Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2026 [Draft]
I thank Tim Eagle for his kind remarks. There will be a lot of thank yous in this contribution, because I also want to thank all those who helped us with our work on the bill, including Parliament staff on the committee and in the legislation team, as well as those who gave evidence to the committee and the bill team and the minister, for their very constructive discussions throughout the process.
Special thanks must go to Donna Smith and Susi Stuehlinger from the Scottish Crofting Federation—Donna is in the gallery again today. Their evidence and assistance were incredibly important to the bill, and they must rightly feel a great deal of ownership of it.
We hope that the bill, as far as it goes, will put some protections in place but also make the administration of crofting little easier, and we will support it tonight. As Tim Eagle said, it was not the bill that was promised. We all expected an overarching bill that put crofting on a firm footing for the future. That is unfinished business, but it cannot be done at the end of a parliamentary session. This bill was supposed to be dealt with early in the term and yet it will be the last one that we pass.
Drafting an overarching crofting bill will not be easy. Crofting has evolved throughout the crofting counties in very different ways, so the way that crofting works in the Western Isles is very different from the way that it works in Shetland, and it is different again in the Moray Firth and the west coast.
A new bill must strip crofting back to what it was set up to do. Crofting was devised as a result of the land raider protests to give people secure access to land. People from the Highlands and Islands were prosecuted and jailed simply for asking for land on which to work to feed their families. The early crofters were politically astute. They set up their own political party, affiliated to the Highland Land League, and had five MPs elected in 1885. The Crofters Party was a predecessor to the Labour Party. In 1886, a year after the election in which it had five MPs elected, the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act was passed, and we have to learn from the speed at which those MPs worked. The act established the Crofters Commission and led to reduced rents. Those were the first land reformers. Sadly, it is a struggle that continues today.
This will be my last speech in the Parliament, and it feels apt that it is about crofting, because the cross-party group on crofting was one of the first cross-party groups that I was involved in setting up, and it feels as though things have come full circle. It would be wrong of me, in my last speech, not to pay tribute to some people. To start with, I pay tribute to Maureen Macmillan and Peter Peacock, who were elected on the Highlands and Islands regional list with me in the first session of Parliament, and David Stewart, who joined us thereafter. I shared staff with all three of them. There are too many staff to mention here, but I want to thank them all for their work and support. A special thanks goes to my current team—Andrene, Laura, Stuart, Michael and Emily—who have been a fabulous support to me and my constituents. As MSPs, we should remember that we could achieve only a fraction of what we do were it not for those who work with us, so I thank them for their support. I also want to thank our Scottish Labour staff pool and the parliamentary staff who support us so well.
Over the past few weeks, I have been seeing people and thinking to myself how much I am going to miss them. It will be strange not being here, but I am going to enjoy watching the new Parliament come together. I am also looking forward to spending a lot more time with my long-suffering family. Special thanks go to my husband Mark and the rest of the family for their support over the years.
In conclusion, may I say: be kind to each other. Debate and disagree, of course, but be respectful when doing that. We are all here to make our country a better place. I want to see the Highlands and Islands thrive. I want people to understand our unique way of life—which is often different throughout the region—and I want people to respect our culture and heritage, not trample on it. Most of all, I want our people to have equality of service and infrastructure and equality of opportunity that our young people can access by staying rather than leaving. I urge the next Parliament to achieve that.