Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Official Report 1089KB pdf

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Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-16892, in the name of Mairi Gougeon, on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill at stage 1.

15:20  

I think that today is a good day. Spring is upon us, and it is a time of renewed hope and optimism. It is on that note that I am proud to open today’s debate on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which marks the next step on our land reform journey.

I thank the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, the Finance and Public Administration Committee and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for their detailed scrutiny of the bill, and I thank everyone who gave evidence during stage 1. Hearing from a wide range of grass-roots voices from right across Scotland has been invaluable, and it is a mark of the strength of our Parliament. I look forward to working constructively across the chamber as we progress this important bill, and I hope that we can all agree to support its general principles, as the majority of members of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee recommended in its stage 1 report.

Land reform has been a long-standing priority of the Parliament; indeed, it was one of the driving forces that led to the Parliament’s reconvening in 1999. The bill marks the next staging post on the land reform journey, as it builds on the land reform acts that have been passed by successive Scottish Governments.

I am sure that members across the chamber will join me in paying tribute to past and present members of our Parliament, stakeholders and individual campaigners who have worked tirelessly to shape and implement positive and progressive land reforms that have helped create opportunities for communities and individuals across our nation. They include pioneers of community ownership in places such as Eigg and Assynt, who demonstrated a positive alternative to the status quo—that is, that communities, crofters and tenants did not have to accept being frozen out of decisions that affected their lives.

In Scotland, we have one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in the world, with 421 landowners owning 50 per cent of privately owned rural land. We are an outlier in comparison with Europe, where more diverse land ownership is the norm. That long-standing unfairness and the negative impacts on our rural communities have previously been raised by the Scottish Land Commission and others. Scotland’s land must be an asset that benefits the many, not the few, and it must play a leading role in sustaining thriving rural communities, tackling the climate change and environmental crises and continuing sustainable food production.

The majority of people who gave evidence to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee were of the opinion that the bill would not realise the aims that have been set out. How would you react to that?

Always speak through the chair.

I thank Douglas Lumsden for raising that point. I listened very carefully to the evidence that the committee received and to those concerns. There was broad support for a range of the proposed measures, but I want to ensure that the bill is as strong as possible, which is why I welcome the recommendations that the committee made in its stage 1 report. I look forward to working with Douglas Lumsden and others across the chamber as we look to strengthen the bill’s provisions.

Our land reform journey goes to the heart of the debate about the kind of Scotland that we want—a fairer society and a land of opportunity. Land and tenancy reforms are not new. From hard-won rights in the early crofting acts to more recent reforms, people and communities have always been at the heart of the need for land reform.

The Agriculture (Scotland) Act 1948 reformed agricultural tenancies to provide tenants with security of tenure, thereby enabling them to invest in and improve their farms for increased productivity and ensuring food security during a critical period. In the same way, the proposals in part 2 of the bill will enable our tenant farmers to access support, deliver climate and biodiversity goals and provide sustainable food production, thereby ensuring a prosperous future for tenant farming families. All those reforms were controversial at the time, but they were the right thing to do. Then, as now, the reforms were about people, fairness and dignity.

Previous land reforms have improved the lives of ordinary Scots, just as our proposals will. There were early changes, such as the abolition of the feudal system, and the Labour and Liberal Democrat Executive introduced the landmark right to roam and community rights to buy. There have also been more recent improvements, such as the introduction of assignation and relinquishment reforms for retiring tenant farmers and compulsory community rights to buy.

The establishment of the Scottish Land Commission in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 by one of my predecessors, Richard Lochhead, was another milestone, ensuring that we have a continuing focus on land reform. The Land Commission has made a significant contribution, developing policy and driving positive change on the ground, and the tenant farming commissioner has been instrumental in improving relationships between tenants and landlords.

It is easy to take for granted the rights that we have in Scotland. Assets amounting to more than 200,000 hectares—or 2.7 per cent of the total area of Scotland—are in community ownership, and we have seen tenant farmers using their pre-emptive right to buy their farms, creating opportunities for their families to invest and develop their businesses.

People across Scotland are able to benefit from responsible public access to Scotland’s land. In England, the public have access to only about 8 per cent of the country and have no community right to buy. Things are better in Scotland, and we should be proud of our land reform successes.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

I will give way Rachael Hamilton, as I have already taken an intervention from Douglas Lumsden.

Does the cabinet secretary believe that there could be a conflict of interest, given that Scottish ministers have to be answerable to decisions made on land owned by the Scottish Government, which amounts to 728,000 hectares or 10 per cent of the land overall? That issue was not addressed in stage 1.

The member raises an important point. I recognise that the Scottish Government is a significant landowner in Scotland, but I do not believe that there is such a conflict of interest in the proposals that we have introduced.

I want to set out how the proposals in the bill will deliver for communities, small landholders and tenant farmers across Scotland. Land management plans will mean that owners of the largest landholdings will need to engage with local communities and publish a plan showing how they use their land and how that use supports community sustainability and priorities such as climate change. I know that some landowners already do that, but there are also communities that are in the dark about the plans, and even the identity, of the owners of the land on which they live and work. The bill will mean that transparency and community engagement will not depend on a community being lucky enough to have a good landowner.

The bill will also require greater transparency of land sales, expanding options for community right to buy. Large landholdings often do not sell for long periods, meaning that communities can be unprepared or even unaware if the sale takes place off market. Our proposals will mean that local communities are informed and have greater opportunity to make a community right-to-buy application.

Moreover, the bill will, for the first time, give Scottish ministers the power to intervene in large land sales on the basis of the public interest. Where it would help to support local communities, ministers could require land to be sold in a way that allowed for a wider range of buyers. The bill will create the potential to spread opportunity, putting the wellbeing of our rural communities at the heart of decisions on how land of this scale is sold.

Despite the new powers, I know that some people believe that we are not going far enough. I understand the frustrations of those who would like us to go further and faster, and I am listening and stand ready to work across the chamber to build and improve on the provisions in the bill.

Does the cabinet secretary recognise that, provided that their bank balance is big enough, there is currently nothing to stop someone from buying up all of Scotland’s land with no questions asked? Is it not time that that changed by introducing a presumed limit on how much land anyone can own?

I thank Mercedes Villalba for raising that point. There are all sorts of issues in relation to that, but I believe that our proposals, which the committee has scrutinised, go a long way towards making land ownership more transparent, involving communities in that process and, generally, increasing the diversity of ownership of land in Scotland.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I am sorry, but I have to make progress.

We have to recognise that reform must be carried out in a way that is fair to all parties, is supported by evidence and is deliverable within the resources and current powers of this Parliament.

The measures in part 2 are essential reforms that are needed to deliver equality of opportunity to Scotland’s small landholders and tenant farmers. We want to offer our tenant farmers a future that we would want for ourselves—one with security and dignity at its heart. We want a vibrant tenanted sector, ensuring that we have opportunities for the next generation.

More diverse land ownership is not incompatible with those aims. All that we have to do is look to Europe and examples in France and the Republic of Ireland of how a vibrant tenanted sector can be achieved. The key difference is that they have the fiscal powers that are necessary to encourage those changes.

I will keep working with all partners and across this Parliament to ensure that momentum continues to build for a stronger, more resilient tenancy sector. The bill will ensure that tenants today and those in the future have a level playing field, enabling them to deliver improvements to the land that they farm in order to become more sustainable and productive, and enabling tenant farming families to better access the new agriculture support and rural framework so that they can play their part in delivering on key Government priorities. After all, tenant farmers make up a quarter of Scottish farmers, and our provisions in part 2 of the bill will mean that they are treated with fairness and dignity, including if they choose to leave their tenancies.

By modernising small landholder legislation, we are ensuring that no part of land tenure is left behind. The new model of lease for environmental purposes—the land management tenancy—will provide a new tool for land management, enabling people and communities to undertake a range of hybrid land management activities through one lease and helping achieve Scotland’s net zero, biodiversity, and sustainable and regenerative agriculture ambitions. The bill cannot solve all the issues that land tenure is facing, as many are outwith our control, but we remain committed to delivering a fair and vibrant tenanted sector.

Land reform is a journey. The bill offers hope; it will deliver positive progress and, in so doing, build trust with the people of Scotland. I hope that we can come together today to stand behind the bill’s principles, as they are same principles that have been supported by successive Governments since the Parliament was reconvened in 1999.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.

I call Edward Mountain to speak on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee.

15:31  

I am pleased to speak in this debate on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee.

In accordance with parliamentary rules, I will make a full declaration of my interests so that there is no dubiety. I declare that I have an interest in a family farming partnership in Moray, as set out in my register of interests. Specifically, I declare an interest in approximately 200 hectares of farmland, of which 20 hectares is woodland. I am a tenant of approximately 200 hectares in Moray on a non-agricultural tenancy, and I have a farming tenancy of approximately 5 hectares under the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991. I also declare that I sometimes take grass lets on an annual basis.

I thank my committee colleagues for their diligent work in considering the bill. I acknowledge the useful input from the Finance and Public Administration Committee and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I also thank our clerking team for its support, especially in getting our report out so promptly after it had been agreed.

The committee began its work on the bill in April last year, when we issued a call for views. We started taking oral evidence in June, and we heard from 13 different panels of witnesses. We also got out and about in rural areas to meet people on the ground. We held a successful panel event at the Royal Highland Show and an online engagement event with tenant farmers. I thank all the people who contributed to our work.

The bill is split into two distinct parts. Part 1 sets out new methods of land reform and part 2 relates to the leasing of land. Each part has raised separate issues, and I will take them in turn.

On part 1, stakeholders were fundamentally split on a central intention of the bill, which is to diversify land ownership. Those who were supportive of that highlighted that Scotland has a more concentrated pattern of ownership than most international comparators. They said that that creates an imbalance of power and can prevent rural communities from feeling in charge of their own destinies. Their view was that reform has lost momentum and that further change is needed to address that imbalance.

Those who were opposed to part 1 often considered it hard to justify the interference with property rights, and they were also concerned that the bill would scare off investment. They considered large estates to be better able to deliver change at scale, making them assets in tackling the twin climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.

Will the member take an intervention?

I will if I have time, Presiding Officer.

There is time, but it is very limited.

Is it fair to say that those who opposed part 1 tended to be representatives of those who own large amounts of land in Scotland?

That is not entirely true. Some of the people who opposed part 1 were people who manage land holdings across Scotland, whether in the private or public sector.

Whether stakeholders were supportive of further land reform or not, there was consensus that the bill as drafted risks not delivering on its aims. There was a clear fear that the proposed changes would be burdensome and bureaucratic without delivering any real benefit.

On the detail of the bill, the committee is supportive of the provision to allow Scottish ministers to create community engagement obligations. However, only a majority of the committee think that the land size threshold for community engagement obligations—which is 3,000 hectares for mainland estates—is too high. The committee is not agreed on the appropriate thresholds for landholdings to allow the bill’s obligations to kick in. However, we agree that, when they are adopted, those thresholds must be kept under review by the Government.

