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 888 contributions
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Good afternoon to the panel. I have two questions. The first is on the issue of missing people, which was mentioned a couple of minutes ago. I did a wee bit of work on that in the previous parliamentary session after a very tragic incident in my constituency, not long after I was elected in 2016.
The police were going through a review at that point of how they dealt with missing people. We will all be familiar with information being shared on our social media feeds very early in the process, which was well fought for. It is very good that the police engage the public in those searches. Did the mental health component of missing people come up in the review? Did that issue come up when you spoke to officers about missing people? How do the police manage that component of a missing person inquiry?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
We have covered quite a lot about trauma-informed practice already, so my question is quite general and touches on something that the cabinet secretary has already raised.
Clearly, we have heard evidence that a lot of good trauma-informed practice is already happening in the justice system, albeit that it perhaps happens in patches throughout different organisations. I think that everybody recognises—we have heard this from various people who have told us about their experiences—that the justice system often retraumatises victims. Is it the purpose of this part of the bill, which brings trauma-informed practice into legislation, to try to drive culture change and to look at the good things that are happening and try to replicate them across services quicker than would happen without legislation?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Fair enough. Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
That is interesting. I will be interested in the findings of your future work on missing persons, as I am sure the rest of the committee will be.
My second question is about the recommendation for Police Scotland to produce a mental health strategy, which you have spoken about at great length. Was any thought given to embedding health professionals within the police structure? I know that some work has been done on that.
The unfortunate nature of the situation is that, although there is a multi-organisation approach, the police are the first responder for many people and organisations. Was any thought given to or were any discussions had on embedding mental health professionals as direct employees of Police Scotland to assist, or is that just a pie in the sky idea of mine?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 15 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning, cabinet secretary and officials.
To follow on from Rona Mackay’s question, we heard some concerns from the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland about a “lack of clarity” and a potential “overlap” between its role and the role of the proposed victims and witnesses commissioner. Has the Government looked at that? Do you think that there might be a case for making that clearer?
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
A quarter is quite a significant number.
Although my line of questioning has been on the SLCC’s submission, I want to give Rosemary Agnew and Colin Bell an opportunity to come in on what we have discussed, if they want to.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Yes.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
You said that the figure was about 300 a year, but what is that as a percentage? Is 300 quite a big part of your caseload, or is it tiny? I just want to understand the context.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning, panel. Thank you very much for your evidence thus far.
This question is probably for Neil Stevenson. The SLCC has indicated in its submission that
“the Bill provides no … powers to ensure we get access to the information we need in a timely way to handle complaints efficiently, or to be able to conclude complaints when that information is not forthcoming.”
Will you expand a wee bit on that part of your submission?
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