 Welcome to the 15th meeting in 2023 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I'd like to remain everyone present to switch on mobile phones to silent, and we have received apologies from all of them in Dell. The next item in business is to decide whether to take item 6 in private. Is committee content to this item in private? Moving to agenda item number 2, we are taking evidence on the Trusts and Successions Scotland Bill. I welcome Yvonne Evans, the Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Dundee, Professor George Gretan. He merits his Lord President to read Professor of Law at the University of Edinburgh and Professor Roderick Paisley, the Chair of Scots Law at the University of Aberdeen. I welcome to you. I would also like to note that the Mercedes-Vialba is joining us online today. I remind all attendees to not worry about turning on your microphone during the session, as these are controlled by broadcasting. If you would like to come in on any questions, please raise your hand or just catch my eye or indicate to the clerks. If you cannot answer the question, please feel free to follow up in writing or simply indicate that this is not for you to respond to. We will now move to questions from the committee. First of all, I will open for the committee. Can you confirm for the benefit of the committee whether you support the general principles of the bill? What do you see as the bill's key strengths? We are certainly going into some specific areas of the bill as we progress through the session. I very much work on the bill. I support its general principles. This is a much-needed measure, as I am sure you are very aware. The trust law has not had a proper overhaul since 1921. There have been bits and pieces, but it is now pretty badly out of date. Comparative jurisdictions have done a lot of reform in recent years. In England, a project has just started for a complete overhaul of their trust law, but even then they have done more in recent years to update their law than we have. We are falling behind and, if nothing is done in the next few years, it is going to look even worse. What the bill does, it restates a lot of the existing principles that were in the legislation but does so in updated terms. It also introduces certain new provisions, which are very welcome. I strongly supported the trust law, which is an important part of the law. There are bits and pieces that need revisiting, but that is inevitable. I could go on for hours, but that is probably enough. I fully support the bill in its principles and outline. I imagine quite a lot of what George and Yvonne will say today. It appears like nitpicking to improve detail, but it is a really necessary bill. However, I would like to say a little bit more on succession in this bill. That is an area of the law that needs revisiting, but it is a very welcome bill. It is particularly well thought out in many respects. I absolutely agree with that. I am delighted to finally see this coming to fruition in the near future. As has been said, it is minor tweaks and improvements that we can perhaps suggest to you. I will go into one aspect. One thing that has come up thus far in the bill is the issue regarding the section 104 order. Does the panelist believe that both Scottish and UK Governments should potentially design some type of protocol so that, when a bill comes forward and there is a section 104 issue, it can automatically be dealt with? You mean in general, not just for this bill? Last week, the Parliament passed the moveable transactions and the section 104 order was one of the outstanding issues in the bill. Certainly at the very beginning of this bill, the section 104 order has arisen again. I suspect that, as more SLC bills come forward and potentially other legislation, the section 104 order might become more of an issue. If a protocol was put together, would that help in the advancement of any legislation? That is more of a question that we are moving more towards. It is not exactly a constitutional law, but it is getting near there. I do not have a strong view about that. It is an issue. I was there last week when the stage 3 debate on how I was cheering up in the gallery and being shushed by the staff. I understand why the Scottish Government is a little bit cautious on these ledge comp issues. If it is put in and there is a problem, it is safer to do it this way, to leave out the provision in the case of moveable transactions and provisions about the financial instruments, terminologies and then wait for a 104 order. I think that that is the right way to go. Whether a protocol would be possible, you would need to ask people like Chris Simsworth, Christine O'Neill and experts in that area rather than myself. I do not think that I can offer a useful view, but it can be a bit of a technical problem. If pension schemes are left out from the bill as they are, if that went through and for some reason there was no section 104 order or no timeless section 104 order, I suppose it took a couple of years, you would then be in a little bit of a black hole for pension schemes going by the Scottish law because the 1921 act is repealed in TOTO and so you would have the position that Scottish regulated pension trusts would be in a black hole. If that goes through, it would be very important to secure that the 104 order would be forthcoming timelessly. That is not very helpful, but that is all that I can say. I think that the committee generally appreciates the work of both the Scottish and UK governments to move on to the transactions bill with regard to the section 104 order, because there has been a lot of work taking place there. The question was not posed as a trick question or any type of constitutional question, but it was just to try to see if there was any potential art, maybe a smoother way. I am sorry, I cannot offer you anything on that breaking point. No problem, that is great. On to the panel. If I can come back to the specific bill, it looks like it takes about a year to do a section 104 if everyone is moving smoothly. Do you think that there is any way that we could amend this bill to avoid a section 104, which would then mean that it would all come into force at the same time, or in your views as a section 104 because of the pension scheme inevitably going to have to happen? Pensions should be covered in this. Pensions are a huge value. We have a big industry of pensions in Scotland and it is a hugely important part of trust law. Even if there was a delay, it is probably important to include pensions. There is one tiny point on pension schemes that I want to bring to your attention. There is no definition of pension schemes in this trust and succession bill, although there was a definition for a particular statutory provision, a particular section in the bill that is produced by the Scottish Law Commission. I do not know whether that is deliberate or whether it is an oversight, but pension schemes are not defined at all, as far as I read it. That is a point that needs to be double-checked. Yes, timing is going to be important and I suppose the answer is that this gets passed and the commencement delay to the 104 order is already there. I suppose that is the way you do it, but I have no personal experience with 104 orders. I have done many things in my life. I have fought as a mercenary in the halls of Africa, but I have never been involved in a section 104 order. I do not have the hands-on experience there. On 2 May, the Scottish Law Commission said to the committee that it is important that the trust law reforms ultimately apply to the pension trusts as well, and it just touched upon the issue there regarding the definition. On this, do you think that if the pension trusts are not included, will that have a detrimental effect in terms of the implementation of the law? If they are not included in the bill, which is current, they are not indeed. If there is no section 104 order, that is going to be a problem. In that case, for example, the 1921 act is going to have to be kept in force just for pensions, and that will be awfully messy. I absolutely agree. Trust lawyers who advise on pension trusts do not want to have two separate bits of law to have to know. We do not really want the 1921 act to have to carry on once we have the new act. Would it be common to operate using two separate bits of legislation? We operate using many, many bits of legislation, but this is a chance to tidy that up and make it much more simple to look at where the law is. Even if it were to, for talking sake, the 1921 legislation were to be still in use purely for this aspect, for talking sake, whether it is six months or whether it is a year as Jeremy touched upon. Although it would be complicated, messy