One community engagement obligation that is set out in the bill is for large estates to produce land management plans. The committee is supportive of such plans, as they could create an accessible one-stop shop for information about large parcels of land, which would improve transparency about estate ownership and use. That provision in part 1 gained clear support, but we heard pleas not to allow it to become a box-ticking exercise with a long list of things to say in those plans, which could remove the local and distinct tailored elements that are required to make the plans truly useful documents.

We also heard concerns about the potential cost to estates of producing plans. However, it is difficult to assess those concerns fully when the details of the obligations for what will be set out in the plans will not be set out until later, in regulations. The committee was not in a position to assess the unknown. That is why our report recommends that there should be additional parliamentary scrutiny of regulations that set out community obligations.

The committee supports the principle of extending communities’ right to buy land. However, the changes in section 2 are unlikely to accomplish much on their own. A wider review of the community right to buy is under way, and we are disappointed that it was not completed before the bill was introduced. It would have been much more useful to consider the matter in the round.

We support giving Scottish ministers the ability to determine that large landholdings should be sold in lots. However, the basis on which such decisions would be made is unclear. We recommend that the transfer test in the bill be reconsidered to make it clear that the public interest will at least be at the heart of lotting decisions. We also recommend that guidance be produced to provide more clarity about the circumstances in which Scottish ministers would or would not expect to make lotting decisions. We are broadly supportive of the new role of land and communities commissioner.

Turning to part 2 of the bill, I note that the most significant changes in that part relate to agricultural tenancies. The starting point for those changes is a consensus that the tenanted sector is in long-term decline and that things need to change. Taken together, the changes in the bill could be said to rebalance the landlord and tenant relationship by giving more rights to tenant farmers. However, some stakeholders thought that those changes would make owners even more loth to offer tenancies in the first place. We are deeply concerned about the risk of a further decrease in agricultural tenancies, so we have recommended broader consideration of how to actively encourage the leasing of land for agriculture.

Although we support most of the individual provisions in part 2, we recommend that the Scottish Government considers how best to proceed with the provisions on resumption. Resumption is when the landlord takes back part of the tenancy. The methodology for compensating that, as proposed in the bill, has faced significant criticism. The view is that it perhaps rebalances compensation too far in favour of the tenant.

We need to clarify the meaning of “sustainable and regenerative agriculture”. That is a central feature of many of the changes in part 2, but it is as yet undefined. This is a familiar discussion for those who have been involved with the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024. That act requires a code of practice to be created, which would provide meaning to the term.

Will Edward Mountain give way briefly?

I think that I am short of time, but I would like to give way.

There is a limited bit of time in hand.

The bill proposes legal measures that would, I gather, be applied retrospectively. Is the committee at all concerned that that might contravene the European convention on human rights, as was indeed the case with the agricultural holdings legislation two decades ago—the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003?

I think that the committee was more concerned that constantly changing agricultural tenancies retrospectively could cause problems for the letting of land in future, because it would give landlords no surety that what they agreed with a tenant would be carried forward.

We also talked about the need for sustainable regenerative agriculture to be included. We think that that should be in the bill.

Overall, the bill needs significant changes to make it fit for purpose. Although it is normal for a bill to undergo some adjustments at stages 2 and 3, the changes that are needed in this case appear to be more fundamental. That puts pressure on us, as a committee and as a Parliament, to make sure that we get things right at the amending stages, and that we take the views of experts and stakeholders as we do so.

A majority of the committee supports the general principles of the bill. However, we want the Scottish Government to engage constructively with our recommendations to ensure that the bill can be improved.

15:40  

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a small farmer. I also have a couple of short limited duration tenancies. I apologise in advance for speaking a little quickly; I have a lot to get through.

I wish that I could share the enthusiasm that the cabinet secretary showed at the start of her speech. It is a nice day outside, but I do not think that it is in here.

I will start with a wee quote:

“My analysis suggests that the impact of these provisions on the pattern of land ownership in Scotland will be vanishingly small at best and zero at worst. Importantly, no amount of amendments at Stage 2 or 3 will change the underlying mechanisms being relied upon in the Bill.”

I could tell members that that pretty cynical quote is from a known Government critic or perhaps a large lobby organisation, but no—it is from Andy Wightman, a former Green MSP and a leading figure on land reform. I do not agree with his view on land reform, but what a quote that is, and he is not alone—the Scottish Land Commission, Scottish Land & Estates, NFU Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland and others have all raised significant concerns about the bill.

The policy memorandum to the bill says:

“These proposals deliver the Bute House Agreement commitment to deliver legal mechanisms to tackle scale and concentration of land ownership.”

The moment that I read that, I realised what the bill actually is—nothing other than a measure for the Green Party’s consistent desire to take away rights from individuals—[Interruption.] You can groan all you like, but that is despite many of those landholdings delivering on climate change goals.

Will the member take an intervention?

Go for it.

Although it was not lacking in courtesy, I note that that language was a bit relaxed.

Is the member against the proposals that we are taking forward to ultimately make things fairer for our tenant farmers and our small landholders across Scotland? Is he against diversifying land ownership and tackling the concentration of land ownership that we have in our country?

I am just about to come on to that—wait, and I will get to it.

I was tempted to go for the full Richard Leonard experience with this speech and shout from the back benches about the grotesque, unjustified big state intervention against the most basic of human rights for what appears to be nothing but envy politics—but I have decided instead to remain a little calmer. However, I cannot express enough my utter horror at the bill. In the year that I have been here, it is by far the worst bill that I have seen. That is for three key reasons: I do not agree with the principles of what the bill is trying to achieve, the bill is fundamentally unworkable in its current form, and the legal implications could be far reaching and lead to challenge.

Let me take those points in order. First, the bill—and, for that matter, large parts of land reform—seems to make the major assumption that owning a large landholding is inherently wrong, or perhaps that large landowners do not care about the land that they manage or the communities that they are part of.

Will the member give way?

I apologise, but I do not have time.

However, my experiences are somewhat different. I know landowners who have given plots of land for local people to build a house at next to nothing in cost, and large landholdings that are leading the charge on peatland restoration, large landscape projects along rivers, tree planting and land for community projects. I note at this point that there is a challenge in every sector of life where the few can impact the many. It is vital that those who work in the industry, and the organisations that support it, work to make sure that all landowners meet their responsibilities. However, major legislation is not required to ensure that.

Secondly, the bill is fundamentally unworkable in its current form. There is a risk of consultation upon consultation. An area of land for, say, housing that is already going through the statutory planning process will face public consultation and discussion, and it is vital to avoid duplication. Why has size been chosen as the key measure for who is impacted by the bill? Why not value? There is a huge difference between 3,000 hectares of moorland and 3,000 hectares of agricultural land.

The Law Society of Scotland has pointed out that proposed new section 44B(3)(c)(iii) that the bill seeks to insert in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 requires that a land management plan must contain information about how

“the owner is complying or intends to comply with ... the code of practice on deer management”.

That creates a compliance duty in relation to a voluntary code of practice.

Proposed new section 44A(4) of the 2016 act mentions the land rights and responsibilities statement. It looks as though that provision puts on to a statutory footing the voluntary approach to developing a stronger relationship between landowner and communities that is set out in the 2016 act.

As someone who has worked in this area, I am not sure that whoever wrote the bill actually understands it. It is very common for land sales to take place for small pieces of ground, such as a little bit of garden ground or a new site for a local teacher or doctor. As the bill stands, it will require all sales to be notified to the Scottish ministers. What a huge blockage that will create, and that is before we get to the administrative nightmare and the huge cost that it will introduce.

Sarah-Jane Laing from Scottish Land & Estates said:

“Lotting provides uncertainty. Any intervention in the land market that places obligations on you or reduces your ability to liquidate your assets—which is what we are talking about here—will impact on your ability to borrow from the banks.”—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 19 November 2024; c 48.]

Given the lack of timescale for Government decisions, there is a great risk that lenders will see the inability to dispose of land as a large risk. In turn, that will create uncertainty in the market, and markets do not like uncertainty. As well as affecting people who bring their land to the market voluntarily, the lotting provision will have an impact on the wider land market and the attitude to land value and risk in Scotland.

Will the member give way?

Will the member take an intervention?

I will bring in Fergus Ewing.

Does Mr Eagle agree that the emphasis should be far more on working with existing landowners and encouraging them to invest in things such as the provision of additional rural housing, rather than on imposing on them ever more regulations, which will discourage investment and new tenancies, dampen the rural economy and prevent us from achieving the opportunities that exist in rural Scotland?

I apologise to Ms Villalba for missing her out.

That is exactly the point that I am about to come on to. There are different ways of doing what the Government wants to achieve.

I had better skip forward. There is so much that I could go into. NFU Scotland has expressed concern that the changes will simply put landowners off any tenant farming, thereby further damaging the tenant farming market. I could do a whole speech on that alone. For example, resumption changes, such as the extended notice period, enhanced compensation and a public interest test, will undoubtedly worry any prospective owner who would consider letting land. That is what happened following the passing of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

I could mention other things, one of which is that there is a huge risk of legal challenges in relation to compliance with the bill. Clarity is needed on compensation for value other than agricultural value. There is significant potential for legal crossed wires when land is part of a large landholding but is also a registered croft.

As the Scottish ministers own 10 per cent of rural Scotland—I think that my colleague Rachael Hamilton mentioned that—they will have to make decisions about themselves, which will highlight significant conflicts of interest.

There could be legal challenges to do with the expropriation of land and the adequacy of compensation; failures to adequately support the enforcement of new regulations; the requirements for community engagement; property rights; the criteria used for lotting decisions; and the criteria for determining public interest in lotting decisions. The issue of addressing off-market sales to ensure that communities have the opportunity to buy land could lead to legal disputes over the transparency and fairness of the process, and landowners and investors could argue that the bill’s provisions deter investment in rural land and negatively affect the economy.

I am speeding through my speech because there is so much to talk about. There is a lot that I have not touched on, including the need for the land and communities commissioner.

The Scottish Conservatives, sadly, cannot support the bill. I say “sadly”, but it is not really sad. We simply cannot support an unworkable bill, and because of the risks associated with the bill, we cannot support the financial memorandum, either.

I say to the cabinet secretary that I think that I could make the bill a great bill if I really had to. I would keep the land management plans, because I think that what the Government really wants to do is to put community engagement on estate plans on a statutory footing. That is what Fergus Ewing meant when he spoke about the need for us to work with the estates to deliver what we want to see in rural areas.

The Government should scrap everything else and allow the review of the community right to buy to be completed. It should then review its findings with stakeholders and work together with them to simplify and implement any conclusions from that review. At the same time, it should set up a proper agricultural holdings review to explore everything that has happened over the past 50 years and how we can take forward tenancies in the interests of owners, tenants and communities.

In the meantime, I am confident that there will be legal teams across the country that will be happy to help the Government to develop clauses to ensure that leases can be tailored where the main reason is to relate them to climate change goals. That approach would be much better than the one that is taken in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. Frankly, the bill is unworkable. The approach that I have suggested would create good law; the bill will not.

I call Rhoda Grant to open on behalf of Scottish Labour.

