Meeting of the Parliament 18 December 2025 [Draft]
I thank everyone who has contributed to this afternoon’s debate. I repeat my thanks to the Scottish Law Commission for the work that has gone into this project and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for its work in scrutinising the bill.
Contract law is important to our everyday economic life, and the bill will modernise important parts of the Scots law of contract while clearing up doubts that have arisen over a few years. It is clear from today’s debate that there is widespread support for the general principles of the bill.
I will touch on a few issues that have been raised today. On electronic communication, section 13 provides a general principle on when a notification, such as an acceptance, reaches another party. The provision is deliberately broad and flexible because it has to work in a wide range of circumstances and be capable of application to future technologies. I am pleased that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee agrees with the approach that is taken in section 13.
Section 13(4) gives a non-exhaustive list of examples in which it might be considered that a notification has reached the other party. However, in individual cases, that must be measured against the general rule in section 13(3). An automatically generated out-of-office response may make it unreasonable to expect the addressee to be able to obtain access to a notification without delay, and the party sending the notification can forward it to a different email address, if known, pick up the phone or speak to someone. It is, of course, open to parties to make alternative provision during their negotiation, and the bill allows for that.
As members have said, this reform is important. In my MSP capacity, I recently visited Royal Mail in Prestwick and heard first hand all the challenges that it faces. Our hard-working postmen all felt demoralised because all they wanted to do was to deliver for the community, yet post was not being delivered and parcels were being prioritised.
I will touch on Katy Clark’s comments on the need for guidance. Contracts are used widely, and it would be a significant undertaking to publish and maintain guidance that accommodates the breadth of purposes to which contracts are put. For example, the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland has suggested that guidance be prepared for the construction sector, but any such guidance would be of limited value because the standard form contracts for the industry would take precedence over the default rules in the bill.