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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 3298 contributions
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Just to be clear, do you have data to back up that analysis and help you reach the conclusion that there does not appear to be much of a differential impact in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Could you send them before we get the first set of minutes, so that we have a sense of what the object of the board is beforehand?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
A question that arose previously was that we could not find the Scottish income tax board’s terms of reference published anywhere. Would you be able to supply those to us as well?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I will raise an issue that I think we raised with you last year. It is pointed out in the National Audit Office’s report in paragraph 2.32 that
“The tax gap is the difference between the amount of tax that should be paid and what is actually paid. HMRC does not currently produce a Scotland-specific tax gap.”
Why do we not know what the tax gap is?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Alyson Stafford, would there not be a benefit to the Scottish Government in having that data? We are talking about £11 billion or £12 billion of revenue. We are the Public Audit Committee, but would it not be sensible, even at the basic housekeeping level, to know the difference between what should be paid and what is actually being paid in Scottish income tax?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I accept that, but the quotation that I read out is from the National Audit Office’s report, so there is obviously an issue. It might be a low priority, or it may be a low risk in your estimation, but nonetheless the National Audit Office has drawn it to our attention as being worth commenting on. We understand that there are priorities and risks to be assessed, but to us it seems to be a pretty fundamental piece of data that it would be useful for the Scottish Government—and for the Scottish Parliament, because it sets the rates of income tax—to have in order to understand what the tax gap is.
We will move on now. I invite our deputy convener to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Craig Hoy wanted to ask a quick question; I am not sure what it is on.
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. I am sure that that academic analysis will be of use but, in the end, that is a negotiation between two Governments, and it was due to be concluded in 2020, I think. That has been on the go for quite some time. Why has there been such a delay in that negotiation? When do you now expect the negotiations to be concluded?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
My final question is for Alyson Stafford. Could you tell us the Scottish Government’s position on the deployment of private debt collection agencies?
Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Director general, you are in danger of straying into an area of policy that is of great interest to me, which is the extent to which we will have to rely on foreign direct investment versus the extent to which we are boosting our indigenous business base. However, that is not for this morning’s conversation.