Chamber and committees

Is the committee content with the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

The committee will now move into private session for the next three agenda items. We expect to resume in public for the evidence session on the Judicial Factors (Scotland) Bill close to 9.45 am, but not before then.

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As colleagues have no final questions, Ms Allan, are there any points that you would like to put on the record that have not been covered this morning?

Will the bill aid the work that you do if there are cross-border issues? I know that that is a difficult question.

For our second panel today, I welcome Morna Grandison, director of interventions, Law Society of Scotland; Sandy Lamb, partner, Lindsays; and Ken Pattullo, partner, Begbies Traynor.

I remind the panellists not to worry about turning on the microphones, as they will be turned on automatically. If you would like to come in on any questions, please raise your hand or catch the eye of the clerks. There is no need to answer every question—you can simply indicate that it is not for you. However, if you want to follow up in writing afterwards, please do so.

Before we move to questions from the committee, I want, first of all, to thank you for agreeing to appear before us today. It is helpful for the committee to get the views of those practising as judicial factors.

For the benefit of the committee, can you describe the type or types of judicial factories that you are currently, and have been, involved in? Specifically, what are the general purposes of your appointment? For how long have you been, and do you usually find yourself, in post? How did you initially come to be appointed as a judicial factor by the court?

Morna Grandison, do you have anything to add?

We move on to a question that is really for Morna. The witnesses will be aware of the situation with McClure Solicitors, which ceased trading in 2021, when Jones Whyte was appointed to take over a substantial volume of case work on trusts, executories and powers of attorney. If the McClure case had been suitable for the appointment of a judicial factor, the committee is interested to know how that would have operated in practice, given the scale and nature of the case load that McClure Solicitors had. To give you some indication of that, it was estimated that there were more than 60,000 wills, 20,000 powers of attorney and about 18,500 trusts.

Who would have assumed responsibility for the on-going work required for existing cases in areas such as trusts and executories when it is presumably challenging for an in-house judicial factor to have expertise in all the specialist areas of legal practice?

Would it be quite common to divide up the existing business to regulated firms?

Agenda item 4 is consideration of two instruments that are subject to negative procedure. No points have been raised on the instruments. Is the committee content with the instruments?

Welcome to the 13th meeting in 2024 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I remind everyone to please switch off or silence their mobile phones and other electronic devices.

Under agenda item 1, is the committee content to take items 5, 6 and 7 in private?

Members indicated agreement.