 The next item of business is a debate on motion 12958 in the name of Annabelle Ewing on prescription Scotland Bill. Can I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now? I call on Jo Fitzpatrick to move the motion minister. Formally moved. Thank you. I call on Alison Derrolis, Mr General, to speak to the motion. Nine minutes, please, Mr General. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm very pleased to be here today on behalf of the Scottish Government to open the debate on the general principles of the prescription Scotland Bill, which began as part of the Scottish Law Commission's ninth programme of law reform. I'd like to take this time to thank those who gave evidence, the convener and members of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, and particularly the work of the Scottish Law Commission, whose report included the draft of the bill. This bill will be taken forward by the new Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Minister for Community Safety following its formal appointment subject to Parliament's approval tomorrow. The Scottish Government welcomes the committee's support for the general principles of this bill and its recognition that it will provide clarity and legal certainty in those areas of negative prescription that have caused practical difficulties for creditors and debtors alike in Scotland. The bill began as part of the Scottish Law Commission's ninth programme of law reform, and its aim is to increase clarity, legal certainty and fairness in the law of negative prescription. In civil law, that doctrine serves a vital function. It sets time limits for when obligations and correlative rights are extinguished. This serves the interests of individuals, where, after a certain lapse of time, it is fairer to deprive one of a right rather than allow it to trouble the other. It also serves the public interests because litigation begun promptly encourages legal certainty. It is probably worth briefly revisiting the intentions of the bill, which were to resolve certain issues with the law of negative prescription that have caused practical difficulty. Those were deemed to be worthy and welcome reforms to this particular aspect of the law, and that is something that we should perhaps bear in mind when we debate the principles of this bill this afternoon. What does the bill do? By extending the five-year negative prescription period to cover all statutory obligations to make payment, the bill significantly simplifies the law in this area. Currently, in the 1973 act lists specific categories of obligations that are subject to the five-year prescriptive period. The consequence is that that list needs to be constantly updated if new obligations are to come under the five-year prescription. At the same time, there are statutory obligations that do not come under the five-year prescription period, but where there are no policy grounds to explain or justify that. There are exceptions to the new rule, such as taxes, council tax and DWP over payments. In other words, generally, those statutory obligations of a public law nature. Negative prescription is about the extinction of obligations after they become enforceable, but it is difficult to say that there is an enforceable obligation unless you know who to enforce it against. In the case of seeking damages, it is after all only fair that if you do not know who is responsible for your loss, injury or damage, time should not run against you until you do know or can reasonably be expected to know. Section 5 of the bill does just that. It makes little sense to postpone the start of prescription when the creditor becomes aware of the cause of their loss yet unaware of the identity of those responsible. The Scottish Government welcomes the committee's recognition that the new test proposed in the bill achieves a fair balance between the interests of the creditor and the debtor. Although it seems fair to creditors to allow them some time to discover the identity of the person responsible for their loss or damage, it is also fair to defenders that time does not carry on indefinitely against them. An unusual feature of Scots law is that both the five-year and 20-year prescription for obligations to pay damages run from the same date—that is the date of the loss. Another unusual feature is that the 20-year prescription can be interrupted with the effect that the 20-year period starts again, and so it is possible for a very, very long time to pass before an obligation finally prescribes. The bill will make the 20-year prescription in relation to obligations to pay damages commenced on the date of the act or omission giving rise to the loss. The bill will also make the 20-year prescription a true long-stop by preventing it from being restarted. The committee, along with a number of those who gave evidence at stage 1, agree with the Scottish Government that such provision increases legal certainty and clarity. The committee also recognises the logic in allowing the prescription period to continue until proceedings finish where that happens after the end of the 20-year period. A good deal of time has been spent on what the bill does not do, as opposed to what it does. What it does is simply maintains the exceptions that already exist under current Scots law. With respect to council tax and non-domestic rates, the bill does not seek to change the current position as it is generally understood. Local taxes are vital sources of income for local authorities in the same way that other taxes are vital sources of income for the Scottish and UK Governments. The Scottish Government would not wish, as the SNC indicated, to differentiate the treatment of local taxation payments from all other tax payments. I would like to make progress if that is all right at this stage. COSLA has told the committee that it is rare for action to be taken to recover a debt more than five years old, but any move to a five-year negative prescription period would, just like the DWP, hurt the debtor most. Payments would either have to be recovered over a shorter period of time, remembering always that local taxes are recurring obligations due every year, so failure to make payment one year is likely to be compounded the following. Or councils would have to change the way they try and pursue and enforce payment leading to substantially increased costs for councils, for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and, more important, to the debtors themselves. From the committee's report, the Scottish Government notes that the committee has agreed to write to all 32 local authorities for more information about such debts. Reserved social security spending in Scotland is still decided on the basis of rules set by the DWP, and that includes how it decides to recover any overpaid benefits. The DWP has made it very clear to the committee that if there was no exception from the five-year prescription for obligations to repay reserved benefit over payments, debtors would be placed in a worse position than they are now, as the DWP would have to recover the money over a shorter period of time, meaning that larger amounts would require to be deducted from a debtor's benefits over a shorter period. The Scottish Government does not have any jurisdiction over policy decisions concerning the operation of reserved benefits, and the committee is keen not to increase the financial hardship on vulnerable people in our society. The DWP is in control of the matter, and the Scottish Government hopes that the committee will join them in recognising the impact that making reserved benefit over payments subject to the five-year prescription would have. As well as those mentioned already, the bill also makes some miscellaneous provisions that I want to briefly mention before time runs out. First, the bill allows for agreements to extend the five-year prescription by no more than one year in order to allow parties time to negotiate an end to their dispute