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
Correspondence
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Russell Findlay
The letter is pretty vague and does not really tell us anything. The fourth paragraph states that there is a commitment to “improving victims’ experiences”, but the letter does not address the central point, which is access to court transcriptions.
As the top of the letter points out, there was also quite a delay between our letter and the response. However, I kind of wonder what the point of the response is, as there is so little in it of any substance.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 5 October 2022
Russell Findlay
I agree with Jamie Greene. I do not have the Lord President’s response in front of us, but I think that it gave a much more detailed explanation about why what is asked for is difficult. There are many things that we can reasonably ask on the basis of the cabinet secretary’s letter, which really says nothing. We should ask those questions.
10:15Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
What will the inclusive fee be?
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
How does that differ from the current system?
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
The crimes that the regulations would cover are summary cases but those can include acts of violence. Victims often complain that the system is opaque: they are not kept in the loop, are not told of disposals and are often left in limbo for significant periods. Has any consideration been given to informing victims about disposals as part of the change? It seems that there will be even less chance of their being told if there is no formal hearing because it is not needed.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
Churn has been a huge problem in the sheriff courts for decades and I guess that that is what we are talking about. However, is there not a risk that it might financially incentivise a defence lawyer to recommend to their client that they should enter a guilty plea, which might not be in the client’s best interest?
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I understand that this is the business of the court and the Crown Office, but could there be a stipulation or requirement with regard to the need to inform witnesses and victims as the work is progressed? Otherwise, there will be a real risk of their being left not knowing the outcome of cases. For victims of violence, in particular, or some other crimes of that nature, it seems only right that that consideration is front and centre of any such change.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Russell Findlay
Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
I echo that the proposal is a good development. It was in our party’s manifesto during the last election and is in my colleague Jamie Greene’s member’s bill—that development will push the bill forward.
We should be grateful to those who responded to the consultation. There were of course those people who one would expect to respond, but also quite a lot of members of the public who have suffered from the verdict—including Miss M and families who have lost members to murder—and have not had justice as they see it. There are really compelling responses in there that are worth taking time to read.
Criminal Justice Committee
Correspondence
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Russell Findlay
The letter that we received happened to be dated the same day as the first meeting of the new group. The letter also says that details will be made available on the Government website. I do not know whether that is indeed the case, but I certainly would like to know when the group is planning to meet next and to have a rough idea of schedules. Given that there are international members among the 20 listed in the letter in front of us, I would like to know what the format of meetings will be. I presume that they will not be travelling to Scotland every time the group meets—I am curious about that.
