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
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That is very helpful. You have touched on wealth taxes, which I wanted to ask about next. We will be taking evidence in a round-table meeting straight after this session, and we will be speaking to the witnesses about that issue, because a number of them have suggested that, over a relatively short time, wealth taxes could raise quite substantial sums of money, if not in the current financial year then in financial year 2025-26. What is your view on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I agree, but no one tells us what we should be disinvesting from—that is the problem.
12:45Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
If we had more time, I would talk to you about the taxation of occupational pensions.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Very quickly.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
I thank all our guests. I will allow them to leave and we will then have a short five-minute private session. We will put most of our private work programme to one side and discuss two issues very quickly, seeing as time is marching on.
12:47 Meeting continued in private until 12:54.Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Yes—they start to lose it at £50,000.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
That first figure is assuming no behavioural impact, is it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Yes, because of the message that is being sent.
In your submission, you have said:
“tax increases are likely to be unpopular and possibly counter productive and ... funding reductions to other spending priorities are likely to be valued more by the electorate than the gains resulting from the introduction of the new policy—this is so-called ‘loss aversion’”.
I find that quite interesting. I have talked about that a number of times in committee with regard to council tax reform: the people who gain will just shrug their shoulders, but the people who lose will be less than chuffed. In fact, the consultation on council tax closes tomorrow, and no one has contacted me to say, “This is great”, but I have had plenty of people tell me that they are not too chuffed about it. Perhaps you can say something about that, Professor Bell, and then I will let João Sousa in.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
Thanks.
Professor Heald, you have said:
“budget documentation should set out clearly the additional cost of ‘above-parity’ expenditure and the reduced costs from ‘below-parity’ expenditure.”
Would you like to touch on that?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Sustainability of Scotland’s Finances
Meeting date: 19 September 2023
Kenneth Gibson
However, what the economists have said is that, if you implement some of these policies, you will not get any more money, because people will simply avoid it, work less hard or leave Scotland. For example, they said that, when the top rate went up by 1p in the pound last year, 90 per cent of that revenue was lost through behavioural change. Someone who works five days a week might say, “Do you know what? I am just going to work four days a week because I am not going to lose all that money to tax. Why should I work for that?” It is one thing to say that, if we do X, we will raise an extra £500 million or whatever in tax, but if we lose 90 per cent of that or possibly end up losing £600 million in tax because we have implemented that change, it does not deliver the changes that you and, I am sure, everybody really want to see. Everybody wants to tackle poverty, create better-paid jobs and have more money for the health service, but how do we realistically fund that when the impact of behavioural change is so fundamental to doing that? You can raise tax as much as you like, but if the money goes elsewhere, how do you deliver?
