Chamber and committees

PE2076, which has been lodged by Maurice Frank, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require original wills made outside of Scotland to be accepted into safe custody by Registers of Scotland, or other safe custody providers, without prior mailing around, removing their power first to require an opinion on the validity of the will from a lawyer in the jurisdiction of origin.

The SPICe briefing explains that

“prior to a person’s death, there is no requirement in Scotland to register a will with a public body. However, a person might choose to register their will for safekeeping in the Register of Deeds ... A document whose formal validity is governed by a law other than Scots law can be registered if the Keeper is satisfied that the document is formally valid according to the law governing such validity”,

and the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995 makes that provision.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that due to the resources involved in obtaining such confirmation, the responsibility for providing the necessary evidence test rests with the applicant. The response further states:

“This provision is consistent with the principle that as the Register of Deeds is a Scottish public register, members of the public in Scotland (who are not familiar with the laws governing documents in other jurisdictions) should be able to view the register with confidence that the documents registered therein are formally valid.”

Where an individual chooses to lodge a will in the register, it might be possible for evidence to be obtained electronically rather than by mailing the document to the relevant jurisdiction, depending on the requirements of that jurisdiction.

It is quite a technical request and quite a technical response. Do members have any suggestions or comments?

Thank you, Mr Torrance. I will make an additional suggestion. The cabinet secretary notes that the Education and Skills Committee’s 2017 report noted how valuable good PSE is to young people. Therein rests an issue of how contemporary the content of PSE is at any given point in time. From my constituents, I know that there is, at times, a feeling that the content has not been updated regularly enough to reflect current circumstances, and that the range of cultural and social issues affecting young people move apace, so what might have been relevant two or three years ago needs to be looked at again. Therefore, although the value of good PSE is there to be seen, students should not be questioning the value of the item in the curriculum, because they should feel that its content is relevant to their concerns and considerations. The content should not be speaking to something that is aged in relation to their personal experience.

Are members content that we proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

I say to Mr Ross that we are going to close the petition on the basis that the Government has no plans to do away with the subject. However, there is an issue at the heart of what he has said about the contemporary relevance of the subject at any given point, and we will draw that to the Government’s attention.

PE2078 is the last of our new petitions today. It was lodged by Ryan McNaughton and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create a new body to be responsible for the mandatory inspection, assessment and licensing of private ambulance service providers, or to encompass the clinical governance management of private companies in Scotland into Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

The SPICe briefing that we have received explains that the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 includes independent ambulance services in the definition of an “independent healthcare service”. The act sets out that Scottish ministers must

“prepare and publish standards and outcomes applicable”

to independent health care services and that Healthcare Improvement Scotland may inspect

“any independent health care service.”

However, HIS has confirmed that regulation of those services has not yet been commenced and that it is unable to undertake any regulatory activity in respect of that type of service.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that the next step is for officials to continue engagement with stakeholders to explore whether the definition of “independent ambulance services” should be amended before the provision is commenced, in order to ensure that any regulation adequately reflects services today and in the future. The response also states that the commencement of HIS’s functions in relation to the regulation of independent ambulance service provision will be considered and prioritised as part of a suite of proposals regarding the regulation of independent healthcare.

The act was passed in 2010, but it seems that we have not yet commenced its provisions, which is certainly some lead time by any standard.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action??

Thank you, minister. That is encouraging. If I look over your shoulder, I can see the petitioner, who is in the public gallery this morning and will, no doubt, be pleased to hear that, too.

I was trying to understand the pathway. At our last meeting, having read the previous submissions that we had received, I noted an understanding that, given that Scots law is rooted in different traditions and precedents to law elsewhere in the UK, the assumption underpinning the petition—that there would be tourist destination travel to Scotland for such litigation—was perhaps more of a theory than a determined outcome. The Scottish Government’s thought process at that point was that it would prefer to be in a slightly reactive position if that happened rather than in a proactive position simply because it might happen, given everything else that the Government has to consider. Was that part of the thinking? Has the fact that action has now been taken in other jurisdictions compounded the potential risk—which might otherwise have been theoretically less likely but is now potentially more likely—that such litigation could occur, meaning that the Government perhaps feels that it needs to take more decisive and direct action on the matter, proactively rather than reactively?

I would be very grateful for that.

