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 1213 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
David Kennedy and Chief Superintendent Hay, is there anything in this bill that you fully support and which you think is useful?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
That is helpful—thank you. Dr Lennon, is there anything that you want to add?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
In cases where police officers go before the court and are not convicted, should any other misconduct issues related to those cases automatically be dropped? I hear what you are saying: you do not want to do things the other way round, as Sharon Dowey has suggested, because it might prejudice a court case. Obviously, we would be talking about a higher court here. If there is no conviction, why should the police continue with a misconduct disciplinary procedure against that police officer? After all, the court has already determined the matter.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
I see, but it just seems grossly unfair to be tried for the same offence by the court and by the police. It might be fair enough, if it were not for the issue of timescales. We have heard loud and clear really alarming evidence from Craig Naylor about the level of distress and mental ill health among the officers concerned. Everyone is prepared to defend themselves and deal with the charge against them, but it is the duration that they have to wait. Should there be clear timescales in legislation that Police Scotland has to abide by?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
It is not a supplementary—well, it kind of is.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
As an alternative model—an independent body—has been raised in the lines of questioning, I ask Dr Lennon what that would look like. Would there be police officers on the independent body? Most professions, rightly or wrongly, police themselves or have some representation. What would the independent body cover? Would it be misconduct or all complaints?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
What did you mean when you said that you favour an independent body? Did you mean for whistleblowing?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
Good afternoon. I find the responses from David Kennedy and, in fact, David Malcolm about not being told what you have been accused of very interesting, given the previous panel’s remarks about the importance of human rights. It is a fundamental right, even under Scots law, to know what you are being accused of and who your accusers are, but that does not seem to apply here either to staff or to police officers.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
It would be helpful to have that information.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 May 2024
Pauline McNeill
David Malcolm, what range of staff do you represent? Do you represent public-facing staff, too?