Seòmar agus comataidhean

Again, I would have to fully understand that and see what the implications might be, but I am more than happy to have that conversation with the convener between stages 2 and 3. I still ask that members support my amendments in the meantime.

The final amendments in the group—amendments 45, 46 and 48—concern how composite holdings are defined in the bill. They are technical amendments that strengthen the definition of a composite holding and ensure that multiple holdings that are owned by connected persons form together to comprise composite holdings in the same way in which holdings that are owned by the same person form a single holding.

Those amendments will also support the introduction of non-contiguous holdings, which I have just spoken about, in relation to amendment 49. I therefore recommend that the committee supports the amendments in my name.

If you are talking about aggregate holdings—holdings across Scotland that potentially fall under the thresholds—they would not be caught by the measures. Essentially, we need to make sure that we have the evidence base for that and that we address the impact of the concentration of land ownership. The amendments that I am bringing forward do not cover aggregate holdings, because those would be across Scotland.

As far as I am aware, there is no legal definition of what that would mean. We would be inserting a legal definition of something, which would have wide-reaching ramifications beyond what we have set out in the bill. I am about to come on to a few other points and issues in relation to that.

A wider point has been raised about measures that are being taken in the urban environment. It is important to remember that the bill was intended to deal with a specific problem that was identified by the Scottish Land Commission, which was about the issue of the concentration of land ownership, particularly in rural Scotland. However, that is not to say that no other work is going on to address some of those issues in the urban environment. Monica Lennon raised that matter with me during stage 1 consideration of the bill.

I am about to come on to the community right-to-buy powers and the on-going review of them. Significant work has also been taking place in relation to compulsory purchase orders and compulsory sales orders. All those different mechanisms will help to deal with some of the issues in the urban environment. I do not think that we can address those issues in the bill—in this legislative vehicle—alone.

Different stakeholders have voiced support for the concept of sites of community significance, but they have done so in different ways. Some have sought to expand the scope of the bill; others have sought to limit it and to require communities to undertake more work before the provisions in the bill could apply.

The process of assigning sites as being of community significance would be complex, and the enforcement and monitoring of any registration could have significant costs for the Scottish Government, which would have to establish a way to register the sites, and for local authorities, which might be required to be involved, too. There has not been any impact assessment to consider how many more sites could be brought into scope and what the costs of that could be for landowners and the public sector.

The benefits of including sites of community significance are unclear, and how the lotting provisions and transfer test would be applied to such sites is also unclear. There is an existing process through which urban and rural communities can register a community interest in land through the community right-to-buy processes in part 2 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. An additional process could add significant cost and complexity for both the landholder and the public purse, with unclear and limited benefit.

In rural areas, there is a need to add an existing route to the community right-to-buy process, which is why we have introduced the notification measures in the bill, but we do not believe that that would be proportionate when there are no issues of concentrated ownership. In fact, if we were to expand the provisions of the bill to apply beyond the target area of large landholdings, that could risk taking the bill away from the evidence base on which we made the proposals.

There would also be issues with legislating in that space before we have been able to consider the findings of the community right-to-buy review, which is still under way and is due to report by the end of this year. I appreciate the concerns that were raised by the committee in relation to that review. If legislative changes are required as a result of that review, we would be happy to propose the right legislative vehicle to address those.

Although I appreciate the approach that Michael Matheson has taken, I believe that it would take the measures in the bill away from what they were intended to do and beyond the issues that they were designed to address. I ask him not to press amendment 11 or move amendments 35, 42 and 106.

Through amendment 22, Bob Doris proposes that the Scottish ministers publish a statement when they are exempting any land that would otherwise be subject to future regulations that require landowners to have a land management plan. As Bob Doris has outlined, and as I said in the conversations that we have had, I would expect the Government to do that as a matter of course. I am always nervous about adding requirements to a bill that I do not believe are necessary, but I am happy to support amendment 22, although I might revisit it at stage 3 if any unintended consequences are found or drafting issues are identified.

Tim Eagle’s linked amendments 398, 399, 402, 403 and 406 seek to disapply the community engagement obligations in certain circumstances, including when land is used mainly for agricultural purposes or the owner has not engaged with a community body in the past five years. Rachael Hamilton’s amendments 400 and 404 similarly seek to disapply the obligations when the land is transferred to a new entrant to farming or agriculture business.

