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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Minister, I thank you and your officials for joining us. We will pause to allow you and your officials to leave.
Criminal Justice Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
That was a very comprehensive response, and you covered a lot in it. Following on from that, I refer to the written submission that we received from Claire Wilson, who is the chief social worker at Aberdeen City Council. In answer to a question about whether it would be better to address issues in the system before introducing a new level of management through a care service model, she said:
“What would be beneficial is to pause the Bill in terms of justice to enable a review of the current system, co-design a new one and then a careful transition over to the NCS once the social care part is set up and arrangements in place.”
Bearing in mind that we have the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill coming down the track, as you have alluded to, and the potential increase in workload that that will bring to justice social work, I am interested in your thoughts about the suggestion that Ms Wilson made in her written submission.
Criminal Justice Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Thank you, minister. We move to members’ questions.
Criminal Justice Committee
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Rona Mackay has just outlined part of this, but I remind members that there are two reasons why the Government does not recommend giving consent. First,
“The Government is of the view that the Bill, as currently drafted, is incompatible with the Scottish Government’s views that those who have suffered during the Troubles are able to obtain justice and that those who committed offences during that time are appropriately held to account/punished.”
Secondly,
“the Bill makes novel and unwelcome changes to the functions and responsibilities of the Lord Advocate as head of the systems of criminal prosecution and investigation of deaths in Scotland”.
Those were the two key reasons. Does anyone else want to come in?
Criminal Justice Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Thank you. I bring in Fulton MacGregor, to be followed by Russell Findlay.
Criminal Justice Committee
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
The next agenda item is to return to our consideration of the issue of legislative consent for the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill following the evidence that we took from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans. I refer members to paper 3. Members will see that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has also provided us with its correspondence with the Northern Ireland Office.
I will open up the discussion to members. We will then consider what recommendation we want to make to the Parliament on legislative consent.
Criminal Justice Committee
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
The issue will now be sent to the chamber for all members to decide, based on our report.
That completes our final business for the year.
I take this opportunity to wish all members, our clerks and other staff all the very best for the festive season. I hope that you all have a happy and peaceful Christmas and new year.
I also thank all the witnesses who have given formal and informal evidence to the committee this year. It is greatly appreciated.
I now move the meeting into private.
11:36 Meeting continued in private until 11:46.Criminal Justice Committee
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
We will compile a report and present it to Parliament.
Criminal Justice Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
Good morning, and welcome to the 33rd and final meeting in 2022 of the Criminal Justice Committee. There are no apologies this morning. Our final agenda item, under which the committee was due to consider its action plan, will be rescheduled to a future meeting.
Our first agenda item is an oral evidence session on the criminal justice provisions in the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. Members will recall that, on 23 November, we heard from a panel of witnesses on the possible transfer of justice social work services from local government to the proposed national care service. Today, we will conclude our consideration by hearing from the Scottish Government.
I welcome Kevin Stewart, the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care; Anna Kynaston, deputy director, national care service; and Catriona Dalrymple, deputy director, community justice.
I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I intend to allow about 60 minutes for the evidence session. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement, then we will move straight on to questions.
Criminal Justice Committee
National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 21 December 2022
Audrey Nicoll
We move to questions, and I will start. Minister, you acknowledged in your opening statement the specific role that justice social work has in our courts, among other settings. With that in mind, you will be aware of the forthcoming Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill, which the committee is beginning to consider. It includes a provision whereby justice social work would have a greater role in providing courts with information to inform decisions on bail. To date, the oral and written evidence that we have taken from witnesses suggests, perhaps not surprisingly, that that would potentially require greater resource for justice social work.
Will you outline your view on what the optimum model for justice social work would be, bearing in mind that we are at a very early stage? Would the best model be for it to remain within local authorities or to move to a care service setting?
