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 1174 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
The pilot of single-judge juryless rape trials is a core proposition. As you will know, it comes from the work of Lady Dorrian. The essence of the time-limited pilot is to examine matters in greater depth; to ascertain its effectiveness and how it is perceived by everybody involved; to enable the issues to be assessed in a practical rather than theoretical way; and to have informed debate. In that regard, it is an unrivalled opportunity to look at what, if anything, is next, bearing in mind the long-standing concerns in and around the prevalence of rape myths—in our society and in juries—and about conviction rates.
I assure the committee that I have had many discussions with people and organisations that are opposed to the pilot that Lady Dorrian proposed. My commitment, whether to bar associations or to the Faculty of Advocates, is to continue those discussions. I strongly refute any suggestion that anything in the pilot undermines the rights of the accused, given the role of written statements and the fact that single-judge trials are not a novel experience in our justice system as it stands; nonetheless, I remain more than open to dialogue on how the criteria are crafted and how the pilot will operate and be evaluated, in order to give as much assurance as possible to those who have concerns.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
Let me be clear: I am absolutely determined to do better for victims and witnesses, but I also deeply recognise, respect and would seek to uphold the rights of the accused.
There is no doubt that people need representation. Any pilot would need solicitors to represent clients. What I will not do, bearing in mind that we still have a long way to go with the bill, is to turn up the volume on the debate.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
No! I do not know where you got that impression. Sorry; forgive me—I was just—
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
My view, and the view of Government and of stakeholders—notwithstanding the various views of those on the working group—is that no accused and no victim decides which court they appear in or which procedure they appear under. It may be the case that, when setting the criteria for the type of offence—for example, criteria could be focused on the single complainer, single accused and single act such as acquaintance rape—someone might dispute whether their offence meets the category. There was certainly some discussion about that, but nobody gets—
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
No.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
We have still to make a decision as to whether the pilot—if we call it that—would take place in the sexual offences court or the High Court. Let me run through the pros and cons of both. If we want the pilot to look more at how the current system operates in the High Court, we could do that comparatively quickly in the implementation process. However, there are advantages to the pilot taking place in the sexual offences court, because, given the wide-ranging nature of the reforms in the bill, their sequencing is very important.
When the pilot is evaluated, we want it to be a clear evaluation of the added value—or otherwise—of the pilot, as opposed to findings being more related to other reforms. Therefore, the phasing and sequencing of the different reforms is particularly important. Again, no final decision has been made, but we could, for example, start with the jury reforms and the abolition of the not proven verdict. The introduction of lifelong anonymity is fairly straightforward, but the sexual offences court is a bigger undertaking. We would probably want to phase that in as the court recovery programme comes to an end. The establishment of a court would take approximately 18 months. If we run the pilot in the sexual offences court, to which there are advantages, we would introduce the pilot at that point.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
No, no.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
There clearly is confusion. I said to the convener that the evaluation would include outcomes—which, of course, would include the outcomes of trials.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
That information will be gathered. Information will be available in depth about the written statements. What I was refuting, Ms McNeill, was the suggestion that the only thing that would be looked at, in isolation, was conviction rates.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Angela Constance
The conviction rate is one of many criteria, but it is not the only thing that we are looking at.
