Chamber and committees

The main sticking point was the lack of recognition of the ability to give Scottish ministers delegated powers in devolved areas. That was, in essence, ignored so that UK ministers could override and intervene in devolved areas. Members will all be aware of examples where, for many other pieces of legislation, that has occurred much more controversially and with much more political argument. In this situation, we are dealing with law reform, and the reason why the bill has been expedited in the House of Commons is that Law Commission of England and Wales recommendations in relation to law reform are uncontroversial and technical. That is the background.

In the bill, there is a list of documents that are affected. I am just working through my papers to find the list—I thank David Barnes for handing it to me. In clause 1(2), there is a list of examples, which include

“a bill of exchange ... a bill of lading ... a ship’s delivery order ... a warehouse receipt ... a mate’s receipt ... a marine insurance policy ... a cargo insurance certificate”

and so on. Perhaps, from a legal perspective, Chris Nicholson would like to comment on how wide the list will go.

Private transactions are devolved but, clearly, a lot of this interacts with reserved areas. It is a very complex area because it has been built up over hundreds of years of commercial trading. One of the key points in supporting the LCM is that, if we were to get into an argument over what is devolved and what is reserved, we could be here for years. It would mean untangling hundreds of years of commercial trading to ascertain exactly what is reserved and what is devolved. That is why the bill recognises customs that have built up over time—custom and practice. As I said, Chris might want to talk about the technical detail.

We support the policy aim of moving towards electronic trading, and the bill sets the course for that to be legally possible. That is why we support it.

The bill will give Scottish traders the right to use digital when they want to—it will give them the choice. At the moment, the law says that, generally, the documents have to be on paper.

All legislation has to be looked at on its merits, and—as I said in my opening remarks—this is a technical and uncontroversial issue, because no one thinks that it is a bad idea, in this day and age, to move to electronic trading from paper, given all the benefits of that. However, we clearly know that there are disputes in other areas, so each bit of legislation has to be treated on its merits. In this case, we are pragmatic and open to compromise. The amendments from the UK Government are not perfect, but they are good enough, and for that reason we were content to lodge the LCM.

That is a good question, and I cannot give it a clear answer because we do not know how the negotiations would have gone if we had lodged the LCM at the time. What we are trying to convey is that it has been an extraordinary length of time. We could perhaps have envisaged a successful outcome to allow us to have lodged an LCM to give the committee the opportunity and an appropriate timescale to do its work. However, with the way that things have transpired, we are content to support the bill and lodge the LCM.

In answer to your first question, yes, we will do our best to learn lessons. The background is that we are dealing with a technical, uncontroversial bill, but there are issues of concern within it. There were constructive negotiations in order to sort that out, but that took some time to achieve. Clearly, we need to strike a balance between the fact that the bill is uncontroversial and technical and the concerns that we have. However, given that the bill was generally uncontroversial and not about the most highly political issue in the world, perhaps we could have just launched the LCM earlier in anticipation of negotiations being successful.

I am interested to hear that the Conveners Group has been discussing a kind of interim LCM. That could provide a potential solution in such a scenario.

The bill certainly smoothes trade. It makes sense for the same laws to apply in common trading areas. Removing the obligation to use paper is clearly in the interests of trade in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, so it is a sensible option.

I will have to ask Chris Nicholson, with his legal mind, to come in again, but I think that the Law Society was keen to emphasise that some issues involved in this area are devolved, and those references to examples of devolved areas were made simply to explain its recognition that this is an area that crosses between devolved and reserved areas. People might think that trade is reserved, and many aspects clearly are—particularly in relation to maritime industries—but private transactions and other aspects, such as the ones that you have just highlighted, are devolved.

There are two questions there, which I will try to answer.

The first question is about the fair work agenda and conditionality. We are constantly evolving the fair work agenda in Scotland. That is crucial, because employers that sign up to the fair work agenda benefit through being more productive, retaining staff, finding it easier to recruit staff and becoming more profitable. That means that more people can get into work, which benefits individuals in terms of their wellbeing and self-esteem and is very good for the economy.

The current fair work agenda has some broad themes, one of which is flexibility. The fair work criteria for supporting businesses with public grants and contracts now include flexibility. We are urging employers to be much more flexible. That will, in turn, help disabled people to get into work. The more flexible an employer is, the more attractive that makes them, and the easier it will be for disabled people to work for that organisation. That is where the fair work agenda plays a role.

There are many initiatives under way to help employers to adapt and, we hope, change their culture. For instance, a few weeks ago, I visited the Salvesen Mindroom Centre in Edinburgh, which is working on neurodivergence issues. I urge the committee to find out more about it, or to visit the centre. I met various big employers from the Edinburgh area that have effectively been changing their recruitment policies and taking on board how they can adapt to get people with various neurological conditions working for them. That was an interface between the organisation and employers; a lot of employers in the Edinburgh and Lothians area are engaged in that. It would be great to see that going national.

We also have the workplace equality fund, which funds very different projects across the country. The Salvesen Mindroom Centre is one of the projects that it funds—or rather, part funds, because a lot of the centre’s funding comes from the Salvesen family. The workplace equality fund is about working with employers and helping them to adapt and learn about how they can be more accessible to disabled employees.

I know that that has been an on-going debate for many years; many organisations in my constituency regularly make the same point to me.

I can only point to the enormous pressures on the Scottish budget. Our budget, unfortunately, does not vary as much as we would like it to, but the demands on it vary all the time. We see that there are huge demands on the Scottish budget just now, but there are, without the cake growing, only so many ways that we can cut the cake over and over. The demands on the Scottish Government’s budget are in the news every day of the week, for anyone to see. We would like to be in a position to give much more long-term certainty to organisations, but we are unable to do that until the Scottish budget has the same long-term certainty. We take the point on board—we know that the situation is not ideal, but it is a symptom of where we are, and the pressure on public finances.