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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 936 contributions
|
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
Yes, absolutely. In relation to the reform package—not what is in front of you now, which is an additional reform—we have already discussed our solemn proposals in quite a lot of detail with the profession, and those are pretty much ready to go. I will be able to bring them to the Parliament quite soon.
The summary proposals need a bit more development, so we will take a bit more time to develop them—again, that could absolutely be progressed this year. Those proposals are already in development, which is certainly a starting point. The fees need a lot of reform, and, as I said, it is an on-going process, but we are happy to consider any suggestions from representatives of the profession on how fees could be changed or altered in the future.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
Over the past few years we have had the 3 per cent rise, the previous 5 per cent rise, the 5 per cent rise now and the additional money for Covid resilience funding, too. I accept that there are professionals—practitioners—working in the system who feel that rates should be raised. I totally accept that, and it is obviously for them to put that case forward. We spend much of our time working with the representatives of the profession: the Scottish Legal Aid Board, the Law Society of Scotland and the bar associations.
The fee rise that you are considering today is an across-the-board fee rise, but, as I have said right from the beginning, there are other ways of doing this, too. Some of the proposals that we have in the fee package that the profession is currently considering show that I am completely open to discussing these things with the profession and, if we can find ways to address individual fee reforms that can get more money into the pockets of the practitioners, I am completely willing to consider that. I have said that all along.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
Around Christmas 2020 and early 2021, after discussion with the profession, the Government made a commitment to increase legal aid fees across the board. At that point we committed to 5 per cent increases in two years—one last year and the increase for this year that is in front of you today. We are making good on a previous commitment.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
Capacity issues have been raised with us and we take them very seriously, for the reasons that you have just suggested. We put £1 million into the traineeship fund, which you will no doubt have heard about. That was an attempt to go at least some way towards addressing the capacity issues that have been raised with us. We are monitoring the matter extremely carefully. I guess that, in the medium term, it could be addressed in the legal aid bill that should be forthcoming during this session of Parliament.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
That is a bit like apples and oranges: we are perhaps not able to compare the two directly. I will ask Denise Swanson to provide a bit of detail on that in a moment.
Crown salaries are published online. On the other side, private companies are obviously free to set the rates that they want to set.
Could you give a little bit more context, Denise?
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 2 March 2022
Ash Regan
That was on Monday this week. They will be able to look at those reforms and decide what they think of them. That represents a significant investment, too. All those measures have been developed in concert with the profession. We have been listening to representatives of the profession and adapting and changing things in order to create packages of reforms that hopefully go some way to addressing the present situation.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Online Pimping
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Ash Regan
Will Maggie Chapman take an intervention on that point?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Ash Regan
Human trafficking is a horrific abuse of human rights and there is absolutely no place for it in Scotland or elsewhere.
Action to identify perpetrators of human trafficking and disrupt their activity is led by action area 2 of the trafficking and exploitation strategy. That group, which is chaired by Police Scotland’s dedicated national human trafficking unit, worked collaboratively to maintain the profile of human trafficking throughout the pandemic, including the development and circulation of monthly briefings to draw together intelligence and information.
Police Scotland continues to pursue and disrupt perpetrators of human trafficking and exploitation, including across national boundaries. Joint investigative teams have been developed with other European law enforcement agencies, including in Romania.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Ash Regan
Police Scotland actively investigates all reports of online sexual exploitation. Human trafficking legislation gives police and prosecutors powers to bring traffickers to justice. In addition, we have laws that make it an offence to procure for the purposes of prostitution, including in an online context. Work to design a model to challenge men’s demand for prostitution will consider whether the current laws need further modernisation or strengthening.
Recognising that the regulation of internet and online service providers is reserved, we are liaising with the United Kingdom Government on its draft online safety bill, which will form part of our consideration as more details become available.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 10 February 2022
Ash Regan
We are taking further action in that regard. It is an ambition of the Government to create an environment that makes Scotland a hostile place for human traffickers. Trafficking is an absolutely abhorrent crime. The member will know that the Scottish Government is undertaking a vast amount of work on the model for Scotland, which will seek to challenge men’s demand for prostitution.
Regarding the online part of it, we have the UK Government’s draft online safety bill, as I have said. The situation is a developing one, and it looks like there are some interesting developments there regarding what the member has raised. The Government takes the matter very seriously and there is on-going work in this area.
