Chamber and committees

Yes—absolutely. I hope that the extension that we have suggested will alleviate the burden on the Church of Scotland, other religious denominations and the charitable and third sector, which are caught in the scope of the RCI.

My officials and I have had extensive engagement with the Church of Scotland over months. I have met the Church of Scotland, it has spoken with the First Minister, and officials have gone back and forward to it. It put a series of suggestions to me on how the burden, as it sees it, could be alleviated. For various reasons, none of those suggestions was acceptable. However, I hope that the one-year extension will allow it to spread the burden and the costs. The work will not have to be undertaken in the same time period, which will help it.

There are significant reasons why retaining the Church of Scotland and other religious denominations within the scope of the RCI is really important. I think that the Church of Scotland owns around 6,000 titles in Scotland. That probably makes it one of the largest landowners by title parcel numbers. A lot of its land is still registered in the register of sasines, which dates from the 1600s. Even experienced solicitors can struggle to note title ownership. For all those reasons, it is very important that it is part of the register, but I hope that the provision will ease the pressure on it.

Absolutely. I have been engaged with them—I can speak about that in a moment—but I also commit to continuing to engage with them. I do not want the Church of Scotland or any of our religious bodies to be unduly pressured by the new requirement, but I mentioned that the majority of the Church of Scotland’s 6,000 titles are in the register of sasines. Those are church buildings, glebe land and manses. That shows why the RCI is required, but I am not going to make the church’s compliance more onerous than it needs to be, and I hope that the extra year will help.

We have had considerable engagement with the Church of Scotland. It has been engaged right from the beginning, since the passing of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016. The Registers of Scotland held a session with the Church of Scotland in the immediate aftermath of the passing of the 2021 regulations, in order to test the beta version of the website. The issue was raised at the First Minister’s annual meeting with the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. I met them very shortly afterwards, and my officials and I wrote to the Church of Scotland in November and December, and again on 17 January. Most recently, I wrote to the church again on 16 February, but I will continue to liaise with it.

There is always back and forth as part of such conversations. I have not had a set written consultation from which I could tell you, “Here are the responses I got from these individuals,” but there has been an on-going conversation. As I have said, I thought that the original one-year period was sufficient. Stakeholders have come to me and said that they have concerns, and I believe that the 12-month extension is the right way to resolve those concerns. For a number of reasons, I have not been able to take forward some of the other suggestions that were put to me.

Companies have not been involved from the word go simply because the transparency that the RCI seeks to deliver is already being provided by another register in Companies House. Likewise, we are working with the UK Government on the register of overseas entities—there are a number of registers with different names. That work on overseas interests—the point about which is well made—is on-going.

We are talking about a delay, not reform. It is very deliberately not reform, because I want to maintain the integrity of the register and everything that it seeks to achieve. However, I hope that the delay will help, because I recognise the administrative burden that arises from having a number of titles and from the complex structures in which they are held.

No, I do not. As I have said, we have had extensive engagement with the Church of Scotland. I wanted to meet the church as early as I could to understand what its concerns were and to hear what its suggestions were. I have thoroughly considered how possible it would be to make amendments to the legislation to give rise to what the church asked for, which in one case was a full exemption, and in the second case was a special streamlined part of the register for the main church organisations, as it was put. None of those would have been acceptable. They would have created loopholes and inconsistency. I think that that would have led to challenges by other organisations, which would have said, “Where is our special exemption? What is the justification for this?” All of that would not be proportionate when we consider the land holding of churches in Scotland.

As I have said, I do not want to unduly pressurise any religious organisation. I hope that the extra year will help churches to spread the costs and the administrative work. In the meantime, my officials and I, and the Registers of Scotland, will be there to help them with that.

The engagement that I have had so far—the quite intense engagement over recent months—has principally been with religious stakeholders. However, I have no doubt that concerns are spread across the charitable and third sector.

I have not yet had a response specifically from the Church of Scotland.

We have engaged with stakeholders. You mentioned a consultation. I am talking about on-going stakeholder engagement, which I have had and which I think I narrated in response to Ms Hyslop’s question.

Equally, we have spoken to the Church of Scotland, the property law committee of the Law Society of Scotland, the Scottish Land Commission, the Scottish Property Federation, Scottish Land & Estates and Community Land Scotland. We have reached out to all those organisations and have informed them of our plan to lay the SSI. I do not know whether my officials have had responses from them that give us the thumbs up. I have not, but I am still convinced that what we have done is the right thing to have done.

It has been part of the conversations that we have had.

I think that including them in primary legislation is an indication that it would intend to use them at some point.

Secondly, in terms of any indication that we have had about how, specifically, the powers might be used, I know that the regulation of seeds is potentially an area in which there has been some indication that an early piece of work might be done. Perhaps my officials will say a little bit more about that. In essence, placing certain seeds on the market is currently organised on a GB nations basis. Changes to that, to account for this bill, might be one of the early moves of secondary legislation.