Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will speak to amendments 166, 173 to 175, 189 and 190.

Too often, we hear about people using their croft house as a holiday let or a second home. That theme runs through a lot of the amendments to the bill, because we must find ways of making sure that crofts are used for their intended purpose. At the moment, many so-called crofters are not crofters; they are people who bought a house and some land. Crofting land is fundamentally different from other land in that the land must be put to agricultural use. Over the years, diversification has infringed on that purpose—often for good reasons, because few crofters make a living from the land on their croft.

Amendment 166 would tighten up the “ordinarily resident” criteria to ensure that the

“crofter’s sole or main residence”

is on or near the croft, as opposed to the crofter being “ordinarily resident”. That definition would make it easier for the commission to identify those who are not ordinarily resident on the croft.

Amendment 173 would allow Scottish ministers or any Scottish Government department, such as the rural payments and inspections division, to be able to report breaches in the residence criteria to the Crofting Commission, which would then be required to instigate an investigation.

Amendment 174 would enable the person who is reporting a breach to request that they remain anonymous and to have the Crofting Commission keep their details anonymised if they live in the same township as the person who is being reported. It can cause tensions and splits in the community if the name of the person who has reported a breach becomes known.

Amendment 175 would limit the scope for people to make vexatious complaints by allowing the commission to take previous vexatious complaints “into account” before proceeding to investigate a breach.

Amendment 189 is a probing amendment. Currently, crofters are able to apply for consent to be absent from a croft. There are legitimate times when someone would require to be absent, such as for short-term work commitments or caring and family responsibilities. However, anecdotal information suggests that the ability is being misused and that people are using it to be permanently absent. I am keen to work with the minister and the bill team to explore how we can stop the abuse of consent for absence without putting people’s homes and livelihoods at risk should difficult circumstances occur.

Amendment 190 seeks to deal with the issue of someone who is buying a croft or an assignation needing to be aware of the duties that they are taking on. All too often, people believe that a croft is a house, but it is not. Where a house is attached to a croft, that is a croft house. However, there cannot be a croft house without it being attached to croft land, and it is the land to which obligations are attached. Crofts are changing hands for huge amounts of money, and I do not believe that that would happen as it is doing currently if people understood what they were taking on. My amendment proposes a way in which to enable that to happen, but I am open to discussion if there are better ways of doing it.

My amendment 177 seeks to remove the crofters’ right to buy. Many believe that the right to buy is the reason for crofts becoming much more marketable and, as a result, the costs of crofts going up. Unpicking that right will mean other consequential amendments, which I have left the Scottish ministers to do by regulation.

The proposal will be controversial, so I do not intend to move the amendment today, but I believe that it is something that we have to consider. Given the time constraints that we face, it might not be something that we are able to do with this bill, but I do want the Government to give some thought to how we do this and stop the market in crofts locking young people out of becoming crofters.

My amendment 188 seeks to change the reasons for resuming a croft to ensure that it is for the good of the community and in the public interest.

I will speak to amendments 193 to 195. As the minister said in his speech, amendments 193 and 194 do largely what his amendments seek to do. I do not intend to move them, so I will not speak to them in detail.

I am not convinced that amendment 195 is covered by his amendments. Amendment 195 would provide ministers with powers to make provision enabling grazing shares to be reunited with the croft they originally pertained to. It is clear that that would be desirable, given that owners of grazings shares might not be aware of their status. Those who might be holding on to those shares may also be looking to benefit financially from the work of grazings committees. That was creating a deal of angst for crofters where grazings shares were held by someone with no attachment to the community.

As I say, I do not think that the minister’s amendments deal with that issue. If they do, I would be happy to take an intervention. If not, I will move amendment 195.

I will speak to my amendments 3 to 8, 10, 197, 202 and 203.

Although they welcome the ability to put a croft to environmental use, stakeholders expressed concerns that this might be a shortcut to abandonment. Therefore, what could be deemed as “environmental use” has to be better laid out. The purpose of my amendments is to strengthen the definition of environmental use to reflect a more proactive and purposeful approach. Amendment 3 would add an exception to section 1.

Amendment 4 would make a parallel change to the existing definition of “purposeful use”, bringing it in line with the new definition of environmental use in relation to active management of land.

Amendment 5 would require a crofter to actively manage their land with the intention of providing environmental benefit.

Amendment 6 would ensure that environmental use must not adversely affect the croft.

Amendment 7 would exclude energy generation, transmission and storage from being environmental use. That would not prohibit energy generation on a croft, but it would prohibit it from being termed “environmental use”. For instance, a crofter could not cover their croft with solar panels and say that it had been put to environmental use, but they could have solar panels on their croft as part of the normal working of their croft, to generate electricity—for example, for a barn.

The bill gives ministers regulation-making powers to adapt the list of purposes that are considered to be environmental uses. Amendment 8 would allow them specifically to exclude items from the list.

