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I ask you to consider what the bill looks like to communities where there is a significant or powerful landowner. They will see that the bill will not change the concentration of land ownership overnight, because that depends on many factors, including an eventual sale of land, lotting and everything else. The bill might deliver transparency but, at the moment, it does not apply to very significant landholdings—I go back to the example of Taymouth Castle. Communities will look at the bill and ask how it provides transparency that will benefit them. They will ask how they can be sure of what the future is, and how they can understand major landowners’ plans for their communities. At the moment, the bill does not seem to apply to those communities.

The setting of a threshold seems to be quite arbitrary anyway. Setting it at 3,000 hectares clearly excludes a number of very significant landholdings in Scotland.

We have taken evidence from a range of communities that have developed local place plans. It is clear that there is a relationship between what is in the wider land management plan, what could be in the local place plan and what is actually taking place in that surrounding community, particularly in the built environment. Do you see a role for local place plans in the bill, and should they be specifically mentioned in relation to LMPs? We would not want a situation in which a land management plan that is not really binding on the landowner is developed in one space and a local place plan is developed in another space and for those not to meet up.

I am struggling to see how that can be enforced. You are saying that it is, in effect, a public interest test, but it is not applied to the owner of the land. How would the public interest be carried through to future plans for an estate? Would that be done through land management plans? I am struggling to see how the public interest would be considered if the test is to be applied retrospectively, at the point of sale, on the person who is selling the land.

Are you able to predict what the demand on your resources will be? You can strategise and say, “These look like the areas where we’re going to be asked to do more work,” but there might be new and emerging areas that have not yet been scoped out.

Another point that stakeholders have raised is that the bill does not provide a procedure to calculate compensation for game damage. I am interested in hearing more details on that.

My first question is about the provision in the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991 on compensation for landlords where tenants plant trees. That often includes the cost of returning the land to agriculture. I see in my notes that that is covered in section 45A of the 1991 act. That issue that has been raised with me by tenants in my region for a number of years. Do you have any thoughts on whether that issue could be rectified in the bill?

Yes, and whether they have the ability to discharge those rights to the extent that they can mitigate the damage.

So, diversity is good.

I know that my colleagues want to come in on other aspects of the land management plan, so I will pass back to the convener.

It comes back to my earlier point about what it looks like from the perspective of communities. If you turn up to a village hall, you want to see where the future housing sites are, but you also want to know what is happening with the land that surrounds the community and where those options are.