The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-17249, in the name of Stuart McMillan, on the 60th anniversary of the Scottish Law Commission. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament congratulates all of the commissioners and staff of the Scottish Law Commission, past and present, on its 60th anniversary; notes that the Commission was established under the Law Commissions Act 1965, and that the Commission is Scotland’s law reform body tasked with recommending reforms to simplify, modernise and improve Scots law; considers that outdated or complex laws can be inefficient, and do not serve the interests of the public or justice well; recognises that the Commission provides independent advice to the Scottish Government, often examining entire areas of law and making recommendations; notes that the Commission’s work has led to a number of bills in the Scottish Parliament, including reforms abolishing feudal tenure and protecting adults incapable of managing their affairs; values the contribution of the Commission over the last 60 years, and notes that, since 2013, part of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s remit has been to scrutinise certain Scottish Law Commission Bills that comply with the Scottish Parliament’s Standing Orders Rule 9.17A and the associated criteria determined by the Presiding Officer, with the Committee leading on four such bills so far in Session 6.
17:27
It is my great pleasure to open the debate, and I thank colleagues who signed the motion and those who will speak in the debate. I also welcome the commissioners and staff of the Scottish Law Commission who are in the public gallery. In particular, I acknowledge Lady Paton, the chair of the Scottish Law Commission.
I lodged the motion as a member but, as colleagues will know, I convene the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I think that it is fair to say that we have greatly enjoyed our engagement with the Scottish Law Commission during this parliamentary session and in the previous session. I am sure that the committee’s former convener, Graham Simpson, will also acknowledge that in his comments.
Folk in the chamber will know that, within the past year or so, the Law Commission has moved its offices in Edinburgh from Causewayside up to Parliament house. It is very nice to welcome the commissioners and staff to the Scottish Parliament and to the public gallery.
I also welcome Michael Clancy from the Law Society of Scotland, who is also in the public gallery. With regard to today’s debate, he sent me an email at the beginning of the week that said that the Law Society
“congratulates the Scottish Law Commission on achieving such a milestone and also on all its significant work to reform the law of Scotland for the improvement of the lives of people in Scotland.”
I thought that it would be useful to put that on the record, and I am sure that colleagues from the Scottish Law Commission will be pleased with those comments.
Today, we mark a significant milestone: 60 years since the Scottish Law Commission was established under the Law Commissions Act 1965. As Scotland’s law reform body, the commission’s mission, which is to simplify, modernise and improve Scots law, is essential. Outdated or unnecessarily complex laws lead to inefficiency, injustice and a legal system that does not serve the needs of ordinary people. The commission has continuously worked to address those challenges.
As members will know, the commission operates through five-year work programmes that are approved by Scottish ministers. Those are informed by judges, lawyers, Government departments, interest groups and the general public. It is a collaborative effort that ensures that Scots law remains fit for purpose and is brought up to date.
The Government can refer areas of work for review, and projects can be undertaken jointly with the Law Commission for England and Wales and the Northern Ireland Law Commission, such as the recent work on self-driving cars, which culminated in the Automated Vehicles Act 2024. Since 2013, part of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s remit has been to scrutinise specific Scottish Law Commission bills that comply with parliamentary rules. So far this session, we have led scrutiny on four such bills, and we anticipate a fifth before the end of the session: a bill on contracts, as announced in the programme for government. The committee has consistently been impressed by the commission’s diligence, research and consultative approach, notwithstanding some of our helpful recommendations in our stage 1 reports.
The commission’s proposals are thorough, thoughtful and widely supported by legal stakeholders. Crucially, the commission does not have a party-political stance. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee is very much a non-party-political committee, which cannot be said for all committees in the Parliament. I am pleased that members of the committee tend to approach the activities that we undertake without a party-political bias.
Recent SLC bills that have been scrutinised by the committee and that are now law include the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill, which was about improving access to secured lending; the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill, which updated key legislation dating back to 1921; and the Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill, which modernised Victorian-era law. In addition, the Leases (Automatic Continuation etc) (Scotland) Bill is currently under review, and our committee recently signed off our stage 1 report on it.
