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Amendment 13 introduces a new section to the bill, albeit that it is on a topic that has previously been subject to full public consultation. Amendment 13 seeks to clarify the existing provisions in the 2005 act that relate to the reorganisation of endowments held by what are often referred to, for shorthand, as statutory charities—that is, charities that are constituted under royal charter or royal warrant or an enactment. An endowment is property where the capital has to be preserved and only the income is spent on the fund’s charitable purposes.

For most charities, if the charity’s constitution would not allow it to take an action such as varying its constitution, transferring its property to another charity or amalgamating with another charity, the charity can apply for a reorganisation scheme to allow it to take that action, if OSCR grants consent.

However, those rules are turned off for statutory charities, subject to a specific exception relating to endowments. The wording of the existing provision has caused confusion for some statutory charities and OSCR about the extent to which an endowment can be reorganised by OSCR. In some cases, that has meant that the only way forward is through the use of private bills to reorganise endowments. My amendment 13 is intended to resolve that issue and to allow endowments that are held by statutory charities to be reorganised, as we believe the 2005 act always intended.

It is not a straightforward area of the law and, as such, I anticipate that there might be a need for further technical refinement of the proposed new section at stage 3, once detailed feedback from charities, legal professionals and OSCR has been received.

Given the complexity that is involved, there are also wider issues around statutory charity reorganisation that would still need to be considered in the post-bill review. However, amendment 13 provides a solution in the short term for some statutory charities, and they should see significant financial savings by no longer needing to reorganise through a private bill.

It is right to deal first with fixing the rules around endowments, as there is a long historical precedent for those being allowed to reorganise more readily, and there is existing provision on which to build. It was also the current exception relating to endowments that OSCR asked us to clarify in its 2018 paper with the proposals that form the backbone of the bill.

Amendment 13 contains two new regulation-making powers for Scottish ministers. The first is a power to adjust the definition of “endowment”, should practical experience of the new provisions give rise to any issues.

The second power gives ministers the ability to disapply—through regulation—those changes in respect of particular endowments or charities, or classes of endowment or charity. The latter aspect is considered necessary in order to ensure that, where there are policy reasons for restricting the reorganisation of a particular endowment or charity, that can be achieved.

I hope that members will agree that we should do what we can do now to refine the provision on that topic that is already in the 2005 act. Then, in the post-bill review, we can turn to the much wider question of reorganisations that do not involve endowments.

I move amendment 13.

Good morning. I will make a brief statement on the purpose of the SSI.

The SSI relates to our work to implement the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020, which introduced mixed-sex—that is, opposite-sex—civil partnerships in Scotland. Some 939 mixed-sex civil partnerships were entered into in Scotland in 2021 and 2022. We have been implementing the 2020 act in stages.

When the Scottish Government introduced the bill that became the 2020 act, we recognised that the introduction of mixed-sex civil partnerships could increase the risk of forced civil partnership. We do not consider that the risk of forced civil partnership is nearly as great as the risk of forced marriage. However, there is a range of protections against forced marriage, and we wanted to close any loophole that might allow those protections to be circumvented by forcing someone into a civil partnership instead. Therefore, section 13 of the 2020 act extends the forced marriage criminal offence to cover forced civil partnerships, too. I have just signed the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 (Commencement No 5) Regulations 2023, which will commence section 13 of the 2020 act from 30 November 2023.

We noted in the policy memorandum accompanying the bill that part 1 of the Forced Marriage etc (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 contains civil measures on forced marriage, including forced marriage protection orders. We noted that we intended to introduce an SSI to extend forced marriage protection orders so that they can cover forced civil partnerships, too—that is the SSI that is before the committee. Those orders can contain prohibitions, restrictions, requirements or other provisions that are intended to protect someone from forced marriage. The provisions in the 2020 act to extend the forced marriage offence, and this SSI to extend the civil measure of forced marriage protection orders, provide a legislative package against forced civil partnership.

The SSI also makes two technical changes. First, it amends the definition of “marriage” in the 2011 act to include belief ceremonies. That is consequential to the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014, which included provision for the solemnisation of marriage by authorised celebrants of belief bodies.

