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 2022 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
That could be done. There you go, Mr Brannen—a good idea for you. You could press for some of that money to come back.
I feel that I ought to ask about the correspondence that we received from the former chief executive, because he made a couple of points that I want to put to you. He says in his written submission that the corporate plan
“allowed for expenditure to develop”
WICS’s
“international footprint”
and that there was
“an agreed allowance for the development of WICS’ international activity.”
Is that the case? I guess that that is a question for the Government.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
I am going to move on. I want to ask about staff education and training, which is another area that has attracted a good deal of interest. WICS has spent around £300,000 on executive education in the form of masters of business administration. I think that you, Mr Satti, have an MBA that you received during your time at WICS, and others have MBAs as well. We have heard about Ms Ashford who went to Harvard. How many of the staff who went on these programmes remain in the business? Obviously you are one, Mr Satti. Of the people who were either sent abroad or elsewhere in Britain on these management programmes, how many are still in the business?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
What is the budget?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
In paragraph 14 in your report, you say that the compliance working group
“expects to report to the Scottish Income Tax Board on the first phase of this evaluation in January 2025”—
which you mentioned—
“including the likely costs of additional compliance work, after which the Scottish Government must decide on the merits of funding any additional activity.”
There is therefore a role for the Scottish Government.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
It is still an important issue.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
It should not still be in development, should it?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
Yes—it sounds as though there are a few questions for HMRC.
I want to ask about one other issue. Mr Davies, in relation to tax relief on pension contributions, paragraph 2.13 in your report says:
“HMRC must identify Scottish taxpayers so that tax relief is correctly allocated. Pension administrators claim tax relief at source on behalf of their members and add this to their members’ contributions. HMRC applies tax relief on pension contributions at the basic rate of 20% for all taxpayers. Scottish taxpayers paying a tax rate above 20% can claim the remaining tax relief through a Self Assessment return or by contacting HMRC.”
I have asked about that issue previously. It strikes me that a lot of people will have absolutely no idea that they can do that and will not know how to go about it, so they could be missing out.
First of all, do you agree with my assessment? If you do, do you have any idea how many people are affected?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
Yes, I absolutely accept that. I think that most laymen and laywomen have no idea that they can do that and are probably not made aware of it. However, there is a Scottish element, because Scotland has a different tax rate—that is where we come in.
I have no further questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
When is the next review of the scheme? You mentioned the regulatory review period. When will the issue be looked at again?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Graham Simpson
If the decision was to not continue with the international work, that would affect WICS’s headcount quite a bit. Even if the headcount is already being reduced, presumably WICS would not need as many people as it would do if that work was going to continue.