15:49  

The Scottish Labour Party supports the general principles of the bill, but, like others, including many of the stakeholders who are in the gallery today, we want the bill to go further.

Donald Dewar gave Labour’s enduring view on land reform in a 1998 lecture. He said that change was required “on grounds of fairness” to increase “local involvement and accountability” and deliver “greater diversity” in land ownership because there was

“too much control in too few hands”.

After 17 years of SNP Administration, the concentration of land ownership is getting worse—0.025 per cent of Scotland’s population still owns 67 per cent of Scotland’s rural land. As it is currently drafted, the bill will not change land ownership patterns, nor will it deal with the power that is vested in those who own land to hold communities to ransom.

The purpose of land reform is to empower communities, build economies and retain populations. Those things impact service provision, national and community wealth and the sustainability of the Gaelic language.

Stakeholders are very disappointed with and critical of the bill. They do not believe that it will make any change to communities owning land, nor will it change land ownership patterns.

Central to the bill is the setting of two thresholds in defining “large landholdings”: 3,000 hectares for the requirement to have a land management plan and 1,000 hectares to require prior notification of a sale that might trigger a community right to buy or a potential lotting decision. It is confusing and unnecessary to have different thresholds for different purposes, and it is widely felt that those thresholds, even if unified at around 1,000 hectares, are still too high. A reduction in all thresholds to 500 hectares would keep all crofts and 97 per cent of all farms out of the scope of the bill.

The bill does not include urban land reform. A new criterion to allow communities to register an interest in land of significance to them could be a measured way to trigger urban communities getting prior notification of sales and the right of pre-emption.

The bill will create a new land and communities commissioner within the Scottish Land Commission to oversee the land management plans and make recommendations on the potential lotting of land. The new commissioner will be part of the Scottish Land Commission, but they will be completely autonomous from the commission in their work. That looks ill considered, as the commissioner will lack any corporate responsibility and adequate accountability.

Proposals for a public interest test on land transfers have also been completely ditched. Public interest tests are well understood in law, so to change that and to use a transfer test will risk having the legislation held up in the courts. Labour wishes to see amendments to reinstate a public interest test.

Land management plans will be introduced for landholdings of over 3,000 hectares to enshrine community engagement in large landholdings. That is not cumulative and it is set at a level at which very few landholdings in Scotland will be affected. A fine of £5,000 for not producing a plan will not incentivise compliance. There should therefore be a system of escalation of sanctions for non-compliance.

The bill will allow community bodies to have the opportunity to be informed about certain sales of over 1,000 hectares and will give them 30 days to register an initial interest in buying the land. Communities will get a subsequent 40-day period to get consent to make a right-to-buy application. Those timescales are unworkable, given that it can take the Scottish Government two months to approve the constitution of community bodies that are able to make the application. The 1,000 hectare cut-off threshold again means that very few transactions will be caught in that provision.

The bill will introduce lotting for the first time for landholdings of over 1,000 hectares. Those landholdings may be required by Scottish ministers to be sold in smaller lots rather than as a whole, and the owners can seek compensation if that impacts on the value of the sale. That process appears to be complex with no community involvement at all.

Prior notification of any sale over 1,000 hectares is designed to put a restriction on the secretive off-market sales that have been increasing of late. However, that is a relatively high limit, which means that fewer than seven cases a year are likely to be impacted.

Part 2 of the bill seems less controversial, but there are still issues that need to be dealt with. Partial resumption and compensation need to be dovetailed with a whole-farm resumption, so that there are not any incentives to resume the whole farm, rather than the part that is required by the landowner for development. Where possible, such resumptions should be done in negotiation between the landowner and tenant, with the land commissioner having a role should the negotiations fail.

Many people welcome the new environmental lease, which will allow a move towards using land for environmental purposes. We all know that we need to reach net zero, and we hope that the environmental lease will allow tenant farmers more scope to do that in their holdings. Land management plans and whole-farm plans also need to be dovetailed for the small number of farmers who will need both.

As it stands, the bill is unlikely to bring about any change in community ownership or the desired diversification of land ownership. Urban Scotland is also excluded. The thresholds to define large landholdings are set so high that they exclude most land from the bill’s provisions. This weekend, we heard that Clan Donald Lands Trust is selling its assets and land in Skye. I am unaware of any approach being made to the community ahead of the sale. It is also unclear what difference the bill would have made to the sale and community involvement.

The member has chosen a topical example that goes to prove why the measures that we are introducing in the bill are important. They could have prevented the situation from coming about or, at least, the community could have been notified that the land would become available for sale. I hope that she welcomes that.

I sincerely hope that that would be the case, but the timeframes in the bill would make it nigh-on impossible for a community with no knowledge that the sale was coming up to act in time. Perhaps the cabinet secretary will reflect on that to ensure that communities have the time that they need.

We will work in good faith with the Government to strengthen the bill in the hope that the consequent act will make a step change in land ownership patterns in Scotland.

15:56  

The bill is the latest step in Scotland’s land reform journey. As we heard from the cabinet secretary, Scotland is an outlier when compared to many of our European neighbours. Ownership of land is highly concentrated. Although the Parliament has made great strides in rectifying that since devolution by granting the right to roam and the community right to buy, we are still only at the start of the land reform journey.

The bill is part of other work that is on-going to address fairness in land ownership and how public money is deployed. It also links with steps to tackle the climate and nature emergencies that are set out in the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 and the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill.

The Scottish Greens support the principles of the bill at stage 1 but, as the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee and many stakeholders outside the chamber noted, the proposed legislation before us is disappointingly lacking in ambition. There are still many barriers that need to be addressed for the Parliament to achieve its goal of diversifying who owns land in Scotland.

Although there remains much unfinished business in land reform, several improvements can be made to the bill at stages 2 and 3. I will run through several of those and my colleague Mark Ruskell will pick up on additional areas in his closing remarks.

The first improvement relates to thresholds. I note the broad consensus in the committee’s stage 1 report that the thresholds in the bill need to be revised. There is a strong case for the thresholds for lotting and the creation of land management plans to be harmonised; indeed, the Scottish Land Commission recommended that change. Further, the thresholds for both should be significantly reduced.

Committee witnesses suggested that a 500 hectare threshold would exclude around 96 per cent of all agricultural holdings, so crofters and family farms would be exempt. I understand concerns about the cost of creating plans, but are those costs not already part of the cost of business for many large landowners? Are we suggesting that landowners do not carefully plan how they use their land and think carefully about the future of their businesses?

Will the member take an intervention?

I do not have time to take an intervention. I apologise for that.

On lotting decisions, I firmly believe that a lower threshold is the only way that the bill would have a significant chance of diversifying land ownership in Scotland. However, as it stands, the lotting process is somewhat orphaned in the bill. What will ministers take into account when making lotting decisions? How will we know that the decisions are of benefit to the public as a whole?

That brings me to the matter of the public interest, which I know that the committee has discussed at length. I agree with those witnesses who have suggested that the transfer test in the bill must be replaced with a public interest test, and I urge the cabinet secretary to continue her consideration of that. That is what the Government consulted on, and it was supported by 72 per cent of respondents.

Lotting provisions must also include safeguards to prevent lots simply being brought back together at a later date. I also question the rationale for not including contiguous landholdings. It must be clear that lotting decisions are made on the basis of achieving the public interest test, and I am keen that we see a definition of the public interest test spelled out in the bill.

Land management plans, commonly known as LMPs, are an idea with much potential, particularly for progressing action to meet our climate ambitions and to restore Scotland’s nature. However, some key changes are required to strengthen those provisions. First, we need to see a requirement for LMPs to be implemented, otherwise the process will be reduced to a bureaucratic exercise. Cross-compliance can help in that regard, and Mark Ruskell will say more on that in closing.

It should also be made clear how plans have taken the views of the community into account. Community consultation should not simply be a tick-box exercise, but should be given serious consideration.

The five-year limit timescale for plans also needs to be reconsidered, particularly for plans involving changes in land use that would benefit the environment. From tree planting to habitat restoration, several years—in fact, decades—are often needed for those changes to take root. We need longer duration of LMPs and we need their objectives to be locked in for successive owners. We have seen that approach being taken in relation to forest dedication schemes, and we need the same here.

The bill should also be updated to make it clear that LMPs should not only take into consideration how biodiversity can be enhanced, but support efforts to restore natural processes at scale. The Scottish Rewilding Alliance submitted important evidence on that.

I, like others, am disappointed that the review of the legislation on the community right to buy has not been aligned with the bill. Community Land Scotland raised important concerns about the time that is given to communities to prepare applications.

The bill presents us with an opportunity to tackle the issue of increasing off-market sales of land, particularly for the purpose of engaging in the trading of carbon credits on the financial market.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member is concluding.

That is an increasing barrier to community land ownership. One route to addressing that is to have a new public body to oversee Scotland’s carbon credit market. Ahead of stage 2, I would like to explore with the cabinet secretary how we can address some of the growing concerns about the bill, with a view to addressing the issue more substantially in the next parliamentary session.

Finally, I thank the many stakeholders who have shared their views over the past year and who have taken the time to meet me and my colleagues, and I thank the committee clerks and Scottish Parliament information centre colleagues who have kept members such as myself, who were not on the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, abreast of the discussions that have taken place.

16:03  

I start by congratulating the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on its report and its convener on an Olympic-standard declaration of interests. I thank those who gave evidence to the committee and who have provided briefings for the debate, including our former colleague Andy Wightman—it is right that his voice is being heard in the debate, although it will probably surprise him that it has come from the front bench of the Conservatives.

I also thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for their engagement with me on the bill. I put on record my disappointment at her decision not to stand at the next election. She is a good friend and a respected colleague, and she will be missed.

As others have observed, land reform is an issue with which successive Governments and Parliaments have grappled, dating back to the act that ended feudal tenure being passed in the year that the Parliament was first re-established. However, despite those interventions and the laudable intentions of MSPs across parties, the concentration of land ownership appears to have increased over the years. Research shows that 2,588 landowners own 70 per cent of privately owned rural land in Scotland today, which is down from 3,161 in 2012. The committee rightly acknowledges that patterns of land ownership in Scotland are unusually concentrated and that levels of regulation are low by international standards.

I accept that what matters is a question not solely of ownership but of how land is used. Even so, those figures suggest that land reform has to date fallen short and, as the committee suggests, lost momentum, and that has consequences. We know that a lack of available land can create problems for rural communities and can impact on, for example, the quality and availability of local services, affordable housing and economic development.

That said, it is important to acknowledge in the debate the fact that rural landowners and land managers are often at the forefront of efforts to tackle climate change and restore nature, while also producing food and providing jobs and economic growth. Indeed, big is not necessarily bad, with estates of scale often delivering wider public goods.

Will Liam McArthur take an intervention?

I will not take an intervention, I am afraid.

Any legislation must strike an appropriate balance between rights and responsibilities. In that respect, when I read the committee’s report, I was struck by the fact that, although there were fundamentally opposing views on the objectives and intentions of part 1 of the bill, there appeared to be a broad consensus that its approach is potentially burdensome, bureaucratic and unlikely to deliver. I wholly agree with the committee’s view that

“If Part 1 becomes law, it should set out processes that are as simple as they can be”

and that

“are not an administrative headache”.

