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
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The Auditor General wants to come in on that point.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. There is a whole other area that we want to explore, which includes the tax gap and other data issues. Colin Beattie will lead on that.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Obviously, the committee will consider what its next steps are on that, but there would be interest in understanding whether private debt collection agencies are now being deployed.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Auditor General, I want to touch on something in your report. In paragraph 42, which is in the section on taxpayer behaviour, you say:
“In my view, the publication of the income tax behavioural analysis and the development of a dataset to track taxpayer responses to income tax changes over time is a positive development.”
Can I check with you where that is? I have not seen anything published yet, but is there an expectation that something will be published later this year? Has work been commissioned to get that data set and put it into the public domain?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Sorry—I can look it up in your report. I think that there were four areas in which reference was made to methodology and you looked at what could be reasonably assessed. The report states that
“the use of sample data introduces sampling uncertainty”,
so the figures are based on samples. Paragraph 1.22 in your report has four bullet points. The second point is:
“the methodology combines the calculation of PAYE and Self Assessment liabilities.”
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. Later this morning, we will go on to talking a little more about debt collection. For now, the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has some questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
It goes back to our earlier conversation about the service level agreement and whether, if additional payment was made to HMRC, that could elicit, notwithstanding some of the methodological challenges, the kind of data that, it seems to us, would be fundamentally useful to have.
Before I bring in Willie Coffey, I raise the issue of debt collection, which, so far, has been mentioned only in the passing. Somebody mentioned the regular reporting to the Public Accounts Committee from HMRC, the NAO—of course—and other Government bodies. The UK Government’s response on the 48th report of session 2021-22 was a reflection on where things had got to with tax collection. It highlights:
“In addition, from September 2022, there will be a new contract through which HMRC places debt with private debt collection agencies (DCAs). This will allow HMRC to increase placements with DCAs by around £1 billion a year without increasing the cost to the Exchequer.”
Are those debt collection agencies doing that for free—given that it is said that there is no cost to the exchequer—or are they taking a percentage of everything that is collected, which is normally what happens in such situations? Are those agencies operational in Scotland? Are you aware of whether the Scottish Government has a view about the deployment of private debt collection agencies, and who are they, principally?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
I have something to ask before we leave this theme altogether. Paragraph 2.32 of the NAO report says:
“The tax gap is the difference between the amount of tax that should be paid and what is actually paid.”
The report goes on to say that HMRC
“does not currently produce a Scotland-specific tax gap”
and
“has limited information on total compliance activity undertaken in Scotland.”
Do the Auditor General for Scotland and the Comptroller and Auditor General at the NAO have a view on whether it would be useful to have specific Scottish tax gap data?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
On that note of great clarity, I will draw this morning’s evidence session to a close. I thank our witnesses. The evidence session has been very useful, and it provides us with a platform on which we will build.
I move the meeting into private session.
10:20 Meeting continued in private until 10:49.Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much. I invite Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General from the NAO, to make a short opening statement, after which we will move to questions.
