Chamber and committees

We are often told that Scotland has two Governments. Whose responsibility would it be to encourage that manufacturing? Who has the levers that would encourage the manufacturing of offshore wind turbines and so on?

I want to ask you about a couple of comments in section 5.1 of your report, which is entitled

“Path dependency: what are we transitioning to?”

In that section, you refer to

“an academic/third sector consortium”

that said that there was a difficulty in breaking

“the path dependency between economic development and oil and gas related industries”,

with

“considerable resistance to doing so from companies, governments and communities, largely due to concerns and uncertainties over costs and impacts.”

You also quote the chief executive of Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, who said:

“no one is going to come in and pick up things like floating offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, etcetera, because right now it is not commercially viable.”

How do we ensure a just transition? How do we manage the move from oil and gas to renewables? What support is required from either the Scottish or UK Government?

I also want to raise the issue of the discharge of trustees. Currently, there is no automatic discharge. Where a debtor is either uncontactable, unco-operative or just cannot be found, that can result in a trustee being in post indefinitely. If the trustee is an insolvency practitioner, it can mean that there are on-going charges that eat into the money that is available for creditors. Both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Insolvency Practitioners Association have called for a solution to the issue. What is the Government’s view on the automatic discharge of trustees?

The other issue that came up was extending the timescales for serving a bankruptcy petition, where it is difficult to find the debtor or the person lives quite far away from the central belt, where a lot of the sheriff officers are based. Is that something that the Government is looking at?

James Clelland, do you have anything to add?

A number of issues about bankruptcy reform have come up during the committee’s stage 1 inquiry into the bill.

The first relates to minimal asset process bankruptcy. A number of organisations, including Citizens Advice Scotland, have called for that to happen more regularly. Currently, a person can apply for that form of bankruptcy once every 10 years, but there has been a suggestion that that should be reduced to once every five years, in line with the limit for full administrative bankruptcy. What is the Government’s view on that?

My last question relates to interest. I understand that a recent court case suggests that, where a bankruptcy is recalled, the law has been left in a bit of a state of flux, because interest may or may not be payable. Again, the Law Society and ICAS have asked for that to be reviewed and have suggested a six-month period, after which interest can be charged. What is the Government’s view on that?

Okay; thanks.

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.