That is the best way, if not the only way, to deliver the positive change that people and communities expect and require.

The creation of land management plans by landowners on the basis of community engagement is certainly a sound principle and should result in greater and necessary transparency. On the disagreement among stakeholders and within the committee over thresholds, I will continue to listen to the debate. I certainly sympathise with the view that a threshold of 3,000 hectares is on the high side but would like to fully understand the implications of reducing it to 1,000 hectares, particularly in the context of the earlier point about avoiding unnecessary administrative headaches.

Liam McArthur makes an interesting point about reducing the size of the threshold for land management plans. The costs are interesting, too. Does he agree that, once you get to small-scale farms of 1,000 hectares or less, funding £10,000 for a management plan every five years is prohibitive?

That is certainly a concern that I would have. Whether a 1,000-hectare farm would be referred to as a small-scale farm would be open to debate, but, as I say, we need to fully understand how that will impact people and who it will impact. On balance, the committee is right to recommend that the Government keeps the issue under review, for those very reasons.

Like the committee, the Scottish Liberal Democrats support extending community right to buy as a means of further empowering and revitalising communities. However, including such provisions in the bill before the review into community right to buy has concluded is regrettable and, I would argue, risky. Indeed, it is part of a pattern of the Government introducing legislation either in haste or before it has done all the necessary preparatory work.

The proposal for lotting makes sense if we are to achieve greater diversification of ownership. Again, I support the committee’s call for the transfer test to be revised and to ensure that it is very much driven by public interest.

I turn briefly to the provisions in part 2 relating to the leasing of land. They appear to be a bit of a mixed bag, with some welcome elements alongside other aspects that give rise to concern. For example, however well intentioned, legislating in ways that retrospectively impact on existing contracts seems legally dubious and politically inadvisable—a point that Fergus Ewing made.

Definitions require further clarity, not least in relation to sustainable and regenerative agriculture. At a time when there is already a worrying decline in the number of agricultural tenancies, care must be taken to avoid creating uncertainty that would simply undermine what we should be seeking to achieve through the reforms.

Finally, I note with concern the Scottish Land Commission’s view that the bill will require fairly fundamental revision at stages 2 and 3. All bills are subject to amendment, but it places the Parliament in an invidious position if it is expected to radically overhaul legislation during the scrutiny process. With good reason, the Parliament expects Government to undertake robust pre-legislative consultation and preparation. For whatever reason, that does not appear to have been the case in this instance.

Notwithstanding that, the Scottish Liberal Democrats will support the general principles of the bill this evening, in the interests of kick-starting a process of reform that has stalled, and with the aim of re-energising our rural communities.

16:10  

Like the convener, I am grateful to those who took the time and opportunity to give evidence to the committee. Some of that evidence was very considered, covering both parts 1 and 2 of the bill. Organisations such as the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association, NFU Scotland and Community Land Scotland, and a range of individuals, provided us with a wide body of evidence in written form and presented evidence to the committee.

I also put on record my thanks to Patrick Colquhoun of the Luss estate, who kindly invited me to visit the estate to discuss the proposed changes in the bill. That engagement was valuable to me in considering some of the issues relating to that particular estate.

As a number of members have highlighted, the issue of land reform has been a thread of policy running through the Parliament over the past 26 years. As the cabinet secretary rightly said, we have been on something of a journey in this Parliament over more than a quarter of a century, and at times some of the debate around land reform in Scotland has been very politically divisive, with stark divides in the positions that individuals and parties have taken.

I recall the first debate that we had on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which became the 2003 act. During consideration of the bill in Parliament, the debate became very politically polarised. I recall—correctly, I think—that the late Phil Gallie, in a contribution in Parliament, described the bill as a Robert Mugabe land-grab policy.

I do not think that any of the members who are currently sitting on the Conservative benches served with Phil Gallie. As those of us who have been in Parliament for a few years will know, he was often adept at using colourful language in describing various issues of concern. However, I say, with all due respect to Phil, that I think that history will show that he was wrong in the light of what the 2003 act has contributed—

Will Michael Matheson give way?

I give way to Mr Ewing, who I suspect was involved in that debate back in 2002.

Michael Matheson’s suspicion is correct, and I feel that I should stand by the memory of my friend, the late and much-missed Phil Gallie. To be fair to Mr Gallie, is it not the case that a provision in the 2003 act—namely, that there be retrospective changes to limited partnerships—was deemed by the courts to be confiscation of property, and therefore in breach of article 1 of the first protocol to the ECHR?

All the officials who are sitting at the back of the chamber today should be looking at their law books to see whether history will not repeat itself here.

I am not disputing the position that the courts have taken on a particular provision in the 2003 act, but I think that history will show that, in general, Mr Gallie was incorrect. Despite the political sabre rattling that often goes on when it comes to land reform legislation, I think—no, I know—that there is a broad consensus on the need for continued reform.

It is worth reflecting on the progress that has been made to date. A primary land reform objective is to seek to reduce the concentration of land ownership, and to see greater diversification of ownership of land, in Scotland. Despite the repeated pieces of legislation that have been passed over the past 25-plus years, however, very limited progress has been made.

There have been some successful community buyout projects, but—as Liam McArthur pointed out in his contribution—land ownership continues to be very much concentrated in a few hands, as the work by Andy Wightman clearly demonstrates.

The committee’s recommendations are focused on strengthening the bill. If the Government is minded to take forward some of those recommendations, it will significantly improve the bill and what it seeks to achieve.

I will touch on three particular areas that I hope the minister would be open to considering for stage 2 amendments. The first relates to the public interest test provision. I understand that the Government’s position is that a combination of the lotting provisions and the transfer test provisions ultimately delivers a public interest test in the bill. However, the original consultation was clear on the need for a public interest test, and I hope that we can consider putting a public interest test policy objective on a statutory footing in the bill.

The second area relates to sites of community significance. The bill could go further on that and make provision for clear procedure and criteria for how applications for sites of community significance could be provided.

The third area would be to improve the prior notification process. Although that is moving in the right direction, the bill could go further on that. Rhoda Grant was correct to highlight the announcement this week of the Clan Donald Lands Trust sale of the Sleat peninsula. My understanding is that the community has very little engagement with the landowner and has had no notification that half of the peninsula was about to be sold. The landowners have not engaged with the local community in any meaningful way in developing their local plan. That is a very good example of exactly what should not be happening and why the bill is needed. I hope that the strengthening provisions that have been suggested by the committee, if the Parliament agrees to them, will help to address that type of issue in the future.

16:16  

I will start my contribution in the same vein as Michael Matheson. I remember our late Presiding Officer, Sir Alex Ferguson, warning me when I first took up my post as an MSP to avoid land reform and deer management. Sadly, I am standing here talking about land reform, and in the coming weeks, I will be dealing with deer management in our discussions on the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill.

It has become evident that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill poses a significant threat and will add to the damage that has already been inflicted on rural Scotland by the SNP Government. First, let us consider its economic implications. Scottish Land & Estates has voiced its apprehensions, highlighting that the bill would impose

“disproportionate and unfair legislative proposals”

on rural businesses. SLE’s chief executive, Sarah-Jane Laing, has warned of an era of “wanton damage” to our rural economy if the bill is passed without substantial amendments. We cannot afford to ignore those warnings.

NFU Scotland has raised concerns about the bill’s potential impact on Scottish agriculture. Although we understand the Government’s desire to share the benefits of land ownership, the proposals for land market regulation could severely compromise farming. Economies of scale have necessitated larger farms so that they can survive, and the bill threatens to undermine that foundation.

The bill’s focus on large-scale holdings, particularly the requirement for land management plans, is another area of contention. The Agricultural Law Association has pointed out the burdensome nature of those plans on large landowners. The cost and administrative burden of preparing and publishing those plans must be justified by clear benefits, but that justification is currently lacking.

Additionally, although SLE supports improving transparency of land ownership and use, it believes that changes must be made to reduce costs and increase the associated timescales. NFU Scotland also emphasises maintaining the 3,000 hectare threshold to avoid burdening smaller landholdings with unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.

Furthermore, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation has raised significant concerns about changes to agricultural holdings. The bill’s efforts to widen the scope of compensation and liabilities for landowners when game damage a tenant’s crops raise issues of fairness, legal complexity and practical enforcement. Such changes could have far-reaching consequences that we must carefully consider, and NFU Scotland supports ensuring that tenants are left no better and no worse off as well as the avoidance of retrospective changes to agricultural tenancies in order to maintain confidence in land letting.

The background to the bill stems from the Scottish Government’s definition of land reform as the on-going process of modifying, reforming and modernising land ownership and distribution. Although to some the intentions might be noble, the execution leaves much to be desired. The Scottish Land Commission’s investigation into large-scale and concentrated land ownership in Scotland concluded that concentrated land ownership is causing damage to communities. However, the commission’s own evidence suggested that the issue lies in concentrated ownership in specific areas rather than in the scale of ownership itself.

Tenant farming, which is a key component of Scottish agriculture, is also at risk. The bill introduces changes to the right-to-buy process for agricultural holdings and to the provisions on resumption and compensation for game damage. Although those changes are aimed at improving the system, they could lead to disputes and further complications in the Scottish Land Court.

SLE has highlighted that the bill would place an unwarranted bureaucratic burden on landowners, who are at the forefront of tackling climate change, restoring nature, producing food, providing jobs and growing the local economy. That burden would inhibit their ability to continue delivering those essential services. Research is clear that scale is a key enabling factor in the delivery of multiple benefits that are considered to be of national importance. The bill’s use of scale as the metric for fragmenting partnerships of land ownership is not the same as tackling concentration and risks making it harder to deliver those benefits.

It might well be possible to meet the Scottish Government’s original objectives of greater transparency and community engagement without inflicting the damage to rural businesses at taxpayers’ expense that the bill threatens. Extensive provision for community ownership already exists, and the need for prior notification of all sales over the threshold will lead only to further costs and delay, both for businesses and the public purse. As drafted, the bill would hold up sales to sitting tenants or local businesses.

The lotting provisions are both alarming and unworkable. They could lead to taxpayers being lumbered with substantial compensation payments and, at the same time, could wreak havoc in the land market and kill Scotland’s natural capital investment market. There is no demand for those provisions, and they must be scrapped.

There are serious concerns that part 2 of the bill risks discouraging landowners from letting land, which is contrary to its aims. Decades of excessive legislation have created that challenge, and adding to the imbalance in regulation will not solve it. Tenant farming policy must focus on encouraging landowners to make land available to new and existing tenants instead of deterring landowners from doing so, and legislating to retrospectively amend tenancy agreements to change resumption clauses will not move the sector in the right direction.

