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
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Later this morning, we will go on to talking a little more about debt collection. For now, the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has some questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
It goes back to our earlier conversation about the service level agreement and whether, if additional payment was made to HMRC, that could elicit, notwithstanding some of the methodological challenges, the kind of data that, it seems to us, would be fundamentally useful to have.
Before I bring in Willie Coffey, I raise the issue of debt collection, which, so far, has been mentioned only in the passing. Somebody mentioned the regular reporting to the Public Accounts Committee from HMRC, the NAO—of course—and other Government bodies. The UK Government’s response on the 48th report of session 2021-22 was a reflection on where things had got to with tax collection. It highlights:
“In addition, from September 2022, there will be a new contract through which HMRC places debt with private debt collection agencies (DCAs). This will allow HMRC to increase placements with DCAs by around £1 billion a year without increasing the cost to the Exchequer.”
Are those debt collection agencies doing that for free—given that it is said that there is no cost to the exchequer—or are they taking a percentage of everything that is collected, which is normally what happens in such situations? Are those agencies operational in Scotland? Are you aware of whether the Scottish Government has a view about the deployment of private debt collection agencies, and who are they, principally?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
I have something to ask before we leave this theme altogether. Paragraph 2.32 of the NAO report says:
“The tax gap is the difference between the amount of tax that should be paid and what is actually paid.”
The report goes on to say that HMRC
“does not currently produce a Scotland-specific tax gap”
and
“has limited information on total compliance activity undertaken in Scotland.”
Do the Auditor General for Scotland and the Comptroller and Auditor General at the NAO have a view on whether it would be useful to have specific Scottish tax gap data?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
On that note of great clarity, I will draw this morning’s evidence session to a close. I thank our witnesses. The evidence session has been very useful, and it provides us with a platform on which we will build.
I move the meeting into private session.
10:20 Meeting continued in private until 10:49.Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I invite Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General from the NAO, to make a short opening statement, after which we will move to questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
I think that that would be helpful. One of the factors that we considered last year but which has possibly been brought more to the fore in this financial year is the rate of inflation. Inflation has led to higher wage settlements and, therefore, people’s incomes are rising. I presume that that means that the income tax take is going up. Is that a fair assessment of what is going on?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
They might be higher in reality, but I am not sure that they are higher in real terms. My point is that people’s incomes going up—albeit that they lag behind the cost of living and the consumer prices index—presumably leads to an expansion of the revenue that comes in to HMRC. In turn, that will lead to an increase in the resources that are available to the Scottish Government.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes. We will come to discuss that in more detail.
Gareth Davies, you mentioned methodology a couple of times. Again, that is something that exercises the committee’s interest, and other committee members will have more detailed questions in that area. Scottish income tax is now well established, but we have heard some concerns that the methodology does not give us the level of data that we think is necessary to make informed policy decisions.
I will cite an example. In the report, you identify some of the methodological flaws, if you like, or recognised areas in which there is not the level of data that we might like. The second point about the methodology in your report states that
“The methodology combines the calculation of PAYE and Self Assessment liabilities for the UK such that the amount apportioned to Scotland does not reflect the differing proportions of each type of taxpayer between Scotland and the rest of the UK.”
Do we know, for example, what the balance is, in England and Northern Ireland versus Scotland, between people who are on the pay-as-you-earn system and those who are on the self-assessment system? Are there more people on PAYE in Scotland than there are in England and Northern Ireland, or vice versa?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Therefore, that could be built into the data that is available, but currently it is not. Even on some kind of sampling basis, it would presumably be possible to gauge the relative balance between PAYE and self-assessment liabilities in both jurisdictions.
09:15Another point strikes us in relation to the methodology, which the Auditor General for Scotland reflected on in last year’s report. Paragraph 16 of this year’s report, which notes the NAO’s report, states that the
“methodology has remained broadly the same since the prior year.”
This time last year, we were having conversations with Scottish Government officials, as well as with HMRC, about the methodology, the service level agreement and the quality of data that was being procured, because there is obviously a financial cost to it.
Last year, Gareth Davies commented:
“Clearly, if you had a more highly specified agreement that got into some of the areas that we have been talking about today”—
why we cannot get more qualitative data and fewer estimates—
“it is likely that HMRC would require more costs to be covered. However, on the basis of the agreement that is currently set out, we think that the cost is fairly stated.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 3 February 2022; c 25.]
In other words, we were getting into the terrain of suggesting that, if the Scottish Government was prepared to pay a little bit more money to HMRC, it could perhaps get some better-quality data.
In her evidence last year, Alyson Stafford from the Scottish Government said that
“the committee’s consideration is extremely timely for us to take your observations and comments into account”
and that the Government was
“looking at data breadth and depth.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 12 May 2022; c 41.]
However, nothing appears to have changed. Is that a fair estimate of what is going on here? Nothing.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to the fifth meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. Under the first item on the committee’s agenda, do members agree to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
