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 918 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
You have four objectives: stable revenues, a wellbeing economy, national outcomes and responsiveness to societal shifts. If you have objectives, surely you should have a way of measuring them.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
I have two supplementary questions, the first of which follows straight on from that discussion.
The question is broader than that of North Sea oil and the transition to green jobs. A number of the answers begged further questions around what forecasting the Scottish Government undertakes.
We know that the Scottish Government is about to publish a multiyear spending review. I presume that forecasting will form part of that, so that the Scottish Government can have some view of what revenues will be generated over the period. Is the Scottish Government relying just on the Scottish Fiscal Commission forecast? If so, is it doing further interrogation? Is it undertaking its own forecasting?
The point is important; it is about what forecasts are used and where they are generated. Will you clarify what the Scottish Government is doing?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
No, you have not. In your preamble, you said that it is about the how, but this is about the what. If it is just the SFC forecast, with any data set, it is not just about the numbers themselves but what they do in terms of your process.
Maybe you could write to the committee to clarify where in the process forecasting fits, what forecasting takes place and how you use the SFC data. That would be helpful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
It is not necessarily about additional forecasting; it is about what forecasting and data sets you are using. Do you use just what the SFC provides or does additional forecasting take place? On what basis is it broken down? It is not just about oil and gas; are there sectoral or regional forecasts?
Ultimately, you must think that the Scottish Government has some influence on tax receipts, so it is about how that is modelled, forecast and baked into your decision making. An understanding about how that takes place formally in the Government decision making process is pretty important.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
I would like to follow up some of the lines of questioning that the convener commenced. At the outset, I note that, although the fiscal framework—sorry, I mean the framework for tax; I apologise for getting my frameworks mixed up, minister—is useful, it is incredibly high level, and I wonder about the specifics of how things are measured.
The Scottish Fiscal Commission has set out clearly the issues that we face over the next four to five years, in terms of shortfalls in income tax and indeed welfare commitments, with the combination of those coming close to £1 billion. The fundamental dynamic is that, if income tax receipts per capita grow more slowly in Scotland than they grow across the rest of the UK, we receive less money to spend on Scottish public services. Given that that is so fundamental to the way in which public finances work in Scotland, why is that not laid out specifically and explicitly in the framework?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
The data points that I was referencing are from the National Audit Office, so they are at a global level—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
You seek devolution of the taxes in question through the fiscal framework, so those levies would be devolved in a manner akin to income tax, albeit that there is some debate about the detail of that. Is that what you are saying? Are you talking about just those levies, or would you seek to have additional levies devolved?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Resource Spending Review Framework
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
That is me, except to thank Professor Heald for name checking the Mirrlees review, which I have been recommending to colleagues in private session.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
The convener—quite rightly—puts me under pressure as an Opposition spokesperson to say where the money is coming from. I think that that is a fair challenge. However, I would say the same thing to you. We have numbers that suggest that you are overcommitted by almost £100 million in this year’s budget and there are just four weeks to go. I hear what you are saying about pensions, but is that pension adjustment £500 million?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 8 March 2022
Daniel Johnson
Where else in the budget are we going to underspend in order to generate the £500 million? Why is that not reflected in the spring budget revision itself? You are basically saying that the spring budget revision is not right and that we have overestimated costings by £500 million. Where is it?