Amendments 3 and 10 would ensure that crofters and owner-occupier crofters are not treated as breaching the standards of good agricultural and environmental condition if an environmental or purposeful use is incompatible with the requirements under sections 5B and 19C of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993.

Amendment 197 would remove part of the bill that gives no role for the Crofting Commission in a situation where the landowner grants conditional consent to environmental use. The amendment would allow the commission to determine all applications for environmental use.

Amendments 202 and 203 refer to carbon credits. A crofter is entitled to take trees and peat on their croft or common grazings, so they are currently entitled to any financial gains from that. Some landlords are now seeking to take the carbon credits that pertain to that peat and forestry. This is not only wrong, but it is preventing crofters from working to ensure that they maximise the environmental benefits of their croft. We heard about this matter when we were scrutinising the climate change plan.

Amendment 202 would ensure that, if a crofter or grazings committee carries out peatland restoration or forestry, they alone are entitled to the carbon credits that emanate from their work.

Amendment 203 would prevent a landlord from resuming the croft or common grazings, once that work has been carried out, in order to keep to themselves the carbon credits that emanate from that work. This would not interfere with a landlord or a grazings committee entering into a joint venture to carry out such work if they wish to.

I am really concerned about the matter, because it represents a blocker on crofters carrying out environmental work if the landowner can then take the benefit. I also know of cases where landowners and crofters cannot reach agreement. It seems to me that we could find a way of ensuring that, if a crofter or a grazings committee takes action to create environmental benefit, the landowner cannot claim any of the income or wealth that is generated from that work. We could get round the issue of defining carbon credits and we could surely find a way of making sure that the crofter or the grazings committee gets the value from their work.

I will speak to amendments 176, 39 and 40. The bill will limit the number of crofts that a crofter may normally hold. There was discussion in the committee about the appropriate number of crofts, given that they can vary significantly in size, especially where crofts have been subdivided in the past. A hectarage threshold might be a more realistic gauge of what may be seen as excessive, and amendment 176 would set the quite high threshold of 500 hectares. That would be a substantial amount of land to be held by one crofter. It is the limit that Mercedes Villalba sought to put into the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill to signify a substantial holding. It seems fair, but I will listen to members’ and the minister’s thoughts on that approach.

Amendments 39 and 40 seek to slightly tweak the provisions in section 11, which amends sections 23 and 26J of the 1993 act to provide that, where the commission has let a croft to a crofter under section 23(5C) of the 1993 act, it may not be assigned during the 10 years following the date of the let. Under the bill, the commission may not consent to the assignation of the tenancy of a croft and the Land Court may not make an order authorising the acquisition of the croft by the crofter. Amendments 39 and 40 seek to allow the Crofting Commission and the Land Court discretion to waive the 10-year ban in exceptional circumstances. Those circumstances could include someone becoming unwell and being unable to work the croft any more, or someone having a change of circumstances that leads to them having to leave and being in breach of their obligations under the crofting acts. In exceptional circumstances, the Crofting Commission and the Land Court could look at the individual circumstances and waive the requirement if necessary.

I am happy to accept that reassurance, and I have nothing more to add.

I just want to make a short intervention to agree with a lot of what has been said. People were expecting there to be a substantive bill in the previous parliamentary session, and now, in the current parliamentary session, they have a bill that does not really meet aspirations, although the changes that it makes are welcome. We have to find a way of binding the next Government, whoever it is, to consult widely and introduce legislation, while recognising that crofting has evolved in different areas. That will not be easy, but, because of what is happening to crofting, it will not survive if legislation is not amended substantially in the next five years.

Is the minister willing to have discussions ahead of stage 3 on amendment 189? I know that the amendment is not the finished article by any stretch, but there is an issue about people being absent but not really being absent and instead using it to enable abandonment. If we could tighten up the rules on that, that would make the situation better. I am not suggesting that people should wait to be reported, but the circumstances in which people can leave their croft for a short period should perhaps be tightened up.

I will speak to amendments 178, 179, 183, 184 and 187, which try to address a problem created by the right to buy and seek to make it clear that ownership of a croft does not circumvent the obligations of a crofter.

Amendment 178 is a paving amendment, and amendment 179 would add an extra condition that a person must meet to be considered an owner-occupier crofter—that the commission be satisfied that they can meet the owner-occupier crofter duties. The bill introduces an alternative way in which a person can be considered an owner-occupier crofter, via new section 19BA of the 1993 act, by which the commission makes a determination that the person is an owner-occupier crofter. Amendment 183 would provide that the commission cannot make such a determination unless it is satisfied that the crofter can meet the crofter duties.

Amendment 187 would add a new section to provide that, if the commission is not so satisfied that the person can meet the duties, it must direct the person to let the croft to any person as a crofter. It would also provide a regulation-making power for ministers should they need to create other substantive provisions to make this operational.

Amendment 184 would provide that subsections (3) to (7) of section 58A of the 1993 act, which deal with notification and objections, will continue to apply to determinations under proposed new section 19BA of the 1993 act.