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: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Auditor General, I want to touch on something in your report. In paragraph 42, which is in the section on taxpayer behaviour, you say:
“In my view, the publication of the income tax behavioural analysis and the development of a dataset to track taxpayer responses to income tax changes over time is a positive development.”
Can I check with you where that is? I have not seen anything published yet, but is there an expectation that something will be published later this year? Has work been commissioned to get that data set and put it into the public domain?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The principal reason for our meeting is to take evidence on the “Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22” report, which was produced on 12 January this year by the Auditor General for Scotland and is, in turn, a commentary on a report that was prepared by the National Audit Office.
I am pleased to welcome our four witnesses, who are here in person this year. Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, is accompanied by Mark Taylor, audit director at Audit Scotland. I am particularly pleased to welcome Gareth Davies, Comptroller and Auditor General at the National Audit Office, who is appearing in person before the committee for, I think, the first time. He is joined by Darren Stewart, audit director at the NAO.
We have a series of questions to put to the witnesses, but I begin by inviting the Auditor General for Scotland to make a short opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Sure.
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
The report mentions the omicron variant of Covid and the war in Ukraine, and it is suggested that those would have an impact on taxpayers’ ability to meet their tax liabilities. Will you elaborate on that, please?
Public Audit Committee
“Administration of Scottish income tax 2021/22”
Meeting date: 9 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Yes, it poses some wider questions—including, again, some policy questions.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
We will move straight to questions. I invite our deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, to ask the first question.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Although it is not in the written report, the ÂŁ550,000 increase in grant aid to the Crofting Commission, which has been provided for by the Scottish Government, was alluded to earlier on, and Pat Kenny said that it was, in part, to address an enhancement of staffing capacity.
I have two lines of questioning. First, could you describe in more detail what those job roles are and whether the enhancement was about filling vacancies or increasing capacity? Have there been particular logjams, where the commission has not dealt with things as speedily as it might have? Is the enhancement of staffing capacity an attempt to address that?
Secondly, are other, non-staffing costs being met through that increased level of grant aid that has been provided for?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Thank you. There will be public interest in the proportionate increases in the salary levels from the regulatory team that is, I presume, working on the front line and those who are in strategic senior management positions. There will also be an interest in the net outcome from the new structure compared to what it was under the previous structure.
My final point is to pick up on something that you spoke about earlier. Some of the new commissioners were elected and some were appointed. I am interested in understanding what training and development they have been given. In answer to Colin Beattie’s earlier questions, you talked about the role of the public bodies unit and there is an expectation that training will be provided. In our report, we identified that we would want to understand what quality of training is being provided to a new cohort of commissioners.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
It strikes me that a lot of the six-page report reflects on the recommendations and lessons that were put at the point of the previous section 22 report on the Crofting Commission and, indeed, on this committee’s conclusions. I just wonder whether it would not have served transparency a little better if you had listed the 41 recommendations and given some kind of tracking of how they had been progressed, so that we had a sense of that. I do not know whether you alluded to that as being part of the internal audit but, as far as the published document that is before us is concerned, that is not captured. I wonder whether you would consider that.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of the Crofting Commission”
Meeting date: 2 February 2023
Richard Leonard
Okay. Maybe it is just me, but I thought that, for completeness, given the scale and breadth of the recommendations—seven on financial sustainability and the other 34 on governance and transparency—it might have been useful to capture those details in the document that is before us, but I hear what you say.
Craig Hoy has some questions.
