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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 3527 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Eamon Keane, do you have anything to add?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
That was helpful.
We will bring our session to a close. Thank you both very much for what has been a helpful and informative session.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
That concludes our public agenda item for today. At our next meeting, on 6 December, we will continue our evidence taking on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill by hearing from representatives of survivors of crime on the abolition of the not proven verdict and on jury majorities.
11:37 Meeting continued in private until 12:27.Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Can you say more about your observations of what you felt were the strengths of the mock jury trials that you arranged?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Thank you. That is really helpful. I am just going to bring in other members because I know that they will be keen to probe those findings. Rona Mackay would like to start off.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Good morning, and welcome to the 32nd meeting in 2023 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have received no apologies. Fulton MacGregor joins us online.
Under our first item of business, we will continue to take evidence on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. We are beginning phase 2 of our scrutiny of the bill. That focuses specifically on part 4, which covers the abolition of the not proven verdict and changes to jury sizes and majorities. We expect phase 2 to run to the end of this year, after which we will consider the last two parts of the bill.
We are joined, from the University of Glasgow school of law, by Professor Fiona Leverick, professor of criminal law and criminal justice, and Eamon Keane, lecturer in evidence and criminal procedure. I welcome you both.
I refer members to papers 1 to 3. I intend to allow about 90 minutes for this session, but it might run on, if required, as part 4 is a key area of the bill.
I will begin with a general opening question, which I will direct to Professor Leverick. The Scottish jury research that you were involved in informed the approach that the Scottish Government has taken in part 4 of the bill. Before we consider the relevant findings of the research, will you outline what you see as the strengths and possible limitations of the research methodology in relation to, for example, the use of mock juries?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
I call Rona Mackay.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
I have one final question, which comes back to something that I noticed in your submission and was curious about. It is on the issue of safeguarding against wrongful conviction in sexual offence cases. In your submission, you say that the use of the not proven verdict
“is particularly prevalent, but particularly problematic, in sexual offence cases, where it may enable juries to give weight to myths and stereotypes in avoiding verdicts of conviction.â€
You go on to say:
“while there is no clear evidence that the verdict does in fact safeguard against wrongful conviction, its existence has been used to justify Scots law not introducing other measures which would, meaning that it may in fact be actively harmful in this regard.â€
I am looking for a bit more commentary on that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
It might be helpful if you give a quick run-through, if there is such a thing.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Audrey Nicoll
It is helpful for us to understand a bit about the background detail and just how robust the research was, so that was very helpful. Eamon Keane, would you like to come in on anything?