Although a majority of committee members supported the general principles of the bill, it is clear that part 1 risks not delivering its intended outcomes. The approach is seen as potentially burdensome and bureaucratic, and the land size threshold that operates across the bill should be reconsidered. The committee’s concerns about the lotting and resumption provisions highlight the need for a thorough review and significant amendments. We must strike the balance between reforming land management and supporting rural Scotland, and the bill in its current form fails to do so.

I urge members to oppose the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill at stage 1 and to work towards a more equitable and sustainable solution for our rural communities.

16:22  

As a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, I thank all our witnesses who, for a prolonged period, gave their time to provide valuable evidence on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. That evidence has supported the committee in completing our stage 1 report on the bill, the principles of which were agreed by the majority of MSPs on the committee, myself included.

Before I go into detail on some of the bill’s provisions, I wish to make a general point. It is clear from our report that there is a desire for Parliament to shape the legislation and take it further than where it currently stands, and it is likely that there will be a considerable number of amendments. That shows that our committee system in this place is working well. The Scottish Government’s response to our report shows that the Government has found that scrutiny to be beneficial, and it is up for many of those amendments. I look forward to working in partnership on such matters.

I want to look at the threshold for the duty on large landowners to produce a land management plan, which I think is important. Our committee asked the Scottish Government to reflect on the threshold of 3,000 hectares, given that there have been many calls for it to be lowered. I will simply reiterate what I said at committee: Glasgow’s botanic gardens and grounds, which sit in my constituency—in part, anyway—would fit 150 times into 3,000 hectares. It would seem remarkable that, if the gardens fitted only 149 times into an area of land, that land would not be required to have a land management plan. The gardens would fit 50 times into a threshold of 1,000 hectares, and I think that most fair-minded people would say that an area of land that is 50 times the scale of Glasgow’s botanic gardens should have a plan. It seems like a no-brainer to me. For me, that part of the bill certainly needs to be looked at again.

The Scottish Government has said that such a reduction would double the number of large holdings required to develop such a plan to 700, which, to me, is not burdensome but positive. The Scottish Government noted that lowering the threshold could add cost, as it would increase the number of landowners who had community engagement responsibilities. I say this to the Government: the committee heard on several occasions that good landlords will already have most of the elements of a land management plan in place, because that is what good landowners do.

We were told a similar thing with regard to community consultations. Good landowners, as a matter of course, consult with communities living on or beside their land on an on-going basis. We were told that time and again. If they are good landowners, as most will be, I cannot for the life of me see why large landowners would be concerned.

Will the member take an intervention?

I will take a very brief one.

I have a very brief question on costs. Does Bob Doris share my concern that it is not just costs on the landowner that would increase—he has addressed that—but costs on the Land Commission, which has already been told that it has to find the money from existing budgets?

If I have time, I will address the issue of the new commissioner in detail.

Landowners already consult with communities and have land management strategies, so I hope that large landowners will embrace the changes rather than resist them. Our committee was clear that community engagement has to be meaningful and landowners should be able to demonstrate how they have taken community views and considerations into account when drafting their land management plans. We were clear that that must not be a tick-box exercise, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government has agreed to consider the issue further.

Briefly, on the cost of pulling land management plans together, some witnesses’ estimates varied greatly. I was left unconvinced by many of their arguments, because I find it contradictory on the one hand to say that much of this work is taking place anyway and, on the other, to raise cost concerns. However, many excellent landowners out there are already regularly consulting communities in a meaningful way, and when we bring regulations forward, we must do so in a way that recognises that good practice.

I repeat the committee’s view that a one-off fine for landowners of up to £5,000 for non-compliance is insufficient, so I am pleased that the Government will look at that again. That said, I should note the difference between the sort of wilful non-compliance that should be subject to fines, and landowners requiring support to meet their duties in this area, with good practice and advice being shared among them. I want more substantial fines in some cases of non-compliance, but I do not want a rush to apply fines or sanctions. Our landowners remain key partners in all of this.

That brings me to the role of the proposed land and communities commissioner. I want the commissioner to develop a positive, supportive and constructive relationship with all stakeholders, and large landowners will be at the heart of that process. Hence, I have distinguished between dealing with wilful non-compliance and supporting large landowners to be compliant, as well as acknowledging the good practice that already exists out there.

My important point, however, is that I am keen for the land and communities commissioner to be able to undertake proactive investigations in the absence of a report from a designated body. I am pleased that the Scottish Government will consider that, but I want to go further. Each year, a small number of land management plans should be proactively investigated for compliance in the absence of a reported breach. Land management plans must not just exist on paper; they must be implemented in practice—and not just the community consultation element, either. Depending on the nature of any non-compliance that is identified, support rather than sanction might be the most appropriate outcome.

In my final moments, I want to make a connection that I do not think has been clearly made with regard to good-quality land management plans, exercising the right to buy and lotting arrangements. A land management plan worth its salt will make reference to areas of land that will be of benefit to the community in the next five, 10 or 15 years, and lotting arrangements could feed into that process, if a sale were ever to take place.

I support the bill’s general principles.

16:29  

Some people hold the view that it does not matter who owns Scotland’s land. They do not mind that Scotland’s pattern of private land ownership is probably the most concentrated in the world. Some people are relaxed that anyone in the world can buy large amounts of land in Scotland with relatively little scrutiny. Scottish Labour members believe that those things do matter. It matters that less than 1 per cent of Scotland’s people own two thirds of Scotland’s rural land.

The story of who owns Scotland is a long history of inequality, and we need to write a new chapter. The bill is the latest attempt to spread the ownership of Scotland’s land into the hands of the many, not the wealthy few. Scottish Labour absolutely supports the bill’s principles, because we know that the land reform journey is far from over.

We have not waited for the Government to do all the work. My colleague Mercedes Villalba consulted on a member’s bill a couple of summers ago, and I hope that the Government is very much looking at that work as we try to improve the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.

Rural communities deserve the opportunities that can be unlocked if land is owned, managed and used in the public interest. Our ambition is for urban communities to also benefit. As a Central Scotland MSP, I know that there is an overreliance on speculative private developers, which contributes to the acquisition of strategic land banks. We have heard about the community right to buy, but we need that to be more meaningful and to be a reality.

We know that wealthy landowners are powerful and have huge influence over decisions that impact the people of Scotland. A Scotland that aspires to be modern and democratic needs to change that. Tim Eagle spoke about large estate owners gifting small plots of land to local people to build homes on, but our communities deserve to have greater control over their own destiny. They deserve choice, not charity.

As a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, I am in the privileged position of being one of the seven committee MSPs who have been scrutinising the bill. We have read and listened to a colossal amount of evidence. Like the convener, I am hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed, and a special word of thanks must be recorded for the committee clerks and SPICe colleagues.

I recognise that the cabinet secretary and her officials have worked really hard to reach this stage. Mairi Gougeon has signalled her intention to leave the Parliament at the end of this session, and there will be opportunities to say nice things about her closer to that time.

Despite all the doom and gloom that we have heard from members of the Tory front bench today, there is a majority in the Parliament for advancing Scotland’s land reform journey.

The committee’s stage 1 report recommends support for the bill’s general principles. However, we make really important recommendations on how the bill should be improved and strengthened, and we set out where more clarity is required. I welcome the cabinet secretary’s letter to the committee last night and the fact that she has restated today that she will continue to listen, reflect and work with MSPs, stakeholders and, importantly, grass-roots voices, because we must ensure that the bill is amended at stage 2 in a coherent way.

I agree with the cabinet secretary that Scotland should be a land of opportunity, and we need to be bold to ensure that Scotland is not just a playground for the extremely wealthy. I think that some members in the chamber would gladly keep things that way, so we need to work hard and be bold and ambitious at stages 2 and 3.

My colleague Rhoda Grant, who attended stage 1 evidence sessions and has championed land reform throughout her political service, has set out areas in which Scottish Labour will seek to improve the bill. That includes public interest tests—I was glad to hear Michael Matheson speak about them, because the Government needs to show a bit of courage and be bolder in that area.

Rhoda Grant talked about issues on which Scottish Labour will lodge amendments or support others, particularly in relation to thresholds, lotting and the role of the land and communities commissioner. We believe that the commissioner should be able to proactively investigate potential breaches of community engagement obligations.

A small number of landowners act against the interests of communities, but does Monica Lennon accept that a very large number of them often do far more to invest in, support and develop businesses, people and individuals in their communities than the public sector does? Surely, we should encourage that rather than take measures that risk that coming to an end.

Any good practice is always welcome, but what I am hearing from Fergus Ewing today is that he is in alliance with the Tories, who do not want land reform. It is a shame that the member feels that way, too.

I will draw my comments to a conclusion. I have missed out a few things, but I want to touch on something that Finlay Carson said. He warned about the economic implications of the bill. Maintaining the status quo or allowing landowners to become even more powerful in Scotland would also have serious economic implications.

I commend to the chamber a blog by the economist Laurie Macfarlane, who wrote that

“Land is Scotland’s most important economic asset.”

He also said:

“How land is owned, managed and used plays a fundamental role shaping Scotland’s economic, social, environmental and cultural landscapes.”

I completely agree. That is why Scottish Labour will work with the Government to support the bill at stage 1 and improve it.

This is not Scotland’s first land reform bill and it should not be the last. We can improve the bill, but the next Parliament will have to go further and be bolder, because Scotland’s land reform journey has many miles to travel yet.

16:36  

I join colleagues in thanking all the folk who have given evidence to the committee and those who have continued to engage, even today.

I was late in joining the committee, and I had to do a wee bit of a catch-up. As I am the member for Aberdeen Central, which is the only constituency in the north-east of Scotland that does not have a farm, there has been a lot of learning along the way.

Today marks another step on Scotland’s journey towards a fairer and more equitable society. The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill represents a way forward in our on-going commitment to transform land ownership and management in our country.

It is not right that the ownership and control of much of Scotland’s land remain concentrated in the hands of the few. Many members have quoted Andy Wightman and have used statistics that he has provided to show that land ownership is now even more concentrated in the hands of the few. Four hundred and twenty-one landowners own 50 per cent of privately owned rural land. That figure was 440 in 2012. Nine hundred and twenty landowners own 60 per cent of privately owned rural land. That figure was 989 in 2012. Two thousand, five hundred and eighty-eight landowners own 70 per cent of that land. That figure was 3,161 in 2012. We have gone backwards in some regards, which is why we need to continue our journey on land reform.

We should ensure that those who have landholdings that are not contiguous are captured in the bill. At the end of the day, we know that many landowners have large parcels of land that might fall outwith the thresholds that have been put in place, even though they have a huge number of landholdings.

Will the member give way?

I will give way very briefly to Mr Mountain.

Has the member thought of a way of resolving that? If the landholding is not contiguous, should its inclusion be based on a commonality of machinery, management and staff that makes it contiguous as far as land management plans are concerned? If one landholding is in Orkney and one is in Lewis, they should not be seen as being contiguous.

That was not brief, and no, I do not necessarily agree with that, but it may be one of the things that can be looked at. Some landowners and land managers have parcels of land that are spread right across the country, and they will not be sharing machinery or anything like that. It is one thing that we can look at, but there are a number of other things that we have to look at, in my humble opinion.

