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 1531 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Jamie Greene
I appreciate that. If etizolam can be sent in the post, the big issues are about what else can be sent and how else it can be sent. People clearly still want to get drugs into prisons, and some prisoners will still want drugs to get in as well, so the really big question is, “What next?”
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Jamie Greene
My next question is for the cabinet secretary. It is clear that serious organised criminal gangs are the primary drivers of drugs getting into prisons to feed addiction and to feed their lucrative market. You said that confiscated mail would be passed to the police if there was a suspicion of drugs. Are the police following that up? Are you aware of any criminality taking place? Has anyone been prosecuted for posting mail that is soaked in drugs? Is there any recourse when it comes to prisoners who receive the mail? Does it affect parole conditions or their behaviour card, for example?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Jamie Greene
In the interests of time, my questions will probably be quite rapid-fire ones. My first question is to Ms Medhurst. Can you give us an indication of what percentage or proportion of original mail has been photocopied and passed to prisoners as photocopied versus the percentage or proportion of mail that has been given to prisoners directly in its original form? As you have said, it is quite difficult to spot original mail that has been soaked in drugs.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 January 2022
Jamie Greene
Okay. Thank you.
I come to my second rapid-fire question. It is not just mail that contains drugs; I am aware from speaking to prison officers that clothes are often soaked in drugs. Obviously, that is very difficult to deal with. How on earth are you going to manage the incidence of that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
I appreciate it. Thank you.
There is very little with which to disagree in what I have heard in the previous two answers. It is a collective problem, but I am trying to get to the nub of what happens next. To me, that is still unclear.
I raise the issue because I listened with great interest to the language used by the cabinet secretary, who represents the Government and sits in the Parliament, about how we could make quite significant changes. I appreciate that those changes, whether they are trials or are more permanent, will require legislative change. However, is the legislative change simply a technical requirement to enable the changes to happen, or is it the legislative change that informs the changes?
When asked about juryless trials or other such changes, the cabinet secretary went to great lengths to say that those were matters for the Lord Advocate. Therefore, I am trying to understand whether you, Lord Advocate, are advising the Government as to what changes it should be introducing through legislation—which the individual members of Parliament will debate and vote on—or whether you are looking to the Parliament to come back with a set of proposals that you will then be forced to introduce as the Lord Advocate.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
That is helpful. I might come back to you on that, but I believe that the Crown Agent would like to comment.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
I think that he has dropped off the call. I appreciate your response. I have some other questions but I am happy to reserve them for later in the meeting.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
Thank you. Convener, could I respond to what we have just heard?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
Thank you, convener. I hope that everyone can hear me okay, despite my earlier technical difficulties.
Good morning, Lord Advocate and thank you for appearing before us today. Much of what I was going to ask about has been covered in the initial questions. I will pick up on another point, which is based on the evidence session that we had with the cabinet secretary last week, which I am sure that you saw or indeed read the transcript of.
I was quite struck by what the cabinet secretary said in many of his answers. He made it clear that any fundamental changes to the legal system, whether on corroboration, judge-only trials, the removal of the not proven verdict and jury sizes and majorities, were matters for the Lord Advocate, and not for him, as cabinet secretary, to comment on. I want to get to the bottom of that, because in your answers you seem to be implying that such decisions are political decisions and matters for parliamentarians, not for the Crown. The politicians, on the other hand, are saying that those are matters for the Crown.
Where do you think that the buck will stop with the decisions that we are talking about, some of which will be very difficult and controversial?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 December 2021
Jamie Greene
Thank you—that was very helpful.