Secondly, the SSI provides for decrees of declarator of nullity of marriage, when they are granted by a sheriff, to be included in a register of divorces that is operated by National Records of Scotland. That reflects the fact that the 2011 act extended jurisdiction in proceedings for declarator of nullity of marriage to the sheriff court; previously, those proceedings could be heard only in the Court of Session. Declarators of nullity are declarations by the courts that, in the eyes of the law, the relationship never existed.

If the SSI is approved by Parliament, our intention is to bring it into force on 30 November, to coincide with the forced marriage criminal offence being extended to cover forced civil partnerships.

That outlines the purpose of the SSI that is before the committee.

No.

For a start, we have not cut the funding for the poorest communities.

What we have done, as agreed with COSLA, is look at where the poorest communities and the poorest children are, and we have put the funding to those areas—and, yes, that is across the 32 local authorities.

The exceptional circumstances application would take place once we were in-year and looking at changes to teacher numbers, either up or down. Councils would come forward and suggest that there were exceptional circumstances for a change. No council will be making an application now, because they are setting their budgets and it would be inappropriate for a council to do that just now. That is what the in-year discussions are for, as I just went through with Mr Rennie. They are about dealing with any variations to teacher numbers. That is the point for us to talk about exceptional circumstances.

As I have said, the letter was the final piece that came after a number of meetings between the Scottish Government at ministerial level with COSLA spokespeople and at official level before that final opportunity was given to see whether more could be done in a different way.

We were very clear that we wanted to see progress, but we were also very clear with COSLA that that could be done in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that that approach was required. The reason why that was required was obviously the teacher census, which sparked concerns about what happened in the previous year.

For clarity, I highlight that the proposals are from officers, but we saw a number of councils coming out with proposals for the 2023-24 budget that were exceptionally concerning in terms of what they would mean for teacher numbers.

If we put those two things together, that is why we were on a trajectory—

That will all be from the teacher census, in essence. The census gives the national statistics on teacher numbers. The numbers on pupil support assistants are not published in December; as I referred to previously, they are published in March. When you look at where the baseline is for each of the years and where the numbers that I quoted came from, you will see that those are from the teacher census.

In the letter that I have just issued on teacher numbers, I recognise that pupil numbers have decreased, and are expected to decrease in some local authority areas while some others will experience an increase. It is clear that, in certain local authorities, it would be possible keep the pupil teacher ratio the same with a reduction in teachers. That is something that local authorities could look at.

However, the challenge that we face is that we also want to improve attainment, and it is clear—the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s research supports this—that teacher numbers and teacher quality have an impact on attainment. Therefore, a decreasing pupil roll is not necessarily a reason to reduce teacher numbers, particularly if an authority is considering how it can support pupils from the poorest communities or pupils who, for whatever reason, are struggling in school. Teachers can be used in different ways.

The pupil teacher ratio is important, but so, too, is how the overall teaching workforce is used. When it comes to expenditure, whether pupil numbers go up or go down has an impact on the funding that goes to local authorities.

When it comes to the challenge authorities, parts of my letter to local authorities recognise that we might need to take into account exceptional circumstances. I mentioned recruitment and retention earlier; we would take cognisance, too, of the changes to challenge authorities.

I fully appreciate the difficult decisions that local authorities have to make. I said in my opening statement that local authorities have very difficult decisions to make, just as the Scottish Government did as we put our budget together. We have—this is a joint understanding—a desire to improve attainment. I have yet to see any suggestion that reductions in teacher numbers or pupil support assistants would help to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

If we want to get those education fundamentals in place, we have to take the decisions. If we have a joint understanding about why money has been put into a budget, it is not surprising that local government would wish to provide further challenge to local authorities to ensure that that money was spent in that way.

Local authorities have to make very difficult decisions on other areas of their expenditure. However, to go back to the point that we made earlier when we were discussing the budget that was set yesterday, the Deputy First Minister introduced additional expenditure for local government of more than £700 million, which is a substantial real-terms increase. The decisions that we have taken allowed that to happen.

As I mentioned earlier, no costed proposals came forward from other parties to suggest how that funding could be increased.

The Government target remains at 3,500 by the end of the year. We have to work with local government colleagues once budgets are set to analyse further projections in-year, and we also need to look at what the ITE number will be. That is not a one-stage process but an iterative process that will go on throughout the year. The Government’s commitment to those numbers remains.