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 912 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
You might feel, again, that you are not able to answer my next question. We have heard about the importance of information being provided to the sheriff and the court. In the previous session, we were told that there was better provision of social workers in the courts back in the 1990s and early 2000s. That is quite anecdotal, so there might be great geographical differences in the levels of provision. Are you able to point us towards any evidence or work that has been done on the availability of that support in the courts? It is a resource issue rather than necessarily a legal issue. Do you have any experience of that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
When somebody is already in custody for something else so that there is no possibility that they would be getting released anyway, is that perhaps an example of an exception?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
It was pointed out to us that the interests of children need to be a top priority. To what extent would you get involved in getting sufficient information about that? Would you have to refer to other agencies?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I think that the problem is that we might end up in the same place, but there might be a lot of appeals before we end up in that place.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I do not know whether the Faculty of Advocates—
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
In the previous session, we heard evidence about the central marking of cases and the decisions that the Crown makes as to whether to oppose bail. In particular, there was a suggestion that procurators fiscal should be able to use their discretion more in the courts, rather than having to go up a managerial chain and impose central policy.
We will be meeting, and hearing evidence from, the Crown next week. I am interested in any thoughts that you have about changes that need to be made to practice or, indeed, process or policy in Crown decisions. You might feel that you do not have expertise in that and do not have an opinion.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
My final question is whether you support the inclusion of the public safety test in the bill. You spoke a little about that already. Would that be a helpful addition to the bill, or would it make no difference whatsoever and, possibly, create uncertainty? We have heard that it might lead to appeals as we tried to clarify what that provision would mean.
David Mackie, you made suggestions about additional provisions that could be put into the bill that might be of assistance. If there is going to be a test of that nature, do you have any suggestions about how we could define it?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I want to go back to the beginning of the bail process. We have heard about the importance of providing sufficient information to the court in relation to bail decisions, and we have heard that the social work provision that we would ideally want to be in place is often just not there. How does that interface with your work? The police are not social workers, obviously, but presumably you have to go some way down that path to ensure that there is sufficient information. Could you comment on not just the resource implications but the extent to which you are able to go down that path to ensure that there is a holistic understanding of the situation when the court is making a decision?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
Thank you.
My second question is about virtual custodies, which is an issue that we have been discussing over an extended period. The Scottish Government might come forward with firm proposals on that at a later date. Given what Joanne McMillan said and expressed so clearly about the importance of discussions—of speaking to all the parties, including the police, the social workers and the procurator fiscal—and the value of face-to-face discussion and talking, what are the circumstances in which you think that virtual custodies would work?
I will start with Joanne McMillan, because she has been talking about some of that.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Katy Clark
I do not know whether the Law Society of Scotland would like to come in on that. It might be something to consider after today. Do you have any initial thoughts?