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Thank you.

—the permit or the licence, that is a defence, and you intend to lodge amendments to ensure that there is a defence, as there is in section 40 of the 2014 act.

I am keen to go over how much work the Government has carried out in its consideration of unintended consequences and the fact that there is apparently no defence in the bill that would prevent a regulator or a consenting body from being held liable for ecocide. I imagine that you will lodge amendments to change that. If you do not, I would certainly consider doing so.

In the past few weeks, the committee has written to local authorities at my behest. We have had a number of responses, which are somewhat concerning—in some cases, they are very concerning. Fife, for example, has a very experienced head of planning, Pam Ewen, who says:

“We support the intent of the Bill but strongly urge that:

Explicit defences for consented/licensed activities are included.

Enforcement responsibility remains with specialist agencies, not local authorities.

Definitions and thresholds are clarified and aligned with existing legislation.

Adequate resources and guidance are provided before implementation.

Without these changes, the Bill risks creating legal uncertainty, unrealistic expectations, and significant operational and financial burdens on local authorities.”

Renfrewshire Council has also responded, and it talks about the possibility of criminal prosecution influencing the approach of the planning authority, which could put the plan-led system at risk. The letter goes on to say that, if some of those impacts are not dealt with,

“Officers may be more inclined to decline to use delegated authority where there is a fear of a future criminal charge”

and that

“Elected Members on the board/committee may be more inclined to refuse applications”.

It goes even further by saying that

“Elected Members may not be willing to serve on the planning board/committee for fear of being involved any a decision which may later be the subject to criminal charge.”

That could lead to a huge amount of bureaucratic clog in the planning system. It could lead to huge amounts of, in some cases, quite small applications landing on the desk of the planning minister, for example, who might well think to themselves, “What do I do here? Is there a chance of me facing prosecution at a later date?”

I imagine that you will seek to amend the bill to prevent a regulator or consenting body from being held liable for ecocide, but have you looked at the issue in enough depth to be confident that we could deal with it through amendments, which would have to be lodged quite quickly if the bill proceeds any further in the very short period that remains of the parliamentary session?

I understand that the committee has received more correspondence this morning, which I have not yet seen, and I think that more will come in. The bill requires very serious scrutiny so that we can get rid of any unintended consequences, some of which you gave an indication of earlier.

Are there any other unintended consequences that we have not discussed this morning that need to be dealt with by amendment? Do you agree that, if the bill proceeds, for us to get it right, we should also look to amend aspects of section 40 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014?

I will ask about acquiring and transferring ownership. Some aspects of that were covered earlier, in the discussion about the Westminster bill, including the third classification that Lord Hodge mentioned.

The Law Commission in England and Wales considered the concept of control of digital assets to be too nuanced to be helpfully codified in legislation. Do you think that the bill benefits from the use of control as a concept?

It could be argued that exclusive control is a legal fiction in many real-world situations relating to digital assets—for example, when private keys are shared or assets are held in digital wallets. That leaves much to the presumption of exclusive control in the bill. In your opinion, is that the best way to legislate?

I have one more question, which may well be a daft-laddie question. We have talked about artificial intelligence coming into play. Professor Fox, you talked about a “person” having shared control. What if some of that shared control is held not by a person but by artificial intelligence?

Thank you.

I want to have a wee look at how the plan is communicated to the public, who are often quite confused about these issues and who face messaging from various polarised viewpoints. I have been sitting here thinking about how we would communicate what is going on at the committee this morning. If we put it into a play and got it out there, we would baffle people. What needs to be done on the public messaging around the plan?

That is the bottom line. To take folk with us, we have to get that message across, without a doubt.

I am interested in the fact that lots of folk have spoken about vision. Dr Dixon talked about consensus and the fact that there has been consensus in this place. However, I think that that consensus is disappearing and that, in the next session, this might be a very different place when it comes to such discussions. Where does logic, rather than vision, fit into our communication?

Professor Roy, your mic is still on, so let us go to you first.