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 766 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
It will not necessarily be needed for a bit of time, but when do you expect the framework to be in place?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
On a similar point, there are some areas where you have indicated that you are looking for parity, largely, with the UK scheme, so that Scottish freeports are not at a disadvantage. What engagement are you having on the freeport projects—if, for example, there was a need to change the five-year transaction date? How is that engagement happening?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 12 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Thanks. The convener, Liz Smith and others have spoken about the impact of displacement as well as the costs involved, such as the advertised cost of £5 million in terms of land and buildings transaction tax, and how that might be offset by increases in income tax take. How detailed will that information be on income tax? Will you be able to determine from local tax figures whether there is displacement? Will that be an opportunity to see where displacement is happening and its impact? How soon would we be able to see that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Because there could be various reasons for people choosing to relocate. It might not be because of tax.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I was interested in the discussion that was had with regard to Michael Marra’s question about top-rate taxpayers, of which there are 18,000. You have said that we do not yet have the data from the Scottish context; however, we obviously have historical UK data. What analysis can be done on the tax mobility of those individuals, admittedly within an international context? Of course, such mobility would probably be even more beneficial within a UK context.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Commission (Publications)
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
My last question is about house prices. There was an underestimate of the revenue from the land and buildings transaction tax. Given that there now seems to be a slowdown and houses are taking longer to sell, would you anticipate that there might be an overestimate for next year?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
I was pleased that the Cromarty Firth bid was successful, but one of the issues that we all recognise is that a huge amount of other investment is needed, in infrastructure for example. Transport infrastructure in the Highlands is not particularly good, and housing will be needed if those jobs are created and people move to those areas. David Melhuish, how important do you feel that that could be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Have you tried to do so?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Good morning. I should say that I supported the Cromarty Firth bid; that is not a declaration of interest or anything, but I think that it important to say that. Ross Greer talked about the east-west divide, but there is also the north-south divide, and undoubtedly there is an important need to invest in remote and rural areas, particularly across the Highlands and Islands.
My first question is for Derek Thomson and Liz Cairns. You have talked about not being engaged in the process and have said that you are not sure what green jobs are—I do not think that you are the only ones to find themselves in that position—but what engagement have you looked to have or have you been having with the two successful bids from Port of Cromarty Firth, Global Energy Group and Port of Inverness as well as, obviously, the consortium led by Forth Ports?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 5 September 2023
Jamie Halcro Johnston
Obviously, a lot of work still needs to be done, given that the bids have only recently been successful, but do you think that, at the moment, the UK Government, the Scottish Government and local government are working together enough on delivering the peripheral infrastructure? I say “peripheral”, but perhaps it is also key.
