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 3120 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Time is marching on and I have six colleagues who want to ask questions, so I will ask just one more. It is about the issue of transparency that David Bell touched on, so he might want to answer.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland highlighted the example of a lack of clarity around the role of block grant adjustments in relation to the land and buildings transaction tax additional dwelling supplement. The institute noted that some had suggested that the tax was introduced in Scotland only because, without the introduction of a similar tax to England’s, the corresponding block grant adjustment would be such that there would be a reduction in the block grant. It commented that that
“demonstrates that either the BGA is wrong in principle or that there is great confusion over it”.
Will you comment on that, Professor Bell?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I thank our three witnesses. I had hoped to ask a question about behavioural responses—I know that that issue is close to David Bell’s heart—but time is sadly against us, as we are well over time already, so I will call a halt to the session.
I hope to see all the witnesses again before too long; I am sure that we have a lot more to discuss on this particular issue. Once again, I thank the three Davids.
11:37 Meeting suspended.11:45 On resuming—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Take your time. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Does David Eiser want to comment on the question that I asked? What should the independent review cover, and what should be the terms of reference for the independent report?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, there is. Before I touch on the block grant, I will follow up what you said. You talked about the adequacy—that was the word that you used—of the fiscal tools. Do we have adequate fiscal tools in terms of borrowing limits, for example? Should the limit be raised? Should it be linked to inflation? Where do the limits need to be increased to give more flexibility for Scotland?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
In other devolved regions around the world, the baseline is reset every five, seven or 10 years. The previous panel touched on that. That might take into account major structural changes such as—as you and others have mentioned—in the oil and gas industry in the north-east of Scotland. Should a reset be built into any future agreement between Scotland and England and, indeed, Wales and England—or, I should say, between Wales and the UK and Scotland and the UK?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
A reset must be based on fairness to both sides. There cannot be a situation in which Scotland—or Wales—would always benefit. The reset would have to be based on specific criteria. That should be looked at.
Wales’s powers are different from Scotland’s. What impact has that had on the block grant adjustments? Wales has more limited powers. You said that property prices have gone up more than was anticipated and that that has helped with land taxes and stamp duty. What impact has that had? Has the Scottish experience encouraged or discouraged Wales from seeking more fiscal powers?
12:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Wales might have learned from Scotland, but it is time that Scotland learned from Wales. In terms of the block grant adjustment, what has happened with regard to separate tax rates has been a real eye opener.
Our inquiry will go on for some months; I hope that we will be able to speak to both of you further down the line. However, I have a final question for you, before I bring in other members. If the Scottish Government could wave a magic wand and make one change to Scotland’s block grant adjustment, what should it be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Who has not fed their dog? Is that you, Michelle? It is Michelle’s dog—I wondered why she had disappeared from view. Are you back, Michelle? Are you joining us?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, I do not want to focus too much on political issues. Scotland might get powers over corporation tax and a share of VAT assignment, and I am quite keen on getting powers on alcohol and tobacco duties, which would certainly help, given some of the issues that we have to deal with on those matters.
I thank Ed Poole and Guto Ifan for their evidence. I apologise for delaying you by some 30 minutes because the previous session overran. I appreciate your patience.
The committee will consider the next steps on this work once the UK and Scottish Governments agree the terms of reference, timetable and authorship of the report. In fact, we might invite Ed Poole and Guto Ifan back. We did not spend a lot of time asking questions, mainly because their submission is so detailed, which meant that we already had many of the answers before us, so I thank them for that.
12:32 Meeting continued in private until 12:41.