Seòmar agus comataidhean

Amendment 367 would require ministers to report annually on the operation of part 1 of the bill, including the production of land management plans and the use of the transfer test and lotting powers. The report would also cover the issuing of any fines by the land and communities commissioner and registrations of community interest in large landholdings.

We believe that it is necessary to give Parliament a yearly snapshot of what is happening in Scotland’s land market as a way of scrutinising the effectiveness of the legislation.

I acknowledge that the amendment covers actions that are taken directly by the Scottish ministers, such as the use of the transfer test and lotting decisions, and actions that are taken by the commissioner. However, we believe that the required information is sufficiently high level that collating it for an annual report would not place a burden on ministers or the commissioner.

Monica Lennon’s amendment 503 seeks to do something similar, and the Greens broadly support the intention behind that amendment. We will listen carefully to the cabinet secretary’s comments on amendment 367.

I turn to the other amendments in the group. We are happy to support Bob Doris’s amendment 182. We do not agree with Martin Whitfield’s amendments in the group, as they seem to create grounds for part 1 of the act to be repealed before the new powers have had the chance to bed in. We will be interested to hear his comments on that later.

Similarly, we do not agree with the addition of a sunset clause that would apply 10 years after royal assent, which is proposed in Martin Whitfield’s amendment 386. Such a provision does not exist in other legislation, such as the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which granted powers to ministers on a range of issues, such as energy efficiency and recycling schemes, although those schemes were not taken forward until several years down the line. We will listen to Mr Whitfield’s comments on his amendments.

I accept the cabinet secretary’s comments about the work on houses being progressed in other ways, but I reiterate the point that that was a recommendation from the Scottish Land Commission. Similar processes are under way in England and Ireland, and we will judge any future progress against that.

To go back to the convener’s point about relative costs, any comparison that looked at how similar processes have worked elsewhere would certainly answer that question.

I will not press amendment 469, but I will talk about Monica Lennon’s amendments, because it feels as if that area of land reform continually gets dropped. Whenever a land reform bill comes forward, people say that considering commonties and common land is too difficult. I recognise that that is probably because a lot of the status of land has been eroded over time. Private landowners may have expanded a garden or private developers may have managed to take over an area—particularly an area of common good land—and develop it without there being clarity as to its legal status. I came across that issue when I was a councillor in Dunblane, and we did a bit of work with Andy Wightman to work out where the common land was. I know that the issue goes way back, probably to the previous Scottish Parliament in 1695.

Those areas of land are held for communities, so we need to give the issue a bit of care and attention. It feels as if another land reform bill has come and gone and, because the work has not been done, there is nothing that we can do legally now, and the problem is just going to sit there. It needs a bit of care and attention in the future.

I will speak to my amendments in the group and to Ariane Burgess’s amendment 470 on Scotland’s land information service—ScotLIS.

The register of persons holding a controlled interest in land was established in 2021. The committee spent a long time looking at the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 (Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land) Regulations 2021, which was a super-affirmative instrument, working out whether the register itself and the penalties and provisions associated with it would be effective. The instrument could not be amended, but we reached a point at which we approved it, even though we had some questions and concerns about how effective it would be.

Since the register came into being, landowners have been required to publicly register their ownership and controlled interests relating to their land. At the time, the Parliament and the Government recognised that there was a lack of transparency in relation to who owned Scotland’s land and who controlled it. Currently, landowners who do not provide their details for inclusion in that public register are committing a criminal offence. However, there have been cases in my region that constituents have brought to my attention in which Police Scotland has chosen not to investigate people who were thought to be flouting the law in that respect because of a lack of capacity or expertise in what is quite a technical area of law.

If the register is to be enabled to work, it needs to be revised. We took a bit of evidence on the subject at stage 1. I have lodged amendments 375 and 376 as probing amendments that present two options for how the register could be reformed to ensure greater compliance.

Amendment 375 would change the current position, whereby someone who does not comply with the registration requirements receives a £5,000 fine, to one in which they would receive an annual recurring fine until they complied. That would be one way of tackling the issue within the provision of the existing regulations. Of course, many landowners would view the payment of such fines as the cost of carrying on with business as usual, so the imposition of such fines would have to be accompanied by a strong commitment on the part of the Scottish ministers and Police Scotland to tackle the problems that are hindering enforcement of the current regulations.

