Meeting of the Parliament 16 December 2015
I thank the fantastic team that supported the RACCE committee throughout its work and the many communities, members of the public and organisations who gave written and oral evidence, which helped us immeasurably in putting together our report.
The report is long, but this is a long and complex bill. It is also a crucial bill, which will have ramifications throughout Scotland. The bill aims to deliver a more equal country, tackle concentrated patterns of land ownership in Scotland, give communities a say in and influence over the use of the land on which they depend and provide for a fairer balance of power between landlords and tenants. Those are worthy aims and objectives and Scottish Labour supports them.
The bill follows on from the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, and it draws on the work of the land reform review group and the agricultural holdings legislation review group.
However, there is so much more that we need to do to ensure that the bill is fit for purpose and delivers on the ambitions that we share. That is why I am deeply disappointed that we do not yet have the Scottish Government’s response to our stage 1 report. We had expected to have the report, and our not having it will impact on our capacity to draft amendments over the recess. I had assumed that today’s debate would give the Government a fantastic opportunity to tell Scottish National Party members how it intends to strengthen the bill in light of the revolt at the SNP conference in October.
Today, our job is at least to get to the headlines. The bill must be strengthened in relation to human rights. We need recognition of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the “Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security” to underpin the objectives of the bill—that needs to be in the bill. That will help to bolster the purpose of the bill and put it in the context of human rights in a way that we can debate and reflect on.
The land rights and responsibilities statement is an important start, but it needs to be subject to consultation and it needs to integrate with biodiversity and climate change issues and be consistent with the land use strategy and the national planning framework.
We particularly welcome the proposal that there be a Scottish land commission, but we highlight that the commissioners should have relevant skills and experience and not just a range of knowledge but a grounding in the equalities and empowerment challenges that are at the heart of the aspirations for the bill.
Information and knowledge about who owns and controls land will be crucial to whether the bill delivers. We need transparency and accountability, and that is why we need to know who the request authority will be. Ministers need to clarify that for us.
The land reform review group made an important recommendation when it suggested that restricting registration to EU-registered entities would deliver transparency of ownership and the capacity to ensure that any taxes that are due will be paid. However, that is not provided for in the bill. I do not think that ministers, under questioning, gave us convincing answers on the matter and we have certainly not had convincing answers in the chamber today about how the bill might change. I am sure that I am not the only member who has had dozens of emails this week from constituents who want the bill to provide that clarity. In framing our amendments over the next couple of weeks, we need to think about that in order to ensure that the bill does not fail the test of transparency.
The recommendations on page 54 of the committee’s report make it clear that we need clarity about ownership and who controls it and benefits from it, with a named person that communities can consult and a transparent and effective registration process. Those are the building blocks that we need to have in place. If ownership is clear and known, it will be so much easier for communities to be engaged in the crucial decisions relative to the land that they are interested in. I am talking not about every day-to-day decision, but about the really big decisions. The bill needs to make that clearer.
We need to learn the lessons from the 2003 act. The guidance from the Scottish Government will be crucial, because communities will not be able to read the bill. It took the committee 141 pages to come up with our conclusions, and the bill will be even more difficult for communities. We picked up on our visit to Fife that the bill needs to be made fit for purpose for communities and we need penalties for lack of engagement.
We strongly support the new principle in part 5 of a community right to buy land to further sustainable development. We hoped to see that in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, but we welcome its inclusion in this bill. “Sustainable development” is a well-used and well-established term and it has featured in several pieces of legislation since the Parliament was established. However, more detail could be put into the bill, particularly in relation to how ministers will judge “significant harm” and “significant benefit”.
We will need to clarify the land that is registered under the community empowerment legislation and under the land reform legislation and ensure that it is all brought together so that communities and landowners have clarity.
The committee has rightly asked for consideration of how we deliver good-quality land and buildings for housing. The land reform review group raised not just the idea of a compulsory purchase order but the possibility of a compulsory sale order where, for example, an empty building or vacant or derelict land could be used to deliver sustainable development but that is not being realised. I hope that ministers will consider such a provision and lodge amendments on it at stage 2. We are certainly considering the matter. Such a provision would definitely help to strengthen the bill. It would be helpful if the minister could work on that over the next couple of weeks. The idea is supported by Community Land Scotland and Shelter Scotland.