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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 4037 contributions
|
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
One of the things that you have suggested in your paper is a sales tax rather than VAT. Can you talk to us about that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
We have four political parties represented around this table as well as five experts on this issue. Who thinks that assignment of VAT is a really great idea at this time? [Laughter.] I thought that John Ireland was about to come in there heroically. You should remember that this is like an auction—if anyone twitches, they will be called to speak. David Phillips had his finger on the button of his microphone at one point, but he desisted.
We seem more or less in agreement that this presents considerable difficulties across the board, whether from a forecasting point of view, a practical point of view or an audit perspective. Does anyone see any real benefits to this approach or any way in which we could eventually reach a benefit? Is there any perfect way of getting to that point, or will this always be a bureaucratic and costly distraction that will not add any benefit to Scotland? Does anyone want to contribute for or against that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
But was it not the case that devolution was not considered, because we were part of the European Union then and it was not permitted to devolve such things to sub-state legislatures?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
David, you said in the independent report that
“relevant data used to forecast the BGAs and to determine tax and welfare receipts should also be reviewed to ensure it is sufficiently robust and comprehensive for those purposes.”
You make a number of other recommendations, one of which is about
“whether the OBR and SFC forecasts could be better tied to minimise this risk.”
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Independent Report and Review
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
What are the financial parameters that we are talking about?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
There is also the issue of cross-border purchases and so on, but there are sales taxes in the United States and Europe. They are quite common around the world, aren’t they?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
The finance committee from 2011 to 2016, of which I was convener, looked at the matter briefly and we took the view that there was not enough on it. The Scottish Fiscal Commission was in an embryonic stage; we were not at the stage that we are at now; and it was hoped that, in future years, we would be able to look at the issue in greater depth. I should say that our predecessor committee in the last session of Parliament was very sceptical about this as a practical way forward.
However, it remains part of the Smith commission’s work. I take the view that the Smith commission is not necessarily set in tablets of stone. It happened some years ago now; I think that we have to evolve beyond it in some areas, and this might be one of those area where we have to say that this approach will not be a runner in the foreseeable future. Scottish Government officials are looking at the matter, yet, given that we can see no practical or pragmatic way forward, one has to wonder whether that is a good use of public resources.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Before I get trampled by people wanting to come in, because no one has so far, I will add to what you have been saying there. HMRC did a presentation this morning and it said that the changes between each publication in the past year were, indeed, the highest that they had been in the last decade at 9.81 per cent. Mark Taylor, you said:
“The implementation of VAT assignment would further increase the uncertainty, volatility and complexity of the Scottish Budget.”
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I will bring in one of my colleagues in a minute but there are a couple of others who want to speak so I will bring them in first. First of all, David Phillips, to add a wee bit more to the mix here, you said that
“VAT has properties that make it a relatively poor candidate for devolution”,
although we are talking about assignment at the moment. Then you go on to say:
“The administrative difficulties of devolving VAT to Scotland should not be overstated”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Fiscal Framework: Value Added Tax Assignment
Meeting date: 14 November 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Is the issue for you that it would perhaps skew economic activity as well? For example, if food is VAT zero rated and in other areas of the economy VAT is 20 per cent, that would perhaps skew Government policy and decision making, if it were devolved, into areas where it was likely to have a VAT return.
