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 3006 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Mr Griffin. As I said, we have a range of questions that we want to ask and ground that we want to cover.
I will begin by reflecting on the briefing, which put in fairly sharp relief the picture as Audit Scotland saw it. When we received evidence from the Auditor General, he said that there was
“a fairly static level of progress”,—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 30 September 2021; c 37.]
which was an interesting—and perhaps a polite—way of describing what could best be described as a zig-zag in the outcomes of custodial versus non-custodial sentences.
It is important to emphasise that the findings of Audit Scotland were that, if people with sentences of one year or less were put in custody, there was a 49 per cent chance of reconviction within the next year, whereas if they went into the community justice system, there was a 30 per cent probability of reconviction.
We also know that there is an enormous cost to the public of people serving time in prison. Audit Scotland came to the figure of a cost of more than £37,000 a year for somebody to be kept in jail, compared with a cost of around £1,894 a year for an equivalent community sentence. That is a massive discrepancy and, as the Public Audit Committee, we are interested in such figures.
Do you accept those findings and all the other findings in the report?
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Craig Hoy has questions to probe into that area a bit more.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Mr Griffin. Feel free to bring in the other witnesses alongside you, if you think that they could helpfully illuminate some of those points further.
You spoke of totals. I am not in a position to dispute the figures that you presented to us, which we will look at in a bit more detail, but there is an emphasis in the Audit Scotland briefing on the proportions. It is a stated aim of public policy to change the balance between custodial and non-custodial sentences. However, over the past three years, the proportion of non-custodial sentences went from 59 per cent to 56 per cent, then back up to 59 per cent. That does not show a clear line of progress to the public or members of this committee; rather, it looks as though there has been one step forward, one step back, then one step forward again. Will you reflect on the proportions as well as the totals?
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
I want to bring us back to the nitty-gritty of the Audit Scotland briefing, on which Sharon Dowey has a series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
So, you dispute the conclusion that there is
“a fairly static level of progress”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 30 September 2021; c 37.]
or no progress at all. In your eyes, we are making progress in shifting the balance from custodial to non-custodial sentencing. Is that right?
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
You understand, Mr Griffin, that the committee has a healthy appetite for data.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Mr Rennick. That was a very helpful and instructive answer, although it provokes a final question.
Everyone talks about the logjam in the criminal justice system because of Covid, during which the courts have operated on a very different basis. Mr Griffin, can you tell us about the department’s view of how the backlog will be managed? “Opportunities” might not be the right word, but does the current situation give you a junction in time to drive what happens in a slightly different way?
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you for ending on that very positive note.
I thank Mr Griffin, Mr Rennick and Ms Dalrymple for joining us. We appreciate your input, your candour and your vitality, at times, in responding to the questioning. Thank you very much for your time and your evidence.
I look forward to seeing Mr Griffin again soon, perhaps.
Public Audit Committee
“Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:04 Meeting suspended.10:08 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
“Covid-19 vaccination programme”
Meeting date: 28 October 2021
Richard Leonard
The committee will reflect on the answers to our questions on the health inequalities impact assessment data and the fact that it has not been published. We will deliberate on whether we can make an intervention on that.
The final area that I want to ask about and which falls within your domain relates to planning and budgeting. How do you plan and budget in a situation in which a third party—essentially the JCVI—is deciding who the priority groups are, and the chronology of who should receive boosters and further access to vaccination programmes? Do you have any reflections on how well the Scottish Government, health boards and so on have responded so far in that environment? What will the future look like and what difficulties and challenges are posed to those who have to budget for and plan those vital services?