I am mindful that the obligations and thresholds should be designed to avoid disproportionate duties on small-scale landholdings or smaller farms. That is why I do not propose to lower the threshold below 1,000 hectares, at which level only the largest of farms—1.4 per cent of Scotland’s farms—are expected to be in scope. We will make all efforts to ensure that the community engagement obligations are as straightforward as possible and that they align with other plans and requirements where possible, to minimise duplication. However, I do not believe that it is right to disapply those obligations to as broad a class of land types and landowners as the amendments suggest. That is why I recommend that the amendments should not be supported.

Tim Eagle’s amendments 37, 41 and 44 would remove the bill’s definition of what constitutes a composite holding for the purposes of community engagement obligations and, instead, via amendment 405, leave those definitions to future guidance to be prepared and published by the Scottish Land Commission. I appreciate that there is often quite a lot of discussion in Parliament about what should be in a bill and what should be left to regulations and guidance. In this case, however, it is right that Parliament can consider what constitutes composite holdings in the bill. Those can, of course, be changed by any future regulations, so I ask members not to support the amendments.

Amendment 39 would raise the threshold for land on which community obligations may be imposed from 3,000 to 5,000 hectares. That would dramatically reduce the ambition of the bill, particularly when there has been such widespread support for land management plans and the community engagement obligations, as the committee will have seen when it took evidence on that.

Amendment 401 would increase the percentage of land that forms an island under the current islands criterion to 33 per cent from 25 per cent. As I have outlined, I propose lowering the threshold to 1,000 hectares, which would then remove the islands criterion. That is a sensible compromise and I therefore recommend that the amendments are opposed.

Tim Eagle’s remaining amendments in the group—104, 105 and 110—would remove ministerial powers to modify chapter 2 of the 2016 act by regulations and instead add more restricted powers to modify the chapter. Amendment 110 would stipulate that future regulations could not reduce the number of hectares in section 44D of the 2016 act in relation to the land on which obligations would be imposed.

Mercedes Villalba’s amendment 109 would do almost the complete opposite of what Tim Eagle is trying to do. It would restrict the power to modify chapter 2 of the 2016 act by stipulating that future regulations could not increase the thresholds for land management plans and community engagement obligations.

Both approaches would substantially restrict Parliament’s future flexibility. Although I probably lean more towards supporting the intent behind Mercedes Villalba’s amendment than Tim Eagle’s—I know that it was worth a try—as a parliamentarian, I am mindful of constraining the actions of future Parliaments, which is why I do not support the amendments.

As I have outlined, we are probably not too far apart in our thinking, but these are new measures that we are introducing so, being responsible in our role, it is only right that we monitor their effectiveness and look at any potential impacts. I do not want to tie the hands of any future Parliaments in relation to that, which is why I propose not to support the amendment. I am happy to have further conversations with Mercedes Villalba after stage 2 as we look towards stage 3, but I am not minded to support amendment 109 at this stage.

Ariane Burgess’s amendments 3 and 4 would lower the threshold for land on which community obligations might be imposed to 500 hectares. For the reasons that I outlined earlier, I believe that that is too low. I want to ensure that the proposals are justified in relation to the policy aim of not having a disproportionate impact on smaller landholdings. The amendments would impose costs on a much more significant set of landowners. As I outlined in my response to Mercedes Villalba, the provisions in the bill are new and it is important that the Government can review and monitor how they are being implemented. We would have the ability to seek to adjust the thresholds in future if that is required. That is why I oppose the amendments.

I thank colleagues around the table for their engagement on the bill more widely, but particularly on the matters that we are discussing in this group in relation to the process for and implementation of land management plans.

I welcome amendment 20, lodged by Bob Doris, which looks to require specifically that regulations ensure that landowners engage with

“tenants, crofters and small landholders with rights associated with the land on the development of, and significant changes to,”

land management plans. That was always going to be the intention of the regulations, so I am happy with that amendment, which makes things more explicit.

Amendment 33 from Bob Doris and amendment 10 from Tim Eagle seek additional guidance on how landowners will comply with their land management plan obligations under the regulations. As it was always the intention for there to be additional guidance, I am happy for that to be made explicit in the bill.

For drafting reasons, however, I ask Bob Doris and Tim Eagle not to move their amendments, and I am happy to work with them ahead of stage 3 to produce amendments that meet the stated aims in both. Each takes a different view on how guidance must be produced, what it should cover and who should produce it; one suggests Scottish ministers, while the other suggests the new commissioner. I agree that the content of both the amendments should be covered in further regulations or in guidance, and I will consider how best that can be reflected in the bill and whether that responsibility should indeed lie with ministers or with the commissioner.

