Meeting of the Parliament 16 March 2016
I am very conscious this evening, after a very long day of debate, that we are now reflecting upon where we stand not just now but for the future.
We stand in two historical streams. One is the stream of those who recognise the scars on the Scottish psyche that were caused by the very unnatural pattern of land ownership in Scotland and by the great injustices that went with that. Next month is the 200th anniversary of the trial of Patrick Sellar. I had an email from a landowner some time ago who—please forgive the language, Presiding Officer, but it is a quote—said that
“oafs like me dredge up crap from hundreds of years ago in this debate”.
We cannot understand the importance of this debate without understanding that stream—the stream of injustice, which Johann Lamont also referred to. Before her, the great Bob Grieve also talked about resolving the problems of Glasgow and of the Highlands and Islands.
The other stream that we stand in is the stream of those who have attempted to do something about those injustices, from the 19th century onwards. There were those in the Land League, through the early years of the 20th century, and there was the work of people such as Tom Johnston. In the 21st century, there has been the work of the first Labour-Liberal Scottish Executive, and I pay tribute to Donald Dewar’s passion for the issue. There is also the work of academics and activists such as James Hunter and Andy Wightman.
I regret that I did not get the opportunity to take land reform forward in government as environment minister. When Joe FitzPatrick rang me shortly after I left Government and asked me which committee I wished to serve on, I said, without hesitation, that I wished to be on the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee—because of this issue. I wished to play a role in the next stage of land reform in Scotland. That was partly because of a huge constituency interest, but also because of a huge environmental interest and a historical interest.
It was also because land reform presents a particular problem to this Parliament: the problem of implementing a vision of a just, fair and equitable Scotland in terms of land ownership, but doing so without the full powers of a normal Parliament. As we have seen today, the powers to deal with money laundering or company law would have helped us with some of the issues that we needed to address.
There is also the challenge of dealing with the legacy of inaction over a long period of time. We cannot divorce the issues that we were addressing today, such as deer management, from the legacy of inaction that has led us here.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism (Fergus Ewing) rose—