Meeting of the Parliament 22 January 2026 [Draft]
I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I also repeat my thanks to the expert reference group for the work that it has undertaken to inform the development of the bill, and to the Economy and Fair Work Committee for its work in scrutinising the bill. Daniel Johnson, who is chair of that committee, gave an easy-to-understand explanation of many of the concepts in the bill. I was grateful for that to be put on the record.
Like others, I also thank the bill team. I assure members that, as a business minister dealing with quite a legalistic bill, I was often reliant on my bill team to explain many of the concepts behind it to me. As recently as yesterday, we were discussing bored apes. If someone had said to me that I would ever discuss the concept of bored apes with a bill team, I would not have believed them. Bored apes are non-fungible tokens—NFTs—which are digital tokens that are generally considered not to be exchangeable for a similar type of token. They are unique pieces of art, there are thousands of them and they are very valuable and can be worth thousands of pounds each.
That is what bored apes are: collections of those unique pieces of art. That is the changing world in which we live, and that is why this bill is before us today; we have to make sure that our legislation is catching up with what is happening out there and that we can give legal certainty in the sense of identifying property, which is what the bill is all about.
Digital assets are an increasingly important component of a range of areas, including financial services and the daily economic life of our citizens. By providing the greater legal certainty that is required on the property status of digital assets, the bill provides a significant legislative foundation for Scots law. As I said, it will enable Scotland not only to keep pace with legislative developments in other jurisdictions but to take better advantage of all the economic benefits and opportunities that digital asset technologies and innovations can offer. It is clear from today’s debate that there is widespread support for the general principles of the bill, which I very much welcome.
I will quickly address a couple of issues. On carve-outs, as Daniel Johnson and other members of the committee have said, many recommendations from the committee deliver good guidance on a number of issues. We will reflect on those, take them forward and respond to the committee in due course on all of them.
One of the issues that were raised was the prospect of carve-outs on things such as voluntary carbon credits. Voluntary carbon credits will be confirmed as objects of property if they meet the criteria in the definition of a digital asset that is contained in the bill, as would any other token. As objects of property, digital assets enjoy the protection of the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions under article 1 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights. However, we should all remember that the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions is not an absolute right. Therefore, should voluntary carbon credits meet the definition of a digital asset in the bill, they can be confirmed as objects of property. However, as we go into stage 2, we will reflect on the concerns that were expressed to the committee by some witnesses about what that would mean for the voluntary carbon credits that may arise from the ownership of land and so on.