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 MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs 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 923 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
I have thrown everybody off—sorry.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
I will pick up on some of the issues that have been raised.
I found the suggestions in the written submission on the definitions relating to complainer and the withholding of evidence really helpful. The committee will want to consider those and to hear the views of others.
On the definition of “public safety”, it has been suggested to us that it would be helpful for the legislation to refer to “intimate partner”. Is that a helpful suggestion? Could that be part of a wider definition of “public safety”?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
Yes.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
With regard to the public safety test, I understand why you personally perhaps do not want to come forward with a suggestion. Would your organisation be well equipped to look at that? Where do you think those suggestions should come from? If you feel that your organisation is not the place to do that, are you happy to look at a number of definitions and think through what the consequences of those might be in the courts?
It is quite easy for legislators to come up with wording, but predicting how that will be looked at and interpreted in the courts is a different matter. As you know, it is important that we get the wording right and that it has the effect that Parliament intends it to have.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
That is fine.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
Would David Fraser have a view on the definition? Would you want to comment publicly on that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 January 2023
Katy Clark
Thank you. We have seen the submission that it has made to the Scottish Government.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I appreciate that we are running out of time. Is Stuart Munro able to add anything to that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I have two questions, if that is okay, convener. The first is on the public safety test in the bill. As we know, that is simply not defined, which could cause a great deal of problems. Have you given any thought to how that test could be defined? If we were to keep it in the bill, how could we define it? I may be putting you on the spot too much now, so I would be quite happy to hear from you afterwards in writing.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
Thank you for that. Does Joanne McMillan have any thoughts on that?