Amendment 376 offers a slightly different and perhaps more complex approach that would provide a quicker way of addressing the problem and dealing with enforcement. It would make failure to register ownership a civil rather than a criminal offence and would give the land and communities commissioner the ability to issue a £40,000 annual fine. Although that does not have the heft of a criminal conviction, it is a stronger up-front financial penalty, and it perhaps aligns more with the penalties and provisions in the bill as they relate to environmental management plans and community engagement. We have discussed, for example, what an appropriate level of fine might be. It is a bit odd that there is no similar penalty in respect of the register for persons holding a controlled interest in land, and I think that that is causing problems. I will listen to the cabinet secretary’s comments and her reflections on what steps ministers can take to strengthen enforcement of the register.

Ariane Burgess’s amendment 470 seeks to expand Scotland’s land information service, or ScotLIS. In 2015, following previous land reform legislation, John Swinney committed to bringing forward a comprehensive, publicly available mapping tool to make available a range of information about how Scotland’s land is owned and used. The ScotLIS service that is available on the Registers of Scotland website makes available information on ownership and sale that is held by the keeper. Although that is important, it falls short of the comprehensive information service that was envisaged in 2015.

Knowing how land is used and what activities are being supported by public subsidies is important for giving us all a fuller understanding of Scotland’s land use and its contribution to the economy and to achieving net zero and other public objectives. Amendment 470 would require that, within two years of the bill receiving royal assent, the current ScotLIS service be expanded to include information such as biodiversity status, active travel routes, flood records, the location of public services and land held under agricultural tenancies. Those categories were recommended by the Government’s digital land and property information service task force, which reported to ministers in 2015.

Making such information publicly accessible in a single database would add greater accuracy to our view of Scotland’s land use and ownership. We just discussed the implementation of carbon land tax, and, before anything like that could be brought in, we would need to have a much more comprehensive view of landholdings. An expanded ScotLIS would be the first step to implementing such a tax.

I note the interest of Bob Doris and a number of members in the issue. At the end of the day, the 2024 act is a piece of legislation that is not functioning in the way that it should. I am less interested in the area in which grouse can be killed and more interested in the area in which raptors are being illegally persecuted and killed. If the primary intention of the licensing regime is to drive down levels of raptor persecution to ensure that land managers are sticking to the law, it is clearly not functioning at this point.

My point is about when we can fix that, if this is not the appropriate bill in which to do so. I do not want to get to a point with the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill where a similar amendment is raised and it is seen as not quite right for that bill either. There is a need to fix this right now. The commitment that the cabinet secretary has made to look at this again is important, but I will withdraw the amendment only on the clear understanding that a fix will be found for this and that it will be introduced into the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill by the Government, or I will lodge an amendment myself.

I will not be pressing it.

Amendment 467 would make small changes to the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 to support community bodies to own land or take leases for community energy purposes. It would ensure policy coherence across portfolios, and it would align Scottish Government objectives not only on land reform, by empowering communities with more opportunities to own land, but on community wealth building.

The Government has stated its commitment to increasing community-owned energy. We have a target of 2GW of capacity by 2030, but we do not think that that will be met without making more land available for community energy. The cabinet secretary has stated that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill will

“allow the benefits and opportunities of Scotland’s land to be more widely shared.”

Community energy projects really show us how that can take place. There are some great examples on Lewis, including the Point and Sandwick Trust wind farm, which generates £900,000 a year for the local community. That will rise to £2 million a year once the project’s capital costs have been repaid. That is really powering the community, and it is providing grants to local primary schools and to people who live in fuel poverty. In my constituency, the Fintry Development Trust has done amazing work over many years in pioneering such development. There are lots of positive examples of communities backing renewable energy, being part of the successful picture of renewable development in Scotland and sharing in its rewards.

However, none of those projects could have happened without the land being available for community renewables. It is quite clear that although partnership working can take place between developers and communities, communities can get the best deals when they are landowners. If they own the land, they can strike the best partnerships. Making more land available for community-owned renewables benefits not only the communities concerned but the whole of Scotland. It means that more of the wealth from renewable energy generation in Scotland stays here—it does not get offshored or go to shareholders.

