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: 25 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I second that.
Kaukab Stewart was chosen as convener.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Would Graham O’Neill or Phil Arnold like to add anything? As the convener said in her line of questioning, you do not have to do so.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Convener, congratulations and welcome to the role.
Good morning, panel. What a hard-hitting first 30 minutes it has been—and quite rightly so. I thank all the panel members for coming here. We know that it is not easy to stand up for asylum seekers in the manner that you have. That has to be commended.
Following on from the convener’s questions and your opening statements, I want to ask about rights and entitlements. I appreciate that some of you have already touched on bits of this. For the record, what are people’s rights and entitlements in seeking asylum? How do those rights and entitlements change when people are either refused asylum or granted asylum?
I am happy to start with Annika Joy, as she did not get in last time.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I am happy with that. I know that Phil Arnold wanted to come in, but maybe we could bring him in for the next answer.
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Meeting date: 25 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks very much for that, Annika. Again, that was a very hard-hitting contribution.
That was a really good description of what happens when asylum is refused. Can any of the other panel members describe how rights and entitlements change when asylum is granted? I see Andy Sirel nodding—I will bring him in.
To bring my questions together for the other panel members, my second question is: what impact do you think the Illegal Migration Bill might have on any of those rights when asylum is granted?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
That sounds very positive.
My final question is for the minister. Rona Mackay touched on this. Does a wee bit of work need to be done with the public on what secure care is? You, your officials, committee members and people who work in the sector know what it is, but others might have the perception that secure care represents a softer-touch approach. Anyone who has been in secure care or has dealt with it will know that the young person still very much loses their liberty, so it is not a soft-touch approach for them. We heard that again today in our private session. Secure care is definitely a lot more therapeutic and beneficial, and it seems to be the best approach for young people, but is there work to be done in communicating that to the public so that secure care is not seen as soft justice or whatever we want to call it?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Thanks to you both.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
I take this opportunity to welcome the minister and the cabinet secretary to their new positions, and I thank the minister for her statement at the start of the meeting.
I will follow on from the convener’s questions. I am very supportive of the bill, as are the stakeholders, as you will be aware. I might be jumping ahead a bit, because it makes provisions for people up to the age of 18, but I am keen to hear where the Government stands on 18 being a starting point. A lot of the evidence that the committee has heard—including the evidence that we heard privately from two individuals today, which was really powerful—is that 18 is still very young, as are 21 and 25. Do you have any thoughts on where the Government might see this going? I will come to the minister first.
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
Do we need to convey that image to the judiciary and to sheriffs as well as to the public, or do they understand that?
Criminal Justice Committee
Meeting date: 19 April 2023
Fulton MacGregor
The cabinet secretary has pre-empted my next question. In a previous session with stakeholders, we considered whether part of the answer would be for young offenders institutions to be modelled more on secure settings. I know that there would be resourcing issues, but, given that there is a very positive impression of secure care, could young offenders institutions be modelled more on secure settings? Would that be a potential answer to the question?
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