Amendments 21 and 315, on the proposed timescales for the review of land management plans, seek to increase the intervals of reporting. Ariane Burgess’s amendments in this group seek to introduce a new plan period of 20 years, with a review and a report every five years. I do, of course, understand the rationale for that, which is to encourage plans to set out activity for the next 20 years. However, the bill already requires plans to set out a long-term vision, and it is appropriate for guidance and regulations to set out more detail of what that means, including the timespan that the plan should cover.

In its stage 1 report, the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee noted that the five-year reporting cycle that we have set out seeks

“to strike a balance between ensuring plans remain current and not imposing unrealistic or unhelpful obligations on landowners.”

To me, that indicates that what we have set out does strike the right balance, and to that end, I ask members not to support amendment 21 from Tim Eagle, amendment 315 from Rhoda Grant or amendments 311, 313, 314, 316 and 337 from Ariane Burgess.

That would be for review of the plan, not its duration. As I have set out in my comments, we would look to regulations and further guidance to set out what the overall duration of the plan would look like. Hence, I feel that we have struck the right balance in having the review every five years.

It is not for me to set that out right now, because we would need to do more work on the matter and have more engagement across the piece. In relation to what Rhoda Grant and Ariane Burgess have proposed, I feel that there is an agreement to be reached between us, but I do not think that fixing this in primary legislation is the way to do it.

Amendments 390, 18, 391, 19, 392 and 396 from Tim Eagle look to do away altogether with the requirement for regulations to provide for obligations to ensure that there are land management plans and engagement with communities on them. They seek to require regulations only to provide that landowners ensure that they engage with a restricted category of persons—and only on the development of plans, not on significant changes to them—and they also seek to introduce in regulations an ability for landowners to report members of the community. I feel that those amendments are against the spirit of what the bill is looking to achieve, and I ask members not to support them.

I also recommend opposing amendment 340 from Rhoda Grant.

I am more than happy to come in on that, convener. We did not come up against those issues with amendment 341, because it specifies that it relates to crofting counties. Therefore, the issue that you raise would not be a concern in relation to that amendment.

I want to quickly touch on the amendments from Tim Eagle. Ultimately, we included in the bill the proposed new section 44C of the 2016 act as part of the overall aim to strengthen and improve transparency and engagement between landowners and local communities. Of course, tenants and crofters should already be engaging with landowners through the land management plan and the community engagement process, but we specifically included section 44C so that regulations would have to be laid to specifically require consideration by landowners of community requests to lease land. That is in recognition of the fact that access to assets, whether land or buildings, can be vital for community development and sustainability. The option to lease might be just as valuable as the rights that are set out under the right-to-buy legislation. That is why I am content that it is appropriate for future regulations to set out the detail of how landowners should give reasonable consideration to requests and how community bodies should make those requests. It is important that we develop those requirements with the benefit of consultation.

On Rhoda Grant’s amendment 341, we did not encounter the issues that you found, convener. Overall, we welcome the intention of the amendment, which seeks to do something similar to what we are already trying to do through new section 44C of the 2016 act—to bring forward the requirement for regulations to oblige landowners to consider reasonable requests from communities to constitute land as crofting land. There is merit in considering the amendment further, in particular to ensure that reasonable requests by crofting community bodies are considered by landowners. However, we have some issues with the drafting of the amendment, because I do not think that it achieves its purpose in the way that the member would—

In the policy memorandum, we set out why we have taken the approach that we have taken, and whether any alternatives were considered.

It comes back to striking the right balance—not being too prescriptive and allowing for some flexibility—because we recognise that land will be very different across Scotland. However, ultimately, we want to achieve a number of high-level outcomes, such as tackling the climate and nature crises, delivering our vision for agriculture in Scotland and being a global leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

We have been listening to the evidence on that and we are keen to hear the committee’s views in its stage 1 report. As Andy Proudfoot touched on, more guidance will be issued and there will be further consultation on what will be included in the land management plans. However, we hope that the high-level overview of our ultimate ambitions strikes the right balance.

I recognise the concerns and the quite universal call for some sort of de minimis provision in the bill to exclude certain transactions that need not be controversial.

It might be helpful if I briefly explain why we have introduced the provision as we have, and the rationale behind that. With regard to pieces of land that communities might be interested in taking ownership of, the vast majority—I think that the figure is between 60 and 70 per cent—are areas of less than a hectare. They are quite small pieces of land, but they might still be very significant to a particular community. That is why we did not want to prevent from being part of those transactions areas of land that could be significant to or of interest to a community.

We have, however, listened to the evidence that the committee has heard and the subsequent recommendations that have come from the Land Commission on that issue, and we are happy to consider that further.