Chamber and committees

If the Government will not consider carrying out a media campaign, will it consider writing to each trust after the legislation is passed, to make them aware that new legislation is in place, and to provide helpful links in any correspondence so that trustees can then look at those themselves?

Jeremy Balfour has a question about that.

Okay.

Under item 3, we are considering one instrument, on which no points have been raised.

Is the committee content with the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

In 2020, the Scottish Government was considering referring a specific project on succession law to the SLC, but there is no mention of any project on the substantive rules of succession law in the commission’s “Eleventh Programme of Law Reform”. How do you see the future of succession law reform in Scotland? The committee has heard evidence that there needs to be a great deal of change in that respect.

As there are no further questions, I thank the minister and her officials for their evidence this morning. The committee might follow up by letter with any additional questions stemming from today’s meeting.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.

I mentioned an individual who gave evidence to the committee. In the trust that they were involved in, there were two trustees, but that went down to one. That created a different dynamic in the discussion that we had in that evidence session.

I also note the points that Jeremy Balfour has raised. Those are legitimate issues of concern. We all want to ensure that the legislation is good and robust, that trusts will be managed appropriately and that beneficiaries will have access to required funds. Obviously, bills have to get paid, and if there ends up being only one trustee and they lose capacity, there is a concern about what will happen and who will pay the bills.

Mhairi Maguire of Enable Trustee Service and Madelaine Sproule of the Church of Scotland Trust said that, although they did not work with family trusts, they thought that 25 years could be too long for certain groups of beneficiaries. Could the 25-year period be amended or could a further subsection be added setting out a timescale that was more relevant to different types of beneficiaries?