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 3314 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects: Accountability and Governance Arrangements
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Are they published on the Scottish Government website?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects: Accountability and Governance Arrangements
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Richard Leonard
I am conscious of time, but Colin Beattie is next.
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects: Accountability and Governance Arrangements
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Richard Leonard
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an unscheduled proxy session on the delivery of vessels 801 and 802.
Let us return to governance and accountability. Andrew Watson mentioned that he had given us a written submission in advance, which is very useful to us. In one part of the paper, which struck me, he says:
“Infrastructure strategy is developed through a range of mechanisms.”
I note from the paper that there is a Scottish Futures Trust, an infrastructure investment board, an Infrastructure Commission for Scotland, an infrastructure advisory group and, as Alan Morrison has just told us, a departmental infrastructure board. How do those all fit together? What are their respective roles? Is there duplication? Is the system overly bureaucratic or does it work perfectly well?
Public Audit Committee
Major Capital Projects: Accountability and Governance Arrangements
Meeting date: 19 May 2022
Richard Leonard
You mentioned the Scottish Futures Trust, which is listed in your submission as being a “key advisor” to the IIB. The IIB also has an infrastructure advisory group. Who is on the SFT and who is on the advisory group? Why are their roles different and what advice do they give you that is different? Is it not simply duplication?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much, indeed, Auditor General. I also thank you for reminding us that active investigations are still taking place, which might make for some limitation in relation to the areas that we can probe into this morning. However, there is still an awful lot in the published report that we will seek further evidence on in the next hour or so.
The deputy convener of the committee, Sharon Dowey, will open up the questions.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. Obviously, we will await that response with interest.
I want to go back to something that Alyson Stafford said. As I understand the process, amendments to the Scotland Act 1998 provided for the setting of a Scottish rate of income tax from April 2017 onwards. HMRC collects and administers Scottish income tax, HMRC’s accounts are audited by the National Audit Office, and the Comptroller and Auditor General is required to report to the Scottish Parliament on HMRC’s administration of Scottish income tax. His seventh report on Scottish income tax was laid in Parliament on 14 January 2022. However, you told us earlier that you do not take any account of the NAO’s estimates of Scottish income tax. Why do you ignore that important body of evidence and rely solely on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s estimates?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Okay. Maybe as DG for the Scottish exchequer, you could write to let the committee know what are the sources that are used.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
Yes.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
I will pick up on that contemporaneous point before I come to my final question. Around the time of the UK spring budget statement, the Office for Budget Responsibility produced an assessment in which it suggested that there might be some buoyancy—a euphemism for an increase—in tax receipts, as a result of the rise in inflation. I presume that that assessment was based on wage and salary demands and rises perhaps going up at a higher rate than they have been for the past decade as a result of the fuelling impact of price inflation. My question is first to Jonathan Athow. Are you seeing any impacts from that rising inflation in your tax collection levels?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Richard Leonard
My next question is for Alyson Stafford and Fiona Thom. Figure 9 in the NAO report shows where there is most divergence in tax paid by earnings. Those who are on around £50,000 in Scotland pay higher income tax than those in other parts of the UK. In light of that and of what Jonathan Athow has just said, is the Scottish exchequer monitoring the situation? Do you have any sense that tax receipts might be going up, and do you have any plans for how they might be spent if they go up?
