Meeting of the Parliament 16 December 2015
The report showed a lack of progress, but deer counts by SNH have also been lacking. The bill must be amended in that regard.
Provisions on agricultural holdings account for around half the bill and try to address hotly-debated issues and tenancy disputes that have existed in many communities for many years. Everyone agrees that we want a thriving tenant farming sector in Scotland, the big question is how we get there.
We support the bill’s aims of: removing barriers to 1991 act tenants buying farms; providing for forced sale of a farm if a landlord is in breach of the lease; introducing an amnesty for tenants, to note improvements that they have made; and tightening rules in cases in which landlords are seeking to make improvements to a farm.
However, other proposals are too often left to secondary legislation, such as changes to the way in which rent is set and measures to allow tenants to retire with dignity and to enable new entrants and young blood to come into the sector. We must have more detail on those provisions before stage 2, because the annual drain on secure 1991 act tenants and the move towards limited duration tenancies fail to ensure tenancy security and sustainable agriculture.
The majority of RACCE committee members support giving 1991 act tenants a conditional right to buy their holdings, so that we can finally resolve a recurrent problem and move on. As ever, European convention on human rights issues need to be applied proportionately, because the long-term reduction in tenancy security is detrimental to human rights.
Other issues, which are not in the bill, should be considered at the amending stages, such as the future for small landholders, the often poor condition of tenant farmers’ houses and the lack of affordable rural housing more widely. We must resolve such issues, which are intrinsic to a sustainable rural Scotland in which people can live and work.
Many eyes are on this Parliament. People want to see whether we can deliver the land reform that they want. I hope that we can match the ambition of the Scottish people and change our relationship with land, so that everyone can feel connected to it, be involved in how it is managed, and benefit from its use.
The bill is a good start and we hope that it passes stage 1 today. However, members of all parties should realise the scale of the work that lies ahead and the role of international human rights in underpinning land reform.