without the need for protective proceedings. The committee recognised the merit in those agreements, and the bill adds to the definition of relevant claim in order to take account of claims that are made in sequestrations and company administrations receivership. In conclusion of those opening remarks, I would once again like to thank the DPLRC for their scrutiny and support of the bill's general principles. The approach taken in the bill is not one of wholesale reform. It aims to focus on and address those particular areas that have caused difficulty in practice. The Scottish Government believes that the bill strikes a fair balance overall, redressing cases of unfairness for creditors and debtors, while also serving the wider interests of fairness, justice and certainty. In those circumstances, I move that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the prescription Scotland bill. Thank you. Sister General, you are not used to this, but it has already been moved by Mr FitzPatrick. No, but it is corroboration. I was all in favour of corroboration and got me a lot of trouble. I call Graeme Simpson to speak please on behalf of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I also thank Mr Di Rolo for stepping in today. One of the responsibilities of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee is to scrutinise Scottish law commission bills. Those bills can often be seen as quite technical and members may think that our scrutiny is therefore quite turgid. Perhaps, as convener, I have just gone a little native, Presiding Officer, but the prescription Scotland bill has proved to be a thoroughly interesting, important and thought-provoking piece of legislation. I do appreciate that many members looking at today's business may not have previously given much thought to this bill. You may have felt that, as a Scottish law commission bill, there is generally a wide degree of consensus among stakeholders for the need to reform the law and that any changes are fairly procedural and uncontroversial. Indeed, if you are asked to take part in this debate, you may have thought that you just need to take your prescription and move on. You may even have thought that it is about the prescriptions that you get from your doctor. We have all had them, but thankfully very few of us have had anything to do with the prescriptions covered in this bill. There are some bills that you can really get stuck into—the planning bill, for instance. This one did not appear at first glance to be one of those, but the DPLR committee did have to wrestle with some important policy areas, such as those around council tax and social security benefits, policy issues with potential implications for our constituents, issues affecting some of the most vulnerable people in our society, issues of justice for people who have suffered injustice. Let me give two examples that demonstrate why the bill is so important and why it required our committee to give it such robust scrutiny. Before I do, and for those members who are new to the legal term of prescription, I found a handy way of thinking about it to be the available time in which you are able to make a claim against loss. If you miss the deadline, that is the prescription period. Your right is extinguished. You are sadly too late. First, I will turn to the case of Morrison vs ICL plastics. This, as many members will remember with great sadness, stemmed from the tragic explosion at the Stockline plastics factory in Glasgow in May 2004, which saw nine employees killed and many left seriously injured. The case centered on a nearby business, David T. Morrison and Co, which had suffered significant damage from the explosion. However, when it sued ICL plastics, who owned Stockline for its loss, ICL defended the claim on the basis that it already prescribed. In essence, Mr Morrison was told that he was too late to receive justice. The case revolved around the interpretation of the existing legislation—that is the prescription and limitations Scotland Act 1973—and what was the start date, what the start date was, on which the loss, injury or damage occurred. While Morrison believed that the start date was in 2013, when it found out that the explosion was ICL's fault, ICL argued that the start date had begun in 2004, when Morrison's had initially suffered the loss. The Supreme Court, by a majority of three to two, found in favour of ICL. The committee recognises the impact that the Supreme Court's decision had on the law of prescription. We therefore agree with the bill's proposal in section 5. This allows the pursuer to know who caused the loss before the prescription period begins. It will mean that, in future, people like David Morrison, trying to seek recompense for damage, suffered due to negligence, will not be told that it is too late to pursue the ICLs of this world. That is a welcome change to the law. Another example might help to explain section 8 of the bill, which covers the start date for the longer 20-year prescription period. Under the bill, that will now start from the date the act or omission occurred, which led to the loss. Finella Mason, head of construction and projects at the law firm, Burnes Paul, gave the helpful illustration of a problem with a large infrastructure project such as—I do not want to cause any worry to the current transport minister here—the Queensfree crossing. Ms Mason asked the committee to assume that, back in 2008, one of the bridges engineers produced a defective design. As the structure did not open until 2017—it is not unusual for it to take 10 or 12 years for a problem to manifest itself—under this example, the right of the Scottish Government to sue for damages could be lost. The committee recognises that the start date for the 20-year prescription proposed in the bill might therefore result in some harsh cases. It was, however, persuaded by the argument that evidence can deteriorate considerably over time, which in turn can lead to difficulties when compiling a case. As a number of witnesses said in evidence, we have to draw a line somewhere. In the time available, I have not been able to mention the important welfare aspects that the committee wrestled with in the bill. We felt that those were of such significance that we wrote to the social security, justice, equalities and human rights and local government and communities committees to ask for their views on our work and if they had anything to add. I am grateful to those committees for their helpful responses, particularly given the very tight deadline that we gave them. I am sure that some of my colleagues will pick up on those welfare issues in their own contributions. Before I close, I thank all those who contributed to the committee's scrutiny of the bill, whether in writing or by appearing before the committee during one of our evidence sessions. As members know, a committee's scrutiny is only as good as the evidence that it receives, so we are grateful for the time and energy that is given to help us in our work. I thank the minister and her officials for the constructive way in which they engaged with the committee and the Scottish Law Commission for proposing the bill. As a committee, we were a little concerned that the commission did not perhaps consult as widely as it could have done, and we have called on it to review its processes for future consultations. I also thank my fellow members of the committee for their enthusiasm in grappling with the issues raised by the bill. Although there are a couple of areas where we could not reach agreement, I felt that it was a great example of parliamentary scrutiny, where the committee wants to get the best legislation on the statute books as possible. I close with the words of William Gladstone, who said that justice delayed is justice denied. The provisions of the bill will hopefully ensure that justice might not be completely denied due to the passage of time. That is something that my committee and indeed the whole chamber will welcome. It will ensure greater fairness and equity in the civil justice system, and I commend the committee's report to the chamber. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, let me simplify the meaning of prescription. Prescription and the Scottish law on prescription encourages people to enforce their right swiftly and before it becomes too difficult for a person or indeed an organisation defending a claim to gather the appropriate evidence. As we have heard earlier from Graham Simpson, delay can cause the quality of vital evidence that may be available for use in a court case to diminish. The Prescription Scotland Bill aims to amend the law relating to the extinction of civil rights and obligations by the passage of time. For negative prescription, the 1973 act established five-year and 20-year prescriptive periods. 20-year applies to all obligations other than those that were specifically excluded from it by other prescriptions in the 1973 act. Five-year prescription applies to those obligations on one statutory list and not those obligations on a second statutory list in schedule 1 of the 1973 act. In practice, most obligations in the Scottish law end after five years. The bill, if enacted, would implement the Scottish law commission's recommendations on the law of prescription and amend the 1973 act in relation to negative prescription only. That means that you have a certain time frame in which to do something or it becomes time-barred compared with positive prescription where you need the time to pass in order to claim the right to it. The bill has three main proposals, which are technical areas of law. However, what I am about to say is just a general guide. Section 1 of the bill relates to the obligations to pay damages and obligations under the law of delict. Delict refers to the Scottish law relating to types of civil law apart from breach of contract. It is a group of wrongful behaviours in relation to a person wronged who can obtain a legal remedy in the civil courts. It includes common law of negligence and also specific types of delict, such as defamation and occupiers liability. It is separate from the law of contract. Section 2 extends to the scope of the five-year prescription to include certain obligations associated with contracts. Section 3 sets out the general rule that statutory obligations to pay money are covered by the five-year prescription. However, there are some statutory obligations only covered by the 20-year prescription. The committee not only heard oral evidence, but evidence was taken from legal profession, academics, welfare rights sector, Scottish law commission and the minister in charge of the bill, as was Annabelle Ewing MSP. All those responded to the committee's call for evidence and to give oral evidence to the committee, agreed that the bill was necessary. Shepard and Wetherburn, in their written evidence, agreed saying, that the bill will improve, clarify, certainty and fairness and overall resources would be more efficient and cost reduced. It is likely that advising clients on potential prescription will be less complex while still not straightforward. Under the existing 1973 act, the five-year prescription applies to those obligations on one statutory list and not to those obligations on the secondary statutory list as detailed in the act. The lists have been amended many times over the years, making the law extremely complex. Section 3 of the bill would extend the five-year prescription to all statutory obligations to pay money with some exceptions that would remain within the scope of the 20-year prescription. Those exceptions are taxes and duties recovered by HMRC and Revenue Scotland, council tax and non-domestic rates, as well as those sums connected with enforcement of those obligations, the obligation to pay child maintenance and sums recoverable under the legislation relating to social security benefits and tax credits. There is some debate around those exemptions. For example, there appears to be some uncertainty under the current law about the prescription period relating to council tax and business rates deaths. Under the current law, council tax and business rates are probably only covered by the 20-year prescription, although there is no decided case on point leading to some uncertainty in practice. It is not as clear-cut as simply five or 20 years when you consider the aspect of joint and several liability in situations in which people genuinely believe that they have paid only to discover that the debt is still outstanding and significantly more than the original amount. Joint and several liability is a general principle of Scotland's law, but it is an area that people do not always appreciate the meaning of or the severity of the implications. The committee has recommended that the Scottish Government give further consideration to the exception for council tax and business rates and provide a more detailed description of the public policy arguments for the exception ahead of stage 2. The committee also recognises that there are wider policy considerations in the bill, particularly in relation to welfare rights. Overall, the committee welcomes the greater certainty that the bill will provide for users of the law, and the committee agrees with the bill's aim to increase clarity, certainty and fairness to the law on negative prescription and considers that the bill, as drafted, generally meets its aims. I also thank the four committee members who responded to the questions that were put to them on the wider policy areas, and I also thank the clerks on the committee for their time, patience and effort that has gone into guiding the members through this bill. I call Daniel Johnson to open for the Labour Party. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to begin my remarks by registering my thanks to Michael Matheson and Annabelle Ewing in light of the announced reshuffle. Over the course of the time that I have spent shadowing the justice brief, we have, of course, had some notable disagreements, whether it is Police Coven's BTP merger or repeal of the Football Act. There has also been some very clear areas of constructive engagement, whether that is around the broad issues of prison reform, making sure that the judicial system and the criminal justice system works, or also more specific circumstances around the civil litigation bill. I would give thanks to both of them and wish them luck in their new roles. I would also like to welcome Humza Yousaf, and I am glad that he is here this afternoon on the front bench, and I will ashen him to their new positions. I look forward to engagement with them, be it constructive or, indeed, on occasion, critical where it needs to be. I must admit, Presiding Officer, that the Labour group was very excited to hear that there was going to be a debate this afternoon about prescription, indeed. The queue lined up so that we could talk about medication, pharmacies and, of course, on the anniversary of the NHS and very important health issues. When the truth was revealed, I am not sure that we had quite the same ease in filling those slots, but the issues that are raised around debt and the length of time at which it is reasonable to pursue those debts are very important and have very real and human implications. I think that those are important issues that we are debating here this afternoon. In that regard, I would like to thank the members and clerks of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for their report. I think that it has provided a useful basis for this debate and also to the organisations who provided their briefings that informed that. I would also like to thank the Scottish Law Commission, whose work has prompted the bill. Prescription is indeed a valuable principle in civil law. It ensures that people who are aggrieved face a time limit in which they can raise a claim in court. That is important as it encourages people to enforce