and untidy, would it be impossible to do? Not impossible. As the bill stands, the 1921 act is repealed, so if there is a possibility of this bill being passed and coming into force before a 104 order is available, then the bill would have to keep the 21 act alive for pension funds. As Yvonne says, possible, but awfully messy. Thank you. Mercedes. Thanks, convener. Just checking that everyone in the room can hear me. Yes. Great. Thanks very much. We know that there may be forthcoming reforms to capacity law due to the report of the Scottish Mental Health Review. Can I ask the panel with regards to future proofing the trust's bill? Can that be achieved simply by ensuring that there is a route to easily amend the definition of incapable in the bill or would more significant structural changes to the trust legislation be required? My first point is that setting aside from the new bill on charities, which is in the pipeline, the current definition of incapable in this bill is essentially the same as the definition of incapable in the Adults Within Capacity Act. But it might have been neater to do what is often done in legislation instead of copying out the definition from another act, but simply to say, has the same meaning as. Although in a way it's a little bit of a federal faddle for users because then they've got to look at the other act, overall it is more convenient for users because they can then see what the interpretation is of that definition in the other act by case law or by commentators. So instead of a user of this bill, if it's enacted, might look at that definition and think, what does this mean? And they wouldn't start off with any find, any interpretation of it. But if it's referenced, it has the same meaning as in Adults Within Capacity, they can immediately turn to the textbooks on that area of law. And that approach is often used in legislation. You often see this term has, you know, the word company in this act has the same meaning as the word company has defined in the Companies Act 2006, for example. So that's the first general comment. That might have been preferable drafting technique, but that's for the drafters to decide. But I agree with you that future proofing is desirable, that the term incapable as used in the trust legislation should track what's in the Adults Within Capacity legislation. And it's a drafting question of the best way to do it, but I agree with you that it would be unfortunate, I think, if the meanings were to drift apart. How would you agree with that? Absolutely. I think it would help the interpretation of this section. If there was, as George has said, a body of case law to look at, I think there are potential problems with interpretation of what we have here about incapacity. And I think there is a problem about judging capacity, especially if we might be talking here about trustees trying to judge capacity as well. The two are identical, because so many trusts are set up for individuals who lack capacity or have a risk of capacity. And a decision in one area really would be useful if it were useful and applicable across the board. I was just going to ask a follow-up in terms of seeking to amend the bill in line with that approach. Would that then mean that the definition would automatically be updated when it was updated in the Adults Within Capacity act? So is it then a sort of more streamlined option to future-proofing this bill, if instead of having a set definition it refers to the definition of interpretation in another act? I think the answer to that is yes. It is a drafting question, I would do that, but the answer is yes. The general answer to that question is yes, and as I said, I think it would be desirable. And it's a good point. If I can move on to the bill's interaction with charity law, you'll be aware that there's a charity law bill going through the Parliament at the same time. And under section 8 of the charity's bill, currently before Parliament, Oscar would have an administrative power to appoint interim trustees to charitable trusts on its own initiative. How do you think that that would work with the current coach power to appoint trustees under section 1 of the trust bill? Is there an interaction there? That's an interest. When interim trustees are a new, novel idea, I think they have good uses perhaps in charities if you want to continue with a charity that otherwise would struggle to carry on without appointing interim trustees. There is an uneasy interaction between those two bills perhaps. One thing that I think is missing from the section of this bill is the option to add trustees for the current trustees. It's about removal of trustees by co-trustees, but you haven't got the option to add trustees, for example. That could cover the interim trustee situation if that was added into this bill and then it would make that less necessary in the other bill. I haven't studied the new charity's bill in detail, so this is a bit provisional, but I think that they can run in tandem with these provisions. In addition to the general provisions in this bill, you would have the special provisions in the charity's bill about interim trustees and Oscar. I had a quick look at this. I didn't see any reason why they shouldn't run in tandem, but it was just a quick look. I haven't investigated this in detail. I think that those two can run in tandem. I would just like to be sure that the provisions enabling the conveyance of property to trustees and interim trustees would be sufficiently well defined to operate in both cases. Do you think that there should be some kind of explanation on the face of this bill referring to the charity's bill, so that interaction is understood going forward or would simply an explanation note suffice? I think that you could say that when you are referring to trustees here that you would also include interim trustees appointed under the charity's bill, that would be fine, and then I think that that would merge the two things. Although, as I said, I think that an expansion of this bill slightly could also help. The responses to the committee's call for views, Gillespie, McAndrew and the Law Society, thought that the circumstances covered by the grounds, especially the grounds unfit to carry out the duties of a trustee, should be clarified. Section 6 of the bill sets out various grounds under which the courts can remove a trustee. Do you think that the circumstances necessary to establish those grounds are clear enough as yet, or is further statutory guidance necessary? If you would like to add more detail, what would you like to see added, please? As I said, this is important because it could be other trustees, lay trustees, who are making this decision. What do they understand? What unfit means? I think that some respondents have raised a concern that this could be used fixatiously as well. I think that it is quite important that we have a common understanding of what is unfit. What is the meaning of that? What is the definition? In terms of challenging, if someone might present in a vexatious manner, how would that be taken up then? A trustee was being pushed out because the other trustees were saying that they were unfit. They could go to court to resist being pushed out, whether in practical reality they would want to stay on as a trustee in that circumstance is probably another matter, but they could resist in the court. Professor Paisley? I would like to make a comment to link that to the topic of the executor who has murdered the deceased. I understand that that is a provision that some might think would deal with that particular issue of an executor who has murdered the deceased. It actually does not, where a trustee is unfit to carry out the duties of a trustee. There is a power of removal, but the rule that has got slow in the case is that someone who murders a testator is not a trustee and is never a trustee. You might want to look at that, but I think that that is a provision that should be added to the bill to clarify what is already the law, because the consultation carried out by the Scottish Parliament before now has confused the area considerably. It missed the case law, it did not identify the principle that was relevant and it simply said that the law in this area is a mess and has referred to one book. The snag about having gone out to consultation with the Scottish Parliament is that it is now being quoted as if it is a decision. Going out to consultation at that point and coming to no decision has greatly influenced the advice given by solicitors who themselves do not research the law. However, those cases do exist and it would be a quick win for the Scottish Parliament and a sensible provision. It is utterly repugnant to all views of decency