Chamber and committees

If you could both write to the committee after the meeting, that would be helpful.

Good morning, and thank you for coming. My first question is for Alan Eccles. Concerns have been raised in the written evidence about the data protection implications of the bill. In the Law Society’s view, have those been adequately addressed in the data protection impact assessment and the legislative proposals, or does the issue need to be looked at further?

Does Nick Holroyd or John Picton have any comments?

One of the powers that OSCR will get if the bill becomes law is the power to appoint interim trustees. We heard the evidence on that from previous witnesses. Are there any practical concerns about how that might work, or are you all happy with it?

Perhaps I can bring in Steven Inglis, because the issue will affect local authorities, too. Are you concerned about extra costs that you might face?

Is there anything that our online witnesses would love to see in the bill?

Would you like there to be some sort of financial limit so that, if a charity was below a certain threshold, it would not have to do the same amount of work as a bigger charity? Could that work in practice?

Good morning. For the record, I declare that I am a member of the Church of Scotland and a trustee of a number of charities of various sizes.

I go back to Jason Henderson. I am not that clever, so I am sure that you will be able to help me here. I do not understand what “a connection to Scotland” means legally. Can you help me out? You said that that is a good thing. I understand that, but what is the legal definition of that?

So, you are happy with the definition. You think that there is enough there.

I have two final questions. First, are you concerned that there will be additional costs for charities because of these regulations? I am thinking, in particular, of smaller charities that do not have full-time staff and whether the process will be more expensive and time consuming for them. Perhaps Jason Henderson can start again.