Thank you. You make a very powerful case in respect of the petitioner and the aims of his petitions. The issue that the committee must wrestle with is the—as you have said, profoundly disappointing—closed door that was presented to us by the Scottish Government.

Mr Ewing, are you indicating that you have thoughts on the matter?

I was going to suggest that, if we take forward Mr Ewing’s proposal to close the petitions, we couple that with writing to the Scottish Government to, as well as confirm our decision, summarise the practical consequences that Rhoda Grant detailed quite accurately and encourage the Government to consider the option of bringing together parties to advance a bespoke solution, rather than simply, as it has done, refusing to entertain further consideration of the idea.

I do not think that there is any dramatic action that we can take, but we could embrace Rhoda Grant’s suggestion by writing to the Government at the same time. Does that meet the committee’s approval?

I agree. We could also write to Public Health Scotland to seek an update on its modelling work on the timescales that it anticipates for completion.

We should keep the petition open and seek further explanation of what progress is being made in that regard. It all looks a bit piecemeal and of secondary consideration, but women in Scotland should not feel that they are subjected to bias or discriminated against compared with those elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Are colleagues content to proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

My voice has been a little shaky today and I now have a lot to say about sheep. Please bear with me.

Our next continued petition, PE2021, on ensuring that the definition of protected animals in the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 applies to the sheep on St Kilda, was lodged by David Peter Buckland and Graham Charlesworth. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to clarify the definition of protected animals, as contained in the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 and the associated guidance, to ensure that the feral sheep on St Kilda are covered by that legislation, enabling interventions to reduce the risk of winter starvation and the consequential suffering of the sheep.

We last considered the petition at our meeting on 28 June 2023, when we agreed to write to the National Trust for Scotland, the St Kilda Soay sheep research project, NatureScot and OneKind. I am pleased to say that we have received responses from all those organisations, copies of which are included in our papers for today’s meeting.

The animal welfare charity OneKind expressed concern about the welfare of the sheep on St Kilda and suggested that it is necessary to clarify the status of the sheep in order to establish what level of protection they should be afforded, and by whom. OneKind’s response also suggests that, given that there is no option for the sheep population to disperse, there is a moral obligation to address the high levels of winter starvation but cautions that any proposals to reduce levels of winter starvation should be subject to animal welfare impact assessments.

Researchers from the Soay sheep research project state that there is no clear biological evidence that the sheep are meaningfully different from other wild mammal populations and go on to note that wild animals often die in large numbers as a result of natural processes, including starvation and exposure to harsh weather, but that, in most cases, those deaths are unseen. The researchers also suggest that measures to manage winter mortality, for example through a large-scale regular cull, could have welfare implications for the remaining sheep.

The response from the National Trust for Scotland highlights the fact that the retention of wild traits in the Soay sheep population has allowed for their survival in the often harsh conditions of the archipelago. The trust follows Scottish Government advice that the sheep should be regarded in the same way as unowned and unmanaged animal populations such as wild deer. Although there is a presumption against intervention, the trust notes that it might consider intervention in exceptional circumstances in response to animal welfare needs.

Although NatureScot’s remit does not specifically cover animal welfare, its response notes that any change to the guidance on the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 would be likely also to apply to feral goats and feral cats, potentially leading to unintended consequences if landowners decided to remove populations of feral livestock from their land rather than taking on the burden of their welfare.

Those are the responses from the organisations to which we wrote.

We have also received two submissions from the petitioners, the first of which addresses the responses that we have received—and to which I have just referred—and notes the importance of clarifying whether the Soay sheep are to be considered wild or feral. The petitioners also make a comparison with the winter starvation of cattle and horses in Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands, where, similar to the situation on St Kilda, the feral animals have no predators and cannot disperse or migrate. In that case, images of starving animals led to public outrage and welfare interventions were rapidly introduced.

The petitioners’ most recent submission disputes the validity of the information that has been provided by the National Trust for Scotland and invites us to request sight of the correspondence between the trust and the Scottish Government in relation to the status of the Soay sheep.

We have also received a submission from Dr Mary Harman, offering further information on the history of the sheep on St Kilda, noting accounts by the archipelago’s inhabitants of the sheep being used for food and suggesting that a number of ram lambs would have been castrated to reduce fighting and to limit the population.

We have a fairly comprehensive set of responses, including two challenging additional responses from the petitioners, on an issue of major concern about wildlife conservation on St Kilda. In the light of all that, do members have any comments or suggestions for action?