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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Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts” and “Scotland’s public finances: Challenges and risks”
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Before we move off this point, can you help us understand whether the green freeport projects, of which there are two in Scotland, will be the subject of scrutiny and audit by the Auditor General for Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts” and “Scotland’s public finances: Challenges and risks”
Meeting date: 23 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The watchword for us is transparency. Regardless of whether we are looking at the reserve balance, which is not disclosed in the accounts, the failure to produce significant progress on the whole-of-public-sector consolidated accounts, or the extent to which there is transparency about capital borrowing, the view of the committee and the Auditor General is that much more could be done to improve levels of transparency. I hope that you will reflect on that.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The report mentions the omicron variant of Covid and the war in Ukraine, and it is suggested that those would have an impact on taxpayers’ ability to meet their tax liabilities. Will you elaborate on that, please?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes, it poses some wider questions—including, again, some policy questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The principal reason for our meeting is to take evidence on the “Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22” report, which was produced on 12 January this year by the Auditor General for Scotland and is, in turn, a commentary on a report that was prepared by the National Audit Office.
I am pleased to welcome our four witnesses, who are here in person this year. Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, is accompanied by Mark Taylor, audit director at Audit Scotland. I am particularly pleased to welcome Gareth Davies, Comptroller and Auditor General at the National Audit Office, who is appearing in person before the committee for, I think, the first time. He is joined by Darren Stewart, audit director at the NAO.
We have a series of questions to put to the witnesses, but I begin by inviting the Auditor General for Scotland to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Sure.
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to the fifth meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. Under the first item on the committee’s agenda, do members agree to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I will kick off. You make the point that HMRC estimates that Scottish income tax revenue in 2021-22 will be £13.2 billion, which would be an increase of about 11.3 per cent on the previous year—a year when the economy was in lockdown—but it is also estimated that the increase in the UK will be 13.2 per cent, which is significantly more than in Scotland. Why is there an expected difference between UK performance and Scottish performance?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
That clarification is helpful—thank you for that.
Obviously, the estimates are in the domain of the decision-making process, so they are quite important to us. That is why we have taken the view that having better data would give us a clearer sense of where policy should go and what will have the most impact in relation to raising revenue or redistributing the burden of taxation.
