Hansard

I thank the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee clerks, SPICe, the bill team and everyone else involved in the development and scrutiny of the bill.

Crofting is a vital part of Scotland’s cultural and social heritage, but it is not just a reflection of our nation’s past. It is a tradition and an institution that is living and breathing; it is crucial to both our present and our future. Crofting is a glue that holds rural and island communities together and supports their respective economies. It offers us a template for low-impact land management that—if it is adopted more widely across Scotland—can help us to meet the major challenges that are presented by the climate and biodiversity crises while providing fair access to land and food, as well as an antidote to rural depopulation.

While I am pleased that crofting’s contribution to Scotland has been acknowledged by the very existence of the bill and am glad that crofters and other stakeholders are largely happy with its contents, it must be said that the proposed legislation represents something of a missed opportunity. It has been in the pipeline for a decade, yet what we have before us today is more of a technical exercise—although I heard what the minister said about it being an enabling bill.

What was hoped for, and what crofters have been calling for, was a more ambitious document setting out a vision for what crofting is for. Key elements that are missing from the bill include tighter regulations around the market in tenancies, so that crofting can be more accessible; a scheme to create crofts on public land; and a Scotland-wide expansion of where crofting can take place. I would be interested to hear from the minister what work is being done on those much-needed policies. We must ensure, as far as possible, that the next Government launches a new crofting bill process to address those matters and others besides, ideally on a foundation of current work.

As for what we have before us in the here and now, there is very little in the bill that the Scottish Greens disagree with. It is good to see that crofters will be able to put their land to environmental use, and I hope that that will give the community the confidence to do its bit for Scotland’s nature and climate and help to achieve the landscape-scale change that is needed if we are to meet the major challenges of this century.

I understand that there has been some concern about whether the new power for crofters will lead to abandoned crofts but, with the right safeguards in place—which I am keen to explore at stage 2—that need not be a concern.

Turning to part 2 of the bill, the proposed merger of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland and the Scottish Land Court seems to be a sensible idea, given the close proximity in which those two institutions work. It is good to know that the newly formed Scottish Land Court will have jurisdiction over access rights disputes. I trust that that will allow for better, fairer access to justice in this area.

We also have an opportunity to consider how to deliver better, fairer access to justice for those who bring environmental cases. In the policy memorandum that accompanies the bill, the Government states:

“It is ... intended that consideration will be given to the expanded Land Court taking on new functions in relation to Aarhus cases in time to come”.

Given that Scotland is currently in breach of its Aarhus obligations, especially under article 9 of the convention, which requires access to justice to be

“fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive”,

I put the case that we now have the ideal opportunity to consider how environmental cases could come to the Land Court in the future.

Overall, I look forward to working with the Government and colleagues from across the Parliament to deliver an even better crofting and land court system in Scotland.