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 1673 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 March 2023
Russell Findlay
That is interesting—thank you.
I have a couple of questions for Alison Bavidge, one of which is an extension of what Professor Johnstone said a moment ago about exploitation of young people. The proposal suggests that anyone aged 16-plus who is in police custody can nominate an adult other than their parent to be notified of their situation. Has any consideration been given to the risk that vulnerable children in that situation could be contacting people who are exploiting them, whether through organised crime or something else?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
On a similar theme, the Auditor General said last year that data on drugs and alcohol is not good enough and that there is a lack of transparency. Have improvements been made in that respect?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
The pilot scheme for heroin-assisted treatment has cost in the region of £4 million, which I understand includes start-up costs. Those who favour the rehabilitation route accept that it is not an either/or between rehabilitation and harm reduction, but they point out that it costs in the region of 17 times more to treat someone with that particular programme than it costs for typical public sector rehabilitation. How do you respond to their concerns?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
Just so that I understand, do you mean that the quarterly spending on every project is now published, or is that the plan?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
Yes. Will information on Government money that goes into those services be published quarterly?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
Another thing about this letter from the Crown Office is that there is no indication in that as to timescale—there is no sense of urgency. Going back to the original question, should the Scottish Government intervene? What would you suggest?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
You cannot recall when the last conversations were.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
Around this time last year, Audit Scotland said that drug and alcohol data is not good enough and that there is a lack of transparency on how money is spent, which means that it is hard to assess the effectiveness of how funding is used. Has that been improved? Has the lack of transparency been fixed?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
I do not think that the concerns are about the cost, as such, but about working out the effectiveness of such treatments and the significantly higher costs of going down these routes. That will be assessed in due course.
It has been two years since the Scottish Government declared its national mission to respond to the needless deaths of thousands of people through drugs, but we have just heard evidence from Aberlour that residential rehab is still sometimes seen as the last resort or is not being offered as quickly as it could be and from Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs that no one is accountable for repeated service and system failures. Those are pretty stark assessments of the landscape, and given that it has been two years since the national mission was declared, they are quite damning assessments, too. What would you say in response to those criticisms?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 22 March 2023
Russell Findlay
I will begin by apologising for my colleague Sue Webber, who cannot be here today. She was keen to be here but she has a clash with the Education, Children and Young People Committee, which she also sits on. I think that she has asked whether this joint committee might meet on another day in future, so we will see whether that transpires.
As often happens, you come to these meetings with a number of questions and then hear the evidence and the benefit—or perhaps it is not a benefit—of being last is that you have way more questions than you have time to ask. However, I would like to pick up on something that Kirsten Horsburgh referred to at the outset, and that is the drug consumption rooms issue.
Kirsten, you said something along the lines of a case having been made for those rooms seven years ago in Glasgow. You also said that these rooms could be introduced now, as far as the legal issues are concerned.
The Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce called for those rooms last July in its final report. Yet, in January of this year, the Criminal Justice Committee, of which Audrey Nicoll and I are members, received a letter from the Crown Office that essentially says that the Crown Office is still in communication with Police Scotland about the issue. We know that there was opposition to those rooms from Police Scotland. However, what struck me when the issue arose at the Criminal Justice Committee was some surprise that they were still just talking about it if there is no legal blockage and it is purely about practicalities.
Do you understand why there are still concerns about the ability to introduce drug consumption rooms? Do you think that it will happen? If there is a logjam involving the police and the Crown, is there something that the Scottish Government can do to break that logjam?
