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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
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.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 1492 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
It is important that we put on record our thanks to those on the front line who deal with and manage this. It sounds like a real balancing act in some of those institutions.
That said, we have made legislative changes over the past decade. The presumption against short sentences of incarceration means that, by the very nature of our system, those who get sent to prison have been convicted of quite serious crimes. How can we achieve that balance? Do we reduce the prison population, as has been suggested, or is the answer to simply build more estate? We have not been building or replacing those antiquated buildings in a timeous fashion, and any attempts to do so have, as we know, gone massively over budget and been hugely delayed.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
What is the answer? Should we be building more prisons or putting fewer people in jail—or both?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Do you have any powers to direct it to be closed if you are unhappy with the conditions?
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Why is that? What red flags might we see, a couple of years ahead, of projected lower performance relative to other parts of the UK or to similar economies? For example, you say that, in a productivity comparison, we are 16th out of 38 economies, which is around midway through the pack, but clearly we could do better. What is influencing that lower productivity and growth? What analysis should be undertaken of how we could make immediate improvements? That would generate more money for public services.
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
I am sure that there will be opportunities for Parliament to address those issues with the Government. Other members will probably delve into the specifics of some of those gaps.
I will conclude my questioning by making a wider point. Auditor General, you said that much of the strategy is down to prioritisation or choices. I presume that those are policy choices that are under the control of ministers. Is there an intrinsic conflict between, for example, pure economic growth and the wellbeing economy? Is it difficult for Governments to balance those two different policies? The strategies for both approaches might take them in very different directions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
That is interesting. Other pieces of legislation going through other committees are looking at the remand issue. Certainly, in any interactions that I have had with the judiciary, there is very much a feeling that remand is used as a last resort, with the presumption against releasing people when they are charged and go back to court.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Would you recommend that if that were the case?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Indeed. I am sure that we could have a whole session on whether public services are fit for purpose once people are released, and another one on rehabilitation and what we are doing right or not doing right in Scotland.
My final point is a grave one: deaths in custody. Across prisons and other forms of custody, it is estimated that there are around four deaths per week. Those are not solely in prisons, of course, but a worryingly large number of people are dying in the different levels of the prison estate. Is that part of your watching brief? Do you have any views on that, or have you performed any analysis of why those numbers are so high? Have you made any recommendations to the Prison Service or to ministers on how that number can be reduced?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2022/23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
No, I commend you for the work that you have done. However, clearly, all that work will be made more difficult with an increasing population, an antiquated estate and the lack of resource and assistance.
Public Audit Committee
National Strategy for Economic Transformation
Meeting date: 14 March 2024
Jamie Greene
Good morning. I will start with the basics. From your briefing, it seems that Scotland has two issues: sluggish growth in gross domestic product, and low productivity. Is that assertion correct?
