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 936 contributions
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Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Rona Mackay
My question is probably for Gerry O’Donnell. It is about funding for secure care facilities for young people.
You will be aware that there is a Scottish Government policy move, which I thoroughly endorse, that all children under 18 will be held in secure care rather than go to a young offenders institution such as Polmont. The funding model has been causing problems for some time, and the submission from HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland refers to the importance of adequately resourcing secure care to receive children under the age of 18. It says that a “different funding model” will be required.
The inspectorate says that, at the moment, the model requires the facilities
“to maintain full capacity and spaces are routinely taken by children from England to meet the financial imperatives.”
I know that to be true, because there is a secure care facility in my constituency.
What is your view on that point? I do not know whether you feel that you are in a position to comment, but are you aware of it?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Rona Mackay
Thank you, convener. I will try to keep this brief.
I will ask some questions about violence against women and girls. I thank you, Lord Advocate, for speaking so passionately about the subject and its unique nature. I whole-heartedly agree with everything that you said on that. You also said in your opening statement that funding was adequate for the normal level of cases based on pre-pandemic levels. Given that the number of solemn cases of domestic abuse has gone up by 20 per cent since 2019 and given the huge backlogs about which we have spoken, is this the time for something radical? Would you be in favour of a specialist court? Will you have enough funding to cope with the extreme figures that you mentioned?
Criminal Justice Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Rona Mackay
That is fine. I just wanted to put on record that there is a sea change happening, and that the funding could possibly change.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
It is Collette Stevenson.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Our focus is on all aspects of women in the justice system. Far too many women in prison have mental health problems or have been victims of domestic abuse and are brain injured. There are huge issues that we need to look at. The cross-party group on women’s justice made a start on that work in the previous parliamentary session, and I hope that, in this session, we can dig deep into the issues and try to effect a lot of change.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
When I was the convener of the cross-party group on women’s justice, which was formed in 2018, it became increasingly clear that what we were discussing involved children and families, too. There was already a cross-party group on families affected by imprisonment, and its members regularly attended and contributed to our group’s meetings. As a result, it seemed logical and sensible to merge the two groups in this parliamentary session, given that we shared the same agenda on many occasions and spoke about the same problems faced by women going through the justice system and the effect on their wider families.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Thank you very much.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
Yes.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
That was part of the work of the previous group, and, now that the units are nearing completion, we are very keen to press the need for contact between mothers and children. We are asking for mother-and-baby units to be part of these establishments in order to allow mothers to bond with their babies instead of being separated from them. As I said, it has been part of our work—we have taken evidence on it from the Scottish Prison Service on many occasions—and we very much see such work as on-going and necessary.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Cross-Party Groups
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Rona Mackay
One such measure would be highlighting the huge issues that women on remand face. There are still far too many women on remand and in custody. Although we are 10 years on from the Angiolini report, which concluded that we have to stop locking women up for low-level offences, that is still happening. There are many causes of such offending—addiction problems, mental health problems, chaotic lifestyles and so on—and, at that level, prison is not the place for women. Our objective is to keep pressing the issue and to look at what are pretty radical new ways of keeping women out of prison. After all, prison does not help them; indeed, it just makes the situation that they find themselves in much worse, given the mental health effects, and so on. Moreover, it affects not just them but the wider family and their children. Only 5 per cent of children whose mother is in prison remain in the family home, which indicates how disruptive such an approach is. We are focusing on all aspects of how the situation could be improved and on how a much more holistic method might be brought in.
