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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Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
You will be aware of the committee’s report on the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill, which was published this week. Earlier, you mentioned the volume of offenders who breach their bail conditions and the effect that that has on their victims. Have you had a chance to do an initial review of our in-depth report and our recommendations? Is there anything that you want to say about that, as it relates to domestic abuse?
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
Before I move on to get the Crown’s position, perhaps this is a good point to look at the data. I will cherry pick data for 2020-21, because it is recent. Of the 65,000 domestic abuse cases that were reported to the police, my understanding is that 1,600 crimes were recorded under DASA—I need to be careful with my terminology here, because it is very easy to confuse statistics. Of those 1,600 crimes, 1,200 charges were reported. As the convener said in her opening comments, there were proceedings against 420 individuals in 2020-21, and 383 successful convictions.
I am looking at that ratio. If you start with 65,000 incidents and under DASA have 383 convictions, although every one of those convictions is welcome to the victim, that is 0.5 per cent of the total number of incidents, which does not seem great. I know that it is a journey, and that it is a new piece of legislation. The direction of travel has been okay over the past couple of years, but that ratio seems underwhelming. What is the Crown’s role in all this?
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
It would be the Crown, not ministers. Okay—thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
So, it is nothing to do with extradition. That is fine. In that scenario, then, would there be a request by ministers to the Lord Advocate or would it be the other way around?
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
That is also worrying.
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
Thank you for that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
I have two short supplementary questions. The first follows on nicely from the conversation that we have just had. The best way to deal with domestic abuse is prevention, rather than cure. On that point, is the panel confident and comfortable that the delivery of what is known as Clare’s law has been effective in Scotland through the domestic violence disclosure scheme? Does Police Scotland have any statistical data on how many people have applied through that scheme for information and, in the positive, been granted information since its launch?
Secondly, are Police Scotland’s data systems up to scratch in terms of a national register that pulls together relevant information to feed into those requests?
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
If you have any more information on that scheme, I kindly request that you write to us with any data that you have. I would find that really helpful, as we proceed with our post-legislative scrutiny.
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: Post-legislative Scrutiny
Meeting date: 8 March 2023
Jamie Greene
I hear what you are saying, but the number is still quite high. Even if there has been an increase in reporting, the figure is still high.
Criminal Justice Committee
Scottish Mental Health Law Review
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Jamie Greene
Good morning, Professor. I want to focus on some of your comments in your opening statement around the role of policing and the role of police as first responders. You are certainly right to echo comments by the departing chief constable on his concerns about the increasing use of the police as a first port of call for incidents where there is clearly a mental health element—or where that is the substantive element of the situation—how police deal with those situations, how they are prepared to deal with those situations and what happens thereafter when someone has to be removed from that location to another place and where they go. There has been a lot of discussion about that over the years but it seems to me, certainly anecdotally if not evidentially, that it is increasing substantially.
Will you talk for a few moments about the work? It is a big report and there is a lot in it—chapter 9, for example, went into some of the issues—but will you sum up what the problem is and what the Government should be thinking about?
