on petition in Greenock sheriff court on 23 June 2009. They were charged with the theft of £35,000 from the post office. Mr Naga was not employed officially at the post office at that time; he helped out where needed. He understandably pled guilty as part of a plea deal that would see the charges against his mother dropped.
He did not work in the post office, and I do not think that his conviction is covered by the bill. He pled guilty, even though he was innocent, to save his mother from a jail sentence, and he was given a community service order. During that time he contracted tuberculosis and almost died. He had a pretty terrible time. Mr Naga is as much a victim of the Horizon scandal as anyone else. I appreciate that his is just one case, but I hope that members listening will take in the point that the principle is the same as for all other cases. As the policy memorandum states, tainted evidence was used to convict and to get admissions from many others who might be covered by the bill.
Meeting of the Parliament
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
No, it is not live.
Meeting of the Parliament
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
Convener, this is the one amendment that I will move.
Amendment 6 moved—[Pauline McNeill].
Meeting of the Parliament
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
That is the salient point here. The bill is meant to capture cases where the tainted evidence from Horizon was used to convict people, whether there was an admission or not.
Mr Naga was charged, along with his mother, on petition, for stealing £35,000, which clearly did not happen at all. It is interesting that their bank accounts were not checked. I raised that point during the debate on Tuesday: the veracity of the prosecutions needs to be considered. We might think that, if £35,000 went missing, there would be some checks as to where the money went.
Page 10 of the policy memorandum clearly states:
“the Bill is anticipated to have a positive impact on all those who have been impacted by the use of tainted evidence provided by the Post Office in criminal cases.”
What do members need to look at other than page 10 of the Government’s policy memorandum? We must ensure that no victims of this horrendous scandal are left to suffer because of loopholes in the legislation. I believe that the bill would be defective if it did not capture all the cases where tainted evidence was used. The appeal court is a route for all cases, and six have been heard and overturned, but the quickest, safest and fairest way is to capture in the bill all those affected in cases where tainted evidence was used to convict people.
Meeting of the Parliament
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
That was helpful, but can the cabinet secretary confirm whether it is her view that cases such as those to which Maggie Chapman and I referred, in which the person was not employed but they assisted, would be covered by that provision even in circumstances—as I would have thought would be the case—where the person pled on the basis of tainted evidence? Addressing that tainted evidence is the primary purpose of the bill. Is the cabinet secretary saying that those cases will be covered?
Meeting of the Parliament
General Question Time
Meeting date: 23 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
The chief constable of Police Scotland, Jo Farrell, says that the police are receiving calls related to mental health as frequently as
“three or four calls per minute on a busy day”.
The chief constable says that the demands of mental health calls were
“consuming time equivalent to 600 police officers per year”.
She went on to say that officers would take those in distress to “third party support”, but she described such provisions as a “postcode lottery”.
I am aware that the cabinet secretary knows full well the implications of mental ill health, especially for the job of police officers, but can she tell me whether the Scottish Government is looking into a national triage service, for instance, to which the police could take or direct people who are in distress?
