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: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I was going to ask how the pilot that you are talking about might have an impact on resources across the board, so it is interesting to hear that there has been a decrease of up to 50 per cent in police witness citations.
However, do you think that that can really change the way in which we do things in courts? Will you be looking at the pilot project that the Police Scotland witnesses talked to us about earlier this morning? Will you be looking at risk and vulnerability, and the standardness—for want of a better word—of the case, and at where that can all be agreed early on in order to save that resource?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
What are your projections? What savings in overtime do you hope to achieve?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Yes.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Okay. Thanks.
11:30Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
You mentioned sporting events, so you must have read my mind about my next question. At last night’s Scotland match, there was a significant increase in police numbers compared to previous games—I have been at all the games recently as part of the five game package. Even my wee boy, who was with me, noticed and said, “Oh dad, there’s loads of police tonight.” I have to say that the police were great and they were interacting well with the fans and the kids.
How are those things thought out? I do not know what the exact numbers were, but there seemed to be a large police presence: I could see a police officer everywhere I turned. I suppose that is a good thing, but given that we are here to scrutinise the budget, how do you take into account and prioritise such events? I know that you cannot predict things—you just said that—and possibly, as I am sure you will tell me, what I am about to say was to do with the fact that there was a large police presence, but the atmosphere seemed fairly friendly last night and I did not notice any difficulties.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks very much for that answer. My final question is on an issue that we have done a bit of work on in the Parliament: water safety. I have to say the SFRS does a fantastic job with us on water safety. Accessing wild waters is becoming more popular as a result of the pandemic and climate change bringing warmer weather. How much thought and budget resource has been put into that work? It is very good work that is welcomed by everybody who is in that field.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Okay. Thank you.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
It is very important that we help you to reflect that accurately. Thank you.
I have a couple of questions on the fire services—I will be quick, convener. The first question is for Ross Haggart. I did a bit of work with my local fire station at Coatdyke—it was not too long ago, but certainly pre-Covid and before budgets are what they are just now—and there was some discussion about appliances. I think that there were some thoughts that an appliance might be lost from there. When I got involved and started speaking to senior officers about it, there was a lot of discussion about the fire service looking to move to new models anyway. How much of the appliance cuts are to do with budget pressures and how much are they to do with the direction in which the fire service is moving anyway? I suppose that the reverse question of that is, if there was a magic wand and you had all the money that you needed, would you be reinstating those appliances or would you be moving in a different direction?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I hope that my first question will link this session with the previous one. My colleague John Swinney’s line of questioning in the previous session was about joined-up thinking in the justice sector. It will come as no surprise to the witnesses—the point has probably been raised with you previously, maybe even by me at a previous session; I cannot remember—that we often hear from the police about the amount of time and resource that is taken up by officers having to attend the court. We all know about that. We have heard it many times, and we heard it again today; there was even talk about the impact of that on overtime budgets.
Is the SCTS doing anything to try to limit that? Is it doing any further work with the police to see exactly how that can be reduced? That would have an impact on the police budget, which we have just heard about, and I presume that, to an extent, it would also have an impact on the SCTS budget.
12:15Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 13 September 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I am last but not least—I hope.
I have a couple of questions. My first question is for James Gray and David Page. James mentioned earlier that Police Scotland is looking at the issue of overtime. I probably will not be popular for asking this question, and I apologise to any friends in the police who are watching, because I know that they welcome overtime—as anyone would just now. How could that issue play out in your budgets? It would seem more sensible to reduce overtime in order to keep staffing numbers up. Are you looking at that? Can you expand on what the impact of overtime is, and say what the figures are and how savings might be made?