Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2026 [Draft]
Crofting is a vital part of Scotland’s cultural and social heritage, as well as its future. It is a social and economic glue that holds rural and island communities together, offering us a template for low-impact land management that, if adopted more widely across Scotland, could help us to meet the major challenges presented by the climate and biodiversity crises, support fair access to land and food and provide an antidote to rural depopulation.
Although I am pleased that stakeholders are largely happy with the bill’s contents, it must be said—as other members have done already—that the bill is something of a missed opportunity. It has been in the pipeline for a decade, and yet what we have before us today is fairly technical, and not the ambitious reform that crofters have been crying out for.
Key elements that are missing include tighter regulation of the market in tenancies to make crofting more accessible; a scheme to create more crofts on public land; and moves towards a Scotland-wide expansion of where crofting can take place. We must ensure that the next Government uses the review of crofting legislation that Tim Eagle and I secured to deliver the much-needed solutions to those issues in order to secure crofting’s future.
I express my thanks to the stakeholders who have worked with me on the bill. The Scottish Crofting Federation and Community Land Scotland have provided excellent support on part 1. Ramblers Scotland and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland have also been very helpful in proposing amendments, and it has been good to collaborate on making meaningful changes to part 2. I also thank the minister and his officials for their constructive approach in meetings about the bill.
Turning to the specifics of part 1, despite the overall lack of ambition in the bill, some welcome progress has been made on giving crofters the right to put land to environmental use and ensure a fairer balance of rights between the crofting community, the public interest and landlords and estates.
I trust that those changes will allow crofters to do their bit for Scotland’s nature and climate and enable landscape-scale change so that we meet our biodiversity and emissions reduction goals, with biodiversity in particular being key to ensuring that our nation remains resilient in the face of global ecosystems collapse.
My concern is that it is unclear who is entitled to the financial benefit of that vital work. Although I understand that the bill is not the place to resolve carbon offsetting issues, I urge the next Government to commit to investigating that issue through primary legislation to allow crofters and other land users to work with full confidence.
That is not an endorsement of the carbon offsetting system—instead, it is an acknowledgement that the system exists and needs regulating in the interests of fairness, community wealth building and democratising Scotland’s land.
Part 2 of the bill is a sensible idea in principle and will give crofters, as well as other stakeholders, a clear destination for their legal cases.
It is especially pleasing to note that the new Scottish Land Court will have jurisdiction over access rights. That will allow for better, fairer access to justice in this area—something that can only improve outcomes for everyone, not just for those with the deepest pockets.
My stage 3 amendment, which will see land access guidance updated for the first time in two decades, and the minister’s amendment to review the operation of the Scottish Land Court—something that I pushed for at stage 2—will ensure that the new jurisdiction works as effectively as possible in the years to come.
To wrap up, the Scottish Greens support the bill, but we want to see further reform in the next session of Parliament to ensure a viable future for crofting for generations to come.