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 2297 contributions
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Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Affordable Housing
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Roslyn Clarke, do you have a final comment?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Affordable Housing
Meeting date: 17 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Thank you for that. I will move on to another question, which, again, is probably for my local authority colleagues. During the first evidence session, we heard from Mark Rodgers. I am reminded that, two years ago, when Audit Scotland looked at the issue of affordable housing, it said that it was not clear how the national targets linked with local housing needs. Mark Rodgers referred to that in his contribution. I hope to get the views of North Lanarkshire Council and the City of Edinburgh Council on that. Do they share that view, or are things different in the urban setting? Do we have the numbers right, or does the model need to change?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Finally, according to our papers, you have opened 29 per cent fewer civil compliance cases, which is much fewer than before. Can you say a bit more about the possible impact of that on tax revenues?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
But you do not have a figure.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
There is a vice-chair, surely, and the audit and risk committee is pretty autonomous and able to act on its own behalf and of its own volition. Why on earth did the board and committee not meet? I cannot understand why the meetings did not continue. As you have said, that is a requirement of good governance. Is there a vice-chair? Why were meetings not convened with the vice-chair stepping in?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Do the minutes—I presume that there are minutes—from the meetings when it met subsequently refer to the gap? Has anyone explained the reason for the gap? Did the audit and risk committee catch up on the business that had not been done in the six months that had elapsed, and did it report that formally in the minutes? Were the minutes published?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
What is Alyson Stafford’s view on that? Do you mirror those estimates? Are you similarly confident that there is a possibility of a better outturn than was first anticipated?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
The conversation earlier was fascinating. What I drew from it is that we can have any number of forecasts, but it is the outturn that matters. Alyson Stafford led the discussion about the arrangement being firmly embedded in the fiscal framework. I am sure that some people are asking about revisiting that if there is any scope to do so. Who knows? That might evolve in the future.
I want to ask a couple of questions about the impact of the pandemic on tax receipts. I also have a little question about the compliance issue that is mentioned in the report.
In a meeting earlier in the year, we heard that the forecasts for income tax receipts had increased significantly. Will you tell us a little about your estimation of the impact of Covid on your forecasts? Have those forecasts changed as the result of the impact of Covid? That is probably a question for Jonathan Athow and Alyson Stafford.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2020/21”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
Have you been able to put any estimate on that at all?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of South Lanarkshire College”
Meeting date: 12 May 2022
Willie Coffey
The board and committee did not meet again for a considerable period. Is it correct that five or six months elapsed before they decided to meet again?
