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
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
That is helpful. I do not wish to labour the point, but for the benefit of people who are watching the meeting and people who have an interest in the good governance and working, and the success of, South Lanarkshire College, will you explain in layperson’s terms what the implication is, or what the risks are, of there being no internal audit function for three months?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
That is reassuring.
I will bring in Graham Simpson, whom I am delighted to welcome to the committee this morning.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Colin Beattie has some questions in an area that the committee is very interested in.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Lucy Nutley, you said that the same law firm is carrying out the two independent investigations with separate teams. How does that work? Is there a Chinese wall between them, or does it not matter that the two investigating teams are from the same firm? Is it intended that they all come together?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
On that note of clarity, I thank our witnesses Jackie McGeehan, Jonathan Athow, Alyson Stafford and Fiona Thom for the evidence that they have given. We appreciate their time and their contributions.
We will consider what steps to take and how we can keep a monitoring eye on this important work in future. As we have said, we want it, above all, to be evidence led. Whether it is around people’s behavioural patterns, compliance rates, collection rates or people fleeing the country in order to evade or avoid tax, those things are important to us, so I thank you very much for your openness in discussing them with us this morning.
11:09 Meeting continued in private until 11:35.Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 14th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2022. Under the first item on our agenda do we agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Thanks, Mr Simpson. I appreciate that pointer.
I thank all the members who have participated in this evidence session. I also thank the witnesses—the Auditor General, Rebecca Seidel and Lucy Nutley. Thank you very much for your co-operation and openness about the section 22 audit report that you have been required to produce. We will consider our next steps in relation to pursuing our interest in what, by all accounts—including appendix 1 of the report—looks very much like a public institution that has been in crisis.
I now suspend the meeting to allow a changeover of witnesses to take place.
09:57 Meeting suspended.10:00 On resuming—
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Agenda item 3 is on the administration of Scottish income tax. We took evidence on 3 February on the reports that we had received from Audit Scotland and the National Audit Office. We want to explore further some of the implications of the reports, and we have a series of questions on them.
I welcome our witnesses. Alyson Stafford is director general of the Scottish exchequer, Fiona Thom is head of the income tax and reserved taxes unit at the Scottish Government, Jonathan Athow is director general for customer strategy and tax design at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and Jackie McGeehan is deputy director for income tax policy at HMRC. You are all very welcome.
I invite Alyson Stafford to make a short opening statement. We will then proceed to ask a series of questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you, but we are still not clear about whether the NAO is included.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Does it use the NAO’s estimate as part of its deliberations?
