Hansard

If Rhoda Grant listens to the rest of my speech, she will understand the direction of travel. We also want to reflect the importance of urban community ownership in the wider debate.

Historically, community ownership has been conflict driven. That is a fair estimate of how we saw community ownership beginning to develop, and conflict might continue to be a factor, particularly in the areas that Rhoda Grant is probably thinking about. However, I encourage communities to think about land ownership proactively, too. I want them to think about the kind of land and facilities that they need and to look for opportunities to acquire them. It should be the norm, not the exception, for communities to own land.

In November, the Scottish Land Commission published recommendations aimed at improving the processes for community ownership and enabling more communities to take advantage of its benefits. My officials are working with the Scottish Land Commission and other stakeholders to implement those recommendations, and I look forward to seeing the results of that.

Community ownership will always be a central goal of land reform, but we also have to tackle the deeply entrenched issues that affect the way in which Scotland’s land is owned, used and managed if we are to achieve our land reform ambitions. There are no easy solutions, but we are starting to address those issues.

The scope of the issues that the Scottish Land Commission is considering illustrates the complex and interconnected nature of land in Scotland. The commission has published discussion papers on land for housing, public interest-led development, human rights and the acquisition of land by public bodies. It has considered land value tax and land value capture as ways of changing Scotland’s long-term patterns of land ownership, and it is working to bring vacant and derelict land into productive use.

Just yesterday, the commission published perhaps its most challenging report so far, which looks at how we might tackle the scale and concentration of ownership of land in Scotland. The pattern of land ownership in Scotland is unlike the pattern anywhere else, for which there are complex historical reasons, and it is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s land reform agenda. If we do not fundamentally alter that pattern and change the framework that allowed it to develop and exist for so long, our land reform ambitions will ultimately be thwarted.

The debate was not initially intended to be about the Scottish Land Commission’s report—rather, the publication date was brought forward because of the debate. Nevertheless, the report informs the debate significantly.

The Land Commission has made a number of recommendations for tackling the scale and concentration of ownership and diversifying land ownership. They include the introduction of a public interest test that would apply to proposed land transactions over a certain size. The test would require the public interest to be considered before such transactions could take place, helping to ensure that the negative effects of the scale and, in particular, the concentration of ownership were kept in check.

The Land Commission has steered clear of recommending a blanket ban on people owning particular amounts of land or specific residency requirements; instead, it offers the public interest test as a way of providing important flexibility. That would certainly be a powerful tool to stop and reverse the ownership pattern that has hampered Scotland for so many years, but a great deal of work would be required to ensure that any such proposal was compliant with the European convention on human rights.

My officials will work with the Land Commission, stakeholders and other Scottish Government policy areas to consider how the report’s recommendations can be turned into workable policy.

In the past year or so, the commission has made recommendations that will allow us to drive forward change. Some, such as the public interest test or the proposed compulsory sale order, would need legislation. However, others are about culture change, and my officials and the Land Commission are working together with a wide variety of stakeholders to encourage new approaches to how we use and manage land.

Transparency in land ownership remains a key issue for debate. If a community does not know who owns land, it cannot influence how it is used or try to buy it, and landowners cannot be held to account if things go wrong. In 21st century Scotland, there can be no excuse for information about any type of land ownership being obscured. That is true whether the land is held by an individual who lives in Scotland or by a trust that is based in multiple countries. We are developing a new register that will make it clear who owns land and, ultimately, controls decisions about land. We have consulted on a first draft of regulations and we are considering the responses as we develop the regulations further.

I have outlined some of the key priorities for land reform, some of which we are already trying to address although it is likely to take a little longer before there is tangible change in respect of others. It is clear that, if we are to deliver meaningful change, we need to tackle a wide range of intertwined issues.

Considerations about land rarely exist in isolation; they are almost always connected to other issues, be they economic, cultural, environmental or social. That adds to the complexity of our challenge, but it also underlines the fundamental importance of land to Scotland’s future. Improving our relationship with Scotland’s land will have positive effects in many other arenas.

Some of the issues that I have mentioned require culture change to break long-established ways of thinking about land, whereas others will require us to re-engineer the relationship between land and other parts of public policy. Land reform will not be easy or quick to deliver, but it is important and it is absolutely necessary.

The Parliament has been supportive of land reform from the very beginning. The bill that became the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 was one of the first pieces of legislation that the Parliament considered, and it engendered a considerable degree of support across the chamber. However, the journey is emphatically not over. The support of the Parliament remains crucial if we are to achieve the transformative change that I have described, so I call on the Parliament to continue its long-standing support for land reform.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that land is one of Scotland’s most important assets; recognises the value of the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement in providing a framework for land decisions and land management in Scotland; recognises the close relationship between land ownership and land use; agrees that community ownership of land should be the norm and not simply a response to market failure or disputes with landowners; recognises the importance of the Scottish Land Fund in supporting community land and asset buyouts; recognises that the work of the Scottish Land Commission is making a positive contribution to delivering the Scottish Government’s land reform agenda, and agrees the importance of ensuring that land reform continues to be a key policy priority to change the entrenched and inequitable pattern of land ownership in Scotland so that everyone can benefit from land.