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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Implementation Plan Progress and Updated Complaints Procedure
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
I thank the Deputy First Minister for his answers.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Implementation Plan Progress and Updated Complaints Procedure
Meeting date: 25 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
Thank you, convener. I apologise for not being able to attend in person this morning.
I begin by asking about how the policy will be reviewed and maintained. One would hope that, by its very nature, it would be seldom used. However, such things are often left on the shelf and are sometimes, therefore, creatures of their context and time. It is imperative that the policy be proactively reviewed and renewed on an on-going basis to ensure that it is appropriate for its current time. What thought has gone into that? How will the procedure be reviewed on an on-going basis?
10:30Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
I do not have any—[Inaudible.]—but I would be interested to hear whether David Eiser has any comments—[Inaudible.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
Does either of the other Davids want to come in?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
That is helpful. In the interests of time, I will not ask any other questions, but Guto Ifan might want to add something.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
I, too, thank the witnesses for their written submission, which is extremely interesting. In particular, I am interested in figure 3.4, which shows the impact of applying the different models to Scotland. I wonder whether the Scottish Government needs to be careful about what it wishes for. In discussions on the fiscal framework and the Welsh example, the assumption often is that indexation for separate bands would be in addition to the existing IPC model, which would of course reduce the negative consequences. However, the grey dotted line in the graph in figure 3.4 shows that applying that model but using the comparable method would actually result in our being significantly worse off.
The points that you have just discussed with John Mason also need to be added into the mix. The issue should not necessarily be seen in isolation from the Barnett formula and the block grant. In a sense, John Mason was talking about the endpoint that the Barnett formula works towards for Wales but, if we look at what the Barnett formula currently delivers for the nations, we see that, in essence, Scotland ends up being the best off from that side of the equation.
Should we be careful about what we wish for, given that, with the application of indexation of separate bands, we could end up having the comparable method? Is there a risk for Scotland in a re-examination of Barnett and how it applies to us?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
I have one final question, which is about the long-term sustainability of the method. If we are basing it on tax and welfare decisions in Scotland compared to policy positions for the UK as a whole in 2016, that becomes more difficult as time passes. It is feasible, because the UK has, by and large, pursued the same overall policies on the method and size of taxation and welfare spending compared to 2016. However, if the UK Government diverged significantly from that, either by increasing or decreasing tax or welfare spending, projecting what would have happened from that 2016 position becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible. Will we have to have a far more fundamental rethink in five or 10 years’ time?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
Is the fundamental point not that, regardless of what model you choose, if we have a devolved taxation system, Scotland needs to grow its income tax faster than the UK average in order to benefit? In a sense, it does not matter which model we use; that fundamental truth is the overarching one.
11:00Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
[Inaudible.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Fiscal Framework (Independent Report)
Meeting date: 11 January 2022
Daniel Johnson
It is important to try to establish critically the purpose and effect of each of the measures around the block grant adjustments, as that is where the bulk of the discussion and debate is likely to be. I want to clarify a few things. In essence, the comparable method seems to involve isolating the ability of a Scottish taxpayer to pay tax in comparison to the average UK taxpayer. On top of that, in the index per capita method, we have a factor to offset the ability of Scotland to grow its population relative to the rest of the UK. Wales has a system that isolates each tax band, which, in a sense, offsets its ability to change the make-up of its tax base. Is that a fair summary of what the three different methods do?
In your report, you say that the review of block grant adjustments is a political decision, not a technical one. I think that I understand that. Therefore, is the political decision the extent to which the devolved Governments are able to influence the size of their population, the extent to which their citizens are able to pay tax and the structure of that tax? Is that a fair summary of what the political drivers of the models might be?
