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I look forward to further discussions with Ariane over the summer about how we might deliver the policy intent behind the amendment—which is to have a thriving community renewables sector in which communities feel that they are achieving the benefit, so—

The Government has already made a commitment to expand and develop ScotLIS. The service is a living thing—it is not frozen in time. The frustration is that it is not currently achieving its potential. It could be quite a powerful tool in ensuring that, where public money is being invested in land and in public objectives, we are matching that up to the land of Scotland and are able to see the impacts of strategic policy across the whole of Scotland—I hope that I have managed to give some examples of that.

It is good for councils, national parks and the Scottish Government to have that mapping tool, so that they can see where public money is being spent, and it is also useful for landowners who are working at a landscape scale, as they can use it to see where the economic opportunities are. It would be for Registers of Scotland and the keeper to manage a work programme for how ScotLIS could be expanded.

There is an existing commitment to expand ScotLIS, so I am not suggesting something completely new. The digital land and property information service task force recommended using ScotLIS in a range of different ways. There is a frustration that, with regard to a carbon land tax and a range of other policies with which members may or may not agree, implementation relies on having an accurate map database of land across Scotland. We do not currently have that, and until we do, we will always come up against problems if we want to be ambitious in our land policy.

I will leave it there, convener. I move amendment 375.

The area of licensing has been drawn far too narrowly in the legislation and it does not include those areas where raptor persecution is occurring. We have, effectively, a licensing regime that was, at the outset, somewhat dysfunctional. It is important that it covers the area where the crimes are taking place.

I think that the Government acknowledges that this is a problem. It is somewhat embarrassing that, when the legislation was passed, it was widely celebrated among those who work in conservation, who had been campaigning for it for many years. It is a balanced piece of legislation, but this is clearly a loophole. If there is a commitment from the Government to fix it, I will not press amendment 374.

Okay—I will do my best.

Amendment 469 would require the Scottish ministers to establish a community land forum. That would bring together local authorities, public bodies with duties related to housing, land ownership or community development, and other agencies, in order to identify areas of land that could be made available for community housing developments.

A forum of that kind has been recommended by the Scottish Land Commission, based on its analysis of similar processes in England and the Republic of Ireland. Amendment 469 would be the first step. It would require ministers to facilitate a space in which the main stakeholders and community groups with an interest could discuss land for community housing. A more robust proposal would be for a public body to be charged with acquiring suitable sites for community housing and creating a land bank of such sites that could be portioned out, according to recommendations from the community land forum. That would be ideal.

Highland Council has successfully assembled parcels of land through its land bank fund since 2005. We would like to see more local authorities take that approach. Amendment 469 is the first step towards such a process, and I urge members to support it.

I move amendment 469.

No, I do not.

The duties to restore and support the development of our public land for meeting biodiversity targets are already there, but that approach is not working effectively. I see good land management as being cost effective. It could lead to improvements in biodiversity outcomes. It is being mainstreamed as part of the agricultural subsidy reform that we have seen coming through Parliament. We have nature recovery funds and active private and public investment is going into land management that can deliver on natural capital. I do not see it as contradictory to the good economic management of land to meet biodiversity objectives.

The existing biodiversity duty is not sufficiently understood or complied with. I urge members to support amendment 366.

I move amendment 366.

I think that the challenge will be to get robust evidence. I heard the cabinet secretary’s remarks that some people might have a security concern and, therefore, would be exempt from providing information, but we do not know. We are where we are; we are discussing the bill, it is before the Parliament, and there is a desire to change and fix a lot of things that we think are problematic. We might be reliant on the Government making commitments to change regulations or carry out reviews in the future, but now is the time to pin down such commitments so that there is some assurance for the committee, here and now, that we know what will happen as we go forward.

That also brings us to the subject of ScotLIS. We all agree that it is a powerful and useful tool, but that it could be more so. Again, we are fishing around to see what the next stage of its development might be. The cabinet secretary admitted that it would cost more money to make the service better and more effective, but what is the Government’s commitment on that? Is ScotLIS a priority, or not? If it is not a priority, we should name it and say, “There is no programme to expand ScotLIS. The commitments that were made in 2015 by the digital working group will not be carried forward, and we will deal with what we have at the moment.” I am aware that another committee would scrutinise the work of the keeper and ScotLIS, but it is so fundamental to our work on land reform that I think it important to bring that into the discussion.

I will not press amendment 375. I will not move amendment 376, but I will move amendment 470. We will see where we get to with Monica Lennon’s subsequent amendments 475 and 477. Although her amendments are supportable, I would like to test with the committee the idea of putting something into legislation now.

Amendment 375, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 376 to 378 not moved.

Sorry, I just—

I do not have an answer to that.

Amendment 366 introduces a duty on public bodies to ensure that they are contributing to nature recovery on publicly owned land over a certain size. This is an alternative to Ariane Burgess’s amendment 320, which we discussed last week, which was more about land management plans.

Under the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004, public bodies already have a duty to further the conservation of biodiversity when carrying out their responsibilities. Mandatory reporting on that was introduced in 2011, but a 2016 report on compliance with that duty found that less than half of public bodies had published a biodiversity duty report as required. Introducing a duty that specifically relates to land management practices is therefore an important step.

Amendment 366 also clarifies that the duty is to enhance biodiversity on public landholdings, not just to sustain biodiversity. That reflects our commitments under the 2023 global biodiversity framework, which calls upon countries to enhance biodiversity across 30 per cent of their territory.

The Scottish Rewilding Alliance estimates that about 243 land parcels that are in public ownership are over 1,000 hectares. Those landholdings have huge potential to contribute to Scotland’s ecological recovery in line with our international targets. The existing biodiversity duty is not sufficient.