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 3226 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government’s Continuous Improvement Programme
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Kenneth Gibson
A number of reports have suggested that there are concerns in the areas of governance and oversight and record keeping and information management. How are they being addressed?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government’s Continuous Improvement Programme
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Good morning, and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Deputy First Minister on the Scottish Government’s continuous improvement programme. The Deputy First Minister is joined by Scottish Government officials Lesley Fraser, the director general corporate, and Ian Mitchell, the interim director of propriety and ethics. I welcome all the witnesses to the meeting.
I invite the Deputy First Minister to make a short opening statement.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Scottish Government’s Continuous Improvement Programme
Meeting date: 26 April 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I note that six external investigators and five external decision makers have been recruited to carry out investigations for the updated procedure and that induction sessions have been carried out. How did you come to those figures of six and five, and what criteria were used to decide whom to appoint? Also, what is the nature of the appointments? I realise that they are giving on-going advice, but are they on retainers? Can you be a wee bit more specific about who they are and what they will be doing?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
About a decade ago, after the financial crash, the FSB said that, without the small business bonus scheme, around one in six small businesses in Scotland would have gone bust, so the question is really about how effective it is relative to other potential measures.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Thank you very much for that very interesting statement. I believe that a lot of questions will emerge from it.
You mentioned two new principles, the first of which was engagement to promote public understanding. In that respect, you talked about the importance of communicating clearly and engaging the public. What form is that engagement and communication taking?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Prior to the devolution of income tax and in the run-up to 2017, there was a lot of discussion about how Scotland would address tax avoidance differently from the United Kingdom Parliament. How has that evolved over the years? I note that one of the new principles is “to minimise tax avoidance”. What has been the Scottish Government’s method—if you want to put it that way—of minimising tax avoidance, and how does it differ from that of the UK?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
My understanding was that the Scottish Government was going to take a principled approach to tax avoidance in contrast to the UK’s position, under which, unless something is specifically addressed in legislation, there is an opportunity for avoidance. In Scotland, these things were not to be set in tablets of stone; the idea was that, if the authorities even perceived that the intention was to avoid tax, they would still be able to collect it. I believe that John Mason was on the committee that deliberated on the matter. Are we not moving forward with that? Was minimising tax avoidance not going to be a significant difference between Scotland and the UK?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I have to say that the choice of taxes does not fulfil Adam Smith’s four criteria of certainty, proportionality to taxpayers’ ability to pay, convenience and efficiency. I think that aspects of the chosen taxes—especially VAT—are extremely contentious when it comes to who gets what and whether Scotland benefits disproportionately from an assignment. However, that is undoubtedly a discussion for another day.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I just want to mention a couple of other wee things before I let others in.
First, on the North Sea, there are a lot of highly paid workers there—71,000 at the last count, I think—who earn more than the Scottish average and pay a lot more in tax than the average person. Is the Scottish Government looking at how the switch to green jobs will impact the tax base in that respect?
I do not want to take up too much of your time, minister, but I just want to ask a second question. Has the Scottish Government looked at the issue of behaviour change? Obviously, if we are short of taxes, Governments will be tempted to put them up. However, if you increase taxes in the short term, you might well dissuade people from investing in or living here and therefore paying their taxes either in the rest of the UK or elsewhere, which means that you effectively lose everything. In that respect, is half a loaf is not better than no bread?
I know that today’s announcement on Cambo, which has been made as a result of rocketing fuel prices and the Russia-Ukraine situation, shows that North Sea oil might have a wee bit more life left in it than we thought, but this is a long-term issue. Behaviour change will always be with us in relation to taxation, so what is the Scottish Government doing about it?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Framework for Tax
Meeting date: 22 March 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We are talking about the Scottish tax framework, so I just want to see what is Scottish about it. How is it different from the UK framework? It was my understanding that this principled approach was a significant difference, but I would have thought that any legislature anywhere would want to try to make sure that avoidance was minimised when it set a tax. Otherwise, what is the point in setting a tax?
