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 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.
Displaying 1264 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Pauline McNeill
Would that be quite a radical change to make? I do not know enough to know whether it would be.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 1 March 2023
Pauline McNeill
Do you feel optimistic? Given what I have heard, I am not that optimistic that things will change. We have heard evidence that the police are the first responders for everything, including this. For that to change, there has to be a structural change in service. Otherwise, I do not see how things will change.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
So, you were not aware that women’s groups were not consulted? I am not trying to give you a trick question.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
I do, in a minute. I am really just trying to get some clarity. That is all that I am trying to do.
In balancing the rights of everyone—and I note what you have said about the importance of balancing the rights of trans people—would you agree that Rhona Hotchkiss is not talking about the possibility that women might be at risk, but that she is saying that the privacy and dignity of women in prisons are also important?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
Can you be clear with me?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
I am sorry, but that does not make any sense. If that was one factor, would it be fair to say that the decision maker could, under the policy, have said, “Okay. I have looked at that. This person has self-identified as a woman. I’m going to segregate the person in Barlinnie until we decide where the person is going to go”? Could that have been a decision or not?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
They checked that with headquarters.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
You are talking about hindsight.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
This is—I hope—a straightforward question. It follows on from Katy Clark’s question about who made the decision and all that. I am not trying to get you to say who made it, but I did not understand something.
There is a segregated unit in Barlinnie for sex offenders; I have actually been to the cells for individual solitary confinement. Why did the decision maker not just hold the prisoner in the segregated unit in the estate for assessment? That is a really important question, to answer now or to come back to the committee on at some point.
Is the problem that the 2014 policy is a self-ID policy, so you did not have a choice? It is really important to get to the bottom of that. If we want to move on from this, and if there are genuine lessons to be learned, we need to know why.
This seems like an obvious and sensible question that any member of the public would ask. Why did the prisoner need to go to Cornton Vale to be assessed and segregated? We have heard that there was no risk to women, but they could have been segregated somewhere else. I have a clear question. Why did the decision maker not hold Isla Bryson in another part of the male estate until a decision was made—albeit that I might not have liked the decision?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Pauline McNeill
The decision maker chose not to do that.