that someone who murders a testator should become their executor, but that provision does not in any respect deal with that. That is very important and a good pointer for the primary committee to look into that. I agree that this bill should have something on the homicidal executor. It would be easy to do, it would not have consequences, it would not be controversial, just do it. On section 6, removal of trustee by a court, I am more relaxed about this than perhaps Yvonne is. I think that this is workable and I do not think that it is going to cause problems. It is a matter of judgment. I note that where a trustee is unfit to carry out the duties of a trustee, in my experience the biggest fights come in trusts in what might be called constitutional trusts for churches. Someone will say that you are not fit to carry out the duties of a trustee because you do not adhere to this particular doctrine or whatever spin it is on the particular doctrine. I think that you are just going to have to trust the courts to get this right. You will not be able to legislate in detail for absolutely everything that comes about, so I am slightly more relaxed than Yvonne on this than I would have said to what George has said. It is always nice to have some minor disagreement between the panelist anyway. Thank you very much indeed for that. Just before we move on, I have a point of clarification regarding the consultation. It was a Scottish Government consultation and not a Scottish Parliament consultation. No problem. On section 7, a trustee does not get to participate in trust decisions under section 12 when they are incapable, so trustees can also remove a fellow trustee from their role under section 7 on the basis that the trustee is incapable. The risk of abuse of those provisions has been highlighted to the committee. Do you see merit in those concerns and, if so, how can we safeguard against those risks? Yes, I saw those comments. Again, I am actually fairly relaxed about the drugs that I am taking, but I am fairly relaxed about this. This is only going to happen when there is a majority against this person anyway, so if the trustee who is unsatisfactory or God is unsatisfactory, they cannot control the trust decisions anyway because the majority can make the decisions. They are, in a sense, out of it anyway, so booting them off the board is in a way not a huge further step. Sorry, that is not very coherently expressed, but maybe I should try it again. They are going to be a minority anyway because otherwise you would not get the majority to get rid of them, so if they are a minority already, they may be causing a bit of trouble, there may be a bit of a nuisance, but this is not ultimately going to make any difference in principle to what the trust actually does and decides. Again, I do not think that we are likely to see a lot of abuse or a lot of litigation arising out of this, but maybe I am being too optimistic. I would agree with that. Again, there are going to be individual cases where most of the problems in trusts and getting rid of trustees are not problems of law, they are not problems of property law either, they are problems of personalities. Generally, in my experience, someone among the trustees acts in a strange way and the others decide that they just have to get rid of this individual because they cannot work with them. Those do work their way out to their courts very occasionally, but I do not see any enormous mischief with the wording that I see in front of me. I think that that is quite good. I would tend to be that it is good to have a mechanism that does not involve the courts. Just with that, I mean, could any grave trustee raise the court action and the circumstances? If so, what do you think the legal basis is for that actual court action? Let's get a bit of anile of one of these grounds, and it's going to be a factual thing. If that did happen, it could turn nasty, and there could be nasty litigation, but that can happen as I'm trying to pursue my thoughts here. I've seen one or two of those in practice, and there is a statute—Georgian will remember the name of better than me—that if someone repeatedly raises litigation, they can be excluded from a vexatious litigant act. Trust law is the only circumstance where I have seen that litigation goes on and on and on, because an individual has been removed as a trustee and has decided they didn't agree that the grounds had been established. Those individuals then get the test for legislation and just continue for years. I discovered an individual in Kilmarnockshire, of course, who did that. It went on for about 20 years until he basically was disqualified under the legislation and then can we bring court action, provided he gets the consent of the relevant official. By and large, I think that that's right at the edge. It doesn't happen very frequently. When you see it, your eyes light up as an academic because it's something really unusual. This, I think, is reasonably good. To avoid being dismissed as a trustee, it would have to be a complete denial that these circumstances exist. I think that that could be done by a declarator or something like that. I'm just pursuing further on section 7. I know that there's been a bit of difference between the three of you in regard to the submission, so please feel free to critique each other. On this, section 7 of the bill sets out various grounds under which the majority of trustees can remove fellow trustees that we discussed. I just wonder should these grounds need to be expanded or altered? We've got in regard to incapable trustees, but should there be other grounds that we should put into the bill? I think that you should align that with disqualification for company directors and Oscar-sanctioned trustees and so on. Perhaps including people who have been the English equivalent of Oscar, the Charity Commission, who has been warned off being trustees there as well. I have got a conclusive view on this, but I inclined to think that what Yvon says is right, and maybe this should apply to both section 6 and section 7. I would agree with all of that. I would just add one qualification to that. When you do bring in a possibility of removal of a trustee by co-trustees on the basis that they've been convicted of an offence involving dishonesty, it might be difficult, as a matter of fact, to get evidence of foreign convictions to the satisfaction of a Scottish court. How would you deal with that, then? By and large, you just have to ignore it as the honest truth. You can't get the reliable evidence. You possibly would deal with it by another ground altogether. You would water this down and not require a conviction, you would require something else, but I don't like that. I like some certification of dishonest behaviour. I don't think that an allegation or an assertion of dishonesty is good enough. If I'm convicted in a foreign jurisdiction, is your concern that jurisdiction isn't completing trials properly? I'm just a wee bit confused. Presumably, if I'm convicted in each country, that would be on public record within that country. You don't think that's enough. I have no problem with establishing convictions for people within the United States of America or the Irish Republic or France or something like that, but if someone is coming out of Iraq or the records are gone, I'm deeply uneasy about that. I've come across a few situations with Pakistan and it's just impossible to get those records to the satisfaction of anyone. This is a civil matter, a trust or civil matter, so you could possibly prove that someone had been convicted on the civil standard in Scotland and have a disqualification apply without having to produce a certificate of conviction abroad, but it's pretty messy. I'm just looking at section 10, because a lot of those have crossovers here on discharges of trustees and discharges being separate from the resignation or removal of a trustee. At paragraph 93 and 94 of the policy memorandum, the Scottish Government highlighted a potential policy issue in relation to section 10 of the bill and a guardian consenting to a discharge of a trustee on behalf of an under 16-year-old in a small family trust circumstance. Do you have any concerns about potential conflict of interest that might be involved here? Is it a valid policy concern and do you have any insights as to how those could be resolved? Potman occurrence. In a small family trust, I have the trustees being members of the family, but whether it's a real important concern, I'm not very convinced. When they're acting on behalf of their under 16, they should be acting in their best interests, so they have trustee duties over them at that point. Obviously, as you say, it's not something that's unknown, because