Plenary, 10 Feb 2010

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Official Report 468KB pdf

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Ure Elder Fund Transfer and Dissolution Bill: Preliminary Stage

The next item of business is a debate on motion S3M-5672, in the name of David Stewart, on behalf of the Ure Elder Fund Transfer and Dissolution Bill Committee.

I am pleased to open this preliminary stage debate on the Ure Elder Fund Transfer and Dissolution Bill. It might not set pulses racing across the chamber, but it is, nevertheless, important. The bill is the 11th private bill in the Scottish Parliament and the first in the current session. From a personal perspective, it has been interesting to work on it and see how the procedure for public bills, which form the majority of our legislative work, varies from the private bill procedure.

I will set the scene for the need for the bill and then briefly recap some of the main points of the committee's preliminary stage report. Generally, private bills propose laws that apply to a particular individual, group of individuals or corporate entity. According to my research, about 11,000 private acts—or personal acts, as some of them are known—have been passed in the UK since 1539. Private bills were fairly common in the 19th century, but they are now very rare, because new planning legislation that was introduced in the 1960s removed the need for many of them. However, some organisations and bodies still need to take private bills through the Parliament.

The Ure Elder Fund for Indigent Widow Ladies is one such body. The fund was constituted by an act of Parliament in 1906 and is a registered Scottish charity. Its main purpose, as the name suggests, is the relief of impoverished widows connected with Glasgow—more specifically, Govan. However, the trustees of the fund are permitted to pay a maximum of only £25 per annum for each of the selected beneficiaries. In 1906, £25 was a reasonable sum of money, as you might recall, Presiding Officer. To put it in context, the average wage in the early years of the 20th century was about £1.40 per week. In the modern context, £25 per beneficiary per annum does not give the trustees scope to provide the benefit that they wish to provide, or that was intended when the fund was set up by Mrs Isabella Elder.

Mrs Elder was concerned—rightly, in my view—that the financial legacy should be put to good use and managed properly. At the time, the best way in which to ensure that seemed to be by setting up the fund through legislation. However, as members will be aware, charity law has been reviewed and changed in the many years since the fund was established and charities are now subject to tight and rigorous scrutiny. It is unlikely that a charity would be set up today under an act of Parliament. The charitable sector in Scotland is regulated by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. Our committee took evidence from OSCR and heard that, although there are several historical reasons for charities to be constituted by enactment, most of those reasons no longer apply because of legislative changes. As I said, few charities would nowadays be constituted under such an enactment.

To modernise the fund and maximise its benefit, it is clearly necessary to reorganise it. Therein lies the need for private legislation. The bill will transfer the property, rights and interests of the fund to a new charitable trust. Once the transfer has taken place, the bill will allow for dissolution of the fund and the repeal of the Ure Elder Fund Order Confirmation Act 1906.

The committee considered the steps that the trustees of the fund took in relation to reorganisation. We examined the pros and cons of alternative solutions and are content that a private bill is a reasonable way forward for the fund. We were reassured that the new charity will stay true to the spirit of Mrs Elder's intentions while giving the trustees the means to help more people with a more appropriate level of grant. The committee understood that, when more people can be helped, the trust will become more widely known and will attract more applicants, so Mrs Elder's legacy will indeed be put to good use. We were also reassured that the new charity will be well regulated and open to greater scrutiny and accountability than was imagined by Mrs Elder when she set out her intentions. Accordingly, the committee agreed that it would recommend to Parliament that it agree to the general principles of the bill.

Before I close, I will touch on two other issues in the committee's report. In taking evidence, the committee learned that around 185 charities were set up under legislation. Some could be in similar circumstances to the Ure Elder fund, requiring an act of Parliament to reorganise and move forward. It was put to the committee that there might be scope for a different process to help such bodies, which could be looked at in the context of a charity law review. The relevant minister, Fergus Ewing, has written to me and confirmed that the Scottish Government is committed to reviewing by 2015 the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005. The committee also recommends, should the Parliament agree today to the general principles of the bill, that the Parliamentary Bureau consider suspension of the relevant standing orders, which would allow us to leave out consideration stage and move to the final stage. As members are aware, consideration stage is about considering objections and amendments to a bill. As we have none, the committee considers that to be a sensible approach that will still allow scrutiny of the bill by Parliament at final stage.

I thank my fellow committee members, Nanette Milne and Shirley-Anne Somerville, and the clerks for their assistance in deliberations on the bill. I am confident that the bill is necessary and that it is appropriate for the Ure Elder Fund for Indigent Widow Ladies.

