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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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 2597 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
I remain of the opinion that the aggregate totals for all the estimates, workarounds and so on must be significant, which is a concern.
I will move on to the specific issue of missing Scottish postcodes, which you have touched on. My concern is that the number had increased from 13,708 to 23,351 when the NAO last reported. That is a 70 per cent increase, although the point has been made that the figure represents something like 1 per cent of the population. However, the concern is that those missing taxpayers can equate to a fairly large sum of money in tax, especially if they turn out to be individuals with a high net worth.
I have three questions. What is behind the increase in the number of missing Scottish postcodes? What is the impact on revenues likely to be? What is HMRC doing to fix the issue?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
You did not indicate the scale of any impact on revenue.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
Westminster’s Public Accounts Committee has reported on HMRC’s management of tax debt, particularly in relation to the Covid period. The committee came up with a number of conclusions that it set out in six bullet points, some of which are quite strongly worded. It says:
“We are not satisfied that HMRC has a clear plan to tackle the mountain of tax debt which has built up during the pandemic ... HMRC is not being ambitious enough in bringing down debt levels and securing the resources this will require ... Rogue companies are exploiting the pandemic to profit at the expense of taxpayers.â€
Scotland will not be exempt from that last issue, I am sure. The report continues:
“HMRC is far behind where it needs to be in making good use of data to manage debt effectively ... HMRC is not using all relevant data sources to understand how the pandemic is affecting taxpayer’s ability to repay.â€
Finally, it says:
“We are concerned that HMRC is not doing enough to identify vulnerable people who need extra support with their debts.â€
Has HMRC accepted those conclusions?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
I am sorry—what does that mean?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
Therefore, HMRC has not accepted the findings of the committee report.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire Collegeâ€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
However, we are entitled to look at the outcomes of those strained relationships and the impact on the board and the functioning of the college.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire Collegeâ€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
To go back to the investigations, I was going to press you on the timescales for completion but, from what you say, it seems that you do not really have a grasp of that at this time.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire Collegeâ€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
The two internal investigations are being handled by the same law firm—it is the same investigation, really.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
You have a huge task because, before the pandemic, you managed about 3.8 million taxpayers in debt and, as of September 2021, that number was 6.2 million. That is a huge hill to climb.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21â€
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Colin Beattie
I think that this committee would be interested if there are specific figures about taxpayers in debt in Scotland.
