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Meeting of the Parliament 05 June 2013

05 Jun 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Land Reform

Fergusson, Alex Con Galloway and West Dumfries Watch on SPTV

I just do not have time—I really am sorry. You chose to have a short debate, so I cannot help you.

Furthermore, we are asked to recognise that

“the Scottish Government has the power to deliver further land reform now”,

presumably with the expectation that it should do so. Given that the Scottish Government has a majority in the Parliament, it could deliver free Mars bars to everybody daily if it wanted to do so, but I am sure that Labour would—rightly—be the first to object if the Government suddenly introduced land reform legislation halfway through a widespread consultation on radical land reform. The position simply does not make sense.

I will concentrate on three aspects of the interim report that are not mentioned in the motion. When I met Alison Elliot and Sarah Skerrat in the early days of the work, I said that I had three main concerns. The first was that the community right to buy should be proactively promoted across the south of Scotland, because the perception was that it was really a Highlands and Islands initiative. I am delighted to have been proved wrong on that by the on-going success of the Mull of Galloway Trust in my constituency, which the minister mentioned. It has recently received a grant of more than £300,000 towards the purchase of the most southerly point of Scotland. That said, I still think that there is a misconception about the community right to buy and that there is scope for many more such purchases across the south of Scotland.

The second concern that I highlighted, which is of much more concern from our perspective, is about the apparent willingness—keenness, even—to consider community purchase even when the land or property owner is not a willing participant. Apparently that willingness is shared by the land reform review group, the Labour Party, the SNP and others, I expect, but to the Conservatives it is simply a step too far. We cannot and will not accept such compulsion. Any project that results in community ownership—be it of land or a building—must be undertaken with mutual consent, because we genuinely believe that only with mutual consent can the real benefits of community ownership be achieved for all.

The final item that I put to the LRRG was my strong view, which I still hold, that the group should not be tempted to get involved in the agricultural landlord and tenancy debate, because—as I said in my intervention on Claire Baker—it is already being looked at in considerable depth by the tenant farming forum, which was making and continues to make slow but steady progress. I am delighted that the LRRG has seen the sense in that position and I commend it for not getting involved in that highly sensitive policy area, despite the pressure on it. Progress is being made, and that progress would not be helped in any way by the involvement of yet another outside group, which could only further complicate the issue.

We will not be able to support the motion at decision time. It implies that the LRRG has not delivered, and I do not understand how it could have been expected to deliver in what is, after all, just an interim report. I do not support all its findings, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I move amendment S4M-06845.1, to leave out from second “Land Reform Review Group” to end and insert:

“independent group is looking at the future of land ownership and management in Scotland with a view to enabling communities to benefit from further land reform; understands that the report simply ends phase one of the process and that much work still remains to be done; agrees that, while community ownership is to be encouraged, a willing buyer and willing seller are paramount, and welcomes the group’s decision not to examine land tenancy issues, which are currently being scrutinised by the Tenant Farming Forum.”

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Meeting of the Parliament 05 June 2013

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