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 1264 contributions
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?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
That is fine. I am trying to understand why the bill has been introduced. If it has been modelled on something, we must presume that you think that the model has been effective.
I do not need to put to you the utterly shocking figures on sexual crime in Scotland. They are going up the way, so something is not right. To that extent, we are all on the same page. The question is, what will stop that figure rising? The rise in sexual crime is why the committee is wrestling with issues such as reform of the High Court, tackling delays and so on.
That leads me to the question of how we tackle sexual crime, and the other parts of the bill that Rona Mackay asked you about. How can you be sure that the provisions in the bill on education are the right way to do that? From the discussions that we have had in the Scottish Parliament, it is clear that the broader narrative is about men’s violence against women and girls. Something is not right, and I agree that that has to be tackled in schools.
However, I am interested in why you have gone down the path of educating boys about domestic abuse. Let us take the Gareth Southgate lecture as an example. I thought that it was a very good attempt to explain why we have a problem with boys in society with regard to their role models and so on.
First, would you agree that how we tackle the issue of boys and young men is a complex question?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
I have a question about which offenders would be caught by the scheme.
Charlie Pound, you explained to Rona Mackay that offenders who had been given a 12-month sentence would be covered. However, is it the case that all those offenders who go through solemn proceedings on indictment would also be covered?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
So, there is an “and”. I just wanted to be clear on that; that was all.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
The crimes that we are talking about would be charged under the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 or the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. Is that correct?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
So we are talking about three acts of Parliament.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
Can I stop you there? I agree with what you are saying; everyone has a responsibility in this regard. However, I am asking you a specific question. A lot of us have done some work on what we think needs to be done in school, but it is a complex question. If the Government is to support a programme of domestic abuse education in school, it must know what the right programme will be. Do you agree that that is complex?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 25 June 2025
Pauline McNeill
So they would all be subject to the MAPPA requirements.
Pam, I think that you said that the provision is modelled on the sex offenders register. If you are not able to answer any of these questions, that is fine, but these are the ones that interest me. Have you done any assessment of how effective the sex offenders register has been in improving safety or reducing reoffending?