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
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Russell Findlay
And then, of course, we will need to decipher what might be considered normal and regular and what might be considered concerning.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Russell Findlay
I don’t know about that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
Meeting date: 29 November 2023
Russell Findlay
On the point about juries being unable to reach a verdict, the most recent research—which is, I think, from New Zealand and dates from 2000—talks about a hung jury rate of 8.7 per cent, which is quite significant. If the bill does not include the ability to have a retrial, should there be some robust post-legislative scrutiny of the impact, which would require the Government to revisit that particular issue?
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
There was another point that I forgot to mention about the cabinet secretary’s letter in response to our questions about an awareness campaign. When the act first came into force, there was a publicity campaign to let people know what it did, which was apparently quite helpful. We asked whether there were plans to do something else. In response, the cabinet secretary said:
“We are currently undertaking insight gathering”.
There is further documentation from Scottish Government, on page 13 of paper 2, that also uses the term “insight gathering”. I wonder whether it is worth trying to establish whether there are any concrete plans, because I do not quite know what that means. It either seeks to do something or it does not. It is a small point.
10:30Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
That point was made during the evidence session, but it was not addressed in the letter from the Government, so it needs to be clarified. Whether Gill Imery would accept is another matter.
Criminal Justice Committee
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
I found it. Just to give the context, page 13 includes the phrase
“insight gathering which could inform a future approach to communications.”
If they do not have any plans, just say so.
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
Yes. That is why I am surprised that the Crown Office, having heard that evidence, which was put in strong terms, has not engaged with us.
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
Gill Imery spent two years producing the report on deaths in prison custody. There have been around 350 such deaths in the past decade, around half of which have been by suicide or drugs. There have been another 11 deaths since she gave evidence to us. Her report contains 26 recommendations and further advisory points but, two years later, only five of the recommendations have been implemented. Her main recommendation was on a new system to investigate deaths in custody but, crucially, she said that that would not even be necessary if the Crown Office fixed what she saw as failings in the fatal accident inquiry system. It is pretty clear from everything that we have heard that the Scottish Government and the justice agencies that are involved are not in agreement with her, but they do not seem willing to admit it. She told us that she feels frustrated but unsurprised. She told us that she feels “humoured” and “patronised”.
In response, we wrote to the relevant agencies—the Government, NHS Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service—and we now have their replies. If Gill Imery was despairing when she came here, I can only imagine how she will feel when she reads the letters. I ask myself whether those organisations actually listened to what she said to us—of course, they did, because she could not have been clearer. By ignoring her explicit concerns in their letters, they essentially confirm exactly what she said. It took another organisation—the Scottish Human Rights Commission, which saw her testimony and wrote to us unprompted—to address her concerns and sympathise with her.
It is notable that, despite the Crown Office being subject to severe criticism by Gill Imery in relation to FAIs, it did not choose to write to us to state its case. In response to a question that I put to her, she told me that she would be willing to extend her tenure on the deaths in custody review group. It is no surprise that the letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs does not even address that specific point. Again, that confirms what Gill Imery told the committee.
To summarise, we are all entitled to feel frustrated, humoured and patronised. It seems to have been a monumental waste of time, effort and money. What kind of message does all of that send to the families of those who have died in custody?
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
I will be brief as I know that we do not have a huge amount of time. We absolutely need to go back to Gill Imery in response to the letters. I made the point that the Crown Office chose not to engage with us despite the criticism of it. Despite all the thousands upon thousands of words, it boils down to the fact that she made one main recommendation and it has been ignored. We need the authorities to come clean on that. Are they intent on doing it, or are they not?
Criminal Justice Committee
Deaths in Prison Custody
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Russell Findlay
That is the main, fundamental point of the report, but she goes on to say that, as she sees it, if the fatal accident inquiry system was fixed, that would not be needed. That is central to everything.
