Meeting of the Parliament 13 January 2026
I am pleased to speak to the stage 1 report on the bill. I congratulate the committee and its clerks on progressing the bill and congratulate the minister on organising various meetings across the crofting community to discuss it. I attended one of those meetings, on a relatively bright summer night, and it was interesting.
However, there is a bit of déjà vu here. In 2017, during the previous parliamentary session, the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee produced quite a lengthy report on the need to make changes to crofting law. In that report, the REC Committee made it quite clear that we needed a statement of crofting policy that would not only lay out the aims of crofting but cover keeping the associated language going and keeping the crofting population and culture in place across the Highlands.
The REC Committee found key issues. Some of those have already been addressed and others are dealt with in the current bill, but it is still apposite to remind the Parliament of them. They related to the election of crofting commissioners and the management of absenteeism. There was a call for a new entrants scheme, which does not seem to have gained any ground at all, and for definitions of different forms of croft ownership, including owner-occupation and various other forms. The committee also called for the mapping of crofts, which also seems to have stalled slightly, and raised the issue of so-called “slipper crofters” who have shares in grazings but do not actually own crofts.
The 2017 report was clear that sufficient time should be allowed to ensure that a new bill would be passed before the end of the session in 2021, but that did not happen. It is therefore surprising that we are discussing the current bill only as we come towards the end of the current session. I hope that we will have sufficient time to get all the amendments through.
I agree with the current committee that there needs to be a fundamental review of crofting in the next session of Parliament. The committee has raised issues relating to the Crofting Commission, mapping and, as I have just mentioned, what I have termed “slipper crofters”—that is, people with grazing shares but no crofts.
The bill represents the low-hanging fruit of crofting law reform. I would have liked to see more of a definition of the cultural, economic, social and environmental benefits of crofting.
I would also have liked to drill down into the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886, the Crofters Commission (Delegation of Powers) Act 1888, the Crofters Common Grazings Regulation Act 1891, the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955, the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 1976 and the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993. When we look at crofting law, we have to have the text of all those acts open at the same time. For people like me, who are trying to help crofters, that makes it difficult to understand which act is apposite to the matter that is being dealt with. There needs to be proper reform of those acts. I would like them to be drawn together to help to make crofting vibrant, understandable and enforceable.
As regards the merger of the Scottish Land Court and the Lands Tribunal for Scotland, I am aware of the expertise problem. The Government is pretty sanguine about it, but I would like to see some clarity when we come to stage 2.
I thank the Rural and Islands Committee for its work. I agree with the general principles of the bill, but I feel that opportunities have been missed here. I reiterate that a new bill will definitely be needed, which is what the REC Committee said back in 2017.
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