Seòmar agus comataidhean

Will the member take an intervention?

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 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.

Well, maybe if there is more information—

In the last cleaner air for Scotland strategy, which was published in 2021, there was a commitment to bring in that code of practice. Is that work now really quite behind schedule?

Will the exemptions be considered on a case-by-case basis? Say there was a situation where there was an arable area on an island, and there were, therefore, concerns about cadmium uptake in crops, could SEPA still say, “Well, actually, that’s not an appropriate area to be spreading sewage sludge,” and therefore rule against it, or is it that, if you are on an island, it is fine to spread sewage sludge?

Okay. That answers the question.

Would that require legal change through the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill?

Right. Thank you.

—until you get involved in the CAFS3 process and see what Government thinking is on those things?