their rights promptly without paper evidence to become lost, damaged or destroyed. Witnesses may have died, become untraceable or simply not remember the facts of the case. Above all else, it may lead people to be pursued for debts under a length of time that anyone would consider simply unreasonable. Against those principles and ideas, the bill seeks to reform prescription. I would like to focus my remarks on the discoverability test and the exceptions to the five-year period. The discoverability test is used to determine when the prescriptive period starts. Recently, two important cases at the Supreme Court have altered that interpretation, one of which has already been mentioned, which was Morrison against ICL plastics and Gordon and others against Campbell, Riddle, Breeze and Paterson in 2017. Those cases held that the five-year period started when the pursuer knew or reasonably should have known that the loss occurred, regardless of whether they knew that it had been caused by fault or negligence. The bill changes that test to meet three conditions that the pursuer knew that loss had occurred, that the loss was caused by another person's act or mission and the identity of that person. We on the Labour bench believe that this is reasonable and sensible compromise position, which means that pursuers are not placed in a harsh situation where their claim could be invalid before they even knew or had discovered that they had a claim. There are two notable exceptions to the five-year prescription period, and they have been acknowledged previously by previous speakers by council tax and non-domestic rates. Members may well have been contacted by constituencies that I have around issues arising from council tax debt, where people are frustrated that councils who have failed to actively enforce the debt for several years suddenly come down on them like a pile of bricks on their debt and who may have been paying what they thought was the correct amount for years. Indeed, Sisters Advice Scotland told the committee that a five-year prescription period would force all creditors to actively try to pursue and enforce their debt, which would perhaps put off the need for things such as sequestration by councils. We should not let policy be led by the inability of councils to enforce their debt, nor should the law encourage inefficiency by council and public bodies to actively pursue those debts. The Government's argument is that that exception retains the status quo, but that does not preside me or us on those benches. The bill, unsurprisingly, is about changing that status quo where necessary, so the justification to exempt council tax and business rates should be made on the merits of that case, not because it has always been so. In conclusion, prescription is an important principle in need of reform. The Labour looks forward to further debate on the bill, and we are happy to support it at stage 1, but we look forward to seeing how it can be improved at future stages. I call Liam McArthur to open to the Liberal Democrat Party. I, like Daniel Johnson, start by acknowledging the contribution made by the Justice Secretary's predecessor Michael Matheson and Annabelle Ewing. I am sure that the current Justice Secretary will have advised his predecessor that, moving to transport, he has not got rid of me yet, as I have read a path to his door on the issue of ferries, but thereafter on many other issues, I am sure. However, I look forward to working with Humza Yousaf in his new role. Unlike most of the colleagues—except Daniel Johnson, I am painfully conscious that I have not had the advantage of many colleagues in the chamber this afternoon of listening to the stage 1 evidence. That is never ideal, but on a bill, as Graham Simpson acknowledged, is highly technical in nature. It makes me rather nervous, as I am sure that the Justice Secretary feels himself to be as well. Nevertheless, having read the committee's report and paid tribute to the work done by the committee, as well as the many briefings from stakeholders for which I am more than usually grateful, there are a small number of points that I wish to raise in the brief contribution this afternoon. Firstly, it is worth confirming that the Scottish Liberal Democrats welcome the bill. It is, I think, a very welcome attempt to modernise and bring clarity to the law in relation to prescription. It seems self-evident that establishing a cut-off point for claims to be raised or rights to be asserted has the advantage of providing certainty in turn both individuals and businesses have some prospect of being able to organise their affairs and plan for the future. Even prospective pursuers benefit, it seems to me, from the enforced discipline of making any claim in a timely fashion. As the law society points out, many years after the fact, evidence will have deteriorated or disappeared and relevant individuals may longer be traceable or indeed have passed away. So, while that does not preclude the possibility of unfairness arising in individual cases, the principle underlying the bill appears to be to be sound. Touching on a couple of specifics, I note first of all the lively debate on whether council tax and business rates should be exempt from the five-year prescription. Again, in the briefing, the law society outlined half a dozen reasons why it believes that it is not justifiable and may produce unfair results. The argument that councils, like others, should be required to do everything possible to pursue debts in a timely fashion, I struggle to accept that the 6 per cent penalty charge that attaches to unpaid council tax would act as a disincentive on the collecting council. I cannot see a council adopting a strategy, and that effectively would be what it would have to be of deliberately delaying collections in order to rack up penalty charges. Indeed, the law society seemed to acknowledge that and undermine their own argument when admitting that uncollected sums are quite small, and if the council has not sought to enforce within five years, there may be a little practical appetite to pursue them many years later. I have more sympathy with COSLA's concern that introducing a five-year prescription would disincentivise payment and lead to a decline in a new year's collection. That said, I note that the committee was unable to reach an agreed position on that. I also noted Daniel Johnson's comments, and the committee is looking for further rationale for the exception in advance of stage 2. That, to me, again seems a sensible strategy, and I will, like others, look with interest at the responses that are forthcoming. In relation to the discoverability test, the bill's proposals to start the five-year period only when a pursuer knows that they have suffered a damage, injury or loss. It was the fault of someone else by actor omission, and they can identify that party on balance offers more upsides than downsides, particularly in terms of legal certainty. Finally, let me flag a concern, again highlighted by the law society, about the treatment of existing obligations that may be affected by the new law. In a bill aimed at delivering clarity, the confusion around claims that are prescribed under existing law, but not under the new law is not helpful. I hope that the Government will be able to address that at stage 2. For now, I thank the committee, as well as those who gave evidence and confirmed to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, who will support the bill at the decision time. We now move to the open debate and speeches of up to four minutes, please. Stuart McMillan, followed by Bill Bowman. