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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].

Having listened to the debate, I am minded not to press amendment 375 or move amendment 376.

To come back to the cabinet secretary’s point about whether there is a big problem with the use of security declarations, Rhoda Grant and I have both come across incidents in which, disappointingly, the police were unable to take the necessary action to ensure the landowner’s compliance. I would therefore look to the cabinet secretary and the Government to consider whether that is a larger-scale problem. We are now several years down the line from the roll-out of the register of controlled interests, which is an important tool in the box that enables us to build much more transparency about how land in Scotland is owned and managed. Clearly, there are examples of situations where compliance is not happening.

It seems odd that the bill contains provision for a fine of up to £40,000 for failure to produce a community consultation on a land management plan, whereas a failure to declare who is financially behind the ownership of land in Scotland attracts only a £5,000 fine. I understand the difference: one of those actions could result in a criminal conviction. However, in the small number of cases that have come through, we have seen that the likelihood of securing a conviction is vanishingly small. For the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to even take on such a case would require a lot of specialist research by the police. I do not know whether we would ever get to a point where that might help to secure a criminal conviction.

I am not clear whether such a penalty would be a deterrent against non-compliance but, until there is a bit more review of whether the register of controlled interests is working, we can only guess, because we have only anecdotal evidence. On the face of it, that provision appears as though it is quite misaligned with others in the bill, not just as they stood at stage 1 but as they have changed as we have progressed through stage 2.

Okay—go.

I will not press amendment 469.

Amendment 469, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 470 moved—[Mark Ruskell].

I look forward to further discussions with Ariane over the summer about how we might deliver the policy intent behind the amendment—which is to have a thriving community renewables sector in which communities feel that they are achieving the benefit, so—

The Government has already made a commitment to expand and develop ScotLIS. The service is a living thing—it is not frozen in time. The frustration is that it is not currently achieving its potential. It could be quite a powerful tool in ensuring that, where public money is being invested in land and in public objectives, we are matching that up to the land of Scotland and are able to see the impacts of strategic policy across the whole of Scotland—I hope that I have managed to give some examples of that.

It is good for councils, national parks and the Scottish Government to have that mapping tool, so that they can see where public money is being spent, and it is also useful for landowners who are working at a landscape scale, as they can use it to see where the economic opportunities are. It would be for Registers of Scotland and the keeper to manage a work programme for how ScotLIS could be expanded.

There is an existing commitment to expand ScotLIS, so I am not suggesting something completely new. The digital land and property information service task force recommended using ScotLIS in a range of different ways. There is a frustration that, with regard to a carbon land tax and a range of other policies with which members may or may not agree, implementation relies on having an accurate map database of land across Scotland. We do not currently have that, and until we do, we will always come up against problems if we want to be ambitious in our land policy.

I will leave it there, convener. I move amendment 375.

The area of licensing has been drawn far too narrowly in the legislation and it does not include those areas where raptor persecution is occurring. We have, effectively, a licensing regime that was, at the outset, somewhat dysfunctional. It is important that it covers the area where the crimes are taking place.

I think that the Government acknowledges that this is a problem. It is somewhat embarrassing that, when the legislation was passed, it was widely celebrated among those who work in conservation, who had been campaigning for it for many years. It is a balanced piece of legislation, but this is clearly a loophole. If there is a commitment from the Government to fix it, I will not press amendment 374.

Okay—I will do my best.

Amendment 469 would require the Scottish ministers to establish a community land forum. That would bring together local authorities, public bodies with duties related to housing, land ownership or community development, and other agencies, in order to identify areas of land that could be made available for community housing developments.

A forum of that kind has been recommended by the Scottish Land Commission, based on its analysis of similar processes in England and the Republic of Ireland. Amendment 469 would be the first step. It would require ministers to facilitate a space in which the main stakeholders and community groups with an interest could discuss land for community housing. A more robust proposal would be for a public body to be charged with acquiring suitable sites for community housing and creating a land bank of such sites that could be portioned out, according to recommendations from the community land forum. That would be ideal.

Highland Council has successfully assembled parcels of land through its land bank fund since 2005. We would like to see more local authorities take that approach. Amendment 469 is the first step towards such a process, and I urge members to support it.

I move amendment 469.

No, I do not.