it's reasonably common. It's just that, because it is so common, the potential for an occasional breach of trust, if I could put it that way, might actually take place. Do you have any concerns about how the under 16-year-old or who might represent them? The alternative would be probably expensive. You'd either have to appoint someone separate to consider that person a curator of some sort, or give jurisdiction to the accountant, or something like that. You could build in extra protection, but it would come at a cost. I agree with what Yvon Llywydd just said. There are one or two court decisions on trusts looking at the issue of conflict of interest, where there are trusts that have been set up in family situations, and the court tends to the view that the conflict of interest rules, let's just say, are applied slightly less strictly, or at least are known in advance, because the person who set up the trust would have done that. We have recognised that those conflicts would have arisen, and it's just a bit impossible in many situations for the trustee to avoid the conflict of interest. If there's anything egregious, I'm absolutely content that the courts have sufficient powers under this bill to intervene and deal with it. That's excellent. Thank you very much to all of you for that. I know that the Scottish Government is keen to explore whether the problem might arise in practice when it was touched upon in the policy memorandum. Do you believe that there are sufficient legal safeguards in place to protect beneficiaries under the age of 16? I'd like to move us on to talking about trustee's powers of investment. I know that Ms Evans, along with the Law Society, has suggested that, in view of Scotland's increasing emphasis on net zero, that section 16 and 17 could be amended to allow trusts to adopt environmentally friendly investment policies, particularly when those kinds of investments might underperform compared to other investments. We're keen to hear from the other panel members their views about this policy idea. In terms of drafting, the Scottish Law Commission seemed to think that the bill would actually permit trustees to focus on environmentally friendly investments already, so I suppose a question for everyone is whether you agree or if you think the bill would need to be altered to achieve that policy outcome either partially or fully. Perhaps we could start with Professor Gratton. I'm very aware of these issues. I haven't researched the point. One preliminary point to make, of course, is that if the trustee says that investment in green investments is permitted or even required, then that is fine, but the issue is what if the trustee is silent? As I said, I haven't researched the point. I don't see my way clearly. I think I would probably just shut up there because I don't think I've got anything without further research. If you have a look at the existing law of trusts, there was a difficulty with Edinburgh City Council that decided to disinvest from South Africa when it disliked the disgusting apartheid regime in South Africa, and there's always a price to be paid for being principled. It's generally the case, I would accept, that those people who cut corners on morals and decency will make money. If the opportunity is there, coupled with an obligation that you must maximise returns, you do put trusts in a bit of a bind that they will have to do things that would be disconformed to their conscience. George's point comes in full square here. Many trusts are set up originally with the opportunity and the obligation on trustees to pick those investments that are compatible with the environment and principles and morals as they change. The issue could be addressed by looking at the possibility of changing trust purposes for those trusts that are already set up. When trusts are new, trust deeds offered by solicitors in Scotland will offer those people who want to set up trust. Do you want the ability to invest only in ethical investments? I think that that will work its way through fairly quickly. I'm reasonably sanguine that this will work out in the law of trusts. Do you don't see a need to amend the bill further to account for that? Do you think that it can be done in other ways? Yes, I think that it can be done in other ways. I feel a bit more strongly in support of this. I'm on the Law Society, Trust and Succession Committee, so it's me that's sped this point in to them. I think that it's quite important. I agree with Lord Drummond Young's evidence last week. I agree with him that you can imply this power from section 17, but I think that the legislation should expressly state that it can be a consideration for the trustees when they are making investment decisions. I think that this is important for future proofing of the trust legislation. There's also been a case in England by Butler Schloss against the Charity Commission that's clarified that their equivalent part of their trust law can be read as giving trustees power to enact ESG goals as part of their consideration of what to invest in. I'm particularly, as I've said in my written evidence, if that investment might not be as profitable as other investments or indeed might make a loss. I just think that fundamentally it would empower trustees, remind them if anything. You could say that this is just messaging, but I think that it's quite important to have this as a clear defined starting point. You're not leaving it to trustees to think, oh, this can be implied. We can interpret the law as including this. I think that a statement that puts that beyond doubt, because obviously in England they had the High Court case to clarify that. If we wrote it in, we wouldn't need to have a case to clarify that if someone objected. I agree with Lord Drummond Young when he said, obviously, trustees don't want them being cavalier in their investment choices, so it needs to be part of the full consideration of all the options. Equally, I don't want trustees to be too cautious by not wanting to consider what else they can do ethically, particularly in public trusts and charitable trusts, but also perhaps in private purpose trusts for some issues as well. I think that this could embolden and empower trustees to use the law in this way and prevent them from being quite so cautious and concerned about someone questioning their decisions on investment. Thank you very much, and could I, if the convener will allow, could I ask a follow-up? Thank you very much. Ms Evans, in terms of the practical way we could change this bill, we could amend this bill, you mentioned a statement, would that be for avoidance of doubt clause or how do you see it working practically? I think that you could add in in section 17 to have regard to the suitability of the trust of the proposed investment, and then you could say specifically including environmental, social and governance goals. Just a reminder that we're not simply talking here about financial goals. Thank you very much. I wonder if I can just follow up slightly. In a previous life, I was working with a trust who were trying to buy property or for another trust, and their view was that they always had to get the best for our use or highest price because they were scared. Would that help that situation as well as not only investments but actually selling off heritable property? You don't have to get the best price if you're part of my money onto another charity, or is there a way round that? There are quite a number of trusts who almost use that as an excuse not to sell to another trust because they keep saying they've got to get the best value. I think that there needs to be a balance when trustees are considering what they're going to do and why, and it shouldn't always be about getting the best price. They need to look at the trust's purposes and how best they can serve the purposes of that trust in their decisions. I think that it would help those sorts of situations. Thank you very much. Part 1 of the bill, chapter 5, is relation to duration of a trust. Law Society of on Evans and Turkin Connell have all made comment in terms of that. Professor Paisley, your joint response with Professor McPherson to the committee's consultation, commented on chapter 5 of the bill on this duration, which said that someone should be able to create a trust of any duration alike. We wonder whether sufficient consideration has been given to the consequences. This change could have significant economic impact as certain trusts accumulate assets over a sustained period of time and accordingly gain sizable economic power. Can you explain a wee bit more about your policy concerns here, please? I would have to say that in advance I am not an economist. I am a lawyer, so it may appear in