The EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill completed its passage through Parliament and received Royal Assent on 16 March. On 29 March, the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the European Union, Tim Barrow, handed over the Prime Minister's formal letter of notification under Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union to the President of the European Council, thereby triggering the withdrawal process. Inevitably, however, the period since the last report was dominated not so much by Brexit as by the unexpected General Election.

This report covers the first three groups of sessions of the new General Synod elected in 2015. The previous Synod having completed its legislative business and the inaugural group of sessions of a new Synod customarily being short, legislative business only really got under way at the February 2016 group of sessions.

The General Assembly met in Edinburgh from 21 to 27 May with the Rt Revd Dr G Russell Barr BA BD MTh DMin, Minister of Cramond in the Presbytery of Edinburgh, installed as Moderator. This year's Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly was again Lord Hope of Craighead KT PC. Lord Hope served as Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General and was subsequently Deputy President of the Supreme Court. The most significant piece of business relating to the interface between church and civil law again related to same-sex relationships, as outlined below.

In his address to the April meeting, the archbishop raised questions about the high business rates placed on the steel industry in the UK and the crisis faced by Welsh steelworkers, the elections for members of the Welsh Assembly and the forthcoming referendum on Europe. He reminded the Governing Body that the right to vote was won at a price and that, as Christians, we had a moral duty to exercise that right. The archbishop, considering the recent death of his wife, Hilary, also spoke of bereavement and dying in general. Palliative care and the hospice movement had come a long way in fifty years; if he had not already been persuaded by the arguments against assisted dying, watching the care and the gentleness of hospice nurses, for whom nothing was too much trouble, would have convinced him.

This year's General Synod, the second meeting of the triennium, was held in Dún Laoghaire, to the south of Dublin. It was a hotel conference venue, albeit one new to the Synod meeting. The Synod passed Bills relating to the areas of episcopal election and part-time ministry, as well as the ongoing areas of charity legislation and pensions. A Bill relating to diocesan boundaries was withdrawn.

The General Synod met at St Paul's and St George's Church in Edinburgh from 9 to 11 June 2016. In his charge to Synod, the Primus, the Most Revd David Chillingworth, reflected on the injunction of St Paul to ‘please God, who tests our hearts’. As the Synod prepared to consider canonical change in relation to marriage, he asked how the Church was to continue to express the love and unity to which it was called by God. During the preceding year, deep pain in relationships had been experienced both in the Anglican Communion and with the Church of Scotland and Church of England – and there was a need to explore whether the Scottish Episcopal Church itself might have contributed to that distress and to shape a response that ‘pleased God, who tests our hearts'. In the light of the (then) forthcoming referendum on the European Union, the Primus suggested that it was not the wish of many in Scotland to use national borders to protect economic privilege. If the referendum took the UK out of the European Union, it could have profound effects on the unfolding story of the new Scotland and of the UK as a whole.