Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2015
It is a pleasure to reach this stage in the passage of the bill, given the huge amount of ground that Kevin Stewart’s committee and my committee have covered. I know that the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee came into the process somewhat later to deal with part 4 and the land reform aspects, but I will also comment on one or two other matters.
A really important point is that when people saw the bill they thought that great difficulties would be put in the way of simplifying, say, the crofting community right to buy. However, we found that by bringing the issues up at stage 2 it was possible to have the debate, take the evidence and reach a consensus on simplifying the process and thereby making things much easier for crofting communities.
The simplification of the registration processes for communities, crofting or otherwise, is one of the things that I am most proud of; after all, it is daunting for people to have thrust on them over a few weeks the necessity of creating a business plan and registering their right to buy. The process of registration—and re-registration within five years—has now been simplified considerably.
Although extending the right to buy across Scotland is a major aim now, we should recognise that that will throw up many problems, and we should never underestimate the obstacles to achieving a step change in development in so many communities across the country. However, we have laid the groundwork.
I am delighted that, as has been pointed out, we have been able to extend the forms of community bodies to Scottish charitable incorporated organisations and bencoms. That is important because it will allow people to choose a form of body that is suitable to their area.
Having listened to the discussions about community planning partnerships having much more local plans, I have to say that I like the idea of locality plans, which the Local Government and Regeneration Committee dealt with. As a result of that measure, small parts of council areas will be able to focus on matters; I know that Culrain in my constituency would have loved to do that at an earlier stage. Such a move will prepare people for taking action, because they will have thought beforehand about, say, the resources that they will need.
The Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee took some time examining the fact that local authorities can act as quite a constraint on the transfer of land to communities, and we found that authorities around the country had varied views about how much they were prepared to do that. Moreover, I note that John Mundell, chief executive of Inverclyde Council, said:
“If we are disposing of assets, we are always required to obtain best value, and that normally means market value, whether we use the district valuer or another mechanism to value assets.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 3 December 2014; c 50.]
We want to change what best value means for communities, because it cannot always mean market value. That is one of the pieces of work that we need to take forward from the bill, but at least the bill has opened the door.
The thing that has cheered me most about the whole process has been how the arguments about human rights have been developed and, in particular, how the Government has embraced the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees certain rights, such as those to sanitation, food and housing. Applying that covenant to our circumstances could aid many communities in our urban areas, as well as people abroad. After all, the UK signed up to it in 1976, and it is generally accepted as a gold standard. As we have so often found, the European convention on human rights relates to property, but the covenant relates to people.
I have great pleasure in supporting the way in which the bill has been taken forward. I hope that we can get the secondary legislation passed as a priority.
19:39