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 1653 contributions
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
I would like to drill into that a little more. As part of the need to look at coherence across the piece, there is a need to consider policy coherence. Can you say at this point whether that was mentioned in the Scottish Government鈥檚 submission to DEFRA? Given that the issue is complex and that there are lots of moving parts in lots of different departments, pulling a lever in one place could completely upset something else that is going on. How do we ensure that there is not only overall cohesion but policy coherence across the piece?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
Okay, but, as you said, the legal aid reform piece is crucial, and we are waiting.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
Do the barriers have different impacts on different types of groups and organisations? Obviously, NGOs might have more money behind them than community groups. Does that prevent community groups and local organisations from even considering trying to gain access to environmental justice?
10:15Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
There is also the threat of having to pay the legal fees of the other side if there is a loss, such as in the case that was mentioned. That is why the qualified one-way cost shifting is so important. Where are we in terms of conversations that the ERCS has had with the Scottish Government about that? Has there been any indication that there is recognition of the need for qualified one-way cost shifting?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
Good morning, panel. Thank you very much for joining us.
I want to carry on the line of questioning about the impact on NGOs and individuals who might be seeking redress and access to justice. Ben Christman gave the example of the John Muir Trust, which faced a bill of more than 拢120,000 after having lost a case. Do people find barriers other than costs to accessing justice, and are they different for NGOs, community groups and individuals? Can you give us a flavour of the types of barriers that different types of people who might be seeking litigation face?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
You said that not everybody is eligible to access legal aid, so that could be a barrier. I will leave it there for now, but I might come back in later.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
That point about looking holistically and aiming for cohesion is really useful, because it is easy to get fixated on one little issue in one place and not think about the bigger picture.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
That is helpful. It is important to get that on the record.
I will shift to a couple of different questions.
What is your view on the arguments put by the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland that the SCJC does not consult very widely, or widely enough, on court rules that are intended to allow access to justice in environmental cases?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
Thank you.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 12 November 2024
Maggie Chapman
I appreciate the constraints that you feel under in answering some of our questions, as the subject covers more than two portfolios; it is quite a broad area. We heard clearly from our first panel this morning about the need to examine the whole process of justice. In your opening comments, you outlined the three pillars, one of which is about accessing the information.
Is there anything that you can say about what the Scottish Government is doing to look at the three pillars in a holistic way to see where the elements are? Access is your job; some of the other pillars will be down to planning, local government or environment. How is the Government looking at the subject holistically?