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The second part of my question was about whether you think that there is sufficient capacity and expertise to handle that.

I will ask about the codification of trust law. The Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Law Agents Society have expressed their support for the bill overall, but expressed regret that it is not a complete codification of trust law. For the committee’s benefit, what did you see as the drawbacks of attempting a full codification?

The Law Society suggests that the starting point, or the principle, should be that trustees should not have any personal liability unless it can be shown that it is fair for them to be liable, so it is suggesting flipping that point around. Without summarising its position unfairly, from my reading it seems that it is suggesting that the principle that personal liability should be introduced is wrong.

Do you expect that there will be more legal action as a result of the bill or could the bill reduce the amount of litigation? Is there sufficient capacity in the sheriff court to deal with such cases?

I question whether we all think that what the minister suggested would be unfair. My argument in response to what the minister said is that, as business and commercial users of the legislation will get a serious benefit from its passing, should the fees that they pay to access the register not be used to help to protect the most disadvantaged in our society?

This piece of legislation has been kicking around for a number of years. It took a long time to get it to Parliament and a long time for the Government and Parliament to give it the priority that people in the legal and business communities felt it deserved. Does it not, therefore, seem unlikely that Parliament will find time to look at any small issues or tweaks that need to be made to the legislation without such a provision being in place?

If the amendment was tweaked at stage 3 to give an option to delay the review by a further year or two years, would that make it more flexible and more in line with the minister’s thinking?

During stage 1 of the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill, we got a bit of kickback from some witnesses and stakeholders, who said that they were concerned about bits of the bill and had not been asked about it. It is all there in the Official Report and was covered in the stage 1 debate. My question is not specifically about that bill, but will you give an assurance that, when SLC bills are introduced in future, the Government will do its bit to scope out any political risks associated with a bill generating public interest?

To be fair to Mr Arthur, he has been very helpful and engaged proactively with the committee on that individual example. I just wanted to get assurance that the Government is doing its bit to ensure that stakeholders are squared off on SLC bills. I am getting that assurance from you.

I am interested in asking, first, about Scottish Law Commission bills. The committee has been scrutinising two of them recently, but there was a suggestion in the 2021 programme for government that the Government wanted to implement a number of other SLC reports in this session. Are you able to enlighten the committee on the pipeline and timescale for the introduction of those bills and how the Government goes about prioritising the different reports?