Although some of those bills are technical in nature, their real-world impacts should not be understated. The Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill was one bill that people in the legal fraternity were quite happy to talk to me about at various events in the Parliament that I attended over the years. They knew how important that legislation was and how it affected business operations. Likewise, succession law reform touches the lives of many, as it governs the distribution of estates after death.
Beyond technical updates, the commission’s work has shaped areas such as family law and defamation, contributing to fundamental legal improvements for the public. The high rate of implementation is testament to the commission’s ability to drive positive change through consensus and diligent research. This Friday, 13 June 2025, the commission will hold a conference at the University of Edinburgh, reflecting on “Law Reform: Shaping Society?” The keynote speaker, Lord Hodge, deputy president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, will be joined by Lady Wise, Dr Alisdair MacPherson, Professor James Lee and many other esteemed guests. I am sure that all of us in the chamber wish to extend our thanks to them. I hope that the event on Friday is a great success, and we can look forward to discussions on how legal reform continues to improve and shape our society. I am sure that we—certainly the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, but the Parliament as a whole—will have feedback from the event.
I express my gratitude to the Scottish Law Commission’s past and present members for their contribution to Scots law over six decades. Their work ensures that our legal framework evolves to meet modern needs and remains efficient, fair and just.
We now move to the open debate. I call Christine Grahame.
17:34
Oh! You have caught me on the hop, Presiding Officer—not for the first time.
“What on earth is the Scottish Law Commission?” I hear you ask—or perhaps not. I say that even knowing that commissioners and staff are in the public gallery. Is that a brave or a foolhardy move? I leave that to the jury.
As for Michael Clancy, we go back a long way, especially as I twice convened the Justice Committee—I will leave it at that; my lips are sealed.
Quietly and effectively in the background, understated to the point of invisibility—that is a compliment—the Scottish Law Commission recommends reforms to improve, simplify and update the law of Scotland. It constantly keeps its eye open to the development of the law and ensures that it keeps pace with changes in the way that we live and work.
Outdated or unnecessarily complex law makes for injustice and inefficiency and leads to law being out of step—or even being bad law—instead of fulfilling the needs of ordinary people. That is bang on.
The Scottish Law Commission offers the Scottish Government independent—I stress the word “independent”—advice on law reform. Public consultation is an essential step in the process to ensure that the recommendations are workable and acceptable. For example, as we have heard, the Scottish Parliament has passed legislation to implement the commission’s recommendations on the abolition of feudal tenure of land and on the protection of the rights and interests of adults who are incapable of managing their own affairs.
The commission has issued reports over many decades, such as the report in 2000 on real burdens. In 2010, the commission established links with the Malawi Law Commission, and, in 2020, it conducted a review of cohabitation law. In addition, the commission ran a social media campaign entitled, “60 bills for 60 years”—I do not know whether it deliberately made sure that it had one for every year, but that is how it has worked out.
The Scottish Law Commission must be distinguished from the Law Society of Scotland, the professional body for more than 13,000 Scottish solicitors, which was established in 1949. It aims to be
“a world-class professional body, understanding and serving the needs of its members and the public.”
I took that straight from the society’s website, so I am not making any comment about it.
The Scottish Law Commission is completely different from that. Quietly working off stage, in the wings, out of the spotlight of political dramas, the commission is invaluable in seeking out solutions to changing legal requirements, casting its collective beady eye over Scottish Government-proposed changes in the law or, indeed, suggesting changes that the Government ought to be considering—or not considering, as the case may be.
Politicians are often in too much of a hurry, driven by tabloid headlines and public clamour—of course, I exclude myself from that; my deliberations are measured. In contrast, the Scottish Law Commission, with its expertise, takes its time. Although it is ultimately the politicians who decide what form laws are to take, it is wise for the Scottish Government and, indeed, the United Kingdom Government to pay heed to the Scottish Law Commission’s comments.
