Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2026 [Draft]
It gives me pleasure to speak in the Parliament for stage 3 of the Contracts (Formation and Remedies) (Scotland) Bill on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. We will be supporting the bill at decision time.
I often wonder if we truly take advantage of the powers that we have in this Parliament to make substantive law that actually takes steps toward helping the people that the legislation is meant to help. We have a vast range of powers in the Scottish Parliament and I am not always sure that we produce good law. However, in this instance, I can whole-heartedly state that this Scottish Law Commission bill will do exactly what it says on the tin for the people who will need it most.
As I mentioned in the stage 1 debate on the bill, I have not previously had the pleasure of working on a bill that was supported by pretty much everybody who gave evidence. I again take the opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the evidence sessions, and my additional thanks go to the clerks and staff for their hard work.
It has been a pleasure to work on the bill with the minister, who has been, as she stated, constructive and accommodating all the way through the process. It has been a joy.
As we have already heard from the minister, the bill will make provision regarding the formation of contracts and remedies for breach of contract.
Many stakeholders have found the legal framework around contract law difficult to navigate, and the Scottish Law Commission’s work leading up to the introduction of the bill concluded that some parts of contract law are unclear, difficult to find and in need of modernisation. The bill rectifies that.
As I said, the bill is universally supported. Business wants it. The Federation of Small Businesses supported the bill’s overall aims, with Colin Borland stating,
“As a general principle, anything that is done to codify, simplify or clarify the law and to make it easier for us as laypeople to understand has to be a good thing”.—[Official Report, Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, 25 November 2025; c 7.]
We cannot argue with that, surely.
Academics want it. Professor Stephen Bogle and Professor Tom Johnson from the University of Glasgow supported the proposed reforms. They said:
“Considering the landscape of contemporary litigation in Scotland, it is increasingly evident that reform is needed”.
Furthermore, lawyers want it. The Law Society of Scotland supported the proposed reforms when it stated:
“it is clear that a new statutory regime has the potential to offer benefits to certain parties by offering users a means to form agreements without a detailed understanding of case law or wider academic and institutional writings.”
In layman’s terms, the bill makes it easier to understand the legalities around contacts, understand the implications of them and, if needed, provides the ability to contract out.
Too many times, there is an inequality in contracts, in which one party is favoured over the other. In certain cases, might is not always right. Given the red tape surrounding business today and the many difficulties that businesses have to cope with in order to survive, anything that we can do in this place to minimise bureaucracy has to a good thing.
I do not have too much to add in the time remaining. If I had to note any small negative in relation to the bill, it is the time that it has taken it to come before us. I mentioned that in the stage 1 debate and I am mentioning it again, as the issue has not really been highlighted. The Scottish Law Commission had been looking at issues related to contract law since its inception in 1965, and it made its recommendations in 2018. We are now in 2026. Before the bill becomes an act, I must ask, especially as it was such a non-contentious bill, why the heck did it take so long?