I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, particularly to my on-going administration of the Who Owns Scotland website.
I am pleased to open the debate, and I thank all members who signed the motion and who will speak this afternoon. The debate is intended to highlight the need for a wide range of information—not just information on the ownership of land—to be more easily and freely available. It is something of a contradiction that Scotland has the oldest national public register of land—the 1617 register of sasines—and yet, today, Scotland has a system of land registration and information that is poor by international standards, and one in which it is next to impossible to obtain critical information easily and quickly.
In 2018, Transparency International published a framework for assessing the transparency of land ownership information, and Scotland was one of the case studies. The authors of Community Land Scotland’s report, “Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland”, concluded:
“There is currently a gap between the desire for a ‘publicly accessible’ land registry and the reality. Access for citizens to anything other than the most basic information is fragmented, expensive and complicated.”
I emphasise, at the outset, that the land information system involves much more than just information on ownership. Of course, it includes information on ownership and associated legal entities, but it also includes valuation data, information on non-domestic rates and council tax, planning permissions, environmental and heritage designations, energy performance certificate ratings, information on flood risks and contaminated land, utilities data, coastal and marine data—the list goes on.
In Scotland today, all that information is available in theory, but it is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to obtain. For example, a constituent of mine was concerned about short-term lets in her tenement in Edinburgh. There were five in all, and she wanted to know who owned them, whether the owners had planning consent and whether they were paying their local taxes. Such a task should be straightforward with a modern land information system. Not only must she look in three different places, however, but the ownership information alone would have cost her £150 plus VAT—money that she did not have.
It is worth noting that we were far better informed historically. In 1872, the Government conducted a survey and published a full return of the owners of lands and heritages. I have a copy here if anyone is interested in perusing it. It is an odd state of affairs that it is easier to find out the ownership, value and use of land in 1915 than it is to find out that information on land in 2018. The Finance Act 1910, Lloyd George’s famous people’s budget, proposed a levy on the value of land. In order to establish a baseline, surveyors mapped out in intricate detail the ownership, occupation, value and use of virtually all of Great Britain and the whole of the island of Ireland, covering 99.7 per cent of the land area of Scotland. Nothing comparable has been produced since.
Countries such as Singapore, states in the United States, and European countries such as Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Estonia are well ahead of us. Indeed, in a ranking of countries by the ease of registering property, for example, the World Bank ranks the United Kingdom as number 42 in the world. Above us are Rwanda, Belarus, Slovakia, Latvia, Finland and Kosovo. One of the best examples of information is the cadastral service of the US state of Montana. Someone can go online—members can do it now, if they fancy—from a computer or smart phone in Edinburgh and examine a wide range of information relating to every parcel of land in Montana. Members could even find out how many bathrooms folk have and the type of heating systems that they use.
England and Wales are making greater progress. For example, with the online land registry of England and Wales, a person can enter a postcode, pay a fee of £6 and download the information. In Scotland, it will cost £30 and cannot be done online by the user. More widely, the UK geospatial commission has been set up and is running with a mission to make geospatial data available free and without restriction.
My motion notes another issue of relevance to the debate. In 2014, following the publication of the final report of the land reform review group, the Government committed to complete the land register by 2024 and to have all public land registered by 2019. As revealed in correspondence with the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee towards the end of last year, however, the public land target will not be achieved. The City of Edinburgh Council said that it
“has neither the resources nor the budget to accomplish the task in the envisaged timescale”.
Stirling Council said that it would not complete it and Highland Council said that it would cost them £8.5 million to do so. All of that begs the question of who is accountable for the policy. In discussions with the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee in January, the keeper of the registers of Scotland claimed that she is doing all that she can. Local authorities in particular cannot afford to provide the information, and they appear never to have been consulted about the target in the first place.
Regardless of how complete the land register is—and latest data shows that 66 per cent of the 2 million units of property are on it, representing 33 per cent of the land area—it remains impossible easily and quickly to identify and secure access to this and a wide range of other information.
All of that looked as if it might change in 2015. Following a report in July 2015, John Swinney announced in October 2015 the establishment of the Scottish land information system, an online portal that would enable
“citizens, communities, professionals and business to access comprehensive information about any piece of land or property in Scotland.”
ScotLIS was delivered in November 2017, but it did not and does not deliver on the commitment made by the Scottish ministers in 2015. Indeed, it is next to useless. Members can see for themselves online. Most particularly, it is not comprehensive—it includes only some of the information held by the Registers of Scotland, and the user has to pay for it. The public receives a much inferior offering than do business users, who not only enjoy easier and better access but are charged 10 per cent of the fees that the public are.
Like the completion target, Government policy is not being delivered. I would welcome the minister’s views on why that is the case and who is responsible. From what I can tell, governance is the key failing. The system should never have been placed under the control of Registers of Scotland. Such an ambitious project requires a broad governance structure that includes the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, public agencies such as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, the voluntary and community sectors, valuation boards and others. Most importantly, it requires leadership by Government, a broad governing delivery board, an agreed designed delivery plan and timetable, and accountability for its delivery, and it requires to be developed to match the best in the world.
None of that is difficult, but for far too long, the people of Scotland have been unable to find out information about who owns the country and about the value and use of land and property. In my view, citizens have the right to openness and transparency with regard to information that is held by public authorities about land. It is their right and it is the responsibility of this Parliament and Scottish ministers to ensure that its stated policy goals are delivered on time and in full. In particular, we need a new work programme and a governance framework to deliver the ambitions of the Scottish land information system as a matter of urgency.
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