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
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
John Swinney
But it still seems like an awful long time. What are the timescales for the scrutiny processes that are undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service and the national health service? Are those processes swifter than an FAI?
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
John Swinney
As you properly said, the arrangements for a fatal accident inquiry are entirely matters for the Crown, as FAIs are carried out independently of the Scottish ministers. Notwithstanding the issues in relation to those arrangements, I am interested in whether a pragmatic adaptation of the processes that are undertaken by the SPS and the NHS could be carried out timeously so that families would get early, prompt, thorough and courteous engagement on the circumstances of the death of a loved one.
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
John Swinney
That is not quite what I am asking. Is everyone on board?
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
John Swinney
Does the improvement of those two processes provide you with sufficient confidence that, in theory, they would substantively address some of the early issues that families may have in the absence of a fatal accident inquiry being able to be undertaken in a timeous fashion?
Criminal Justice Committee
Interests
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
There is nothing from my entry in the register of members’ interests that I believe that I require to declare as relevant to the committee’s work. However, I must state that, as colleagues know, I served in the Scottish Government until March 2023 and participated in collective decision making on issues that will come before the committee during the current parliamentary term. In addition, for the period from July 2022 to March 2023, I personally took direct decisions on the Scottish budget, which is relevant to material that is before the committee today and is likely to be on other occasions.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
I am interested in the part of my question that relates to our experience in society whereby crime is, comparatively speaking, now at a much lower level than it was. I am also interested in the implications of that and how consideration of such issues influences the size of the police estate. Points about police numbers have been raised this morning; I am interested in how that flows into your assessment of the degree of risk in society that has to be handled.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
Thank you. Please see my line of questioning as encouraging.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
However, you will understand where I am coming from.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
We are sitting as a committee, and other committees in Parliament will hear about all sorts of issues to do with financial pressures. You are giving us concrete evidence of areas where no more money is required and the system is just undertaking improvements. I am pressing you on where else that can be done. When we consider the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, I suspect that I will come at it from the perspective of saying, “Why does this need to cost more? Why does this need to involve more resources?”
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
John Swinney
My first question is directed to Lynn Brown and to the deputy chief constable. I am interested in the interaction between the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland on the design of the policing model and its sustainability, given the extraordinary pressures of inflation that public finances have been wrestling with. What role does the Scottish Police Authority take in scrutinising and challenging the plans and propositions of Police Scotland? Given the fiscal context in which we are all having to operate at the present moment, to what degree is the authority satisfied that Police Scotland is properly and fully considering the appropriate approaches to policing and, flowing from that—this is where the question is perhaps relevant to the deputy chief constable—the process that is undertaken by Police Scotland to assess its role and capacity? Although we are wrestling with extraordinarily high inflation at the moment, we are also experiencing some of the lowest crime levels in more than 40 years. Perhaps Lynn Brown could start on that point.