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to be speaking today, and, first of all, I want to put in my record my thanks and appreciation to Michael Matheson and Annabelle Ewing, particularly Annabelle Ewing's dedication, not just for this bill, but on previous occasions where she came and provided evidence to the DPLR committee. I welcome the bill and, as a committee, we recommend the Parliament's agreed to recommendations of it in paragraphs 52, 56 and 57 of our committee report provide a clear indication that the bill is a step forward and will provide clarity of understanding, but also that stakeholders are generally content with its proposals. For something that started off as a fairly technical bill, it certainly came to life when we received evidence from Mike Daley of the Government Law Centre. We have already heard some commentary about that so far, and I am quite sure that Mr Finlay will no doubt touch upon it in his contribution later. Certainly, the minister and certainly the Surgeon General have already touched upon the technical nature of the bill, which has been helpful, but I want to touch upon a couple of other areas. The Scottish Law Commission has brought forward three bills in recent years, and previously I have raised the suggestion that, where possible, could there be the potential for more than one small technical area of legislation to be brought together to help to progress dealing with outstanding issues? I still believe that that would be beneficial on occasion, but this bill, however, highlighted a different scenario regarding the SLC consultation process. As the bill is technical, the examining of some areas such as welfare rights might not have been fully pursued. That became evident once we started our deliberations, and the executive summary highlights that. Although the welfare rights sector was contacted during the SLC consultation, it was only as we undertook our work that we established some issues that really affected it. Our recommendation that the SLC, in a quote, review its consultation process with a view to giving greater policy considerations a greater level of attention when deliberating on law reforms is therefore something that I firmly believe would be beneficial. The section 3 of the bill and its exceptions clearly are the main focus of our report and consideration. We could not agree as to whether the exception for council tax and business rates was appropriate now. With councils clearly wanting the status quo and the evidence from Mike Daley suggesting that it should be cut, there was very little other evidence then. We had to try to test what was actually being suggested. Our writing to both COSLA and SOLAR, as well as the four other committees of the Parliament, was in action and we believed to write to test any new evidence, and that was the right thing to do. The COSLA response was helpful but, as we indicated in the report, it was not politically signed off. Thus, our decision to write to all 32 councils is also the correct thing to do. Attempting to establish exactly the situation of debt broken down into five-year periods will be advantageous for further understanding and the deliberation of the section and the bill. However, the COSLA response did indicate that the collection period, if it was reduced in 25 years then, the higher instalments would have to be applied, therefore having a detrimental effect upon debtors. The very same people we all want to protect. Ultimately, we all want the bill to be right. We all have a great deal of sympathy with the arguments proposed by Mike Daley. However, a few things need to be considered, in my opinion. First, is the correct bill to attempt to change that part of the law? Secondly, why should the bill hamper the ability and flexibility of local authorities in collecting unpaid council tax? The reduction from 20 years to five years is vast, so what should the effects be? Therefore, our letter to the councils will hopefully provide some further information to help here. As the minister has indicated and replied to the committee, I will report that the 20-year prescription will no longer be capable of interruption by a relevant claim or acknowledgement and will therefore act as a true long-stop. I am delighted that the technical bill has been recommended to progress and I look forward to the next stages of the bill's journey in Parliament. I thank my colleague Graham Simpson, the convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, and the committee clerks for their work on the bill. Having substituted on the committee from my colleague Alison Harris, although the bill was being discussed, I am grateful to be able to add my voice today. The bill enjoys support in and out of Parliament, with the convener recognising the general contentment among stakeholders. The Law Society of Scotland summed it up, noting that it would modernise and bring greater clarity to our law of prescription. It will do so through a series of changes to the five-year and 20-year prescription. It is not an attempt at wholesale reform but rather it aims to address specific issues that have caused or may cause difficulty in practice. More fundamentally, it aims to bring clarity, certainty and fairness while balancing the law between creditors and debtors. With that in mind, the committee has recognised the need to address various issues before the bill reaches stage 2, such as cases involving council tax, benefit overpayments and situations where a 20-year prescription can result in harsh results for individual cases. On council tax, the committee split on whether it should be exempt from the five-year rule, the disagreement coming down to balancing perceptions of fairness with public policy. No one wants to see individuals treated unfairly, but we have a public duty to treat taxpayers fairly by recovering their money, which serves a wider public good. A point that I hope sees this issue receive the attention and review that it deserves as the bill progresses. That process is already under way. The committee will write to local authorities to ascertain how many still have council tax and business rates debts outstanding after five years and how often payment has been sought using the 20-year prescription. I welcome that engagement, but we must ensure that the process is kept on track and that responses are acted upon. In a similar vein, more discussion is needed on whether overpayment of benefits should be subject to a five-year or a 20-year prescription. Avoiding overpayments is the best solution, but where it happens, there is again the question of fairness versus the wider public good. Some regard, 20 years is too long, but to paraphrase a clever man in me, time is relative. Public finances do not obey neat demarcations of time, and we must ensure that we retain flexibility in safeguarding public money. Regarding the 20-year rule itself, there is always going to be a need for longer prescription periods, even as we recognise the problems that it can create, such as gathering evidence after a number of years. The bill balances that necessity by strengthening the hand of defenders through much earlier prescription starting points in many cases and preventing court proceedings from resetting the clock on the 20-year period. That measure, in particular, is a welcome boost, as it offers greater certainty to defenders. Certainty is the fundamental point. People must be able to live their lives without fear that they will forevermore be open to lawsuits. Even if individual cases might throw up some unwelcome developments, there is a wider public interest in legal certainty that must be served. Of course, individual cases can be better served, too, as the law society points out by claimants taking early action. People have a right to claim what is lawfully theirs, but they also have a right not to be dragged through the courts to settle decades-old debts. The reforms before us help to achieve that through increased clarity and better balance between parties. However, as we move towards stage 2, I hope that ministers will pay heed to the concerns raised by the committee and seek to address them in a manner that carries Parliament with them. That would allow the bill to continue focusing on the substantive issues and ensure the continuation of the broad