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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.

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.

Meeting date: 24 January 2024

Liam Kerr

Thank you, convener, and good morning, all. With the committee’s indulgence, I will be speaking on behalf of my colleague Russell Findlay, who has lodged several amendments. He has asked me to apologise for his non-attendance, which is because he sits on the Criminal Justice Committee and it is currently taking evidence from witnesses about other legislation.

Transparency is critical to the functioning of Scotland’s justice system. In recent years, more cases of a criminal nature have been directed to the children’s panel system, rather than being prosecuted in the criminal courts. That is likely to become more common. As we have heard, some of those cases already involve serious crimes of violence and sexual violence. In addition, the bill proposes that the age limit for children’s panel referrals will increase from 16 to 18, which will also generate more panel cases, some of which will be criminal in nature.

On 29 March 2023, the Criminal Justice Committee took evidence on the legislation. Russell Findlay asked Kate Wallace of Victim Support Scotland about a lack of transparency for victims in relation to the panel system. She said:

“One of the biggest issues that comes to us for people in that situation is that they are really surprised by the lack of information. A lot of effort is put into explaining the process to them but they do not get any information about their own circumstances. Therefore, it is difficult for people not only to understand what is happening to the perpetrator but to safety plan for their own recovery. That becomes really challenging when you operate in a total information vacuum.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 29 March 2023; c 15.]

Kate Wallace also said:

“Information-sharing provisions are needed so that people are clear about what information can and will be shared with people who have been harmed by a child or young person.

The types of information that will be shared need to be spelled out. If you go through an adult system, you have rights to information about updates to do with your case. For example, if someone escapes or absconds from a prison setting, you are entitled to that information. If you sign up to the victim notification scheme, you are also entitled to know when that person has been released. None of those provisions apply when a child or young person has harmed you. That aspect of the bill needs to be considered and provisions need to be put in place on it.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 29 March 2023; c 14.]

Russell Findlay agrees with Victim Support Scotland, as do I. Amendment 189 would help to fill the information vacuum that is experienced by crime victims.

Amendment 190, in the name of Russell Findlay, also relates to transparency. For victims or bereaved relatives, the justice system can often be unfamiliar and, I dare say, traumatic. The Crown says that

“Providing reasons for ... decisions is essential to retain confidence and to deliver accountability and transparency to those whose lives have been affected”.

In 2015, the victims’ right to review scheme was introduced by the Crown Office, which

“gives victims the right to request a review of a decision by COPFS not to prosecute a criminal case or to discontinue criminal proceedings that have commenced.”

Amendment 190 is necessary because it seeks to extend those same important rights to victims when the alleged perpetrator is not prosecuted but is, instead, sent to the children’s panel.

Members might find some context useful here. A 2018 thematic review of the victims’ right to review scheme was published by HM Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland. It found that, over a particular one-year period, the Crown received one review request for every 306 cases in which a decision had been taken not to prosecute or to discontinue proceedings. Interestingly, around 10 per cent of those applications were successful.

It seems likely that there might be similar rates of appeals for the smaller number of cases involving young people. That is why such situations need to be covered in the bill. Victims cannot rely on ministerial assurances about what will happen.

I will therefore move amendments 189 and 190 in Russell Findlay’s name.

11:15