Seòmar agus comataidhean

Ariane Burgess sends her apologies. As members know, she is the convener of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, and stage 2 of the Housing (Scotland) Bill is concluding in the committee today.

I will speak to amendment 310 and other amendments in the group. We are all aware that Scotland is very much an outlier among many of our European neighbours in that ownership of land is hugely concentrated, and this bill delivers the next step in land reform. However, any land reform legislation must deal with private property rights, so it is crucial that the process is underpinned by the concept of public interest. That is a widely used term in Scottish and United Kingdom legislation, with more than 200 mentions in primary legislation, including existing land reform legislation on community rights to buy. The concept of public interest is also widely accepted in international law. It forms an integral part of the protection of private property in article 1, protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, which says that

“No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest”.

The Parliament and the Government can curtail that right in particular circumstances, provided that those are set out in law and that the curtailment is in pursuit of a legitimate aim and is proportionate. In many forms of legislation, those circumstances are determined by a public interest test. In this legislation, questions of addressing the public interest in the ownership of land have been inexplicably avoided, with a transfer test and lotting decisions being determined by the impact of the specific landholding on community sustainability, a concept that implicitly deals with the public interest but which remains quite poorly defined and which has no apparent legal precedent. Centring the public interest rather than community sustainability would be a far stronger legal position and would be likely to establish a clearer precedent to avoid future legal challenge, as research for the Scottish Land Commission has made clear.

That raises the question of why the Government has not explicitly engaged with public interest considerations, despite the SLC’s recommendations and the fact that the Government’s consultation was clearly framed in relation to a public interest test. As it stands, the bill provides little clue or definition as to what the relevant public interest considerations are in the ownership of land. The bill needs to consider the public interest in the sale, ownership and management of land.

Amendment 310 seeks to place public interest considerations in the bill. That will ensure predictability, transparency and coherence for the landowners who will be producing land management plans and potentially engaging with a transfer/public interest test. If the amendment passes, landowners will produce LMPs based on public interest considerations that would also underpin any assessment if they were to buy or sell land over the threshold. On behalf of Ariane Burgess, I thank Community Land Scotland for its support in preparing the amendment.

To rewind a little, amendment 49 from the cabinet secretary aims to create a definition of a “contiguous” holding, which addresses evidence that we heard at stage 1 that a holding might have a railway line running through the middle of it and therefore might not be seen as contiguous. I appreciate what the cabinet secretary is trying to do.

In seeking to amend amendment 49, I am replacing the suggestion of using 250m as the definition of “contiguous” with the figure of 10 miles. That goes back to the cabinet secretary’s comments on what people understand as being nearby or within an area. It is important that landholdings that belong to the same owner and have boundaries within 10 miles of each other are treated as contiguous. I think that most people who live in those communities would see such holdings as being broadly contiguous as those are holdings of nearby land that those people want to have a stake in and want to have a conversation about with the landowner. The switch from 250m to 10 miles would address cases where multiple landholdings within communities are being bought up by one owner and are effectively being managed as a single entity.

A number of witnesses told the committee about the example of the Taymouth castle estate and the Glenlyon estate, and the issue was also raised at a town hall meeting that we attended in Aberfeldy. In that example, Discovery Land Company owns both those estates, along with a number of other assets in the community. The company’s proposals have been less than transparent and the feeling in the community—no matter whether people are broadly against or broadly supportive of what DLC is attempting to do—is that people do not really have a full understanding of what the final vision is or what the final plan will be for two estates that are effectively being managed together. That lack of transparency or of a long-term plan is causing a lot of division in the community. I see that in Kenmore and I see that in Aberfeldy. I know that the First Minister, in his role as the constituency MSP, has been asking DLC for its long-term management plan for the area so that people, whether or not they are broadly supportive, can at least know what is coming.

All that we really have at the moment is the planning system, which throws up minor applications for buildings to be built on estates or for the change of use of particular assets but does not really provide a full picture of how a community might change, for better or for worse. The point about what the cabinet secretary called nearby land and the need for transparency is really important.

I appreciate that bringing down the threshold from 3,000 hectares to 1,000 hectares might have some benefit. In that particular case, it would include the Glenlyon estate in the purview of the land management plan, but it would not include Taymouth castle estate or the other assets and land that DLC operates in the area, which still leaves a question about the overall vision and the community’s involvement in that.

Michael Matheson made a point about sites of community significance. I think that that is important, and the bill might have missed an opportunity by not dealing with the urban aspect of that. I hear what the cabinet secretary says about there being more reforms to come, particularly on community right to buy. That is also an issue in the Loch Tay area, because DLC has bought hotels, tourist accommodation, caravan parks and shops, but people do not really know how those are being managed. I hope that, if a version of the amendment were to go through and a land management plan applied to all such assets, that would also provide some clarity on sites of community significance.

Ultimately, communities will judge the bill on whether it improves the situation locally and brings transparency. Right now, my constituents—certainly, the folk we met at the town hall meeting—would call that into question. They do not think that the bill will change the situation locally and provide transparency. I hope that we can agree on something at stage 3—whether that involves a contiguous holding being defined as being within 10 miles of another holding or in some other way—that provides much more of a commonsense understanding of what constitutes nearby land and of the kind of conversations that need to be had on the back of the transparency that a land management plan would bring.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s offer to discuss the matter further and to look at the definition again ahead of stage 3. That will be of interest to people on both sides of the debate around Perthshire.

I press amendment 310.

It seems to have passed. Have any developers come to the Scottish Government saying that they would like to push ahead with a development and asking it to grant them a special development order or any other kind of permission that would allow the developers to do it as a trial?

Let us turn to an area where there is a regulatory gap because SEPA’s work applies only up to 3 nautical miles out. How will that regulatory gap be closed ahead of any planning applications that could come through for developments beyond 3 nautical miles?

To go back to my original question, will the commencement of regulations to extend SEPA’s powers align with the decision on any planning application that is made under the regulations, should they be approved?

I am curious about why the work has not been done already. Parliament has been considering the draft Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025. I suppose that, in an ideal world, those regulations would have extended SEPA’s powers and you would have been able to tell us today that the environmental regulations were in place and you now wanted to bring in a planning system. Instead, I am hearing that you are trying to apply a planning system beyond 3 nautical miles, and to make that live, but that environmental regulations are coming some way down the track, so people must hold off putting in applications until there is certainty. That feels quite disjointed.

I am not asking you, as an official, to comment on those choices, but it feels as though there was an opportunity to make the update and bring in a consistent system with the environmental authorisations amendment regulations.

On the subject of targets, I would like to ask you about the topic areas that were chosen for targets and whether you think that those are adequate. I will go into a bit of detail here. NatureScot said in evidence that

“the targets will need to be set carefully to avoid the potential of diverting attention from wider biodiversity improvements”.

Can you expand a little on what the concern is there?

Should the bill explicitly reflect the commitments that Scotland has signed up to in the global biodiversity framework? Should there be a 2030 target and a 2045 target in the bill, or does the bill implicitly deliver on that? I will bring in Chris Tuckett.

How will that aim be achieved? Should the bill reflect the 2030 and 2045 targets or reference the international commitments? I am interested in how that should be reflected in the bill.