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 2881 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
Can we have a range at least? I think that most parties in the Parliament are against council tax, so we will need a new tax, which will need primary legislation. I presume that that cannot happen before the next election, but what is in the far distance? Will we definitely have something within 10 years?
10:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
I am not arguing against any of that. It is 31 years since we had the last revaluation of council tax, and quite a lot of groundwork has been done over the past 31 years. If it is going to be, say, 10 years before we get a replacement tax, does that mean that we need a revaluation in the meantime? As I see it, some properties—perhaps in the better-off areas—have gone up in value, say, 10 times since 1991. In a poorer area such as mine, property prices have gone up a lot less, which suggests that, in a poor area, my constituents are paying more council tax than they should, and that people in richer areas are paying less than they should. If it is going to take a long time, should we not have a revaluation in the meantime?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
Thank you.
On a different subject, the plan was to assign part of VAT, but there have been practical problems with that. If I am not mistaken, one reason for the assignment approach was that the European Union would not allow us to vary VAT within the UK while we were in the EU. I assume that that constraint is now removed, so what is the Government’s position on VAT? Are we discussing it with the UK? Where are we going with it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
I have one final point. In some ways, you are saying that the process for devolution of tax, like national insurance or income tax, over which we already have partial control, takes a long time with Westminster. One might imagine that, from Westminster’s point of view, it might be cleaner just to give us a completely new tax. That would not affect Westminster, whereas everything that we do on income tax does affect it. I do not know—it is just a thought, but perhaps Westminster would be willing to consider that.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
You mentioned national insurance. I do not know how far ahead the Government has thought about what it would do if it got national insurance and fuller control over income tax. I would like the two to be combined in a much simpler system. Has the Government done work on that or is that too far down the road?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
Thank you, convener—it is unusual for me to come in second; that is nice for a change.
The minister mentioned that council tax reform will be considered by a citizens assembly. Can I press you a little for a timescale? What is the soonest date when we could have a replacement tax in place?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
John Mason
Can you clarify one point? I had not realised that, if we were to have a new tax—I will stick with my example of a whisky production tax—Westminster would have to legislate on that first.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
John Mason
We have already touched on a number of issues, but I just note—this has been said already—that this week has perhaps been one of the worst that we have had, and the hospitals seem to be absolutely full. However, evidence that we have received suggests that non-Covid conditions have really suffered over the past two years. Should our focus now move from Covid to non-Covid conditions? Has that already happened or is it still to happen?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Excess Deaths Inquiry
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
John Mason
More constituents have been on at me about not having access to a dentist than have been on at me about not having access to a GP or probably any other service. We say to people that, if they cannot get a dentist in Baillieston, for example, they should try ones in Shettleston, but they say that they have tried all the dentists in the area and that none of them will take them. What should I say to those constituents?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Ministerial Statement and Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 17 March 2022
John Mason
I read that two months’ worth of testing capacity will be kept in case of another uptick. Presumably, however, the kits go out of date after a while and will have to be thrown out. How often will we—or the Government—have to keep replenishing them?
