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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 1131 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Rona Mackay
Good morning. I am trying to establish the process of the group. You say that there has been reluctance to accept some of the findings of the report. How often, if at all, did all parties meet round the table to discuss issues, and why did you get the impression that there was resistance?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Rona Mackay
On average, how many times a year do you have those meetings to get together and look at the data?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Rona Mackay
Could you have set a timeline or deadline for any of the implementation? Would it be within your remit to do that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 20 September 2023
Rona Mackay
It seems that there are a lot of working groups. Is there a lack of communication? Is the structure too layered, so that people are off in their own silos doing stuff but nothing is actually being done? How do you feel about that as the chair? Has your position been undermined by the delays?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
It is a supplementary to Russell’s line of questioning, and it is probably for Mr Page.
You talked about probationer recruitment numbers. What are the current recruitment numbers in the police, and how is that balanced against the number of police that you are predicted to lose?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
I have a few more questions, but I will leave it there.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
Well, I just wanted to ask Stephen McGowan about the part of the Crown Office submission that talks about
“the Appeal Court ... considering the scope of the law of evidence in sexual offences”,
and how that could lead to a significant increase. Are you saying that more staff will be needed for that?
12:45Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
Stephen, is that the same for you in relation to trainees and new skills?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
I am sorry to interrupt—where are we with that, then? Ten years seems like a long time.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Rona Mackay
Thanks. Mr Page, you talk about your reform budget. What is that exactly—what does that mean?