On its 60th anniversary, I hope that I have helped to publicise the real, in-depth significance of the Scottish Law Commission to Scotland’s everyday life. I hope that I have also made it sound a wee bit sexy.
17:38
I am not sure that I can be as sexy as that.
I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate. It would be remiss of the convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee not to congratulate the Scottish Law Commission on reaching the age of 60. As a former convener of that committee, and as someone who is around the same age as the commission, I had to add my voice to Mr McMillan’s.
It has been my pleasure to visit the commission—although I have not yet been to its new offices; perhaps there will be an invite—to chat to the commissioners and to meet the current chair, Lady Paton. It is good to see them all here today.
I want to mention a couple of pieces of work of the commission. One is current and one is past. The current one, which shows that we can achieve things in this Parliament if we work together and engage with the Government, is the work that the commission is doing on tenement law. That directly followed on from a report that was produced by the cross-party working group on tenement maintenance. The group was established in 2018, with Ben Macpherson as its first chair—I took over when he, justifiably, became a minister. We produced a series of recommendations for the Government, including a requirement for tenements to be subject to a building condition inspection every five years, the establishment of compulsory owners associations and the establishment of building reserve funds.
The Law Commission was tasked by the Government with looking at the owners association issue. It has been working on that since 2022, and it hopes to be in a position in the future to provide the Government with a report detailing its recommendations and to produce a draft bill by the spring of next year. I thank Professor Frankie McCarthy, who is leading on that, and her small team for their diligent work and for keeping us informed. It is likely that, by the time we see legislation, it will have been 10 years, spanning three parliamentary sessions, since MSPs first got together to tackle the issue, and that is a frustration.
I have also been involved in scrutinising Law Commission bills on judicial factors, moveable transactions and prescription and title to moveable property. However, I finish by mentioning an important piece of work that I was not in Parliament to work on but in which I had a small part, and that is the work that led to the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011.
For those who do not know, the 2011 act means that people can now be retried in Scotland for serious offences for which they have been cleared, if new and compelling evidence—such as DNA evidence—is found. The matter was raised in the Scottish Parliament by Annabel Goldie after a speech that I made at a party policy conference, in which I told how the man who was accused of killing my sister in England could be retried because the law there allowed it, but the law in Scotland, where she was born, would not. New evidence was found in that case, and he was retried and is still behind bars. I am pleased that the 2011 act has been used in Scotland.
The Law Commission deals with difficult areas of the law. Its work is vital, and we should all be thankful to the current commissioners and to those who have gone before. I will not be around—I am afraid to say—in another 60 years, but I very much hope that the 2085 version of Stuart McMillan will lodge a similar motion for a debate in the Parliament to celebrate the Law Commission’s 120th anniversary.
17:42
I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate and congratulate the Scottish Law Commission, its staff and its commissioners on its 60th anniversary. I, too, welcome Michael Clancy to the gallery—he has provided a lot of really good advice to members of this Parliament for many years.
The Scottish Law Commission’s work is valuable, taking ancient legislation and updating it so that it is fit for modern circumstances. The commission builds trust not only across the Parliament but across society, because it does not have a political axe to grind; it is independent of Government. Its sole purpose is to have good law. The law is there to serve the people, but it needs to make sense in the modern age, and it needs to be transparent and understandable for people.
The motion highlights some of the Scottish Law Commission’s work, but there is much more that it has done. Many of its interventions relate to property and contract law that was drawn up many decades ago and needed to be modernised to reflect current practices. For example, the Succession (Scotland) Act 2016, which was based on a proposal from the commission, simplified inheritance rules.
The Scottish Law Commission works to ensure that the law keeps pace with modern innovations. Case law can interpret to an extent, but we should have law that is clear and fit for purpose. There are aspects of law that are so old that they have fallen out of use but are still on the statute book, and laws that have been adapted through case-law interpretation of modern circumstances. All those things need to be dealt with, and the law amended. The commission’s work deals with those aspects, making the law clear and accessible to everybody.
