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 2875 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Colin Beattie
First, I want to go back to the intervention that I made earlier about the smelter, just for clarification in my mind. You are relying on a 2019 book value to cover the Scottish Government’s potential liability. Book value is not necessarily market value and it is certainly not forced sale value. Normally, as a matter of prudence, when the Scottish Government is in the position of a lender and, if you like, a guarantor, it would look at forced sale value to ensure that, in the worst case, it would be covered. Has that forced sale value been calculated? If so, does it still cover the potential liability of the Scottish Government?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”
Meeting date: 24 February 2022
Colin Beattie
Okay. I was taking the book value as the book value, but you are saying that there is a bit more behind it. Nevertheless, the important thing is the forced sale value, to ensure that we have cover.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
The convener has already highlighted the multiplicity of references to estimates in the report. That is not terribly encouraging when we are trying to plan expenditure against the income that we are likely to get from taxation.
When the Scottish rate of income tax system came in, the first year or two were a bit of a shambles, to be honest, but we kind of expected that. However, it disappoints me that I do not see improvements or the elimination of recurrent problems since then. As the system refines itself and HMRC identifies the weak points and variables in the system, I would have thought that HMRC would work to eliminate those anomalies. I do not see that happening—I see the same stuff again and again. You might think that it is still relatively early years, but I would have hoped that some of those anomalies would have been eliminated by now.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
Do we have any idea at all of the impact on the actual revenues that are being collected?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
So you are satisfied that HMRC is taking steps to deal with the issue.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
You think so. Do we know whether the problem will recur?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
I could go on, convener, but I am conscious that other members have questions. Perhaps I can come in later, if there is time.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
How do you account for that?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
I accept the point, but I am trying to highlight issues with regard to uncertainties around the figures that are being produced.
Flicking through your report, which was an excellent bedtime read, I note that in paragraph 2.13 on page 21 you say:
“HMRC confirmed the residency status for 92% of Scottish and Welsh pension scheme members ... and provisionally estimates that 94% have been confirmed following the 2020-21 tax year.”
That percentage does not seem high—in fact, it seems quite low. You would think that pension scheme members would be easy to pick up.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 3 February 2022
Colin Beattie
It is known that, in Scotland, a higher proportion of people give to charity than is the case in the rest of the UK. On that point, I note that paragraph 2.14 on page 22 says:
“HMRC does not have systems in place to establish the residency of taxpayers donating to charity”.
All those anomalies add up. You might say that each one has a small impact but, when you look at them in aggregate, it starts to become a concern.
