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 879 contributions
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?
11:00Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Neil, I am not picking on you—it is just the way that my questions have landed. In your submission, you welcome the expansion of the consumer panel’s remit across the regulatory system, but you have also raised concerns about its resourcing. Will you talk a wee bit about the panel and the resourcing? As with my previous questions, this question was based on your submission, but I will come to the others, too.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning. I want to ask about throughcare services, which is an issue that has come to the committee before and there have been various exchanges on. Generally, what is the current position with throughcare services? Forgive me if I have missed it, but I did not see anything on that in your submission.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Can I ask one more question, convener?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Do you agree that having a multiyear funding model for third sector bodies could be helpful in the longer term, or are you quite happy with the current model? I ask that question, because the witnesses in the previous session were talking about the throughcare model being replaced by third sector organisations, such as Sacro and the Wise Group, which I think do an absolutely fantastic job. Is there an argument for multiyear funding for such organisations within the justice sector?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Thank you, cabinet secretary.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Good morning, cabinet secretary and officials.
You might have seen last week’s evidence session with witnesses from Community Justice Scotland, during which we heard quite a strong case about a disconnect of some sort between the Scottish Government’s policy intention with regard to the justice sector and how its budgets are actually operating. What they really meant was that, with the focus on prisons and so on and the large numbers involved, the community justice sector’s budget has remained very small and fairly static in comparison with the rest of the sector, which is hindering any chances and opportunities to shift things in the way that we all want.
I apologise, cabinet secretary, if I have taken the long way round in asking that question, but do you agree with that overall analysis?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Is there any plan in this budget for how we might pick up the pace? For example, in the previous session, I asked the Scottish Prison Service about throughcare. The previous throughcare service was very highly respected, but it has been pulled, what with the growth in the prison population and the pressures that that is putting on the staff. It seems that, whenever something has to give, it is the community justice side that has to go, and this is an example of that.
Can anything be done through the budget process and in the upcoming budget to try to pick up the pace, which we would all want to see? After all, I do not think that a single member around this table would doubt that the Scottish Government’s policy intentions in this area are to reduce our prison population and enhance community justice.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
This is a quick question on part 3, which is about failure to appear before a court following police liberation. It enables the courts to modify the date on which a person is required to attend court on an undertaking, if they fail to appear at court for a reason attributable to coronavirus. I am assuming that that is if they are unwell with the virus. The proposal is that that will expire on 29 November. What was the thinking behind that? I know that coronavirus is still among us.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 8 November 2023
Fulton MacGregor
That is okay; if you could come back on it, that would be fine but we can also get that information from other sources.
Community Justice Scotland gave evidence at last week’s committee meeting. One of the things that I will be asking the cabinet secretary about later is the direction of the justice system in Scotland. We obviously want fewer people to be in prison and I know that Teresa Medhurst and others agree. However, it feels as though we need to invest more in community justice in order to achieve that. At the same time, however, that is the first thing to go when things get tough.
Do you recognise that as part of SPS’s decision about throughcare? It was an invaluable service and I think one that has been highly praised across the board. HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland said that the decision was highly regrettable; most folk who have spoken to us about it have praised the standard of the throughcare service that you used to have in place. What factors were taken into account when you made the decisions about throughcare?