We have heard a lot today about many of the stakeholders, but there are a few folks who have been missed out, and it is very important to capture what some of those folks have said. I will turn to the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association, because I joined the call in talking to—and more importantly, listening to—tenant farmers. The STFA supports the general principles of the bill, and, in its submission to us, which came yesterday, it talks a fair amount about part 2. It says that the bill contains “vital” provisions to ensure that farm tenants have fair access to future public funding and future commodity markets; that it implements some “long overdue” changes to the rent test; that it ensures a “just transition” to alternative land uses for tenants who are facing the loss of land; and that it modernises compensation for deer and reared game damage. The association believes that the bill strives to balance the rights of tenants and landlords, and, in the meeting that we had, we heard very definitely that, in many cases, the rights favour the landlords to a huge degree. I have to be honest: I was taken aback by some of the commentary that came from tenants about the way that they had been treated.

We absolutely need to continue on the journey towards a fairer and more equitable society. I believe that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill—which aims to improve our system of land ownership, land use, and rights and responsibilities, ensuring that our land contributes to a just society while balancing public and private interests—is the way forward. I hope that we can continue to engage with the cabinet secretary on the issue and get it right for all the people of Scotland.

16:42  

I thank the committee and the clerks for their work in preparing the stage 1 report. As it stands, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill proposes several radical changes to land management. In its current form, the bill poses a threat to rural Scotland and will have unforeseen consequences for the wider rural economy.

The bill goes against evidence-led policy making and fails to recognise the key drivers of rural Scotland. With Rachel Reeves’s spring statement today likely to affect the Scottish budget in the future, we have to consider that the rural economy is more important than ever.

Throughout the bill process, stakeholders in the rural sector have raised endless concerns about the bill’s pitfalls. My colleagues have highlighted some of those concerns; they have told us that the bill is unworkable and that it does not achieve the Government’s aims.

When Doug Lumsden intervened on the cabinet secretary, he highlighted that just 8 per cent of respondents to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s call for views thought that the bill fulfils the Scottish Government’s objectives, which means that the majority of people believe that it does not. I genuinely hope that the cabinet secretary will engage across parties in good faith to shape a more pragmatic aim for the bill but, from what we have heard today, is it not the case that the SNP, Labour and the Greens are absolutely obsessed with who owns the land rather than how it is used? It is a sort of socialist attitude.

Will the member take an intervention?

No.

There are some bad actors, as Fergus Ewing highlighted, but, in the main, it is not the landowners who are flawed but the bill itself.

Turning to the detail of the bill, my colleagues have highlighted several problematic areas, which I will aim to cover in the time that I have. We are concerned about the complexity and bureaucracy of the land reform process, as is noted in the committee’s stage 1 report. Critics have said that land management plans increase the burden on landowners by introducing red tape and making it harder for people to manage their land more effectively. That will have severe consequences for food security, nature targets, investment and the wider rural economy.

Additionally, there are serious concerns from rural stakeholders and legal experts that part 1 would interfere with property rights, which may yet prove another costly legal battle for the SNP. Fergus Ewing highlighted that a public interest test may be incompatible with the ECHR, as it could interfere with legitimate property rights, and there could be legal challenges.

I do not agree with what Bob Doris said. He seemed to belittle the role of land managers. Land management plans are burdensome and costly, particularly for those who have smaller amounts of land. In reality, it is unlikely that an LMP could result in clear benefits. There could also be confidentiality and sensitivity problems around them.

The size of an estate is not an indicator of concentrated land ownership. Evidence from the Scottish Land Commission points to the issue of concentrated land ownership, rather than scale.

I disagree with Ariane Burgess on lotting. The evidence that was given on lotting from across the land reform spectrum clearly provides a resounding and worrying signal to Parliament.

On the point about scale, does the member really believe that there should be nothing—no questions asked and no intervention—and that anyone could own as much land as their bank balance would allow?

I am not sure that I get the question, so I will carry on.

Part 2 of the bill is already having a very worrying impact. A recent conversation with a tenant farmer in my constituency revealed the reality. He told me that landlords are becoming reluctant to agree to new tenancies in fear of the provisions that the bill sets out. That could undoubtedly lead to fewer opportunities for tenant farmers, who play a vital role in Scotland’s farming industry.

We have heard a lot of concerns about resumption. I hope that the cabinet secretary will consider a consultation on resumption and that she might comment on that.

I also highlight concerns in the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s report regarding the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and the limited engagement with stakeholders on policy development.

Overall, fundamental changes are necessary to make the bill work. We will lodge sensible amendments to mitigate the bill’s damaging effects—as we always do—and we will ensure that the bill reflects the needs of rural Scotland.

16:48  

I welcome the opportunity to debate the bill. I am glad to hear members of most parties pushing for the bill to be as strong as it possibly can be for communities across Scotland.

As I am a highlander, land reform is a policy area that I feel a great deal of emotion about. Our land is emotive, and it has too often been misunderstood, misused and misappropriated. The impact of the clearances is still very much visible and tangible in so many of the communities that I represent, not just because there are no homes where there could be, or thriving communities where there should be, but because awful, Cumberlandesque attitudes towards our communities and the land that we live and work on are still frequently displayed.

Back in 2021, I spoke in a members’ business debate secured by Rhoda Grant on the emergence of green lairds. I am sure that, ever since, she, like me, has continued to get Google alerts and to read in the local newspaper about further instances of that. The reaction to the BrewDogs of this world coming in and buying up bits of the Highlands to kill trees on while parading that fact around as if it is something to be proud of has frequently—I am pleased to say—been one of derision, dismay and disgust. However, there remains a pervasive attitude that the Highlands are a wilderness that is available for the richest urbanites to purchase and do with as they please, because whatever cause they want the land to serve will obviously be better than whatever the highlanders want to do with it.

Land ownership in Scotland has been far too concentrated for far too long, and the situation is getting worse, not better. As many have pointed out, 421 landowners own 50 per cent of private rural land, and that is in the context of 57 per cent of Scotland’s rural land being privately owned. That is wrong; it is not serving communities, culture or the climate. We need more diverse land ownership.

Andy Wightman points out that many of the landowners who are responsible for that figure will not be caught by provisions in the bill, because their portfolio is not contiguous. Currently, that can be the case if somebody owns multiple holdings that are slightly under the limit across Scotland, or if what is, in essence, one holding is split up by a railway line. It is not any better for somebody to own lots of little bits of land across the country than one big holding. I agree with Community Land Scotland and others that the contiguous requirement for hitting significance thresholds should be removed.

We are not short of examples of community land ownership proving a success. The cabinet secretary mentioned Eigg, which was purchased by islanders in 1997, just before I was born, after years of suffering at the hands of absentee landlords. It continues to go from strength to strength. It is worth noting that it was another community buyout in the Highlands—by the North Assynt crofters—that drove the people of Eigg forward in their plans. It was not easy, and the story is worth looking into for many reasons. The push from communities and the support that they required from the public sector contain lessons for us today.

We can also learn from places such as Eigg about the potential of the relationship between community ownership and depopulation. Often, when people speak about their decisions to leave the Highlands and Islands, they refer—even if not in explicit language—to a feeling of disempowerment, to an inability to impact how the land around them is used and to an awareness that decisions about that are out of their hands and instead available to the highest bidder to make. Eigg went from being home to about 60 people in the 1990s to being home to more than 100, 27 years later. The community knows what it needs better than anyone else, and that shows.

The Highlands and Islands hold many similar examples of community buyouts and their success; 97 per cent of community-owned land is situated there. That is not because that is easy to do in my region or because the central belt cannot or should not make use of community empowerment—it can and should. However, it is necessary for the future of Highlands and Islands communities; if we want people to stay and be productive in those areas, the righting of wrongs and the rebalancing of power are needed.

I welcome any steps forward in relation to land reform, but we should be doing as much as we can with the opportunities that we have. People keep voting for the SNP, as a party that says that it is going to do great things on community land ownership, so we should do those things wherever possible.

Although I completely back the general principles of the bill, as I would have any of the previous land reform bills, I hope that it is stronger by the time that we are debating it at stage 3. Some of that should be easy wins, such as lowering the land size threshold to 500 hectares for land management plans and registrations of interest, as the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has recommended. As the committee also recommended, there must be a clear public interest test in the bill, and the role of the public interest in decision making around lotting must be explicit. As many have mentioned, fines of £5,000 are not enough to disincentivise breaching the requirements of a land management plan, especially when some are arguing that creating the plan will cost more than that.

A land reform bill next parliamentary session seems as inevitable as ever, but let us do what we can with the last year that we have of this session to put power into the hands of communities in the Highlands and Islands and across Scotland. Those communities have shown incredible resilience in the face of decades of inequality, and sometimes they are successful in purchasing and making better use of their land—but not often enough. Land reform should be about recognising, rewarding and empowering that resilience.

16:54  

Land is a public good, and land reform is a question of who owns that public good—whether it belongs to the people who live on and work it, or whether it remains concentrated in the hands of those who have come to own it through chance and happenstance.

The question of who owns Scotland is at the heart of today’s debate, and it should and could have been at the heart of the Scottish Government’s Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, but, in its current form, the bill will simply not address the concentration of land ownership or challenge the interests that perpetuate it. It does not include a presumption against a single individual owning all of Scotland’s land. It does not set a realistic threshold for a public interest test to be applied on the sale or transfer of land. It does not even include a public interest test. Therefore, I and my colleagues will lodge amendments to strengthen the bill so that we can finally begin to address the centuries-old concentration of Scotland’s land in the hands of so few.

Today in Scotland, our land remains in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy individuals, estates and organisations. Recent research shows that 421 landowners now own half the privately owned rural land in Scotland, which means that just 0.025 per cent of Scotland’s population own 67 per cent of Scotland’s total rural land. I repeat that: just 0.025 per cent of our entire population own 67 per cent of our rural land.

In its evidence to the committee, the Crofting Commission highlighted how Scotland’s highly concentrated pattern of private land ownership is “economically dangerous”, as it creates localised monopolies. Having ownership in the hands of so few severely limits access to affordable homes, stifles job creation and harms the environment. The owning and controlling of large landholdings by wealthy private individuals does not meet the public interest. We are talking about a monopoly of a resource that no one created and no one produced—it was freely created, yet it is owned and controlled by a handful of individuals for the extraction of private profit.

So, ownership matters, scale matters and concentration of that ownership matters. We cannot rebuild and empower rural communities unless we break that monopoly, but the bill as introduced does not include a presumption against a single individual owning as much land as they can afford. It does not set a realistic threshold for a public interest test to be applied on the sale and transfer of land. In addition, as I have said, it does not even include a public interest test.

Just this week, as we have heard, the Clan Donald Lands Trust on Skye suddenly announced its intention to sell all its land and properties. That is a glaring example of why the bill needs to be substantially strengthened to work in the public interest. The trust manages 20,000 acres of land, which is used for agriculture, crofting, deer and woodland management, wild fisheries and renewables. No advance notice was given to the community, and no public interest test will be applied. The Scottish Land Commission is currently powerless to do anything about it, and it will continue to be powerless unless the bill is drastically amended.

