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 1619 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
I understand, but when you go in there—in your independent neutral role—to inspect the prisons, what do you see when you go into HMP Addiewell or HMP Kilmarnock compared with what you see in other prisons?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
The cost will be in the tens of millions. I am sure that the committee will discuss that in more detail, and with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans.
My final point is about women in prisons. In the submission, you said:
“Women in particular are at the extreme end of the waiting times and if requiring high secure in-patient treatment are transferred to England”.
Is that a capacity problem in Scotland?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
Does that mean that there are facilities in Scotland, but they are full, or that there are no facilities?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
What are the consequences of sending people to England?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
Why do you think the Government would want to take HMP Kilmarnock back in-house to SPS?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
I am not, but I would love to know.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
The problem is that much in the upgrades or improvements that those people are asking for costs money, and will require a capital budget that very few of them believe they will get. With all the good will in the world, an increase in the resource budget will keep people happy, but it will not necessarily be invested in the things that they need. That is the concern.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
In what respect?
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
I will briefly recap an issue. The letter almost implies that £15 million is the settled amount, but the figure is nowhere near that, and nor is £51 million necessarily the end of it. At the end of her letter, the Solicitor General stresses that “proceedings remain live”; there might be other discussions and the £51 million is certainly not a cap on the liability.
On the financial side of things, it was helpful that the Crown Office made it clear last week that the money was not coming from its budget at a time when such budgets are under such pressure or are facing cuts. However, the question remains as to where the money is coming from. It is all very well saying that the Scottish Government will underwrite it, but which bit—which directorate—will do the underwriting? Does the Government take out insurance on such matters? At a time when ministers are keen to stress how difficult things are for it financially—which I totally understand—it is perfectly reasonable for us to ask where £50 million-plus of public taxpayer money will come from to subsidise the payment to the claimants.
Aside from the money—which is an important issue; it is actually a hell of a lot of money—there are other questions that lie alongside all this and which we have never really got to the bottom of. Why were the decisions taken in the first place? Why has no one ever been held to account? Russell Findlay mentioned that, too. A huge amount of taxpayer money has been spent, but, to my knowledge, no one has lost their job or properly apologised. A number of individuals have, rightly or wrongly, become overnight lottery winners as a result.
The Government must accept that, to restore trust in the Crown Office and its independent decision-making process, even with regard to historical decisions, some form of inquiry that is as independent as it can be must be held at some point. Whether that should happen in this parliamentary session or the next, I do not know, but I do not think that that faith can be restored until those questions are answered.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Jamie Greene
I thank the working group for its work on a difficult and sensitive issue, not least for members who represent communities in the west of Scotland.
It is unclear from the letter what will happen next around some of the proposals. I have concerns about the suggestion that decisions will be taken at microlocal level. I also have concerns about whether local authorities will have new or specific powers in relation to marches and processions, and about what the consequences of that might be. We could have quite disparate outcomes, with certain types of marches allowed in one part of the country but not in another, for example. That would leave matters open to the vagaries of how different councils operate, depending on whether, for example, they are more member led or official led. We also need to bear in mind that councils come in different shapes, sizes and political colours.
I would like to get a bit more information, as it is a little unclear from the cabinet secretary’s comments whether he supports the proposal to give more powers to local authorities. He only says:
“I am keen to explore what, if anything, is possible and desirable”
in relation to the working group’s conclusion on that.
The cabinet secretary uses the phrase
“improvements could be best handled by local partners”,
but the letter does not state who those local partners would be and what statutory roles they would play in making decisions.
Some people are disappointed that we will not have a Northern Ireland-style parades commission. I understand that the number of parades that take place is much lower in Scotland than it is in Ireland, but the consequences are often not dissimilar.
I ask that we are kept up to date on the issue. I would find it really helpful to get from the cabinet secretary any information on the Government’s direction of travel.
