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 4236 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
Corroboration strikes me as a fundamentally different concept from the not proven verdict.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
It is totally different, as recent judgments tell us.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
I will try to draw some points out from what Mr Duffy has already said. The experience that you recounted about your participation as a jury member is insightful and brings further weight to the long-term argument that you, your wife and your family have pursued with such vigour and distinction.
However, it strikes me that your argument is, essentially, that the not proven verdict is a product or symptom of a lack of clarity in the judicial system. Is that a fair summary? You made a powerful plea for us not to bother defining it but, in a sense, because it cannot be defined, it can mean almost anything.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
You used the term “middle ground”, and that might be the best way of explaining people’s view of the verdict. Whether we like it or not, there is an encouragement to believe that the not proven verdict is a middle ground, but it is not: it is on one side of the line, because it is essentially equivalent to being found not guilty. That has the potential to create confusion in the jury room about what people are feeling and about the conclusion that they come to.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
So you can see the argument for a reduction in the size of juries, but a higher threshold for conviction.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
What concerns would you have about the triangle of issues——jury size, majority versus supermajority and not proven—that I just mentioned? Would you simply not put them in that framework? Would you encourage me to stop thinking about them in that way?
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
Thank you for that. Last week, when we took evidence from the academics who were behind the jury research, I was struck by their argument about the interaction between jury size, the question of a majority versus supermajority within a jury and the presence or absence of the not proven verdict, and we laboured over the relationship between those three factors.
Essentially, Sandy Brindley has just put on record the question whether the correct decisions have been arrived at, as opposed to whether we are making a change here by abolishing the not proven verdict, on which Mr Duffy has made his beliefs clear.
Are we answering that question alone, or a hypothetical question about how we maintain convictions at the current level as opposed to what may be the correct level?
Meeting of the Parliament
Fiscal Framework Review
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Fiscal Framework Review
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
Will the member give way on that point?
Meeting of the Parliament
Fiscal Framework Review
Meeting date: 6 December 2023
John Swinney
Having negotiated the inaugural fiscal framework, in 2016, I know and appreciate how difficult a challenge it is for the Scottish Government to secure a broadly acceptable set of financial arrangements with the United Kingdom Treasury. I therefore warmly commend the Deputy First Minister for securing the agreement that was announced some weeks ago, which is the subject of today’s debate.
In essence, the agreement builds on the agreement that was put in place in 2016. Crucially, the agreement embeds on a permanent basis the use of the indexed per capita mechanism for calculating block grant adjustments. That was the key issue of negotiation in 2016. I say to Brian Whittle that there would have been no fiscal framework agreement in 2016 if that provision had not been in place, and I constantly made that expressly clear to committees of this Parliament.
I am very sorry that Willie Rennie is not here for my speech, because I am going to mention him. I am reminded that, in 2016, he said to the First Minister at the time that the Scottish Government had made a fundamental error in accepting the model, because we would never be able to protect it at the point of review. The Deputy First Minister has not only protected the model at the point of review but has embedded it permanently, which we were unable to secure in 2016. That is a formidable achievement.
The model that underpins the fiscal framework is essential in protecting Scotland’s public finances, because we already carry population risk in the Barnett formula, and the indexed per capita mechanism was necessary to provide long-term stability.
