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 ˿ and committees will automatically update to show only the ˿ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ˿ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ˿ 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 800 contributions
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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
Craig Hoy
You will note from our meeting on 19 January that we have a significant interest in the financial interventions in Prestwick airport and the Lochaber aluminium smelter, in addition to our on-going inquiries in relation to Ferguson Marine. How is the Scottish Government managing the heightened financial risk with the Lochaber smelter, given the reported issues that are facing the Liberty group?
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
Craig Hoy
In March 2022, the Scottish Government published its business investment framework, outlining the principles for investments and decisions that it might make in the private sector. Mr Marks, can you bring us up to speed on whether the Scottish Government has used the framework in practice yet?
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
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Marks. Will you reflect on Covid-19 support payments and the issue of fraud? In 2021-22, the Government allocated £5.3 billion in funding to Covid response activities. The estimate that we were working with for fraud and error equated to 1 to 2 per cent of that. Are you in a position to say to the committee how much has been recovered from fraud and how much has been recovered from payments made in error during that financial year?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Davies and Mr Boyle, and welcome. It is good to see you in the flesh, rather than on Zoom.
I want to delve a bit deeper into the monitoring and evaluation that you can do around the compliance of Scottish income tax payers, which is becoming a live issue, given the increasing divergence between the Scottish tax system and the UK tax system. Indeed, that is referred to in a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is covered in today’s Daily Telegraph.
I return to the issue that the deputy convener raised regarding postcodes and where people are resident. The NAO report says:
“HMRC has not identified any significant or widespread instances of taxpayers changing their address to obtain a tax advantage.”
However, today’s newspaper report points to David Alexander, the chief executive of Scotland’s largest letting agency DJ Alexander, saying that he is already seeing signs of high earners leaving. He said:
“It’s a natural situation that people think, ‘actually why would I reside here when I can move not that far and pay substantially less tax’.”
Given that HMRC says that it is not seeing any significant or widespread instances of that, can you elaborate on that? What would be significant or widespread, bearing in mind that Scotland has a very small number of upper-rate and high-rate taxpayers?
09:30Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
The divergence is around 2.1 per cent in relation to the rest of the UK, which is getting into what I perceive to be a significant sum. From your perspective, would it be reasonable to expect that there is an incentive for individuals faced with the prospect of higher tax to consider legitimate tax avoidance measures, such as converting income to dividends or moving south of the border? Is that a reasonable expectation that HMRC should be aware of?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
Is it difficult to do that modelling in a predictive sense? Do you only realise that the flight has happened once you look back over the output for a year?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
So, you are saying that if people are doing it, perfectly legitimately, over a number of years, HMRC would not necessarily be particularly activated about it.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Craig Hoy
You came forward with various recommendations in your report. Do you think that more third-party data checks and compliance activity should be undertaken in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Craig Hoy
My concern is that, while the focus of Audit Scotland, the press and the public is on the organisation, there could be a process of quite effective window dressing. How long do you think that that quite intense process of scrutiny will last for? How long do you want to remain on the commission’s back, to make sure that it does not fall back into bad habits?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Boyle. Obviously, the report is optimistic and reflects a significant amount of work that has been done by the Crofting Commission. Looking forward, my concern is how that can be sustained. Paragraph 20 of your report says:
“The progress made by the Commission over the last year is welcome. The activity and actions taken will require time to bed-in and this must remain an area of focus for the Commission to ensure that the improvement is sustained. I will continue to monitor the Commission’s progress and consider further reporting in public as necessary.”
With regard to the use of the term “bed-in”, in practical terms, what do you still need to see happening before you have surety that there has been a turnaround rather than just a good plan that could subsequently be badly executed?
