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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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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Displaying 1673 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Last September, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans told the Criminal Justice Committee:
“Prison governors in England and Wales have stated that it is not possible to have a drug-free prison. I would like to test that to see to what extent it can be achieved.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 1 September 2021; c 36.]
Is that realistic?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Hello, Mr Strang. Your predecessor, Professor Catriona Matheson, and her deputy, Neil Richardson, both quit, saying that the Scottish Government’s strategy was “counterproductive”. Have you had any contact with either of them, have you evaluated their concerns and, if so, what are your views on those concerns?
10:15Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Do I have time to ask one more quick question?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 2 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Yesterday, Kit Malthouse spoke passionately about the need to support people with drug problems and the vital role of the criminal justice system. For example, he spoke about a “ring of steel” being put around the community of Blackpool, as part of the addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery—ADDER—project. Every day, Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency work hard to target the organised crime gangs that make so much money from killing people in Scotland with their products.
Do you agree that it is not a question of one or the other, and will you give a commitment to Scottish communities that they will enjoy robust policing and the targeting of people who deal drugs?
11:30Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
A lot has been said about drug consumption rooms—[Inaudible.]—questions that have—[Inaudible.]—from those who zealously want such rooms to be rolled out, presumably in every Scottish town and city. It is worth repeating what Police Scotland’s chief constable said, which was that he would need “stronger evidence” before he could support that approach.
Should there not be greater emphasis on helping drug users to rehabilitate, rather than on encouraging drug taking? Is there a slight risk that, in focusing on that contentious issue, we are distracting from the Scottish National Party’s record? The SNP has presided over a doubling of drugs deaths in Scotland since 2008, and Scotland has now become the drug deaths capital of Europe.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Good afternoon, Mr Malthouse and Mr Starling.
Scotland’s drug deaths crisis is—quite rightly—being treated as a matter of public health, but I wonder whether we sometimes lose sight of the fact that highly dangerous gangs make a lot of money from killing so many people. Can you explain your thinking on that aspect?
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
Thank you. I do not think that I can have any more time.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
No, that is fine.
Criminal Justice Committee, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Joint Meeting)
Reducing Drug Deaths in Scotland and Tackling Problem Drug Use
Meeting date: 1 February 2022
Russell Findlay
In your opening statement, you talked about the importance of joint efforts and working together, and yet the Scottish Government has rejected an offer to extend ADDER into Scotland. Can you quantify, in any way, the possible detriment as a result of that decision? Alternatively, do you think that, as the National Crime Agency operates—thankfully—at a UK level, we continue to see those benefits?
Criminal Justice Committee
Petitions
Meeting date: 26 January 2022
Russell Findlay
I suppose that I need to declare a bit of an interest, in that I wrote the first press story about the petition when it was lodged in 2012. As a journalist, I came into regular contact with the petitioner, Peter Cherbi, and continued to report on the petition for many years. Remarkably, despite the best efforts of the judiciary, the petition is now almost 10 years old, which must be a record and perhaps says something about parliamentary committees, although I am not sure what.
I agree entirely that we need to see exactly what the Scottish National Party Government is proposing. I was surprised to see the commitment in the SNP manifesto—I found that interesting, because Nicola Sturgeon and successive justice secretaries have long been opposed to the idea in principle.
Although plenty has been said about the subject, and plenty more will be said about it, we should not lose sight of the fundamental issue of transparency and accountability—it is absolutely not about political meddling in judicial independence. I think that the reason why the petition has almost reached its 10th birthday is that many łÉČËżěĘÖ, across the parties—some of whom are no longer in the Parliament—understood the principle. That is perhaps why the petition is still live, as frustrating as it is that something that seems to be generally agreed has not meaningfully progressed. Let us just see what will be brought forward.
