Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee 03 June 2025
I am pleased to speak to amendment 174 and my other amendments in the group. I thank Community Land Scotland and the Scottish Parliament legislation team for their support in drafting the amendments.
The bill as introduced includes a transfer test that does not make any assessment of the wider public interest in land ownership, nor does it assess whether the buyer or their plans for the land are in the public interest. Successive Scottish Governments have consistently made commitments to diversify land ownership patterns in Scotland but, as it stands, the transfer test in the bill is not an effective mechanism for achieving that.
In order for the test mechanism to be impactful, it must move beyond being a mere assessment of the landholding; it must instead make a forward-facing assessment of whether the landholding and the land management plan of the incoming landowners are in the public interest. That would also create coherence between the otherwise disconnected test and land management elements of the bill.
The committee heard evidence from numerous stakeholders, experts and land users that it is necessary to reframe the transfer test as a public interest test. The stage 1 report noted that the committee
“considers that the transfer test, as drafted, will not meet the aims of the Scottish Government as it does not sufficiently take account of the public interest”.
Unlike the term “community sustainability” in the bill, the term “public interest” is widely used in Scottish and UK legislation. It has more than 200 mentions in primary legislation, including in existing land reform legislation. That means that a public interest test is likely to establish a clearer precedent than a transfer test and would avoid future legal challenges. Research for the Scottish Government and the Scottish Land Commission has been clear on that.
My amendment 174 would therefore insert a forward-facing public interest test into the bill, with that test to be applied to a proposed new buyer in relation to transfers of large landholdings. Under the proposal, land being transferred would remain subject to public interest considerations and existing obligations, such as land management plans; at the same time, it would ensure that potential buyers would fulfil the land management plan obligations necessary for their ownership of the land.
The public interest test in amendment 174 and as amended by the presumed limit in amendment 174A would provide that a proposed transfer would have no effect in a situation where
“(a) section 67G ... or
(b) a lotting decision under section 67N applies to the land”,
if ministers considered that the transfer would not be in the public interest.