the eyes of economists that what I am about to say is quite simplistic. Broadly speaking, once a trust is established and does gain assets, it obtains a certain amount of economic power. A trust in itself can become an entity that, if it is perpetual, can grow to a very considerable size and have a considerable amount of influence. It is the lack of investigative powers to work out what is going on inside the trust from the point of view of the state that worries me. I could tie that in with another part of the bill whereby some of the trust, particularly the beneficiary lacking trust without beneficiaries, are able to change their domicile. That worries me very considerably because if a trust that can last forever can be set up in Scotland and changes its domicile, whether it be to England or Northern Ireland or anywhere else, it then becomes absolutely impossible for the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament to find out who controls that trust through the register of controlled interests. It is the easiest thing in the world to set that up and then it just escapes the jurisdiction almost immediately. You will not be able to work out who owns land, you will not be able to work out who really has the benefit from assets. I regard that as a real difficulty when coupled with the change of domicile point. I do not think that you will be able to work out whether Russians own parts of Scotland or anything else about it. The economic point about a great accumulation of wealth is the type of thing that you will come across in antitrust legislation in America, where you have assets owned by individuals that are disguised by a trust that goes on for a long, long time, and you have transmission of intergenerational wealth that simply grows and grows. I do not think that, unless there is some counterbalance in some form to find out what is going on, that this is really good for the state. Do you suggest that a charitable trust, for instance, could be hijacked into being a private business but still using the frontage of a charitable trust? I suppose that it depends how dismal of you you have a human nature, but I would not say that for all charitable trusts. I think that charitable trusts in the main are absolutely splendid bodies and the people involved in them are great, but there will be a minority. I want to wait and unravel this if it goes wrong. You will remember the great difficulty with limited liability partnerships that were set up in Scotland and money laundering and everything else that was flushing through Scotland from Eastern Europe, and it had to be closed down afterwards. I am worried that those very lengthy trusts will be used by the super wealthy to avoid insight. I am not a Marxist or anything like it, but the state and the populace of Scotland have a legitimate interest in not having part of their economy controlled by entities that are unknowable and controlled by people who cannot find out who they are. I agree that the domicile point is important, and it seems a bit strange that a protector should be able to change the domicile of a trust. That is an odd one to me. The change of domicile or the law of the domicile is problematic, but I am worried about that as well. I think that we are all worried about that. If section 41 goes through, I think that the provision in subsection 5 does not apply to Charities in paragraph B. I do not think that that is right. I think that one or two of the consultees did not agree with that. Charities are probably the one type of trust where you do not really need controls, because I think that there are other controls in existence for charities. If you do need controls on duration, it is actually not for charities. I think that this is kind of 180 degrees wrong, and I think that there is also some drafting problems there as well. On the core question of duration, I am not very clear in my mind. I was reasonably persuaded by the Scottish Local Commissions report on this, but I do not have a particular personal view on it. I do think that the exclusion of charities in subsection 5 is the wrong way around. As we said earlier, I am concerned about the domicile point, which could make this worse, but the domicile point is one of those that is in itself human apart from section 41. That takes off at a slightly different angle from the duration element of it, but I think that that adds to our background and depth of knowledge here, and I think that it is worthwhile listening to that. If I can move on to section 6 of the bill, which makes a clear private-purpose trust, are permitted in Scots law and sets out certain requirements as to how these trusts can be run. Again, in policy terms, are the requirements of section 5 stringent enough to guard against possible abuse of these trusts? I would simply reiterate the point about domicile again. Limited companies cannot change their domicile. Why on earth should these people be able to change their domicile attempt? Why would they want to attempt to escape the scrutiny of the Scottish courts and the legislation in Scotland? The bill relates to Scottish trusts. If an attempt to change your domicile means that it is no longer a Scottish trust, it will set something up here, waltz off to somewhere else in the world, own Scottish land and you cannot find out who has an interest in it. It is as easy as that. That is completely contradictory to the policy of the register of controlled interests to find out who owns Scotland. If I were advising someone who was a Russian allig dark, I would go straight for this one. The change of domicile of this private-purpose trust, we cannot even work out who the beneficiaries are. How do you get hold of the documentation once they go abroad, as it were? What are the nature of the rights? As soon as you move from Scottish jurisdiction to English jurisdiction, the nature of the rights changes. They do not have the same type of trust in England. Again, I have no problem with private-purpose trusts. We have them already. We have many of them set up as individual foundations. There is even case law on this. I would have liked to have seen a little more exploration of this prior to bringing them in, but that is a purely academic point. I like this generally. I quite like private-purpose trusts, but I do not like the idea of changing domicile. I think that they should be locked into Scotland so that you can keep an eye on them. On private-purpose trusts, I have one or two hesitations, which I mentioned. I had to put in a very late consultation response. I do not have a ratio. Since then, I have been doing some work. I might put in a supplementary if that is any interest to you. On private-purpose trusts, I am concerned about the definition. People always talk about definitions and they nitpick with draft legislation. You can always do that, but I think that there is a significant issue here. It says private-purpose trusts, what is it? It is a civic purpose. All trusts in Scotland of every type have their purposes. Take a vanilla favour. It is a very ordinary private law trust. It sets up a traditional example of your widow for her life and her eldest son thereafter. Forgive me if you are using a traditional example. That has its purposes, told for the widow and the eldest son for their respective interests. I do not think that we have managed to demarcate what a private-purpose trust is from other trusts. In Scotland, English laws are a bit different. They do not talk about purposes in the same way as we do. The idea of all trusts having their purposes goes back. This is deep in Scotland's law and continues to be the case. This bill itself talks about purposes for trusts, not just private-purpose trusts. It can quite rightly so, because that is the way we conceptualise. More work is needed on what is a private-purpose trust as opposed to another sort of trust. I think that specific purposes does not really quite cut the mustard. That is my own view. I am ready to be shot down on that. My other concern is a bit more nebulous, but it is that the worry that you are setting up a kind of ownless trust, which, because it is ownless, is going to be immune to creditors' claims. In an ordinary private law trust beneficiaries have their beneficial interests and they can be attached by their creditors if they are insolvent. Here, in a private-purpose trust, it seems that you do not really have beneficiaries in that sense. I am slightly worried that this could be used for asset protection purposes. I mentioned that in my paper, the consultation response. I am not sure how well-founded this concern is. It may not be well-founded, but I thought that I would mention it. It is also by way of background. If someone with money wants to set up an asset