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 1190 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Yes. I am really struggling.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Good morning. In response to Sharon Dowey’s line of questioning, Teresa Medhurst said that Kilmarnock has a one-tier staffing structure whereas SPS has two tiers. I was aware of that, and I think that one of the reasons why Serco said that they ran HMP Kilmarnock more cheaply than SPS was that it did not have the same grading structure. Does that mean that the figures that you have outlined incorporate going to a two-tier structure? Presumably, that will be a lower pay or higher pay structure.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Will we just wait and hear when that work is done?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Anyone who has ever appeared in court as a witness will probably have found it quite a traumatic experience. From what you have described, nothing is black and white, and questions can be confusing. Is there a way of drawing a distinction? To me as a layperson, there are people who have had trauma in their lives, there is the trauma of someone who is the victim in the case—the trauma that that person experienced that has to come out—and there is the court experience, which can itself be traumatic. Would you agree that there are different elements to be considered?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
You certainly convinced me. You answered a lot of practical questions for me. That is where my line of questioning comes from—trying to apply all this to a system that, as John Watt said, is not the same, in that you all do different things.
My first question is to Laura Buchan from the Crown Office. David Fraser said that we have a court system with limited capacity to prevent what victims always complain about, which is the trauma of bumping into the person they have accused. I have had this conversation with the Lord Advocate at least once: the trauma of victims trying to find out where their cases are is a significant factor. I support all that has been said, but I am a bit concerned that we do not fix the things that are causing lots of trauma. As I said to the earlier panel, I am a layperson trying to understand that there is the trauma that people have had in their lives before they were offended against, there is the trauma of people who have been offended against and there is the trauma of what the system is doing to them. Can anything be done to make the information from the Crown easier to access?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
What do you mean by “gateway”? In simple terms, if you are a victim of crime, or even a witness who has been called, should you not be able to call someone easily, get through and ask where your case is likely to be in the pipeline? Is that fair?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
Good morning; I apologise for being late.
This question follows on from Katy Clark’s line of questioning. I am trying to apply this to an adversarial court system. What you said about preparation of witnesses and victims makes perfect sense, because we need to have a system that brings out what they have to say. We hear all the time from victims that they did not feel that they had a voice. However, I am interested in applying what you are saying to the court situation, where there are practitioners—the prosecution, the defence and the judge—who should be trauma informed. Is it your expectation that everyone should treat every witness who comes to court in the same way? A prosecutor will not know whether the person had adverse childhood experiences, and some people will not have. Is it your view that a trauma-informed approach should be applied regardless of the circumstances?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
This has just crossed my mind and you will probably not be able to answer it, but up until now, a trauma-informed approach has not been embedded in the system. However, juries—in cases in which there is a jury—have to make a determination based on what they see in court. Is there any evidence at all that you have come across in relation to juries and trauma? You will probably not have spoken to jurors, but do you agree that it is important to establish what the situation is in that regard? Ordinary people in juries watch the proceedings, and I would have thought that they would be able to read a person’s body language. Would people really need to be trained or could they see for themselves? Have you considered the reaction of juries?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 1 November 2023
Pauline McNeill
It has struck me that, if we are being honest, successive Governments and Parliaments have tried to get a shift into community justice. That is my view.
We do not have time for you to answer my question, so perhaps you could follow it up with the committee. It would be helpful for our report, given the good evidence that we have had from you. First, what exact numbers are you dealing with? We do not have any sense of that. Secondly, and to wrap up, what I am hearing is that if you had even £250,000 or £500,000 more, you could do something with that. To quote Bill Fitzpatrick, you should not be given a penny more until you can justify it. I agree with that because public and judiciary confidence are essential to move it forward.
Could you follow up with the committee on the numbers and also give us some indication of whether, if you had the additional budget, you could hit the ground running with the things that would give the public and judiciary confidence that, instead of sentencing people to prison, they can sentence them to community services?
