Meeting of the Parliament 28 October 2025
I rise to speak against the business motion, which sets out the timings for the important stage 3 debate on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. Before I say why, I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that my family owns in the region of 202 hectares of land in Moray, that I rent about the same amount of land under a non-agricultural tenancy and that I have a tenancy for about 12 hectares under the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991.
I have been embedded in land reform since the Parliament was reconvened in 1999. I have seen the 2003 and 2016 land reform acts. As convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, I have followed and steered the current bill through stages 1 and 2—listening to witnesses, attending external meetings, visiting community groups and, ultimately, convening stage 2, which took 16 hours and 3 minutes.
I lodged no amendments at stage 2. I chose to listen to the evidence on the 507 amendments that were lodged. I weighed up the strengths and weaknesses of each amendment and then voted independently on them. After stage 2 had concluded, I considered and formulated my stage 3 amendments.
The Government has lodged 245 amendments over stages 2 and 3. One has to ask why. The flawed bill consists of 137 pages that are riddled with errors. It is clear that, when the bill was presented to the Parliament, it had not been fully considered.
Presiding Officer, you do not have to believe me. One of Scotland’s pre-eminent lawyers, Don Macleod, has said that the bill is “junk law” and is
“an appalling mess that deserves no place on the statute book”.
If members do not believe him, perhaps they will listen to one of our most pre-eminent land reformers, Andy Wightman, who has condemned the bill. He said:
“It would be irresponsible of Parliament to impose new, complex, legalistic and bureaucratic mechanisms on the people of Scotland that will not deliver the outcomes that ministers say that they will. That is just making bad law.”—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 3 December 2024; c 64.]
The bill is bad, “junk law” that will not deliver land reform or any more agricultural tenants.
On the issue of new tenancies, I believe that the bill will go a long way in killing them off. Who would enter a contract with someone if that contract could be changed unilaterally by somebody else?
However, it is not all bad news. I believe that many of the stage 3 amendments—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Presiding Officer, but I am finding it quite difficult to hear, given the noise to my right.