Hansard

I congratulate Roseanna Cunningham on her appointment as Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform.

It is a great honour and privilege to have been elected to Parliament and I thank all the parliamentary staff who made us new members feel so welcome in our first few days. I also thank my colleagues in the Scottish Green Party, who have given me incredible support and encouragement over the years; my family, for their support; and, most important, the voters of Lothian for putting their trust in Alison Johnstone and me.

I was particularly grateful to a veteran of this place who gave me the following three pieces of advice shortly after I arrived. First, be yourself and stick to your principles. Secondly, expect surprises every day. It is true that there are surprises every day. For example, after decision time last Thursday, I returned to my office to find a parcel. I opened it and discovered a rather wonderful green knitted woolly hat. It is a gift from former MSP Mary Scanlon and it will be my first declaration of gifts in my entry in the register of interests. I know that I have many admirers on the Tory benches—particularly Mary’s successors on the Highland list. They do not need to wait until they retire to give me more gifts. The third piece of advice, which perhaps is the most significant one, is to remember why you are here and who put you here. That is all good advice, I suggest.

This Parliament has huge potential to transform the lives of people in Scotland. In relation to the challenges of climate change, the solutions increasingly lie in areas such as energy demand reduction in housing and transport, active travel, urban planning and a substantial programme of reforestation and ecological restoration. Transport is the sector that has seen least progress in terms of reducing carbon emissions and, as Stop Climate Chaos points out in its briefing, the focus on the use of the private car privileges men and higher earners disproportionately. The new cabinet secretary will face formidable vested interests when addressing some of the questions that will be put to her, and she will need all her experience and political skill to persuade her cabinet colleagues that they must work together to achieve such ambitions. She also has critical decisions to take in the short term, on topics such as wildlife crime and the future of beavers.

That brings me to land reform. I first met Roseanna Cunningham in the 1990s, when she was an MP and we were both part of a group campaigning against the abandonment of tenant farms by the owner of Blackford estate, which was owned then—as it is now—by a company registered in the secrecy jurisdiction of Liechtenstein.

Land reform is about the redistribution of legal, political and economic power over land and is a process at the heart of questions over the affordability of housing, the availability of land for housing, wealth inequality, food security, economic development, equitable taxation and how to govern public land, including Crown land. That is why the Scottish Greens, in our manifesto, outlined 18 distinct measures that could be taken to democratise land and ensure that it is owned and used in the public interest and for the common good, and why there must be a further land reform act in this parliamentary session. I look forward to discussions with others on how such an act might be framed.

As this is my first speech, I want to highlight two related issues that I believe are vital to address over the next five years.

The first is inequality. In the decade from 1997 to 2007, the increase in share of total income among Scottish taxpayers that has gone to the top 1 per cent of earners is bigger than the change in income of the other 99 per cent combined.

The Scottish Greens did not propose a 60 per cent top rate of tax because it would yield vast amounts of tax revenue; we proposed it because it would help to reduce income inequality by curbing excessive pay demands and by diverting funds to employ more people on more modest salaries.

Inequality is also a product of the way in which land and property are taxed. A week ago today, the First Minister talked about how the “clear progressive majority” in this Parliament could be harnessed to oppose “regressive Westminster policies”. What more regressive policy is there than the council tax? Designed in Westminster by a Tory Government, it remains the most regressive of all taxes in the UK and sees people in the lowest-value properties pay far more in relation to the value of their property and as a percentage of their income than those who live in the most expensive properties. That regressivity will remain, even after the tinkering that the SNP and the Tories propose.

We will continue to make the case for the abolition of council tax and its replacement with a modern, progressive system that provides a predictable source of finance for local government, stabilises and reduces house prices and helps growing numbers of young people to afford a home while reducing their exposure to volatile interest payments.

The second issue, which I will highlight continually over the course of this parliamentary session, is democracy itself. Last Thursday, Fiona Hyslop claimed that Scotland has

“one of the most politically engaged electorates in Europe.”—[Official Report, 26 May 2016; c 1.]

However, 45 per cent of that electorate chose not to vote on 5 May. Why did so many people see no point in expressing any preference as to who should represent them for the next five years? If that engaged electorate cares little about Holyrood, it cares even less about local democracy, which is in a far more fragile state, with turnouts that should shame us all.

If people do not vote, political parties will increasingly present manifestos that favour those who do vote: the rich, the propertied and the elderly. The people who most need effective representation—the young, the poor and the vulnerable—will find themselves increasingly marginalised.

The solutions to climate change, to inequality and to voter apathy can be addressed only by a radical redistribution of economic and political power, for the benefit of all and for the planet as a whole. I look forward very much to the next five years and to the bold and transformative measures that we in the Scottish Greens believe are both possible and vital. Our amendment outlines that boldness, clarity and determination.

I move amendment S5M-00226.3, to leave out from “recognises” to end and insert:

“and reaffirms its commitment to protecting these natural assets for today and the future; believes that securing Scotland’s long-term prosperity requires the Scottish Government to have ambition, policy coherence and a focus on realising the benefits of a low-carbon economy for people in Scotland; supports ambitious action to end fuel poverty, safeguard biodiversity, deliver a step change in community-owned renewable energy; believes that fracking and other forms of unconventional gas extraction are incompatible with Scotland’s low-carbon ambitions; notes that land reform is a process of changing the legal, political, economic and fiscal relationship between society and land across urban, rural and marine Scotland, and believes that this relationship requires radical and ongoing reform to democratise land and ensure that it is owned and used in the public interest and for the common good.”