A large number of commission reports have not yet been actioned. That has been an issue for many years, and we need to find a way of tackling all those reports, because they have a purpose. They might not have political impetus, but they will provide a valuable service to the Scottish people. Sometimes, those niggly issues make life hard for people and use up their resources and energy, but they are not headline grabbing, because they might not have an impact on many people. For example, the Succession (Scotland) Act 2016 simplified inheritance rules, which was very important to people.
Those issues are, as I said, never headline grabbing, and they do not find their way into manifestos, but they are essential to good governance. I wonder how we might bring forward those issues. In the Scottish Parliament, committees can introduce legislation, but that process has been used on only a small number of occasions. Perhaps the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee could have a role in introducing some of the Scottish Law Commission reports as legislation in the future—that might be an issue for the next session of Parliament.
The debate not only gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to the Scottish Law Commission’s work; it provides us with an opportunity to explore solutions to ensure that its work reaches fruition, thereby allowing the Scottish people to see, and experience in practice, the benefit of its work.
17:46
I thank Stuart McMillan for securing the debate, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to add the voice of the Scottish Greens to the shared congratulations to the Scottish Law Commission on its 60th anniversary.
As Stuart McMillan outlined, the SLC has undertaken, and continues to undertake, vital work to ensure that our law is fit for purpose and that it serves the interests of both the public and our justice system.
It is perhaps no great surprise to learn that the establishment of the Scottish Law Commission was an afterthought; it was only included once the plans of Harold Wilson’s Labour Government for a law commission for England and Wales were well under way. We in Scotland are used to that, however, and our commission, despite struggles to obtain the resources and staffing that it needs, has carried out hugely valuable work, quietly and without fuss or fanfare. It well deserves its 60th birthday wishes.
I believe that the Scottish Law Commission enhances our collective life in three principal ways. First, it recognises and continues Scotland’s distinctive legal tradition. That tradition is rightly celebrated as a unique combination of elements, representing our connections to the classical world, to European perspectives and to local histories, relationships, rights and responsibilities. In the early years of the two law commissions, there were suggestions that cross-border consolidation might ensue, with the formulation of a so-called British law. That was resisted—rightly, I believe—although there has, of course, been on-going and positive engagement between the two bodies.
Secondly, the commission enables the law to develop in ways that build and support our shared wellbeing. Legal systems have traditionally been constructed in order to protect and give legitimacy to social hierarchies, patriarchal privilege, the accumulation of private property and the exclusion of dissent, but they do not have to do that. Law can be a means of liberation in place of oppression.
Stuart McMillan’s motion refers to two examples of exactly how the Scottish Law Commission has facilitated that movement of progress, through the abolition of feudal tenure and the protection of vulnerable people. We could add many other examples, including the introduction of no-fault divorce in 1976 and the Legitimation (Scotland) Act 1986. Recently, we have seen the commission undertake valuable work on issues including remedies for domestic abuse, surrogacy and cohabitation breakdown.
Finally, the work of the Scottish Law Commission helps us to build a secure foundation for law and justice for the independent Scotland to which so many of us aspire. When we get there, we will begin not with a blank slate, nor merely with the legacy of Westminster, but with our own tradition, informed and expanded by our values, our priorities and our vision.
When we are able to make all our own decisions, and to make justice real in all those areas that are currently denied to us, we will need the wisdom and expertise of the Scottish Law Commission to guide us on the path forward. This evening, we gather to thank the current commission for its work, to remember the past 60 years of valuable contributions and to acknowledge that, although so much of that valuable work goes unnoticed, it is not unappreciated. We value and appreciate it, and I reiterate our congratulations and good wishes to the commission.
I call the minister to respond to the debate.
17:50
I thank Stuart McMillan for securing this important debate to mark the extensive work of the Scottish Law Commission over the past 60 years. The Scottish Government supports the motion and associates itself with members’ warm and positive words. I am delighted that the chair of the SLC, Lady Paton, is here, along with a number of other commission members, to hear in person what has been said. I give a very warm welcome to them and to Michael Clancy from the Law Society of Scotland.