protection vehicle, whereby there is a fund of assets to benefit their family, and no creditors can ever get that clause into it, there are other ways of doing this anyway. If you are well-advised, you are advised by clever law firms. There are other ways of doing asset protection. I am a little bit concerned about that. I have a bit of concern about private-purpose trusts. I am not against them, and I am just a bit concerned. Those are the two points I mentioned. The definition I do not think cuts the mustard. I am also a little bit concerned about creditors, but I may be wrong on both points. I am glad for that. If you are sending a supplement to your supplement, if you have any idea for definition yourself, or could point the committee towards a definition, that would be helpful so that if we are looking at amendments at certain stages, we are probably not the best people to be drafting definitions. If I can move on and perhaps direct this question initially at Ms Evans, I noticed in your response to the committee consultation that you said you did not think the standard of care applicable to supervisors and protectors was clear. I wonder if you could expand slightly on that and then do your colleagues agree with your comments? That is particularly in relation to professional trustees, because the standard of care will be higher for professional trustees. I would tend to think that protectors and supervisors might be professional trustees, and I just wanted to clarify that that was meant to carry across to them. Or, if you wanted to have a different, higher standard of care for protectors and supervisors, given how powerful they are, that would be useful. Do you think that there should be a higher standard of care on professional trustees? I absolutely agree with the exception to that, which is when you have professional trustees who are acting in a non-professional capacity, because those of us with a bit of trust expertise are always getting asked to come on to this committee or that committee and give off-the-cup advice, and we don't really want to be on the hook for that. We probably wouldn't sign up to those things. I think that that's a sensible balance between trustees' responsibilities and protecting beneficiaries. Is there an agreement again on that point? Move on to section 61 of the bill, and that's with regard to private trusts. Section 61 gives the power to the beneficiaries and others to apply to the court to alter the trust purposes of a family trust, and it sets out the default position that this power can't be used for 25 years. Given that the views on the 25-year restrictions have been mixed on the consultation and its default power only, are you all satisfied that it's the right policy decision to retain the 25-year restriction on the bill? I disagree with the 25-year restrictions. I think that it's quite a long time. I know that when I was in practice you would draft around that provision, so it very much depends what the person is setting up the trust for. Do they want maximum flexibility in which case you'd want immediately to have that power, or do they actually want to retain control for a period of time, in which case a longer duration would be workable? That doesn't override that possibility that they can choose a different period of time, but to me 25 years is quite a long time in the scheme of things. You've also got the quite complicated provisions around when does the time start for a trust that's in a will, and particularly if someone writes their will and then they live for a period of time before they die, when does that 25-year clock kick off? That's a bit of a complicated thing in there. I don't have any particular objection to that clause, but I would, in less than 25 years. It's just quite a lengthy period. It's far longer than the period of negative prescription, which applies to property matters. After what you'd bring it down to, well, just less than 25 years out. I couldn't tell you what it is, but maybe 10. 24 years, nine months. That'll do. I would agree with what Yvonne says. I don't think that I really have anything to add, but maybe something like 20 years. I haven't got anything really useful to add. I'll go back to one of the previous questions and the issue regarding the moving domicile. Would that be an issue for this in terms of the 25 years? The simple answer is scrap this moving domicile business. Get rid of moving domicile with my view. I don't really understand exactly what people are trying to achieve when their moving domicile would be perfectly honest. It strikes me as if you're letting trust be perpetual, just like a juristic body, like a limited company that could potentially live forever. Why on earth should trust be able to move domicile when a limited company cannot? We all know how trust can be used to emulate other legal relations, how they can hide ownership and so on and so on. There's a dark edge to moving domicile that I really do not like at all. I could suggest various things if you allow a trust to move domicile. You should have certain restrictions on it, but if you could have put it this way, once you allow a trust to move domicile, how do you see the documentation to see who's involved? The answer is you don't. You never get it back. It goes out into the world of the virus. I don't want Scotland to have that reputation. I'd like to move us on to section 65 and 66, expenses of litigation. The law society, while supportive of the bill overall, is concerned about the current policy underpinning section 65, which provides principles to determine how legal bills are paid for in trust cases. It says that trustees shouldn't find themselves personally liable for the expenses of litigation where there is insufficient trust property. The law society thinks that section 5 will deter people from becoming trustees and may lead them to unfavourably settle or abandon legal proceedings for fear of personal liability. We'd like to know if you share these concerns or if you can offer the committee any reassurance in this regard. I have not researched this. When I read section 65, it struck me as fine, but I have not really researched it. The only thing that I have noticed in section 65 is the detail, which is that the trustee may be liable that litigation is unnecessary. That's true if the trustee litigates, but if the trustee is the defender, it may be someone else who is litigating unnecessarily. I think that the wording doesn't work there, but more generally I don't have an answer. I have not really looked into this properly, I'm sorry. I haven't looked at it in good detail, but possibly those concerns, as narrated to us, are slightly overstated in the sense that for litigation there are various products available together with insurance that certain expenses can be covered or at least mitigated. That's all that I wish to say on that. There's possibly a little bit overstated. I can't recall exactly the point that the Law Society was trying to make although I said that it was part of their discussions in this. I'm not a litigation expert. I think that it might be more about the wording of the section than the actual substance, but I know that you're speaking to the Law Society next week, so you'll be able to ask them then. I'll leave that there and move on to part 2 of the bill, looking at section 72, the rights office. Just before we move on, in terms of the panellists, I've just indicated that we've got the law site next week. If the panellists do have any further thoughts on this between now and next week, if they wanted to send something into the committee, that would be very helpful. Sorry, I must say this. No, no problem. Thank you very much. I wanted to look at the issue of the right of a spouse or civil partner to inherit. Looking at the part of the bill that deals with succession law, a few different people who responded to the call for views, including Ms Evans, who we have here today, have said that a distinction should be drawn between spouses or civil partners who were left out of the law. They were living with the deceased person at the time of their death, and spouses or civil partners who had previously separated from the deceased person but hadn't actually divorced or had the partnership dissolved. The committee is interested to hear from our other panel members' views on this. I suppose that we are looking to find out how easy it is in practice to draft legislation making separation a key factor within the scope of this section 72, when sometimes in practice, even if a couple have finally separated, it may not be entirely clear at a given point in time. Practically speaking, how could legislation address this? At the current law, it is unfair, although it covers the situation