I therefore move,

That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Ure Elder Fund Transfer and Dissolution Bill and that the Bill should proceed as a Private Bill.

I echo some of David Stewart's comments: we as a Parliament need to think about the best way to deal with private bills such as the one about which we are speaking today. I understand why the Ure Elder Fund Transfer and Dissolution Bill has come before the chamber and that there will be a similar bill on the Memorial hall in Falkirk. We have to wonder whether it is the most cost-effective approach for charities or the Parliament in terms of managing time and resources. That is not in any way to take away from the bill's importance to the trustees and, which is probably more important, to the people who will benefit from it in the future. We must, however, bear it in mind that there might be a more effective way of dealing with such matters.

I am pleased to note that the trustees have chosen to retain the original intentions that were expressed in Isabella Elder's will that the new trust should assist widowed ladies in Glasgow as well as maintain the family burial ground in the Glasgow necropolis. The purposes of the trust will therefore encompass the prevention and relief of poverty, the advancement of health and education and the relief of people who are in need by reason of age, ill health, disability or financial hardship, all focusing on the greater Glasgow and Govan areas. I am also pleased that the purpose of heritage and culture will now be included.

Before concluding, I will pay tribute to the lady who wished the trust to be set up. Isabella Elder was a fine and upstanding woman in numerous ways, but made a particular mark on the life of Glasgow to which we should pay tribute. After the death of her husband, she became the sole owner of a shipyard in Govan that was recognised at the time as one of the world's leading shipbuilders and marine engineers—something that we should be particularly proud of for a lady of that time. She also had a keen interest in higher education, particularly the University of Glasgow. I am pleased to note, however, that she contributed to the building fund of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, which was the forerunner of the University of Strathclyde—a fine institution that I attended when studying for my first degree. I am glad that I have a small personal link to some of Isabella Elder's work that contributed to Glasgow.

I wish the trustees every success with the new trust and in their assistance of the people and new projects that they will begin in the future.

I thank the other members of the committee for their contributions to the debate. Although the debate has been short and not very well attended, that should not be construed as reflecting the importance of the bill to the trustees of the Ure Elder Fund, for whom it is an essential step towards helping them keep faith with the intentions of the fund's instigator a century after it was set up. The Parliament's agreement to letting the bill proceed is important to not only the fund's trustees but the greater number of people who would be assisted more meaningfully by the changes that are proposed.

As David Stewart said, scrutiny of the bill has been an interesting process for the committee, not least because of the background to it and the history of Isabella Elder, who was the architect of the fund.

As Shirley-Anne Somerville said, Isabella Elder was an impressive lady and had many ideas that would not be out of place today. For example, she started classes that taught people how to provide the best nutrition on a limited income—a common advertising theme for some of our supermarkets and something that could well be replicated for the many people today who live on convenience foods because they do not know how to cook.

Isabella Elder's contribution to society becomes even more remarkable when we consider the world of 1905—the year in which she died, aged 77—and the place of women in it. That year, Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin D Roosevelt. History records her work in the ensuing years to enhance the status of women and her work as a volunteer in the slums of New York. Isabella Elder had, before that, been doing similar work in Govan in Glasgow for many years, to the benefit of many underprivileged and impoverished women in that area. She was, indeed, a pioneer in many ways.

I will quote something that Eleanor Roosevelt said and with which I am sure Isabella Elder would have agreed. She said:

"One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."

How true that is.

Isabella Elder's school for cooking and domestic economy led to lectures for women on clothing cleanliness and how to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, and then to the provision of a district nurse to give instruction to her classes. Again, that is work that would not go amiss today.

She took a particular interest in promoting opportunities for women in higher education and she set up a medical school for women at a time when women were rarely educated to such a level. When women were finally admitted to universities, the first students from her school were able to graduate. She bore the whole expense of building and furnishing a cottage hospital in Govan and the subsequent running costs: largesse, indeed.

Elder park in Govan was provided by Isabella Elder when she bought land opposite her late husband's shipyard. She designated the park as a recreational space for local people.

A great deal of that good lady's work was directed towards the further education of women and to improving the health and wellbeing of the people of Glasgow.

I think that Mrs Elder would have approved of the way in which the trustees of the fund have resolved to carry on her work and legacy by modernising the fund to help as many people as possible. I hope that in the future many deserving women will derive significant benefit from the fund, as Isabella Elder intended when she set it up as a tribute to her brother and her husband.

I urge the Parliament at decision time to agree to the general principles of the bill and to agree that it should proceed as a private bill.