Meeting of the Parliament 16 March 2016
For the Labour group in Parliament, the strengthening of the human rights underpinning of the bill is incredibly important, because it provides the context for the detail of the bill that comes thereafter and the framework by which people will interpret implementation of the bill. It is also important in recording that community rights need to sit alongside our rights as individuals. Therefore, I very much welcome the minister’s amendments. Human rights were a key issue in the committee’s stage 1 report. It had cross-party buy-in; it was an area that we all felt needed to be strengthened.
11:15Mike Russell moved an amendment at stage 2 to add specific reference to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The committee very much welcomed and supported that amendment. I had moved amendments suggesting the addition of a requirement for the Scottish Government to have regard to the “Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security”. By adding those references, we do not just strengthen our own legislation on land reform, but align ourselves in solidarity with other communities and other countries, particularly indigenous communities around the globe that some of us have met over the years through our cross-party group on international development. I welcome that the minister has taken on our intentions, improved our wording and put them in the correct part of the bill. When a member is lodging an amendment, they do their best at the time.
The references to
“internationally accepted principles and standards”
are important to have in the bill. The minister’s amendments also include reference to seeking the views of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, which is important in order to ensure that its human rights expertise is drawn on. The SHRC’s letter to the committee was trenchant, so I welcome the fact that the minister has addressed the concerns that it raised with us just a couple of months ago.
The amended bill will speak to the ambition of delivering global sustainable development and acknowledge the importance of food security and the capacity to support and sustain communities. It makes the connections between our ambitions for global sustainable development goals with our ambitions for land reform and the empowerment of communities across Scotland. Therefore, Scottish Labour will support the amendments in group 2.
I thank Global Witness for its advice and work. It gave us good ideas and advice—in particular, about how we could strengthen the human rights framework in the bill. I am glad to see that we have such amendments, which I hope we can all support.