of separated couples. At the moment, the prior right for the dwelling house is only available if the spouse was ordinarily resident. That is the term that is used. That can be unfair if the spouse has moved out and it is the deceased spouse who had kept on living in the house, so that can be unfair to them. They can miss out on £473,000 worth of house. The proposed new law is pretty liberal, in my view, because it could have been separated a very long time and then suddenly be able to inherit a very substantial estate. Although we could have a situation where we also have a cohabitant and they still would have a section 29 claim, that is a possibility. My other concern was about how that translates to cohabitant situations. If we imagine a situation where there is no spouse and there is a section 29 claim for cohabitants at the moment, the Family Scotland Act 2006, section 29, says that the maximum that a cohabitant can get is what a spouse would get. By changing the law here on what a spouse without children can get to everything, I think that the follow-on from that would be that a cohabitant should also be able to take everything. That would be my view as well, and I think that that should be updated and followed through on. The issue of ordinarily resident is quite tricky. I've always mentioned how it's referred to in section 9. This is not a matter that's addressed in the bill, where a surviving spouse has to have been ordinarily resident in the house to inherit it. If it's at all possible, I would like that to at least be explicated, because on many occasions, such as, for example, my own parents if they had been living in Scotland, when one of them died, the other was in a home, they certainly weren't ordinarily resident in the house in that case, except on a very charitable reading of the statute. But if someone survives and is permanently resident in care, how they can be ordinarily resident in the home somewhat troubles me, and it would be a very, very simple declaration to amend section 9 now in the course of this bill, there are other things like someone being in the navy, serving in the armed forces for a length of time, or even someone being in jail that might require a little consideration. But my primary sympathy is for someone who is in long-term care, never to come back. That's the problem. They're never going to go back to that house. First, just a sort of footnote. Obviously, when people separate, it's quite common for them to have a separation agreement. If they're not too embittered and hostile, you can quite often get a separation agreement. Separation agreements usually have a clause dealing with what happens if one of them pops their clogs prior to divorce. So, if you have that, that's well and good. We're really talking about the situation where there's a separation, no divorce and no separation agreement either, which, of course, equally commonly happens, no separation agreement. Mercedes asked about the separation reason to be definable. I don't think it's very problematic. You get the concept in the Family Law Act in relation to divorce, the time when they actually separated. It's a key provision. There will be slightly mushy cases, but I don't see this as a big problem. Rudi's mentioned the parallel problem of ordinary resident for the purposes of prior rights. So, of course, prior rights, so they would disappear in the situation where there's no issue if this amendment goes through, will so apply where there are issues and there's an intestines. So, it may be Rudi has a point there. So, just to sum up, I generally support this provision about where there's no issue and the surviving spouse takes his stay, but I agree with some other people if on and so on that there should be an exception where there's a separation. I don't see that as terribly problematic. Does that cover the question? Yes, I think it does. I suppose the issue that we're grappling within the committee is how we might allow for separation to be a factor, but without excluding some of the examples that were given by Professor Paisley. So, if there's surviving spouses not normally living with the deceased, there's a whole range of situations where that might occur. So, how do we define separation without it merely being sort of geographical because obviously there's lots of circumstances where people might be physically separated but still together, as it were? I think that that's doable. I don't think that that's terribly difficult. Just to add to that, Rudi, on section 9, I don't think that that can be opened up in this bill. That would be too big a job, but I think that that's doable in separation. I think that the drafters could tackle that one. Thank you. Thank you. There was really just to follow up Professor Paisley's opening remark, or one of his opening remarks, that he felt succession could go further in this bill. In case we miss that as we come towards the end of it, I just wonder whether you could expand slightly on those comments. In general, where do you go with succession? There's legal rights, discretion, forced provision and so on and so on. There's been report after report on this for 25, 30 years in the Scottish Law Commission consultations. Nothing's gone forward. This straightforward way to deal with it is to leave legal rights as they are but tackle anything that's obnoxious about them. In other words, to have some exclusion from legal rights in some cases. That would be a minimalist approach. It would be better than nothing in my view. I like legal rights. I don't like discretion generally. I think that legal rights work well. There's constant sniping at legal rights. Let's just get rid of what's obnoxious. That can't be that hard. For those of us who are less aware of legal rights, what would you find obnoxious about which category of individual are you wanting to remove from legal rights? English couple have a drug addict son in Newcastle upon Tyne. He steals from them. They move to Scotland to get away from this character. They acquire a Scottish domicile. They're subject to legal rights in their estate. When the old lady dies, followed by the old man, do the executors have to search for this guy in the gutters of Newcastle upon Tyne and pay him the money on legal rights? According to the present Scott's law, the answer is yes. I would take that out for a start. To pray devils advocate for a moment, Professor, that is a very subjective test because your morality may not be my morality. I suppose that you are better doing this than I am, but in regard to putting forward a piece of legislation, we need to have some kind of principle. We may not want to exclude that individual, but how do we make that decision in law? I would look at the civil codes of France, Germany, Poland or any of the continental civil codes where there are some circumstances that force provision can be avoided by a test data or in certain defined circumstances. There are not everything that we would want, but in large measure they provide the mechanism that you'd be seeking for that force provision is not absolutely bomb proof. In some of these legal systems there are extreme cases that allow force provision to get round and I would suggest that they should be looked at in the first place. There are usually a section of about four single lines that say that force provision can be avoided provided 1, 2, 3, 4 and that's the way I would deal with it. Just to follow us up one further and maybe your colleagues could answer, would one of the ways be to exclude it by having a will? If you write it directly into the will that you want to exclude legal rights, then does that go too far? No, that's quite a good idea, but we've got lots of sections in here on how you can get rid of paperless trustees. It's a similar type of thing. I want to get rid of my forced air because I'm writing it in the will and I've justified it on the basis of the ground set out in the civil code. You would not be able to say that I don't want someone to have legal rights on any ground whatsoever. You would have to fit in the recognised statutory headings. I think that you should look at succession more widely and more generally in all those areas, both test date and in-test date, considering legal rights. My view is that if there is a will that you should, as Professor Paisley says, be able to disregard legal rights in that sense and obviously you can't at the moment so you can end up in these sorts of situations. That's fairly sensible to me but I would definitely push for more. I know that it's very controversial and that's why it's not happened but the Scottish Law Commission has done a lot of work on succession that hasn't got anywhere. Like trust law until hopefully now, it's a mess. It's