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 3298 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much indeed. I will turn to a couple of issues that both of you raised in your opening statements. In particular, Auditor General, you referred to something that is in your report. Exhibit 3 shows that £3.367 billion of additional income tax revenue has been raised from the Scottish population, but that that converts to additional budget spend of only £629 million. Presumably, that is a product of the fiscal framework. Do you have any observations about how the fiscal framework is working? What are the implications of that? As I calculate it, for every £5 raised, only £1 is available for the budget.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
I said at the start we are quite pressed for time, but can I ask you to confirm my calculation? The figure in exhibit 3 is a cumulative figure—I draw attention to it because it is one of your key messages. For every £5 that has been raised through additional income tax in Scotland, only £1 of that—or less than £1 of that; it is about 18 per cent—finds its way into the Scottish budget.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay. Let me move on to another area that your report draws attention to and which you mentioned in your opening statement. The reconciliation figure for 2025-26 is £449 million—nearly half a billion pounds—which is the largest reconciliation to date. Is there a likelihood that that level of reconciliation will continue in the future? How does that affect the Scottish Government’s budget setting?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
That might come back to haunt you, Mr Stewart, but we will see. I hope that you are right
My final question is on the overestimates. Your report speaks about calibration adjustments and a calibration adjustment was required to be made in 2021-22. Do you expect HMRC to have to make a calibration adjustment for the tax year 2023-24?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I will now pass over to the deputy convener, Jamie Greene, who I know has some questions to put.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay. We will come to the international work later in our evidence session this morning.
I turn finally turn to you, Mr Brannen—but feel free to delegate to your team.
I am quite surprised that you did not know that something like that was happening. If the matter went to the audit and risk committee and the board, I would have expected there to be some oversight of it. Do the board and the audit and risk committee not produce minutes? At the very least, did the person who was in Jo Blewett’s position at the time not read the minutes that were generated in order to keep an eye on what was going on in a public organisation like WICS?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Okay, but does the bonus arrangement not come under the watchful eye of the remuneration committee either of the Scottish Government or, I presume, of Scottish Water, which has its own remuneration committee, has it not?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
So, it is a ministerial decision, in the end.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2023/24”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Mr Davies, you might want to respond to that question, but I want to ask specifically about the point that you made in your opening statement about the error, which you have taken a fairly dim view of, I think. Can you talk us through that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2023/24 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland”
Meeting date: 19 February 2025
Richard Leonard
Mr Brannen assents also—excellent.
Could you give us a bit more detail on what you have been doing to address some of the deficiencies, which I think Mr Hinds described as quite shocking when he first read about and understood them? Mr Hinds, what changes have been made to financial management and governance arrangements over the past year, for example?