That approach also increases public support for community energy projects. We see good evidence of communities developing renewables themselves, in the right places, by entering into positive agreements with developers, which drives support for renewables projects. That will be important going forward. People need to be able to look up at the wind turbine on the hill and recognise that they, their community and their families are benefiting from it, otherwise, it can feel as though wealth is being extracted from Scotland. Increasing public support will therefore be critical as we go forward.

When there is space on public land that is suitable for renewables, the first step should be to offer that land to local community organisations that wish to use it for that purpose.

The first part of amendment 467 would place a duty on ministers, when deciding community asset transfer requests, to exercise their function in a way that

“prioritises community ownership of green energy assets.”

At the end of the section that would be inserted by Ariane Burgess’s amendment 467, a duty would be placed on ministers, when assessing proposed land purchases under the community right to buy, to

“consider the public interest”

reasons for

“increasing community-owned green energy.”

It is important that we move beyond what has become quite a polarised debate—including in this committee, given some of Douglas Lumsden’s amendments on whether we need to restrict transmission infrastructure—about whether we need to restrict the growth of green energy. There is a way to advance community energy generation that reflects its benefits, notwithstanding concerns about planning decisions and getting renewables projects in the right place. The idea of community ownership, and getting communities to invest in and engage with projects, will be really critical to their success. I think that we could see renewable energy develop in a way that would benefit everybody.

I move amendment 467.

We are where we are with the legislation in this area. There is a lot of frustration in communities. There is a call for reform, particularly on crofting legislation, and a bill on that has been introduced in Parliament. There is also the long-awaited community right to buy review.

Some of the issues are really long standing. The Largo community has been active on the issue that I referred to since 2017, and it is clear that the law, as currently constructed, is not working. In terms of the intricacies of valuations and buyouts, the provision on abandoned and neglected land has very rarely been tested. That is partly because it is not a robust provision. There are loopholes that allow landowners to effectively avoid or bypass the right that communities have.

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments that the examples that have been raised today will be consulted on and reflected on in the community right to buy review. We look forward to that process. I hope that it will be on time and that the next Government that comes in will be able to act quickly on the issue. I do not want to find that I, or my successor MSPs from Fife, are sitting here making the same point in another five years’ time, perhaps in speaking about another land reform bill, because communities are still trying to get control over historic assets that are abandoned and neglected. Right now, those assets are literally crumbling away because of a technicality. That is holding back economic development and conservation and the vision of communities around Scotland, which is a shame.

I will withdraw amendment 355, but I look forward to continuing the conversation with the cabinet secretary and taking that forward into the community right to buy review in the months ahead.

Amendment 355, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 356 moved—[Mercedes Villalba].

I think that the challenge will be to get robust evidence. I heard the cabinet secretary’s remarks that some people might have a security concern and, therefore, would be exempt from providing information, but we do not know. We are where we are; we are discussing the bill, it is before the Parliament, and there is a desire to change and fix a lot of things that we think are problematic. We might be reliant on the Government making commitments to change regulations or carry out reviews in the future, but now is the time to pin down such commitments so that there is some assurance for the committee, here and now, that we know what will happen as we go forward.

That also brings us to the subject of ScotLIS. We all agree that it is a powerful and useful tool, but that it could be more so. Again, we are fishing around to see what the next stage of its development might be. The cabinet secretary admitted that it would cost more money to make the service better and more effective, but what is the Government’s commitment on that? Is ScotLIS a priority, or not? If it is not a priority, we should name it and say, “There is no programme to expand ScotLIS. The commitments that were made in 2015 by the digital working group will not be carried forward, and we will deal with what we have at the moment.” I am aware that another committee would scrutinise the work of the keeper and ScotLIS, but it is so fundamental to our work on land reform that I think it important to bring that into the discussion.

I will not press amendment 375. I will not move amendment 376, but I will move amendment 470. We will see where we get to with Monica Lennon’s subsequent amendments 475 and 477. Although her amendments are supportable, I would like to test with the committee the idea of putting something into legislation now.

Amendment 375, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 376 to 378 not moved.

Sorry, I just—

I do not have an answer to that.