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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Public Audit Committee
Decisions on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning and welcome to the fourth meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.
Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you. I now turn to Willie Coffey, who is joining us virtually. Willie has a number of questions that he wants to put. Over to you, Willie.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
We are going to come on to questions around the cost of administering Scottish income tax shortly, and Willie Coffey will ask about the identification of Scottish S-code taxpayers. Before that, however, Craig Hoy will ask a series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
I thank Mr Davies and the Auditor General very much indeed for their opening statements. As you will expect, we have a significant number of questions.
I want to begin where you left off, Mr Davies. It seems a little bit counterintuitive that at a time of huge collapse in the economy, gross domestic product, gross value added and all the other measures of economic performance, the estimates suggest an increase in the tax take when the pandemic was at its height. We keep coming across references to estimates, samples and assumptions, but can we rely on the accuracy of those estimates?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Can you just confirm that you have no evidence of flight of income tax payers from Scotland to England, Auditor General?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you.
I would like to capture the essence of what we have been saying today. I say to Gareth Davies and Darren Stewart that our approach today has not been pointed at you; we have taken that approach because we are trying to understand where there are gaps and where improvements could be made.
We reflect that this is year 4 or 5 of the distinctive Scottish income tax system, and yet, even at this stage, we do not have Scotland-specific tax gap data—that is, data about the amount that should be paid versus what is actually paid. Further, we do not have Scotland-specific data on compliance and non-compliance or on income tax debt, all of which we have been probing this morning. You are right to say that the reasons relate to the service-level agreement that is in place between the Scottish Government and HMRC, and we need to consider whether it would be useful for us to explore that avenue further.
In previous years—and, to a limited extent, today as well—we have been told that the issue is all about HMRC’s limited resources. If the service-level agreement were adjusted, would it be possible to get that data disaggregated to a Scottish level, so that it could be used to inform the decisions that this Parliament needs to make around income tax rates as well as to give us an understanding of the revenues that would be generated by the rates that are set?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
Just to be clear, the report says that the £0.7 million administration fee is
“accurate and fair in the context of the agreement between HMRC and the Scottish Government.”
Could you tell us what you mean by “fair”?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Richard Leonard
On that note, we will conclude the session. I thank Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, who joined us in person at our meeting today, and Mark Taylor, who was on hand to answer any questions that we had for him—in the event, I do not think that he was called on, but I thank him anyway.
I give particular thanks to Gareth Davies and Darren Stewart from the NAO. As I said at the beginning, we hope to see them in person at some point in the not-too-distant future, because that would help us in examining the important role that they play in keeping account of how HMRC is functioning in this area, which is of particular concern and importance to us.
10:15 Meeting continued in private until 11:00.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
As well as any internal reforms, what external changes are needed for the commissioner’s office to address that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 27 January 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 2 is to continue our inquiry into the Audit Scotland report on the Scottish Government consolidated accounts.
I welcome the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, who joins us in the committee room. I am delighted to see you here, Auditor General. Joining him from Audit Scotland online are Michael Oliphant, who is audit director, and Helen Russell, who is a senior audit manager of audit services. They also joined us for last week’s meeting.
Before I continue with questions on the consolidated accounts, I will ask the Auditor General, given that Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission produced an overnight report into social care, to elaborate on the principal lessons from it. Of course, the committee will turn to in-depth discussion of the subject at some point in the future. The thing that struck me about the report was the paragraph that said, in relation to a national care service:
“Regardless of what happens with reform, some things cannot wait. A clear plan is needed now to address the significant challenges facing social care in Scotland based on what can be taken forward without legislation, which could provide strong foundations for an NCS.”
Auditor General, do you want to say a few words about the report?