support that is being seen today. I would appreciate it if the last two open debate speakers could come in just under four minutes, please. Mark Griffin followed by Tom Arthur. Thank you, Presiding Officer. We welcome the prescription Scotland Bill. The new discoverability test requires a person to be aware that their loss, injury or damage, was caused by a person's act or a mission. To know the identity of that person before the start of the five-year period is fairer than the current law. However, it is disappointing that, while the bill seeks to simplify prescription and ensure that all debts, with few exceptions, arising from personal contracts or statutes, should be covered by the five-year rule, the Government has been persuaded to exempt certain statutory creditors. In particular, the exception of council tax and benefit payments under UK legislation from five-year subscription making them subject to 20-year subscription leaves people vulnerable to high penalties many years after they first incurred them, even when they might not have been aware of them. Given the six-year prescription that covers council tax and the overpayment of benefits in England and Wales, the bill feels to provide that simplicity, fairness and clarity, particularly for those accessing devolved and reserved benefits. Early on, I want to try to intervene on the Solicitor General. I was not trying to catch her out in unfamiliar surroundings. I wanted to ask a question seeking genuine clarity. That is about the debt that will be transferred from the UK Government to the Scottish Government, with the devolution of the new social security powers coming to this Parliament. The debt associated with historic claims will also be transferred to this Parliament and to this Government. It was simply to ask—maybe if the Solicitor General could cover in conclusion—what system that debt transferred from one Government to another Government will operate under if the bill has successfully passed through all stages in this Parliament. Mike Homeyard from Citizens Advice Scotland told the committee that the position was unfair. He gave examples of problems with obtaining adequate evidence from both the data and from local authority collection systems. He explained that the way that council tax is collected exacerbates the difficulties that debtors have in understanding their council tax debt. Citizens advice advisers see clients who have built up debts over a period of 10, 11 or 12 years without the council having taken any previous action to collect those debts. People cannot understand how the council can apparently go from no effort to collecting those debts over such a long period to go on to then such drastic action to recover those debts. Similar issues arise in relation to benefit over payments under the UK legislation. Under the bill in its current form, a divergence between devolved and reserved benefits would result from the way in which section 3 of the proposed bill interacts with section 66 of the Social Security Act. The combined effect of the two provisions is that the five-year prescription would apply to devolved social security benefits, but 20-year prescription would apply to reserved benefits. Presiding Officer, I will conclude there and say just in closing that we welcome this bill, but I think that there are certainly areas that we would be looking at again at stage 2. The last of the open debate of speakers is Tom Arthur. Presiding Officer, I would like to begin by joining colleagues across the chamber in paying tribute to Annabelle Ewing. I had the privilege of being parliamentary liaison officer to both Michael Matheson and Annabelle Ewing earlier in this session. Annabelle Ewing is the very best, and I congratulate Michael Matheson on his new post. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the prescription Scotland Bill at stage 1, as the bill originates from the work of the Scottish Law Commission. It is naturally the more technical nature of many other matters that we debate in this chamber. Given that the Delegated Pills and Law Reform Committee was appointed lead committee, the proposals contained within the bill are situated closer to the consensual end of the spectrum of political debate. However, given the implications that the law of prescription has in a broad range of areas, the bill has provoked some broader questions, particularly on the recovery of debt by public bodies. Two areas of contention that emerge from the committee's deliberations are reflected at paragraphs 111 and 144 of the committee's stage 1 report, which concerns council tax and benefits respectively. I will focus my remarks on the issue of debt to local authorities. Currently, the prescription period applies to both council tax and non-domestic rates. It is probable that the 20-year prescription period applies, however, there is no decided case on the point that could offer more certainty, as has already been noted. I believe that there is consensus in saying this bill as an opportunity to bring clarity. Where there is contention is on whether the period of prescription should be five or 20 years. Advocates of both five and 20 years have offered strong arguments. Those who advocate a five-year prescription period include the Law Society of Scotland and Mike Daley from the Government Law Centre, but the Law Society contends that the 20-year period is unfair and a reasoning is set out in paragraph 86 of the committee's report, which states that non-payment of council tax attracts a high penalty charge so that the value of the debt grows over time and situations where people in good faith believe that they have paid their council tax yet are chased for the debt many years later, particularly in situations where joint and several liability applies. Mike Daley argues that the position in Scotland should equate with that in England, where action to the cover of council tax debt must be initiated within six years. Mike Daley offered a further nuance to his position, where a compromise could be affected by having a quote from paragraph 90, a five-year prescription with an exceptional circumstance test to establish whether there had been deliberate behaviour on behalf of the debtor to create a delay in enforcing debt. Those advancing retention of 20-year prescription included both solar and cosla, although I should state that coslas at response to the committee had not been politically endorsed. Both organisations highlight the importance of local taxation to councils and the need for a legal regime that allows effective collection of debt. A further argument that the committee considered was that of parity between the local and national governments with regard to the prescribed period for debt recovery. While I am sympathetic to the arguments that are made by the Law Society and Mike Daley, I am not as of yet convinced that the bill under consideration today is the appropriate vehicle for delivering significantly the form of local authority debt collection. There are three reasons that have led me to this view. Firstly, there has so far been insufficient consultation with relevant stakeholders regarding my implications for any reform, although, as my colleague Stuart McMillan referred to earlier, what has been undertaken in that regard. Secondly, on a practical level, the process of council debt recovery is normally commenced swiftly, and the consequential issuance of a summary warrant creates an effective 20-year prescription period. It should be noted that that compares favourably to the English equivalent of a liability order, which, as an instrument of English law, is indefinite on to the lack of prescription in that jurisdiction. Thirdly, and lastly, I believe that there is a risk of the bill going beyond its SLC-inspired remit and trespassing into policy areas that should be the concern of other committees in this Parliament beyond DPLR. Time limits me from going into further detail on the issues of benefits, however, I