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 1169 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Non-fatal Strangulation
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Sharon Dowey
I am still trying to get to whether we would need a stand-alone offence. As Liam Kerr said, Scots law is already further ahead on this issue, and we have ways in which we can prosecute non-fatal strangulation. There are also concerns that the current laws could be diluted if we brought in a stand-alone offence. Would more education for the public and the police help, or do you still think that there definitely needs to be a stand-alone offence?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Non-fatal Strangulation
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Sharon Dowey
Is there any other action that you think we should take?
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Non-fatal Strangulation
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Sharon Dowey
In their written evidence about the potential detrimental effects of introducing a stand-alone offence of NFS, Police Scotland and the COPFS raised concerns that it would be treated as an isolated incident rather than as part of a course of conduct under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. What are your views on that? As I said before, they thought that it might dilute what is already in law.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Non-fatal Strangulation
Meeting date: 21 May 2025
Sharon Dowey
Okay. Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Secure Accommodation
Meeting date: 14 May 2025
Sharon Dowey
I share the same concerns about capacity. I am also interested in the processes when capacity is reached. When somebody needs to go into secure accommodation, and there is none because capacity has already been reached, what is the process? Where are the kids going and what are we doing about it?
The letter highlights the new post of a “dedicated professional lead”. I would like to know more about what that is and what improvement it will give to the service. It also highlights a
“contingency plan with up to £2 million”
in funding. What will that additional funding achieve? Will it achieve extra numbers in accommodation and how will that impact the service?
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
People’s Panel on Tackling Drug Harm and Deaths
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Sharon Dowey
Can I just ask for timelines to be included in that, so that we can see progress?
Criminal Justice Committee (Draft)
People’s Panel on Tackling Drug Harm and Deaths
Meeting date: 23 April 2025
Sharon Dowey
The Scottish Government’s response to the report said:
“the majority of the recommendations are already being undertaken within our ... National Mission and cross-government programmes of work.”
It says that those recommendations that are not already being progressed will be incorporated into considerations for the Scottish Government’s post-national mission planning.
I wonder what those latter recommendations are and whether there is a list of the action points that are being taken for every recommendation. Some of them are part of the national mission, some are part of cross-Government programmes of work and some are still to be considered. It would be easier for us to see what actions have been taken if we had a list of all actions by recommendation.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Sharon Dowey
My fear is that we are trying to put something into legislation that sounds good but that will not do any good for the victims. Many small changes could be made that would have a huge impact on victims, but we are trying to make a huge change that, if not implemented properly, could end up having a detrimental impact on victims and make the court system worse rather than improve it, which is obviously what we intend to do.
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Sharon Dowey
Thank you for that clarification. It still does not fill me with confidence that the Scottish Government has a clear vision, supported by concrete evidence, that would justify radical changes to the justice system of the kind that it is now proposing at stage 2. Indeed, the cabinet secretary told the committee on 26 February that
“the research ... led us to support a jury size of 12 in the first place.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 26 February 2025; c 13.]
Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]
Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2
Meeting date: 26 March 2025
Sharon Dowey
I would say that, at the moment, none of us can put forward a proposal that is completely based on concrete evidence, because of the lack of evidence that we had at committee. Pauline McNeill said as much in her contribution—we needed a lot more evidence on this. We could have done with seeing the research before we lodged our amendments, but we do not have it. I will come on to this, but I do not think that the mock juries gave us the research that we needed either.
Actually, I am going to come on to it now. I am deeply concerned that no real research is available to us on jury deliberations in Scotland. We have no idea how juries reach their decisions or what the split is between those who believe the accused is guilty or not guilty. Alisdair Macleod, from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, made the point that
“It might well be that every jury in the land comes back with a unanimous 15 to nil verdict or a 14 to one majority verdict. There is no way of knowing how many cases are decided on an eight to seven verdict”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 13 December 2023; c 46.]
Moreover, Lord Renucci made the point, which I agree with, that
“we should not change our whole legal system based on research with mock juries, which, in no way, mirrored what happens in courts.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 13 December 2023; c 9.]
He said that the mock trial in the Scottish jury research lasted one hour, but he had never in his career experienced a rape trial that had lasted less than a day. That is not the way to build an evidence base for reform of the system.
