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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 3264 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
My final question is for Alyson Stafford. Could you tell us the Scottish Government’s position on the deployment of private debt collection agencies?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Thank you.
The other thing that you mentioned, which is of interest to not only the Public Audit Committee but the Parliament as a whole, is the fiscal framework and how that works. Of course, it works in a very particular way. If Scottish income tax receipts are at a certain level compared with UK income tax receipts, there are consequential effects on the operation of the fiscal framework, which can be advantageous but can also be disadvantageous. Can you update us on where the renegotiation of the fiscal framework is?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
A question that arose previously was that we could not find the Scottish income tax board’s terms of reference published anywhere. Would you be able to supply those to us as well?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I will raise an issue that I think we raised with you last year. It is pointed out in the National Audit Office’s report in paragraph 2.32 that
“The tax gap is the difference between the amount of tax that should be paid and what is actually paid. HMRC does not currently produce a Scotland-specific tax gap.”
Why do we not know what the tax gap is?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Alyson Stafford, would there not be a benefit to the Scottish Government in having that data? We are talking about ÂŁ11 billion or ÂŁ12 billion of revenue. We are the Public Audit Committee, but would it not be sensible, even at the basic housekeeping level, to know the difference between what should be paid and what is actually being paid in Scottish income tax?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
I accept that, but the quotation that I read out is from the National Audit Office’s report, so there is obviously an issue. It might be a low priority, or it may be a low risk in your estimation, but nonetheless the National Audit Office has drawn it to our attention as being worth commenting on. We understand that there are priorities and risks to be assessed, but to us it seems to be a pretty fundamental piece of data that it would be useful for the Scottish Government—and for the Scottish Parliament, because it sets the rates of income tax—to have in order to understand what the tax gap is.
We will move on now. I invite our deputy convener to put some questions to you.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Director general, you are in danger of straying into an area of policy that is of great interest to me, which is the extent to which we will have to rely on foreign direct investment versus the extent to which we are boosting our indigenous business base. However, that is not for this morning’s conversation.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
We are really out of time, but I will make one final request. Could you supply to the committee in writing a list of the private debt collection agencies that operate in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
For the avoidance of confusion, are you going to get, or are you now getting, regional level data about Scottish income tax receipts?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 11 May 2023
Richard Leonard
Good morning. I welcome everybody to the 14th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. We have received apologies from Colin Beattie. I welcome Bill Kidd, who is substituting for him today.
The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Are we agreed to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
