Chamber and committees

That is helpful. We want to hear the views of smaller designated religious charities on what would happen if they were involved.

The requirement for charities to have a connection to Scotland is now included in the bill. Do the witnesses consider that to be an appropriate measure? Are there any concerns about that?

I asked the first panel of witnesses a question on giving OSCR powers to appoint interim trustees in specific circumstances where there are no trustees to be found or where trustees are not willing to act. Have the witnesses had any experience of that? Would it be a helpful measure in an emergency situation to support and stabilise a charity?

As nobody has a comment on that, perhaps we need to do more digging into where the idea has come from.

On maintaining a register of charity mergers to make it easier for legacies to be transferred in situations where the original legacy was made to a charity that has since merged and changed its name, do the witnesses have any concerns, or is it a tidying-up measure, as we heard earlier?

Is there anything around the legacy issue that we have not captured and that could be improved, or is it straightforward enough? Increasingly, charities look at charitable legacy giving, which might become a greater issue in the future with the impact of the bill and there potentially being fewer charities.

Thank you.

That is helpful. Thank you.

As no one has anything contrary to that that they want to add, I will move on to my final questions, on powers to appoint interim trustees in specific circumstances where there are no trustees. We have touched on that already. How, in practice, could that work? You have already said that it is sometimes difficult enough to find people, but how, in practice, might those powers present challenges as to who the interim trustees would be?

It is a question of whether the mechanism is an emergency measure more than anything. We will look into that further, I hope.

I turn now to a finance question on the merging of charities. I declare an interest in that I chair the Heart of Scotland appeal. Do the provisions make it easier for legacy charities and resources to be transferred in such situations? You might wish to add something about cases in which a charity has merged with another organisation or has changed its name, for instance.

Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us. What are your views on extending OSCR’s powers to allow it to undertake inquiries into former charities and their trustees? I will start with Rami Okasha.

I want to bring together some of the questions that Annie Wells, Mark Griffin and Marie McNair asked. My reading of where we are with being able to empower communities, which comes from the schemes that I have been involved with in my area, is that middle-class communities know how to use the process and are well organised in doing so. How can we further embed empowerment, especially for those who are furthest removed from decision making and the planning system, so that they can organise in a way that allows them to create genuinely sustainable projects that can take over community assets or make the system work for them?

The witnesses have touched on statutory partners throughout the session. Do you believe that anyone who is not included in schedule 1 to the 2015 act should be included? On the flipside, should anyone be excluded from those conversations? We can perhaps start on the positive and think about who should be included.

That is not just an issue with the 2015 act. In relation to the integration of health and social care, housing is excluded. It is about creating that opportunity.