Meeting of the Parliament 22 January 2026 [Draft]
I echo my thanks to all those who have been involved—including those who submitted evidence to the committee, those who support the committee and the Government and the bill’s drafters—in what is possibly one of the shortest bills that has made its way through the Parliament. No matter how short a bill is, it still needs the right level of scrutiny. It is important that, as we increasingly move into a digital age, scrutiny takes place.
The debate allows me to contemporise the discussion about market overt. I am doing so for a practical reason. If we cast our minds back to medieval times, when people travelled by foot or horse, we know that there were nefarious individuals who stole from people and sought to profit by selling to others. The challenge was that it was very hard for the purchaser to know whether something was stolen and who was selling it. What developed was a legal fiction in which, if something was bought in public in a certain market during the hours of daylight, ownership would transfer.
I reference that because of the challenge that we are talking about in relation to the bill: the need to have transparency in the passage of ownership and the need to have commerce that works. The medieval answer was that, if there was a certain market, there would be good ownership. The answer in the bill that is in front of us today is, “Oh, you’ll be all right.” Evidence has been submitted to the committee about the authority for doing that. The committee’s report makes reference to it, and it is an important element for the Government to consider at stage 2. That problem sits at the heart of a number of areas in which there have been requests for guidance and understanding, so it is important that we know the view that the Government intends to take. Other areas must be considered, too.
I seek the Government’s assurance that it will reach out, provide guidance and do the thinking, particularly about the wider questions that surround digital assets. We have talked about the situation with regard to insolvency and the reserved nature of much of that, but there are also questions of international law, diligence, security, borrowing, civil procedure and taxation with regard to digital assets.
I welcome the committee’s call for a programme of future reform, and I echo the calls for Scotland to remain aligned with developments across the UK and internationally. I confirm that Scottish Labour will support the general principles of the bill, but I urge the Scottish Government to act on the concerns that have been set out by the Law Society of Scotland, the committee and others, to ensure that the bill not only is workable on paper but is effective, fair and future proofed.