lots of different bits of legislation that have been added on and revised and tweaked as we've had civil partnerships and cohabitation and so on brought in so it's a bit of a mess. There are some areas of law where reform can get general consensus on the whole, such as the moveable transaction to Bill or on trust. There's controversial issues but on the whole you can get. But succession is notorious. You can't. What you can get consensus on and everyone will agree that the current law is unsatisfactory and you'll find the same answer in every other country in the world. If you go to Germany, everyone will agree that law is unsatisfactory. If you go to France, everyone will agree that law is unsatisfactory. What you can't get is consensus on what should replace it and that's true in Scotland. Succesion is, in a way, not surprising that this has gone on for years, a process of proposed reforms and not much happening. It's pretty intractable stuff. But yes, I'm not saying it shouldn't be looked at further. I think it should be looked at further but it's not going to be an easy job. I support legal rights in Scots law and I agree that it shouldn't be discretionary. But yes, there is a scope for reform. Before I bring in Bill Kidd, I want to follow on from that point. In your submission, you state that a full codification would have stretched the SLC's resources and would have considerably delayed the completion of the project and from a practical point of view the SLC had to stop somewhere. Passing the existing bill would not preclude the possibility of further measures at some point, sorry, at some time in the future. With that, in terms of the succession, with what's been proposed in the bill, notwithstanding some of the comments already today, do you think that that's a useful starting point to update some of the law in succession to then help with forward relativity? What's in part 2 at the moment? No, this is good, as I support part 2, though I would agree about the separation point and also the homicidal executive point, though that possibly should be part 1, because executives are trustees. But the homicidal executive should be, as Roddy was saying earlier, and that would be an easy thing to put in, I think. But it is a good start. Yes, and it is good to see some things happening on succession. Of course, the succession act of 2016, which this Parliament passed, that made some progress. I don't want to be too gloomy that progress has been made, and this will be further progress. Last week, the Scottish Law Commission told the committee that, in respect of part 1, it didn't think that full codification of trust law was necessary or desirable and that part 2 was making limited proposals for succession law. Nonetheless, in respect of parts 1 and 2, and you've pretty much covered a great deal of us, is there anything that has been missed out or not yet discussed that you think would be easy to add without interfering with the strong policy consensus that's currently associated with the bill? Is there anything that you want to stick your order in and, as I said, this could be done as well? I raise something with you, and it's a very straightforward point. Section 4, please, of the trusts element. Section 4.1 deals with the assumption of an additional trustee operating as a general convent of the trust property in favour jointly of the additional trustee and the existing trustees. That is just a technical point that could fit in very sweetly into this simple section, and it's the following fact. When any trust assumes a new trustee in Scotland, it can't easily grant a lease and it can't easily grant a servitude to derivative rail rights. Now, why is that important? They have to do an additional document called a notice of title, to which it attaches some taxes in the land register of Scotland registration dues as well. Now, with every other party, you can do a deduction of title. It's a technical point. A purely technical point is to put five or six words added into a document. I think that a trustee assuming new trustees should be allowed to deduce title. It'll avoid doing a notice of title. It'll make it simpler and they should be able to do it in a lease. Why a lease is important will many, many charities, sorry, trust lease out property for an income. If they assume trustees, they'll go to this notice of title every time. Wind Farm projects, for example, frequently involve landowners who are trustees who then have to do a notice of title, and that could be an enormous area of land and a lot of money for a notice of title. So, to sum it up, allow trustees to deduce title for the purposes of leases and servitudes and fit it in at section 4-1, section 4-1A or 4-2. That's interesting. Thank you for that. Anyone else? One thing is directions, so trustees' ability to ask the court for directions. I'm not sure if I missed this point, but it seems to have dropped out of the bill. I think that it's a useful thing. There was a recent case at the end of 2021, Vindex trustees, and the trustees there went to court. They proposed to do with an interpretation of a will. They weren't quite sure what charity was meant to benefit, and they proposed to give to a particular charity and then they asked the court if that was okay. The court said, well, we can't give you directions, although they gave a little bit of a wink and a nod that they were really acting reasonably. I think that it would be really useful to trustees to have that ability, rather than making decisions and then worrying about what the comeback might be. Secondly, to go on to succession, I know that we can't cover everything that we don't want to, but a fairly uncontroversial thing is that the cohabitation claim has to be done within six months. I think that a lot of people say that that is too short a time for a grieving cohabitant to make a claim. I know that the faculty of advocates feel quite strongly about that, so I would propose 12 months. I think that that's again an easy win, a quick fix. That's very helpful. I agree about petitions for directions. I don't know what's happened to that. There's been some confusion, I think, over the last few years on this point. It doesn't need to be looked at again, because I think that there should be provision about petitions for directions. I think that there should be, and I don't know quite what's happened to it. No, I think that I won't see any more just now. Professor Paisley, are you fine? I think that what you put in there was useful anyway, so that's fine. All three of you, thank you very much. That's very helpful, actually. Just before we do close, are there any final points that the panellists would like to highlight? I could go on end, as I said, but I won't. That's been a most enjoyable session, thank you. First of all, I thank the panel for their helpful evidence this morning. The committee may follow up my letter with any additional questions stemming from today's session. With that, I must again thank you very much, and I will now suspend the meeting briefly to allow witnesses to leave the room. Under agenda item number three, we are considering instruments subject to the affirmative procedure. An issue has been raised on the draft international organisations, immunities and privileges Scotland amendment order 2023. The order amends existing legislation to grant immunities and privileges in so far as they are within devolved competence to certain persons working with the international criminal police organisation, Interpol. The order states that the term, and I quote, member country has in the constitution of Interpol. This term does not appear in Interpol's constitution. It does, however, appear in the agreement between the UK and Interpol, which is referred to in the order. When asked about this, the Scottish Government responded with the term that member country has been used for consistency with the terms of the agreement and that this term has evolved into general use. This committee wished to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on reporting ground H on account that the meaning of the term member country could be clearer. Also, under this agenda item, no points have been raised on the draft police negotiation board for Scotland, constitution, arbitration and qualifying cases regulations 2023. This committee condemned this instrument. Under agenda item number four, we are considering instruments subject to the negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSI 2023-132. Under agenda item number five, we are considering an instrument that is not subject to any parliamentary procedure. No points have been raised on SSI 2023-131. Is the committee content with this instrument? With that, I will move the committee into private.