look forward to hearing the Government's response to the issues raised in this debate as we go forward. We now move to the closing speeches. I call Neil Finlay up to four minutes, please. Thanks, Presiding Officer, and can I welcome the new ministers? I think they've departed, and I thank the outgoing ministers for their public service. I can also thank the Solicitor General and the convener for setting out the committee and the Government's position on this bill and highlighting some of the key issues from the bill. There are welcome changes on discoverability and other technical aspects that we've heard about during the debate. I want to focus on how the bill and the issues around it impact on people. I, in a past life, worked for six years as a housing officer in the social housing sector. I was a front-line housing officer working with tenants of housing associations and councils, and I took a great interest in the welfare right side of the job, trying to ensure that people received their entitlement, but also that the council or housing association was paid the rents and housing benefit that they were owed. That job is a tremendous apprenticeship for United Politics. As you see people's lives in the raw and going in and out of people's houses every day and helping them to deal with the financial pressures, it means that you understand the stresses and strains put on families and communities. You get an understanding of the crushing impact that debt can have on relationships and mental and physical health and general wellbeing. As a housing officer, I had to take in cases of extreme debt and invoke an eviction process, which ultimately meant that people lost their homes. Housing officers in Scotland are faced with an awful dilemma every day. It is very grim, it is the worst part of the job and it is evidence of failure of policy. In my experience, many debts came on the back of problems in the benefits system. From either people having their benefits stopped, benefits reduced or with overpayments accruing through errors in the system. I say this against the backdrop of the bill. In particular, in relation to the exemption of council tax and reserved overpayments under UK legislation, meaning that people will be subject to a 20-year prescription period and possible higher penalties after that debt is discovered. Those people might not be aware of that debt, they might have long disposed of any files or records that they have at home that would help them address that debt when they have discovered that they have it. Six-year period covers council tax and overpayments in England and Wales, but it would be 20 years in Scotland. In relation to the poll tax, the Scottish Government took the correct action to write off historic poll tax debts after almost 30 years. However, now under this system, if it is enacted, people will have council tax debt hanging over them for up to 20 years. Let us think about that. If the benefits system is starting from scratch and the UK Government was starting all over again and proposed a six-year debt recovery period in England, but a 20-year period in Scotland would be rightly an outcry. However, that is what is being proposed by what is in the bill. We have heard from the Government Law Centre that Mike Daly made a very positive contribution to our proceedings as did the CAB, and we have had written evidence from the child poverty action group. All of them share my belief that the law and prescription in Scotland for council tax and reserved benefits over payments should be brought more in line with England and Wales, and my Labour colleagues have said that today. We believe that a five-year prescription period brings us more in line with what is happening in England and Wales. If we do not see any movement in that during the progress of the bill, we will bring forward such an amendment at stage 2. In a debate of this nature, it may seem that my right to say anything interesting by this stage has been extinguished by prescription. Let me start by mentioning my entry in the register of interests as a practising advocate. Prescription may seem to be a boring lawyer's topic these lawyers with their pedantic pronunciations. It is, of course, an ancient topic known to legal systems the world over, and it hardly needs to be mentioned that the Romans with their usicapio and other rules were the basis of much of present-day European thinking on the matter. When I was at Heidelberg University, I remember a professor teaching us about the subject and telling a story to illustrate its meaning. He told, as a student of purchasing a bottle of something—I will let others guess what was in the bottle—as he only gave a receipt to the shopkeeper and did not actually pay for it at that stage. He thought, as a student, what a convenient arrangement that was. However, he said that it would not be convenient if, more than 40 years later, the shopkeeper came calling and demanded payment of the bill for that bottle. The professor's point was simply this. An agreement should not be left, as if forgotten and forgiven, only to be trundled out years later and a demand presented when circumstances, situations and even fortunes may have completely changed. It was Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said, and I quote, justice cannot be for one side alone but must be for both. So prescription is about that balance of justice, which seeks to be fair to both parties. Setting a limit to the time beyond which a right cannot be relied upon, invox, pop, perhaps use it or lose it. These are well-established, widely accepted principles in the legal systems of the world past, present and, one would hope, future. As my illustration from the professor indicates, the question of prescription is, however, one that applies across a wide breadth of human life and experience. I did a short trawl through Scottish case law of the past couple of centuries and a huge number of issues were covered, ranging from salmon fishing to boundary disputes to every other conceivable form of commerce. I certainly will not bore the Parliament with a tale of each and every one of those cases. However, the subject even featured in a case relating to the interpretation of the Temperance Scotland Act 1913, the case of McFarlane against Lanarkshire County Council 1921, Session Cases 664. That was in relation to poll conducted and the question of whether it had or had not taken place on a market day, which would have been prohibited under the act. The Lord President in that case commented, and I quote again, to shut all licensed premises in the area on the day of a poll, which is concerned with a question of licensing policy, is an intelligible precaution against influence, while to shut them on a market day is to cause needless inconvenience and annoyance. The act of Parliament is framed in view of both of those considerations. It is that certainly, Mr Finlay— Neil Findlay. Can I ask the member if he has left his church Stevenson's speech today? Gordon Lindhurst. Gordon Lindhurst. What can I say? I've been found out. No, not on this occasion, Mr Findlay. So I go on to say it is that need to balance the rights and obligations of creditors and debtors that the bill before us is aimed to achieve, and also to achieve desirable clarity in the current prescription regime, because fairness requires that clarity, not just the balancing of interests. Of course, it is in fact that particular aspect where the current law has been found to be wanting in a number of respects. The bill is to be welcomed, for we all need to know where we stand when it comes to our rights and obligations, and we need to know within a reasonable time. Any lack of clarity in prescriptive rules is undesirable. There are, of course, points that need to be looked at very carefully, and those have been covered not only by my colleagues but the committee and others who have spoken here today. The section 5 discoverability test, particularly where the burden is being moved to be placed on the pursuer rather than the defender, and there can be complexity in relation to multiple defenders. The question in relation to heritage, prescriptive rights, the 20-year prescription and the failure to correctly reflect in the land register rights and obligations, and finally, as a point, the one raised and so eloquently talked about, perhaps in a lifted speech from Mr Stevenson by Mr Findlay himself, that to do with recovery of taxes and obligations to the state, and the question, of course, raised by Mr Findlay, should that and why should that be a longer period than relation to private individuals? Alison Derolo, to wind up the debate. Seven minutes, please, Mr Geno. