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: 9 November 2022
Katy Clark
That is because it has technology such as CCTV in place. I understand your point.
You might know about the staff contracts for Kilmarnock, and perhaps about those for the other private prisons. We have been told—this has also been my own understanding—that guaranteed cost of living increases are built into such contracts. Given the challenges that we now face across the prison estate because of the size of the proposed budget cuts, will the private sector prisons have a level of protection from those while the mainstream estate will have to bear a greater share of them? Is that your understanding of how things are likely to operate?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Katy Clark
Yes. Also, women tend to get longer sentences than men for similar offences. Do you have any thoughts on that? Prison is not necessarily the right solution, but it also has massive budgetary implications.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Katy Clark
You have said very clearly that some people have to be in prison because the nature of their offence or their violent nature means that they must be incarcerated. We all accept that that is the case and that there is a need for prisons, but I think that we also believe that there are people in prison who should not be there. We have been trying to get data on that so that we can better understand who is in prison and what they are there for.
How good is our data? The committee is very interested in having the data so that we can take a view on what could be achieved by looking at other disposals, although it is clear that there are some people for whom the only possible disposal is incarceration.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Katy Clark
When we spoke to judges, they said that women prisoners, and particularly women appearing from custody, are given custodial sentences for almost paternalistic reasons. The judges do not know what else to do. They are not convinced that prison is the right way to deal with a particular woman offender but—
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2022
Katy Clark
That is helpful to know.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 26 October 2022
Katy Clark
If we could be kept advised on that issue, that would be helpful.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 26 October 2022
Katy Clark
I have been told that there are more than 100 stations without sufficient shower or toilet facilities. Is that correct? Are you able to provide a cost for the resource implication of undertaking upgrade work for those specific reasons?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 26 October 2022
Katy Clark
It has been asked.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 26 October 2022
Katy Clark
In an area such as fingerprinting, if you lose expertise because staff go, does that mean that you might have to bring in officers who are less likely to stay in those roles for a lengthy period because they will be progressing through the organisation or are more expensive? Is it a false economy?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 26 October 2022
Katy Clark
Do you agree that that work has to be a priority? I am sure that there is a whole range of upgrading work on the estate that, ideally, should take place, but this particular work has to be a priority. It would be useful to get as much information as possible on the capital spend for this tranche of work that is necessary for the reasons that I have given.