I thank Mercedes Villalba for making a powerful point about the need for a public interest test. Does she agree that the inclusion of a public interest test would help the bill to make improvements in urban Scotland as well as in rural Scotland?

I do. It is important that urban land is looked at, and it is unfortunate that it has not been up until now.

It does not have to be this way. If legislated for correctly, land reform can be a vehicle for empowering communities across Scotland. That will mean amending the land transfer test so that it is properly redefined as a public interest test, to ensure that land transfers benefit the public—us, the people of Scotland. It will also mean introducing a presumed limit of no more than 500 hectares on the aggregate amount of land that any person can own unless that public interest test can be met.

Those are not new or fringe ideas—they are popular and well-supported ideas, and I have the receipts to prove it. They are the very proposals that I consulted on for my proposed land ownership and public interest (Scotland) bill, which received majority support from respondents. The consultation on those proposals received greater participation than the Scottish Government’s consultation.

Land is a public good, and land reform is a question of who owns that public good. With the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, we have an opportunity to right a centuries-old wrong and finally bring land back to the people—for the many, not the few.

We move to winding-up speeches.

17:00  

I join members in thanking the committee clerks and the witnesses for their evidence over many months of stage 1 consideration of the bill.

It is important that the committee got out of the Parliament and spoke with communities around Scotland. We had a powerful meeting in Aberfeldy, which was of a lot of relevance to the bill. Local people talked about their concerns regarding the Taymouth castle estate in Glen Lyon and the lack of transparency from the landowner about their plans. Over a number of years, community and economic assets have been drawn into the ownership of that landowner for an exclusive development. Nobody locally knows what the land will look like in 10 to 15 years’ time, so the issue of transparency is key.

We were told that the landowner has not only ignored calls from me, as a regional MSP, to provide a land management plan and a master plan for their assets, but has even ignored the First Minister, who is the constituency MSP. This is a real-world situation for which the bill will either work or will not work. As we heard with the situation in Sleat, the bill needs to provide meaningful change and transparency for communities.

It is clear from the case that was raised in Aberfeldy that the thresholds for the land management plans that are currently in the bill are far too high. They do not apply to holdings that are separate but managed as a single unit, a point that was made well by Kevin Stewart. Amendments will be needed in that space.

It is also clear from the example of Taymouth that we need some consideration of a definition in the bill of sites of community significance—particularly land that is on the outskirts of a village and that could be used for housing, for example, but which falls below the threshold set in the bill. Such land should be part of the picture and part of the scrutiny through land management plans. Michael Matheson made an important point on that. Sites of community significance should be subject to prior notification, enabling communities to have a say if such sites are put up for sale.

I am sorry to disappoint Tim Eagle by saying that this is not a radical bill, despite the cabinet secretary’s powerful speech in opening the debate. It is not a radical bill, it will not fundamentally change the pattern of land ownership—I wish that it would—and it will not fundamentally address the power imbalance. What it might do is bring a degree of transparency. However, if it cannot pass the Taymouth castle test, it will not deliver transparency to a vast number of estates and holdings across Scotland. Communities will be left wondering what the bill has left them with, if anything at all.

I will move on to some details in the bill that have not yet been picked up on. The Greens are very supportive of the creation of a land and communities commissioner, who will have oversight over the implementation of land management plans. However, there is an issue with compliance and penalties. There is a feeling that the penalty of a one-off fine is really low and that it could just be taken as a cost of maintaining business as usual.

I understand that the level of fines provided for in the bill is the highest that can be issued under current guidelines. However, as a means of driving enforcement, we are keen for the landowners and managers who fail to comply with the new requirements of the bill to be prevented from receiving other public subsidies. Another option that the cabinet secretary could consider would be for the £5,000 fine to recur annually until the breach is resolved.

There is also an opportunity to strengthen the fines for those in breach of the regulations relating to the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land. I have become aware in recent months that Police Scotland is already struggling to investigate alleged breaches of that legislation. There is an opportunity to move such breaches from being criminal offences to being civil offences, which could be investigated by the land and communities commissioner, and to introduce a £5,000 fine for such breaches.

It is clear from speeches from around the chamber that many members intend to widen the scope of the bill. That will alarm the convener of the NZET Committee and perhaps others who are in the chamber, but it is inevitable, because the intention of the bill is really broad yet the powers within it are very narrow and quite weak. That provides an invitation for members to meet the intentions of the bill by making it stronger. Monica Lennon is dead right. Communities are fed up of relying on charity. They want the power imbalance in Scotland to be addressed.

I turn briefly to part 2 of the bill. There are important measures in it on agricultural tenancy law. Kevin Stewart is absolutely right. We have had some very powerful evidence—in private, I have to say—from farming tenants, which shows the power imbalance that exists in Scotland.

We need some clarity on aspects such as resumption compensation. We need the definition of sustainable and regenerative agriculture to be absolutely locked into the bill, as it is in the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 and will be, I hope, in the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill. That will drive change.

We need a commitment in the bill to on-going review and monitoring of the legislation. Fundamentally, we need to know in a few years’ time whether the bill has changed the pattern of land ownership in Scotland and brought about diversity of ownership and opportunity. It appears right now, at stage 1, that it will not make those changes. If it does not make them, the land reform question will keep coming back again and again until we have some meaningful change.

17:06  

It has been a really good debate. For Scottish Labour, land reform is in our DNA. It has been part of our identity since the Crofters Party was involved in the creation of our party.

Scottish Labour will vote for the general principles of the bill at stage 1 but, on the basis of the evidence that was given to the committee, we believe that it must be improved.

In her opening speech, the cabinet secretary spoke positively about the importance of land reform but, as members across the chamber mentioned, after 17 years of SNP Government, land ownership concentration is getting worse. The statistic that less than 1 per cent of Scotland’s population still own 67 per cent of Scotland’s rural land should make us reflect. The comments by Mercedes Villalba, Kevin Stewart and Monica Lennon need to be reflected on.

The bill needs to go further if we are to change land ownership patterns. As Rhoda Grant rightly said in her opening speech, the purpose of land reform is to empower communities, build economies and retain populations. Stakeholders are disappointed that what is currently in the bill will not deliver the change that our communities need.

There is a really important bit in the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s report that is worth restating:

“It is clear that in much of rural Scotland, a lack of available land is a serious impediment to economic development, local services, affordable housing and other quality-of-life issues. Put simply, the scarcity of useful land stops some communities flourishing. There can be a power imbalance that leaves landowners, and not the community, the key local decision-takers.”

We all need to work together so that, when we get to stage 3, we have pushed the bill forward and strengthened it. That will take a lot of work, but we are willing to work with the Scottish Government to do that. There is an appetite around the chamber for it, so let us get on with it.

One change for which we want to push is a lower threshold to define a large landholding. We also want to ensure that all thresholds across the bill are aligned. A majority of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee agrees with the principle that the threshold for community engagement obligations for mainland estates is set too high at 3,000 hectares. That point was made by several stakeholders who gave us useful briefings in advance of the debate.

If the bill is to deliver on the needs of our communities, it should set a lower threshold that people can all understand. If thresholds were to be reduced to 500 hectares, that would keep all crofts and 97 per cent of farms outwith the scope of the bill but could be transformative.

A key point that Rhoda Grant made in her opening remarks, which was then made by Mercedes Villalba, Ben Macpherson and Michael Matheson, was about the need for a public interest test. That is crucial, because people know what a public interest test is, it has legal precedence and provides greater protection to family farms. We do not think that a public interest test on land should have been dumped from the bill, so we need to do some cross-party work on that to look at the detail and make sure that we get it right for stage 2 and then stage 3.

One thing that several members have commented on, which I strongly agree with, is that there are problems with communities being given only 30 days to register an interest in sales of land that is more than 1,000 hectares. That is simply not realistic. If communities are to come together, they will have to think about how to raise the money and pull together the plans. They need a bit more space to pull together the resources. The good examples that were cited by Emma Roddick, for example, about the transformation that can be delivered by community ownership, are worth bearing in mind.

A lot of people have talked about the lotting process and the importance of giving rural communities the chance to put in bids. That is important, but the committee again questioned how the decisions will be made. The suggestion of independent advice is critically important. The recommendation that the proposed new land and communities commissioner be empowered to proactively investigate potential breaches of the community engagement obligations is important. We cannot wait for the wrong decisions to be made before we act.

At the moment, there is not really a requirement in relation to how the complex process that is being suggested involves local communities. I have mentioned the timescales, and a lot of detail needs to be sorted out. One example that could be looked at is the unnecessary administrative burden. Admittedly, it is placed on a small percentage of farmers, but could the land management plan not be done in the same way as the legally required whole-farm plan, rather than our having a double approach? That would pull resources together and, if the process is crafted correctly, we would get the same outcomes.

One other issue that I would like to mention in relation to land management plans is the point that was made by Ramblers Scotland about the fact that we are seeing too many examples of restrictions on access creeping in. I have seen that for myself when I have been out walking in the countryside, and I think that the proposed new section 44B of the 2016 act is absolutely crucial in that regard.

One of the things that I want to focus on in my final remarks is the fact that urban land reform is not included. That is a huge missed opportunity, not just for constituents in my Lothian region but right across Scotland in our towns, cities and villages. People are going to miss out.

We will push hard for change in the bill. We have worked really hard on the previous two land reform bills, and we cannot afford this third land reform bill to be a missed opportunity. As I said at the start of my speech, we will be constructive but we will propose amendments to the bill, because we think that, at the moment, it does not deliver on the ambition that we need in Scotland to deliver for our communities.

You must conclude, Ms Boyack.

I want to make one call to the Scottish Government. Will the cabinet secretary come back to members before we hit stage 2, so that we can have a more intelligent and joined-up discussion on amendments and are not just flying through amendments at stage 2, with some getting passed and some not, and some more arriving at stage 3? I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on whether we could come together, have some rational conversations and make sure that the bill delivers in the way that it could.

17:13  

Presiding Officer, last night, I raised a point of order on the timings of this debate and the timings of the Government’s response to the committee’s report, and you confirmed that everything is compliant with standing orders. However, that does not make it right. If, as a Parliament, we want to make good and robust legislation, we have to respect the timetables that are set out by Parliament, and the fact that the devolved Government can railroad something through does not mean that it should do so. As parliamentarians, we have a duty to do things right. Even if we do not agree with a bill, we should make sure that the legislative process is the best that it can be.

Will the member take an intervention?

I have not even started but, yes, briefly.

I ask the member to reflect on the fact that we have been taking evidence in committee since June last year. We have had a long time to deal with this.

I absolutely get that point, but we did not receive the Government’s response to our report until, I think, quarter to six last night—I think that it was even after a press release, with many mistakes in it, was sent out.

I extend my thanks, as others have, to the committee clerks and our convener for the excellent stage 1 report. I also thank everyone who gave evidence and everyone who provided briefings for today’s debate. I also congratulate the Scottish Government on uniting almost everyone who gave evidence—land reform campaigners, the Scottish Land Commission, surveyors and Scottish Land & Estates all agreed that the bill would not deliver on its aims.

