Seòmar agus comataidhean

My apologies, convener—I did not want to interrupt your train of thought. I am glad that you arrived at your destination.

I will just take this opportunity to highlight my amendment 31 in group 7, which is associated with amendments 16 and 17, and seeks to give the Scottish Government the power though regulations to knit all of this together and make it work in a proportionate way. I should have mentioned that in the debate on group 2, but I did not.

I will also say to the convener that there is a policy intent here, and I will listen with interest to what the Scottish Government says in relation to this. There are many ways to skin a cat. The policy intent is that the plans must be publicly accessible, not simply available. Finding a plan should not be burdensome, just as it should not be burdensome for the landowner to produce it.

I am listening with interest. I am an urban MSP, and we can all think of sites that would benefit from additional provisions. Do local place plans have a role here? Local place plans are developed by the planning authority at a local level in consultation with the community. If a community has identified areas of particular community significance that require action, could that, in theory, be a trigger for additional requirements in relation to land management plans? I am just thinking about that as I hear more of what you say, deputy convener.

I will restrict myself to speaking about amendment 22 and you will be pleased to hear that I will speak briefly.

Regarding land management plans, section 44A gives ministers the power to impose obligations on large landholdings and section 44D specifies the land in relation to which those obligations will be imposed. Amendment 22 would ensure that, if the Scottish ministers decided, for any reason, to exclude certain types of land that would otherwise have obligations placed on them, they

“must, when laying the regulations, publish a statement setting out their reasons for not imposing the obligations on the land”.

I met representatives of Community Land Scotland who thought that that would be an important addition. The amendment would simply put the need for clarity and transparency into the legislation.

Having spoken to the cabinet secretary ahead of lodging amendment 22, I was reassured that the Scottish Government would provide a rationale as a matter of course, without statutory compulsion to do so. That said, amendment 22 looks to future proof the matter, should other Governments take a different approach.

I ask members to support amendment 22.

I wonder whether there is a definition of “local community” and whether there is a scale. Would a cluster of five or six houses near a proposed development count as a local community or would it need to be a wider area? We could have a situation in which a relatively small number of people with a theoretical population density in a remote area could block quite a large development. Is that the intention of the amendment?

I saw the NFUS’s concerns about commercial confidentiality within land management plans. Under the bill, various groups will have the ability to contact the land and communities commissioner if they believe that the obligation or the land management plans are not being met. If land management plans are not available, how on earth are we to know whether the obligation or the plan is being met?

I am sure that you know this already, convener, but I want to draw attention to my amendment 32 in group 7, which looks specifically at the transfer of land from one owner to another and appropriate transitional arrangements. I hope that I will get your support for it when we reach group 7.

I think that it would be. I appreciate that it is more challenging to measure the impact of the so-called less well-kent policies or the smaller, more targeted policies, but more information would be welcome.

I can suggest lots of different ways in which we could spend more money, cabinet secretary, and I am sure that you would say, “Where is that money coming from, Mr Doris?” It is important that we know what works, what is targeted and what can make a real difference. Any more information that you can provide on that would be helpful.

I have another question on that point. Do we do qualitative surveys with parents about what works? For example, the school clothing grant, free school meals and the best start grant might not turn the dial on child poverty, but they might change the lived experience of families. We heard some evidence of that when we did our child poverty inquiry; a lot of people who were not lifted out of poverty still had direct positive life experiences because of targeted interventions by the Scottish Government.

That was helpful. The committee will continue to scrutinise the Scottish Government and push it to go further and faster on child poverty, despite the fact that, relative to the rest of the UK, we are doing very well. That begs the question of which factors are within the Scottish Government’s control to turn the dial on child poverty and which are not. To what extent are trends in child poverty under the Scottish Government’s direct control? In what way could the shared space in social security blow targets off course?

The committee is trying to have a positive relationship with the UK Government in relation to influencing its child poverty strategy. We will see how that goes. Does the Scottish Government have any on-going dialogue on that?

This will be my final question, because I know that colleagues want to come in. One of the biggest challenges for the Scottish Government has been turning the dial on children and families who are living in persistent poverty. A new delivery plan is being prepared. Will persistent poverty be a focus for the Scottish Government?