Law changes

As members of the Scottish Law Commission’s external advisory group on its moveable transactions project and practitioners and academics active in the field, we would urge the Scottish Government to accelerate introduction of the reform proposals made by the Commission last December, following their omission from the Scottish Government’s recently announced programme.

We entirely agree with Bruce Wood’s article published in the Scotsman on 5 November that these proposed changes to the transfer of debts and to security over equipment, intellectu-al property, shares and other assets are necessary to bring our law up to date.

These are not dry lawyers’ questions but the modern legal infrastructure required to enable small and medium sized businesses more effectively to access finance backed by the assets they have – debts due from customers, their stock and equipment and the intellectual property arising from their innovations. Scotland’s legal infrastructure is well behind most other countries here and this potentially impedes progress of initiatives to boost our economy and our desire to be one of the best places to do business.

DR ROSS ANDERSON

Advocate

GRANT BARCLAY

Glasgow University

CHRIS DUN

Brodies

JONATHAN HARDMAN

Dickson Minto

ANDREW KINNES DR HAMISH PATRICK

Shepherd & Wedderburn

DR JOHN MACLEOD

Edinburgh University

DR ALISDAIR MACPHERSON

Aberdeen University

COLIN MCHALE

Dickson Minto

TOM SPEIRS

Addleshaw Goddard

BRUCE STEPHEN

Brodies

SCOT WORTLEY

Edinburgh University