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 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.
Displaying 1264 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
So, we will always be an outlier—is that what you mean? We will always be different.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
Well, let me help you then. We have established that it will not be the High Court. It will be a national court with wider sentencing powers, but in the hierarchy of the court system, it will not be as high as the High Court—is that right? It cannot be.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
That is because that confuses people. You previously said that you are not trying to alter the rate of conviction but that you are trying to change experiences. That is what I had always understood. Since we do not have any criteria—am I correct in saying that, or could you republish them?—I do not know what the criteria for assessing the single-judge pilot is.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
I was trying to establish whether the committee is aware of that research. I do not know that we are. You said that that research says that the removal of the not proven verdict would increase convictions, which is at odds with what the Lord Advocate said last week. John Swinney, in his line of questioning, expressed concerns about the Lord Advocate saying that she thought that it would result in a lower conviction rate. Your research shows otherwise. The problem that I have is that I would like to have put that research to other witnesses. Did we miss that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
Lady Dorrian specifically said that she thought that it should be a parallel court, but you did not go for that. Why is that? I hear what you are saying, and I totally support the Government in seeking to change the experience and do things differently, but why did you not adopt Lady Dorrian’s suggestion that it should be a parallel court? If you had, we would not be having an argument about whether you have lowered the status of sexual offences. Do you see what I mean?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
There would be. The SPICe briefing is clear. It would be helpful if Andrew Baird could answer that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
For reasons of workload, you decided to broaden out the scope of who could represent accused persons in cases that are not rape and murder. Is that fair to an accused person, who would not necessarily be represented by an advocate or solicitor advocate when they previously would have the right to be?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
I would welcome further discussion on that. I know that Katy Clark has a supplementary question.
This is an important issue. It is a significant proposal. If the issue is not resolved, I would have difficulty in supporting the provisions in the bill, to be perfectly truthful with you.
I have mentioned this issue previously and I apologise for mentioning it again, but when we increased the sheriff court’s sentencing powers in 2004, the Legal Aid Board eventually refused to sanction advocates for cases that previously would have been heard in a higher court. Ask any of the profession. The problem is that, unless the Legal Aid Board gives you assurances, accused persons who would otherwise have been properly represented by senior counsel or junior counsel will, by your admission, no longer be automatically entitled to that representation. If you leave it to the Legal Aid Board, the same thing will happen that happened in 2004—serious cases that are indicted in the sheriff court will no longer attract a higher level of representation.
We will be throwing the baby out with the bath water if we do not close the door on that. The cabinet secretary opened by saying that she does not want the sexual offences court to be seen as a lower court, but it will be if we do not resolve these issues. I would be happy if—
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
I want to examine how the single-judge trial would operate. You have had questions from the convener and Russell Findlay about how the pilot will be assessed. Will you publish what you are looking for? There is some confusion. At least three of our witnesses, including Professor James Chalmers, seem to think that you will measure conviction rates. It is not just the Scottish Criminal Bar Association that thinks that that will be one of the assessment criteria, but you have clearly said that it will not.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 7 February 2024
Pauline McNeill
I agree.
Lastly, I am trying to piece together the different legal forms, because they connect quite a bit. I take it that, if you were to set up a specialist court, it would be possible that a single judge would sit alone in a specialist court without a jury and with two verdicts.