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 2597 contributions
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Economy and Fair Work Committee
Just Transition (Grangemouth Area)
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Colin Beattie
So we do not actually have a figure for the new jobs that will, we hope, be created as a direct result of the transition to net zero.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
Continuing on deductions from revenue, in paragraph 1.15 of your report, you note that HMRC has used
“historical data for the UK as a whole to determine patterns of uncollected liabilities and then apportioned an amount relating to Scottish taxpayers. HMRC calculated this to be £97 million”.
In paragraph 1.16, the report refers to gift aid—which is not insignificant. It says that HMRC calculated the deductions
“by estimating the Scottish share of ... tax relief claimed across the UK using historical data. HMRC calculated the Gift Aid deduction to be £114 million for 2020-21 and pension contributions to be £155 million.”
However, it is unclear to me what the pattern across the UK is. It is not really the same. It becomes one amorphous figure when we put it all together, but, when we try to separate things out, take one part and compare it with the other, we find that it cannot be accurate. There must be a margin for error here.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
Over a number of years, I have been fairly critical of the quality of information on the Scottish rate of income tax and all the estimates and so on that are around it.
Last year, I drew up a list of 32 areas in which there were estimates—or, more accurately, guesstimates—of what the figures might be. I have not yet had time to do the same with the report that is before us, but I will do so. Looking at it, though, I can see clear evidence that the separate Scottish figures are inadequate to enable an accurate calculation of the tax. At times, there is conflation with UK figures because separate Scottish figures are not available, yet the mix of taxpayers in Scotland is quite different from that in the rest of the UK—particularly when we take London into account, which is hugely distorting. Are the figures that we have on Scottish tax just fantasy?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
However, as the auditor, you would have a view on that.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
However, paragraph 17 says that
“HMRC ... cannot easily track and monitor compliance activity in Scotland and this affects its ability to collect performance data about the extent of Scottish non-compliance”.
Without data, it is not really possible to project accurately into the future.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
If I go through the report and compare what I regard as anomalies with what I took out last year, will I see any improvement?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
I move to paragraph 1.5 of part 1, which mentions
“The reduction in Scottish income tax outturn arising from these adjustments”,
which are estimates for tax due, uncollected amounts and tax reliefs. It goes on to say:
“In some areas of the calculation, HMRC does not have data available in sufficient detail to identify income tax liabilities, reliefs or other adjustments relating to individual taxpayers.”
Again, HMRC is using UK figures to work out some sort of calculation, but the pattern of Scottish taxpayers—versus those in the rest of the UK—is very different, as far as the information that we have seen here is concerned. How accurate can that estimate be? What kind of distortion comes in there?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
There are one or two areas that I would like to examine more closely. Again, though, there are an awful lot of estimates in here that must distort the final figure.
Paragraph 15 of the NAO report states:
“There are no risks identified in the Scottish SPR which are specific to Scotland as HMRC assesses that compliance risk in Scotland is consistent with the rest of the UK.”
Given the different mix of taxpayers and so on across the rest of the UK, is that statement accurate?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
In connection with the compliance yield of £280 million, paragraph 16 states that
“HMRC calculates these figures as a proportion of the equivalent UK figure, rather than ... Scotland-specific data to quantify the risks.”
That does not seem as though it could be accurate.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Colin Beattie
I said at the beginning that I took out 32 cases in which parts of the revenue and liabilities are estimated. The extent of the issues is such that, if you take one, it is not that big but, if you take 32, you are looking at a bigger distortion. I hope that, over a period, that will gradually reduce with experience and an understanding that there are areas to be sorted.
