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 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.
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Displaying 2127 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
The use of remote balloting by jurors seems to have been welcomed by everyone who participated in it. I think that that facility has been made permanent now. Is there anything else that was done as a result of the pandemic that you suggest could also be made permanent?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Your report also tells us that the pace that was required by the emergency Covid response highlighted good collaboration among all the partners in the initial stages of the pandemic. What is your evidence base for the conclusions that you have reached? You also note that there was a failure to “fully document” plans and outcomes. How are you able to reach a conclusion if you do not have a documentary evidence base to look back on?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Can you tell us a bit more about the initial responses to Covid, particularly the digital or electronic transformation of documents, which you say in the report was successful? How did that work, and is that still in place?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Yes, you certainly mentioned that, but I wonder whether that system is available to us in the solemn cases. You said that the backlog was still pretty high. Is that process usable in solemn cases?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Okay. I hope that we can come back to that, convener.
My last question is about the impact of adjournments. We all know that they are part and parcel of the justice system, but were there any significant impacts due to Covid that meant that frequent or more prolonged adjournments took place? If so, how was that resolved?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
You say clearly in your report that the backlog has an impact on victims and witnesses. Other than providing some additional funding to assist, is any other support, such as advocacy, required from the Scottish Government to assist victims and witnesses to get through the process?
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Thank you very much for your responses to those questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Cinemas and theatres were perfectly set up for that purpose. Do you envisage cases appearing at a cinema near you in the future, or is that experiment done and dusted?
09:45Public Audit Committee
“Criminal courts backlog”
Meeting date: 8 June 2023
Willie Coffey
You talked a few times about there being up to 20,000 outstanding scheduled trials. That seems quite a high number, but you have explained that that is the norm, which I was not aware of. Is any consideration being given to keeping the 10 hubs going to try to reduce that number more quickly, or will we revert back to the 39 sheriffdom locations that you mentioned?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Limited”
Meeting date: 1 June 2023
Willie Coffey
Briefly, with regard to the beggaring of belief issue that was mentioned earlier, the point that the committee—and, perhaps, the public—were making, Mr Miller, is that there is a reasonable expectation that bonuses or incentives would somehow be connected to performance and delivery, rather than to competitiveness and retention of staff. We—and the Government—were genuinely surprised to learn that that system was not connected to performance and delivery. Clearly, the project is five years late and well over budget, so it is difficult for us—and, I am sure, the public—to understand how that situation could continue to be maintained. However, we dwelled on that a moment ago, so I will probably leave it at that, if that is okay, convener and Mr Miller.
I will start with a couple of questions to Mr Tydeman. It is good to see you here again in front of the committee, with a chance to give us your view on how the project has fared since the beginning. In your opening remarks, you outlined that a number of reasons lay behind the delays and cost overruns. You specifically mentioned events in 2015 and 2019, which ultimately meant that timely completion of the vessel was “unrecoverable”. You talked about design and build sequencing and contractual strategies. Since the public are so interested in the project, will you expand a little on what you meant by that and what the issues were that, in your opinion, meant that the project, even at that stage, was unrecoverable?
