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 893 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Craig Hoy
Good morning, cabinet secretary. I want to start my questions by looking at tax. It has been confirmed that there will be no change to income tax rates in the budget, although it will freeze the upper rate thresholds, which is effectively a tax rise for many Scots. Why, at this point in time, has the Government decided not to raise tax rates, which, to a greater or lesser extent, has been your policy in recent budgets?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Craig Hoy
Do you consider that a more complex system has higher compliance costs and that those are passed on to businesses and individual taxpayers?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Craig Hoy
In the past, HMRC has expressed concern in relation to your policy and whether people are trying to find legitimate ways to reduce their tax bill, including individuals incorporating. The Chartered Institute of Taxation’s Scottish technical committee has said that the problem could become more acute as a result of the national insurance increases that have been levied on employers in the recent UK budget, which could lead to false self-employment and employers trying to get people off their books or out of PAYE, which could result in more people incorporating. In those circumstances, the Scottish Government loses that tax revenue. How concerned are you that the combination of the national insurance increase and your legacy tax policies could result in the Government losing revenues through personal incorporation, for example?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Craig Hoy
It appears that there is a debate within your party and the parties that are supporting the budget—I do not think that it will be a surprise when I say for the record that the Conservatives will not support the budget—about what happens next on tax, particularly for higher earners. In determining not to raise tax rates, what modelling analysis did the Scottish Government undertake in order to come to that position? Will you share that analysis with the committee?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 18 February 2025
Craig Hoy
As part of your strategy, will you take cognisance of comments from organisations such as Scottish Financial Enterprise, which have real concerns about the direction of travel and, in particular, the behavioural responses to the tax measures that you have introduced in recent years? What further investigations and work will you do on behavioural responses through the tax strategy?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Craig Hoy
Fine. Another labour-related cost is the unexpected—I think that that is probably the best description—national insurance increase that has been imposed by the Labour Government, which appears to be costing the Parliament £2 million this year. The issue is playing out throughout the public and private sectors and is a considerable concern to both. How concerned are you that the increase is adding significant costs to the budget for the forthcoming year? Are there are ways in which you can make further savings—in relation to labour or, more broadly, throughout the rest of the Parliament—to make up for that unexpected expenditure?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Craig Hoy
You mentioned the different situation in the Welsh Senedd. In the Scottish local government arena, the Scottish local authority remuneration committee is looking at potentially raising councillors’ salaries. Anybody who has been a councillor will realise that it is a very tough job and that the remuneration is perhaps not sufficient. That means that council leaders in some local authorities in Scotland will be earning the same as MSPs. The differentials seem to be quite a contentious issue throughout the public and private sectors. Do you anticipate that the closing of the salary gap with councillors will have consequences for on-going discussions about MSP pay?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Craig Hoy
Let us turn to business taxation. In its submission, the Scottish Retail Consortium is critical of what you have described as the prospect that councils will be given more revenue-generating powers and wealth taxation. Indeed, the SRC says that that is “somewhat ominous”. Can you give some indication of what those additional revenue-generating powers and wealth taxation might be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Craig Hoy
It is more to do with the principle in the sense that it makes it more difficult for independent analysts and Parliament to examine the Government’s public spending priorities when the figures continue to change throughout the year.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2025-26
Meeting date: 14 January 2025
Craig Hoy
I am sure, however, that you would concede that setting things out in that way makes year-on-year comparisons tricky.