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I do not want to turn us into a mutual appreciation society, but I also add my thanks and tributes to the outgoing Justice Ministers and to the members of the committee, the DPA LRC committee, who, given such obvious close and intelligent consideration to the bill, because at first sight it does seem a technical bill, a driable, but it is anything but, and I think we can understand from Neil Findlay's positive contribution there, that this is about improving Scotland's statute book. So it is black letter law, it is technical to that extent, but it matters. I am delighted that it has been given the amount of scrutiny that it clearly has. I want to thank all members today in the chamber for their various contributions to what is an important debate, and it is a valuable debate. It is confirmed that there is support across this chamber for the general principles of this bill, and that surely is to be welcomed. Yes, there have been issues raised. That is in essence a matter of balance of rights and interests of various parts of society, and it is clear that those balancing exercises have been carried out from the genesis of this piece of work in the Scottish Law Commission right through its consideration to today. Those issues that have been raised, and I am going to just touch on two or three of them in the time allowed, will receive the close consideration that they deserve going forward. Perhaps the first matter to mention, Daniel Johnson, Graham Simpson and others have all referred to this, is that the fact that the bill does not change the position of council tax, and so far expressed its aim, is to simply maintain the status quo. How did we get to that position? That is a considered position. The exception maintains the status quo. That is an exception in relation to council tax debt. Following an early publication of one of the first drafts, the Scottish Law Commission immediately received representations from local authorities. Among the points that they made were that the policy reasons that justify accepting taxes that are payable to HMRC and Review Scotland apply equally to taxes that are payable to local authorities. It was acknowledged that there would be few cases that would take more than five years to collect those local taxes, but the point of principle was made well. The Scottish Law Commission, taking an overview of all that, was persuaded by the arguments of the Scottish Law Commission. Just given the fact that the situation is different south of the water, I was wondering if any evidence had been looked at whether there would be negative consequences for the six-year prescription period for local authorities in England. I do not think that that comparison of exercise has been done. The scope of the bill is perhaps not as great. We have already had comments—I think that Tom Arthur mentioned this. The bill is about amending, reforming and clarifying the law and prescription in Scotland. It is not about wholesale reform of debt recovery and arrangements for a collection of taxes and revenues. The answer is no to that particular question. However, we know that more than £2 billion of council tax debt is currently owed across Scotland. 1.2 billion of that is relating to debts more than five years old, so making the prescription period for those debts five years would likely force a change in the way that councils recover the debt, and that would be to the detriment of the debtor, again about whom Neil Findlay has spoken so passionately. COSLAG made clear in its letter to the DPLRC committee that there would be an increase in impetus to local authorities to secure repayment within the reduced periods. There are competing issues and arguments to be made in both respects, but the Scottish Government, like the Scottish Law Commission, is satisfied that the exemption is justified. I mention briefly the exception to the five-year prescription period for social security. Again, that is a question of maintaining the status quo, which is that 20-year negative prescription applies. In England and Wales, the analogous legal concept is limitation rather than prescription, so the debt may still be active after that time. The DWP is crystal clear in their evidence to the committee that making reserved benefit overpayment subject to the five-year prescription would impose greater hardship on the most vulnerable members of society. That is a key message that has been delivered to the Scottish Law Commission and to the committee repeatedly. It is part of that balancing exercise. I am sure that the committee, as outlined in its report, is keen to ensure that hardship is not imposed on the most vulnerable in our society. Neil Findlay might be the DWP's position, but I find it very unusual if the citizens vice bureau, the governor-law centre and the child poverty action group were arguing to have a harsher regime for poor and vulnerable people in Scotland. I find that very difficult to believe. Mike Daley and other consultees have given their views, and this is a complex nuance matter with different shades, but there is no question that consultation resulted in the view being expressed that removal of the exception would cause greater hardship. Those are balancing exercises, as I repeat. The committee and the Law Commission are aware of all those, and the Scottish Government is satisfied that the balance has—I must press on just to finish, thank you very much. The final matter, which I will mention, and Daniel Johnson and Tom Arthur have mentioned it, and Alison Harris gave us a helpful explanation about the discoverability and joint and several liabilities. The Scottish Government also consulted SLC on that point, and the bill does not change the law on joint and several liabilities. However, that proposed new discoverability test, and I am heartened to hear universal approval of the clarity that it brings, improves again the position of creditors generally in relation to latent damages. It is significant that broadies in their contribution to the committee were clear in their view that the reform of this part of the act will be welcomed. It is an opportunity to clarify the essential facts that a party must be aware of before a five-year prescriptive period starts to run in respect of an obligation to pay damages. The bill does remedy a wrong or a defect that Morrison against ICL brought about, and I am again heartened to hear across the chamber consensus that that is to be welcomed. To conclude now, there are many more issues in this technical but fascinating bill. I would simply like to thank members again for their contribution to today's debate. It is clear that many, if not all of you, support the general principles of this important bill to provide fairness, clarity and certainty to those areas of the law of negative prescription that have caused practical difficulties in its operation. The bill therefore is an opportunity for this Parliament to protect those who have a claim from running out of time in which to proceed with it, to change the current situation of possible perpetual liability to those claims including those who have historical council tax debt and to make clearer which obligations prescribe after five years.