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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 1099 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
Yes.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
What I think John Swinney is driving at, on keeping our communities safe, is that the debate is much broader than being just about police officers because the work must also involve police staff and other associated professionals, who will bring various forensic skills to bear.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
I know that various dates have been produced and bandied about but, to be absolutely clear with the committee, we want to get the costs so that we can get to implementation, make the plans and set out the capital budget so that there is an up-to-date timeline for everybody to work towards.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
Not being a builder, I share some of that frustration, but I know that the Scottish Prison Service, and particularly the governor of Barlinnie, is very focused on the project. We have to accept that the pandemic and the construction materials price index, with a 47 per cent increase overall in construction materials, have an impact. I want to have as much clarity as soon as possible, and I know that the Scottish Prison Service shares that view, too.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
I am conscious of other public sector infrastructure projects that have been impacted by events such as inflation, construction labour shortages, Brexit and all the rest of it. Given the lengthy lead-in time for infrastructure projects, it is difficult to rule out the prospect of an event interrupting plans. People sometimes start building infrastructure projects and then find something of historical or architectural importance. All sorts of things can happen.
Perhaps I can give you some assurance that the Scottish Government executive team is very interested in the matter and it has had some discussions and opportunities to delve into the plans as they exist right now to ensure that they are as robust and as realistic as possible, because that is in the interests of all the justice partners.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
Yes—that is true. When I visited our prison establishments on my summer tour, I looked very closely at conditions and where we are with making improvements to the estate, as well as our ambitions for HMP Glasgow and HMP Highland. I know now that, according to the Office for National Statistics, there is a 65 per cent increase in the number of vacancies in construction, and the Building Cost Information Service materials cost index shows a 47 per cent increase overall, with an 82 per cent increase in structural steel, a 39 per cent increase in pre-cast concrete and a 32 per cent increase in gravel and sand. All of that has an impact not just on our ambitions in justice, but across the Government.
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
In my engagement with all the justice partners, I am endeavouring to ensure that all the arrows are facing in the right direction—
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-budget Scrutiny 2024-25
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
I will see what can be shared. I know that part of the financial considerations would be that the more recent private prison HMP Addiewell is certainly more expensive than HMP Kilmarnock, because it will be reflective of more recent market conditions. There will be some information that we can share, and I hope that it will be helpful.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
The Government can keep the three remaining time limits under review, and we propose to continue only three out of the seven original time limits. They can be extended only year by year, so they can be extended until next year and thereafter they can be the subject of only one further extension. Any permanent changes to those time limits would require primary legislation; we do not have plans to introduce primary legislation on time limits. We want to get back to the pre-pandemic normal.
Criminal Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Angela Constance
I will answer what I think is within my remit. First and foremost, I want, at the earliest opportunity, for us not to have coronavirus time-limit regulations in place. I want them for no longer than they are needed. I want to get back to our original legislation and the standards that are set out in it. This goes back to my experience from the prison system—although that was not yesterday.
I am aware that time limits can always be altered case by case. I do not have statistics to hand, but such alteration is far from uncommon. One of the reasons why I want us to continue with the three time limits is that I want to avoid misuse of precious court resources that should be focused on the backlog and on getting through trials, and I want not to clog up the system with procedural hearings.
On your reflection on increasing investment in the Crown Office, I think that it is a matter of record that in the past five years its budget went up by 50 to 75 per cent—notwithstanding that demands on its workload have most certainly increased, for reasons that were outlined in an earlier evidence session. To be helpful, the committee might wish me to ask the Lord Advocate to reply to Ms McNeill or to write to the committee. I have endeavoured to answer your question as best I can, from my position.