As we all know, on the 15 June, it will be 60 years since the Scottish Law Commission came into existence under the Law Commissions Act 1965. The act was introduced to Parliament on 20 January 1965, received its second reading on 8 February and gained royal assent on 15 June—a remarkably fast passage for a bill, which is something that I am sure that we all aspire to in respect of Scottish Law Commission bills, too.
The commission is now delivering its 11th programme of law reform, and, over the past 60 years, it has examined around 30 broad areas of Scots law. In addition, it has worked with its counterparts in England and Wales to examine a range of reserved areas of law, including insurance, surrogacy and automated vehicles. As part of its duties under the 1965 act, the commission also continues to examine the law for anomalies or defects that appear to it to call for changes to the law. It has also carried out extensive and detailed but essential work on statute law revision and on the consolidation of Scots law.
After only its first year, the commission concluded that one of the requirements should be that, as far as possible, it work should be
“intelligible and acceptable to the general public, in whose interests, fundamentally, all its work is done.”
It was as important then as it is now that the public are aware that recommendations of an apparently technical or even abstract nature will, if adopted, have the effect of improving and modernising the law in such a way as to directly affect them. That theme has been very much sustained, and it is no coincidence that the title of the conference that the commission is holding to mark its 60th anniversary is “Law Reform: Shaping Society?” Ensuring that Scots law effectively meets society’s needs has always been at the heart of the commission’s work.
Clearly, the Scottish Law commission does not operate in a vacuum or an ivory tower. There would be little point in expert commissioners taking the time to carry out detailed, thorough and thoughtful work that results in recommendations if those recommendations were not then given careful consideration and taken forward. Implementation of law reform is a challenge that many jurisdictions face, and I was interested to hear that, at this year’s Commonwealth Association of Law Reform Agencies conference, which was held in Malta in April, Lady Paton delivered, remotely, a reflection on the commission at 60 years in which she spoke about the collaboration and focus that are needed to ensure that recommended law reform happens.
As is noted in the motion, in May 2013, the Parliament agreed a change in standing orders to allow certain SLC-derived bills to be considered by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. That change was intended to improve the implementation rate of SLC bills by ensuring that the workload of the Justice Committee, and its successor committees, within whose remit SLC bills invariably fall, would be less of a blockage to delivery.
The work to improve the implementation rate did not stop there. In May 2019, the DPLR Committee agreed to the remit of a working group to review the Presiding Officer’s criteria for designating bills as Scottish Law Commission bills that may be referred to the committee for scrutiny. The working group comprised officials from the Scottish Government, the Scottish Law Commission and the Scottish Parliament, and it was a great example of collaborative working with a clear goal. It made important recommendations on what further steps it might be appropriate to take to improve implementation.
On Rhoda Grant’s points about implementation, there are sometimes good reasons for not progressing something. For example, there has been a shift in societal expectations as a result of the removal of the time bar for victims of historical childhood sexual abuse. In other cases, a different policy approach might be developed—for example in relation to adults with incapacity. That speaks to the independent status of the Scottish Law Commission and its relationship with the Government. In addition, not all reports are for the Scottish Government to implement; some sit with the United Kingdom Government. The most recent examples of such reports related to surrogacy, electoral law and automated vehicles. Therefore, the implementation rate is good, but it is important to note that, over the past 10 years, we have been getting significantly better at implementation. In this parliamentary session, commission bills will account for around 9 per cent of the legislation that has gone through the Parliament.
I wish to place on record my thanks to the Scottish Law Commission for its sterling work over the past 60 years. Its work has transformed, through law reform, the lives of individuals and the operations of businesses across Scotland. I am sure that the commission will continue its excellent work for the next 60 years.
Thank you, minister. That concludes the debate.
Meeting closed at 17:56.Previous
Decision Time