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 1359 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Liz Smith
I accept that the tax will raise revenue—that is clear from the evidence that we have had so far. I will come back to the issue that Michelle Thomson asked about. The assessment of what is likely to happen in the housing market as a result of this change is that it will have potentially have quite serious effects. Obviously, we have the evidence that has been presented to the committee and we also have strong anecdotal evidence that people are withdrawing from the market.
My question is to ask the Scottish Government about the potential detrimental effects of the removal from the market of quite a number of landlords who have extra dwellings that can support the economy. I come back to the point about the rural economy because, in some cases, there is a danger that, if too much of that activity comes out of the market, not only could it have a damaging effect on the mobility of the working population and repopulating difficult areas for the rural economy, it could have a considerable effect on tourism. We cannot afford to have any detrimental effects on those aspects of the economy. What evidence are you considering on those aspects of the economy? Finally, what discussions have you had with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government over those likely effects?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Liz Smith
For clarity, when is that likely to be?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Liz Smith
I understand the point about raising tax revenue. It is incumbent on all parliamentarians to recognise the importance of that. However, the proposed legislation will result in a lot of unintended consequences that have not been thought through. I find that pretty difficult, because such issues are important to the future of Scotland. On that basis, I will abstain on the vote.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate legislation
Meeting date: 17 January 2023
Liz Smith
Finally, I will pick up on the convener’s point that there are some inconsistencies in this approach. It is unfortunate that the reform to the additional dwelling supplement issue is happening at the same time as the review; it is almost a case of putting the cart before the horse. You are undertaking a review process, so would it not have been better to do it the other way round?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
What will restructuring of the SHRC office involve?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
Convener, if it is all right with you, it would be important to get that additional information on the public record. Could Mr Carlaw produce that in due course? That would be fine.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
We will have to disagree on that point. Some commentators—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
As I say, we will have to disagree on that point.
Over the past five years, Scottish income tax policy has diverged from the rest of the UK’s tax policy because of the Parliament’s new powers, so the Scottish Government has been able to generate additional revenues. However, the potential additional spending power has been partially offset by weaker growth in income tax per head, and, as you admitted this morning, by weaker economic performance in Scotland—the UK economy has been weak, but the economy in Scotland has been weaker. What specific economic policies should be prioritised to ensure that productivity in Scotland is enhanced?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
I take your point about some of that but, notwithstanding the perceived advantages that people in Scotland have, if they are asked to pay higher levels of tax than elsewhere, they will look for effective delivery of public services. If we look at the NHS, schools or transport and if we listen to some of the comments from yesterday, what is additional in the quality of delivery of public services that merits those higher tax rates?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Budget Scrutiny 2023-24
Meeting date: 10 January 2023
Liz Smith
However, Mr Swinney, people do not find it easy to see their general practitioner. They are finding that there are cuts to bus services, some train services or services that are provided to our islands. A lot of things add up to concerns about the delivery of public services. That is reflected in some of the comments that were made yesterday.
I will ask you about one other aspect of the tax changes: the change to the additional dwelling supplement. The Scottish Government forecasts that we will get extra revenue from that tax change. Has it done any modelling about that change in light of the number of people who say that they might leave the market for the additional dwelling supplement as a result of the rent freeze?
