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 成人快手 and committees will automatically update to show only the 成人快手 and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of 成人快手 and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of 成人快手 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: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Yes.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Could I ask you to pause that question? We will come on to that part of the bill.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
I will move on to questions about parts 5 and 6 of the bill. As a reminder, part 5 relates to the establishment of a new sexual offences court and part 6 has three main provisions: first, the automatic statutory right of anonymity for victims of certain offences; secondly, a right to independent legal representation for complainers in sexual offences trials; and, thirdly, to enable a time-limited pilot of single judge trials with no jury for rape and attempted rape cases.
I will pick up on the final provision on single judge trials and the time-limited pilot that is being proposed. In response to Lady Dorrian鈥檚 recommendation, were alternative options to that of a single judge trial pilot considered?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Yes, of course. I am conscious of the time, but that would be fine. I will then bring in Fulton MacGregor, and I have a couple of follow-up questions. We might therefore run on an extra five minutes or so.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
Finally, I call Katy Clark.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
That is a good point to end on. I will bring in Sharon Dowey and then Rona Mackay
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
That was helpful. I have a follow-up question on the aspirations around the experience for individuals who are going through a trial that relates to rape or sexual offences. Would it be possible to achieve what we are aiming to do and improve that experience using a non-legislative option, rather than a legislative one? That might be done by improving trauma-informed training of staff or by expanding the use of evidence by commission so that we can improve and refine what already exists.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
I apologise to Sharon Dowey for jumping ahead. Please come in with your question now.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
That is a helpful clarification. You will be glad to hear that we will now move on to the final part of the committee鈥檚 evidence session; we will look at parts 1 to 3 of the bill, which I expect will take around 25 minutes. As a reminder, part 1 relates to the establishment of a victims and witnesses commissioner; part 2 relates to a new requirement for criminal justice agencies to have regard to trauma-informed practice; and part 3 relates to special measures in non-evidential hearings to cover civil cases, as well as allowing courts to prohibit parties from personally conducting their own cases or carrying out personal cross-examination in certain cases.
I will open with a question on the proposals for a victims and witnesses commissioner. There has been general support for that proposal; however, I have picked up that there will be potential cost implications and that there have been questions about the role of the commissioner, given that the proposal is that the officeholder would not have a role in the investigation or review of individual cases. Could the cabinet secretary expand on the thinking on that proposal?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 27 September 2023
Audrey Nicoll
I will just pick up on the point about potential duplication of work that is perhaps already the focus of victim support organisations. Would work be undertaken to make sure that there is no duplication and that there are clear and distinct roles and responsibilities for the commissioner, for example, and the organisations that represent victims, so that there is a holistic provision of support for victims and witnesses?