I share the committee’s concerns about the bill. There is not enough detail, evidence or focus on the needs of our rural communities, landowners and those who live on and work the land. As a result, I must say, regrettably, that we are unable to support the bill at stage 1.

My colleagues made excellent points in the debate. I will focus my comments on part 1 of the bill, because that is where I feel that it is most deeply flawed. The contribution that our rural estates make to the economy and wellbeing of Scotland cannot be underestimated or overlooked. Our rural estates contribute 57 per cent of our renewable energy generation, more than half of all new woodland, 13,000 rural enterprises, one in 10 rural jobs and 12,000 homes for workers and their families. It is that contribution that the central belt-focused SNP Government overlooks in its efforts to impose regulation on a sector that needs our support, not our oversight.

I am particularly concerned by any suggestion to change the definition of a large holding from 3,000 hectares to 1,000 hectares. In my meeting with the cabinet secretary, which I welcomed, there was a suggestion that that could be phased. However, that would lead to additional uncertainty for landowners and to a confusing picture. Liam McArthur said that we ought to listen to the argument around the issue. I would say that we should start at 3,000 hectares and then reduce the figure by regulation.

There is a misconception in the Government that big is bad; we also heard that from Liam McArthur. I understand the way that rural estates work. Scale and productivity should be the key factors in determining when and how community engagement and management plans should come into effect, not an arbitrary size model.

That is not the case at all. As Douglas Lumsden will have heard from across the chamber in the debate, there is a recognition that some landowners across Scotland are doing great work, but it is about how we are able to tackle the areas where we know that there are problems and where landowners are not undertaking that good practice. Does he agree that we need to challenge that?

I certainly agree that most landowners do very good work, and we have heard that during the debate. Where there are issues, I absolutely agree that we should do something to tackle those, but from what I have seen, the bill will not do that.

As I was saying, having a simple cut-off such as the 3,000 hectares demonstrates the simple thinking of this Government. It makes arbitrary decisions for our rural communities with little or no understanding of the realities on the ground. It imposes what it thinks is the right thing to do from its desks in Edinburgh without meeting community groups. We have seen that time and again, whether on wood-burning stoves or the building of pylons.

Will the member take an intervention?

I will come back later if I have time, Mr Doris.

That will be a no, then.

It might not be a no.

We broadly support the need for local management plans, but they have to be focused on who they impact and the communities with which they will interact. Well-funded special interest groups must be held in context when it comes to those consultations. Local people, businesses and voices must have priority.

Colleagues across the chamber have raised crucial points in the debate. I want to mention my colleague Tim Eagle’s comments. He was not long ago working in the area, so we should listen to him. He said that the community right to buy is under review and asked why we should make the changes at this time. That point was also made by Liam McArthur.

Tim Eagle also raised the issue of how the bill could affect small land sales. The Scottish Land Commission has raised the possibility of de minimis exemptions, which sounds sensible, but we need to look very carefully at the legislation that would be brought forward on that.

We also heard about huge legal risks. Tim Eagle mentioned compensation and criteria for lotting. Fergus Ewing intervened and brought up the issue of retrospective changes and possible ECHR implications. My biggest worry is that the lawyers may be the biggest winners from this bill.

Ariane Burgess mentioned lower thresholds, but showed no concern for the increased workload on the Scottish Land Commission. The financial memorandum says that the SLC has to do most of the work, using “existing budgets” and reducing its current activities, which would be a concern for many.

I agree with Michael Matheson that continued reform is needed. He said that repeated legislation has not worked; I am afraid to suggest that this piece of legislation will not work either.

Bob Doris mentioned the inspection of land management plans for compliance. I agree that that would be a good idea but, once again I worry—especially if the threshold is reduced to 1,000 hectares—about the impact on the Scottish Land Commission.

In conclusion, the Scottish Conservatives will be voting against the bill at stage 1. I know that many of my committee colleagues hope that the major flaws in the bill can be amended and addressed, but that will require hundreds of amendments, and the bill may look completely different by the time it becomes law.

The committee agreed that part 1 of the bill “risks not delivering” and that its approach is “potentially burdensome and bureaucratic.”

Part 2 of the bill requires major revisions to get it right. At present, from the conversations that I have had, I believe that there is a serious risk of unintended consequences and of less land being available to let. The Government needs to balance the rights of the landowner—

You must conclude, Mr Lumsden.

—and the rights of the tenant to ensure that the market is not damaged. The committee had concerns that that balance had not been struck.

It is for those reasons that I am unable to support the bill at stage 1.

I call the cabinet secretary to wind up. You have up to eight minutes, please.

17:21  

I will start by referencing the comments from Sarah Boyack with regard to the overall tone of today’s debate. We can see how much the issue of land reform matters to people—to MSPs on all sides of the chamber, as well as to our communities more widely.

I reiterate my thanks to the committee for all its work on the bill; to all the stakeholders who have engaged with me and contributed more widely to the development of the bill; and, more broadly, to members from across the chamber who have contributed to the debate. We have heard some powerful contributions.

As I said earlier, I am committed to delivering ambitious proposals that will bring about greater fairness and equality of opportunity for our rural communities. That includes the tenanted sector, which often forms the bedrock of those communities. I am committed to doing that in a way that is supported by evidence and that is fair to all parties.

It is clear to me that, although there will always be areas that we need to consider for amendment, there is some support today across the chamber for many of the measures that we propose to introduce and for the overall aims that we are trying to achieve with the bill. Nonetheless, I recognise the calls from members, and from the Scottish Land Commission in committee, for the proposals in part 1 to be simplified and improved. I take this opportunity to signal that we stand ready to work with members across the chamber, and with our valued stakeholders, including Community Land Scotland, NFU Scotland, Scottish Land & Estates, the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association and others, to deliver effective, proportionate reforms.

As I set out in my response to the committee, I will carefully consider how to simplify proposals. That will include looking at excluding small transfers from pre-notification and setting out clear timescales for lotting decisions. However, we are also going to look to strengthen some of the provisions in the bill—

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I will.

It seems as though there is going to be a long list of amendments to the bill. How is the cabinet secretary going to ensure that the committee has enough time in which to consider those before we go into what is bound to be a fairly lengthy amendment period?

The engagement that we undertake from this point will be important, and I am keen to start that process early, once stage 1 is concluded today. I really look forward to that, and I appreciate the openness today, from members on all sides of the chamber, to working with me in drafting amendments.

As I was saying, we are seeking to strengthen the bill by looking at strengthening the definitions for the landholdings in scope; providing more time for community bodies under pre-notification; and making sure that penalties for landowners who breach obligations are a strong deterrent. I am also considering possible revisions to part 2 in relation to rent and compensation for agricultural improvements, to name just a couple of areas.

As ever, a number of points were raised during the debate that I want to address. I will first touch on Tim Eagle’s contribution. I hope that, during the debate, he has managed to get his breath back, given the speed at which he delivered his speech, although I disagree with much of what he set out. As I outlined in my intervention on Douglas Lumsden, I have visited businesses, farms and estates of all sizes across Scotland, and there are good landowners—no one is saying otherwise—who are engaging well with communities and are doing great work, as Liam McArthur also recognised; however, there are also landowners who are not doing those things.

I welcome Monica Lennon’s passionate contribution to the debate. She made a clear point that we cannot simply rely on the benevolence of landowners—responsibilities have to come with owning large tracts of land in Scotland, or how else will we manage or try to tackle areas in which we know there are issues?

I do not accept some members’ view that it is only by owning land at scale that good things can be done. As the committee’s report highlighted, and as many of those who gave evidence to the committee said, there are many examples of other countries taking forward positive work to deal with the climate and environment challenges that we face through collaboration and by working together. The Just Transition Commission has consistently noted that current patterns of land ownership in Scotland are a major barrier to a just transition, so we have to try to tackle those inequalities.

Tim Eagle raised some concerns about part 2 of the bill. It is simply wrong to reject part 2 in its entirety as if no engagement or work has been done in the intervening periods between legislation on agricultural holdings. To throw away the opportunity to make things fairer for our tenant farmers is wrong, as he suggested when he rejected all the other measures in the bill out of hand. In 2016, a review of agricultural holdings legislation led to legal changes, and there has been continued engagement and consultation with tenant farmers ever since. We have to take forward these proposals, taking into consideration the views that have been expressed across the chamber and the committee’s recommendations, in order that our tenant farmers will have equal access to the future support framework that we are delivering through the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024.

Thresholds have been raised as an issue a number of times across the chamber. Like the committee, I can see some merit in aligning the thresholds, for simplicity and for policy cohesion. I know that the Scottish Land Commission has made recommendations on that. Part 1 of the bill as introduced aligns the thresholds at 1,000 hectares, which would mean that land management plans would deliver greater transparency for more than 50 per cent of Scotland’s land compared to just over 40 per cent at present. I want to carefully consider the additional costs that that would add for landowners, who would be required to produce a land management plan, as well as for the public purse, so that we can be confident that the requirements are targeted in a proportionate way.

If the thresholds are changed and there are significant changes to the bill as it goes through the Parliament, will the cabinet secretary commit to lodging a refreshed financial memorandum in the Parliament so that it can be scrutinised properly?

I think that I answered that question in the point that I just made. We need to look carefully at the financial implications of any changes to the thresholds, for landowners and for ourselves, and I will be looking at that information as we proceed to stage 2.

The community right to buy has been raised throughout the afternoon. It was raised by Edward Mountain and Ariane Burgess, in particular, and I hear their disappointment about the phasing of the community right to buy review. Of course, I recognise that there are links between the measures in the bill and the community right to buy, but it is important that the review that we are undertaking is allowed to be completed according to its own timescales. The conclusions of the review need to be considered in a meaningful way before we legislate, because, if we rush changes in order to meet the timescales for the bill, there could be unintended consequences. If, following appropriate consideration of the review, we decide that legislative changes are needed, that work will be taken forward in separate, future legislation.

A number of points were raised about pre-notification timescales. I note the recommendation in the committee’s report that timescales should be adjusted for pre-notification, and I agree that it is important that timescales are adequate for that process. I will consider that carefully before lodging any stage 2 amendments to extend the timescales. Proposals were also made on the minimum size of land transfer below which pre-notification would not apply. I agree with that principle and am content to look at further proposals.

Many issues have been raised today and, unfortunately, I will not be able to cover them all, as I must draw to a close. Land reform goes to the heart of the debate about what kind of Scotland we want for ourselves and for future generations. The bill marks another significant step on our land reform journey—one that will deliver real change for communities across our nation. We want to make sure that our communities are informed and engaged and have better opportunities to purchase land, and the bill will ensure that our communities are no longer in the dark about the decisions that impact them.

The bill and its provisions will build on the hard-won reforms since the inception of the Parliament, ensuring basic fairness and equality of opportunity for a range of communities and individuals. With that, I call on members across the chamber to vote in favour of the general principles of the bill, to ensure that we move forward together on the next step of our land reform journey.

That concludes the debate on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill at stage 1.