Official Report 565KB pdf
Good morning, committee. It is good to be here to discuss the land reform review group’s report. First, I thank the review group and its team of advisers for producing a very comprehensive report on land reform, with a total of 62 far-reaching recommendations.
When the Scottish Government set the remit for the land reform review group, we were clear that it should focus on how to increase diversity in land ownership and that it should support communities in being more resilient and independent. I am therefore pleased that the review group started from the position that land is a finite resource, and that decisions on its ownership and use must be taken in the public interest and for the common good. I whole-heartedly agree with that.
The Government’s vision is of a Scotland where we acknowledge that land is intimately linked to ideas of wellbeing, justice, economic opportunity and identity. Our policies should ensure that Scotland’s land works for the benefit of the people of Scotland, and a stronger relationship between land and people will empower people across the whole of Scotland in contributing to the prosperity and sustainable development of the nation.
We recognise the empowering nature of land ownership. In our view, land ownership is too highly concentrated, at present. It has been suggested that just 0.008 per cent of the people own more than 50 per cent of the private land.
There are circumstances in which it can be against the public interest for an individual or organisation to hold a monopoly of land. Diversity creates opportunity and choice, and it empowers communities as well as individuals. Land, as a resource, should play its part in building a fairer society.
We need to build a society in which there is greater diversity of land ownership, and in which communities and individuals have access to land in order that they can fulfil their aspirations and needs. We have a target to have 1 million acres of land in community ownership by 2020. It is certainly a challenging target. It is sometimes portrayed as being pro community ownership and anti private ownership, but that is not the case. As the concentration of ownership decreases, there will be room for more community owners and more private owners.
It is clear that land reform is not solely for the Highlands and Islands or rural Scotland; it is for the whole of Scotland. We need to take land reform to urban areas, too, so that we can tackle the blight of derelict land in our cities.
The community empowerment bill will take forward some of the recommendations of the review group’s report, but not all of them. The report contains recommendations that we may agree with, and some that we may not agree with, but I welcome the overall direction of travel. I am sure that the committee does, too. That is why I have announced that I will seek to introduce a land reform bill during this parliamentary session. We will try to confirm the figure of 432—0.008 per cent of the population—owning half the privately owned land in Scotland. That is not a situation that we would have thought of creating in designing a system from scratch, as I have stated previously, and it should not be the case in a modern Scotland. My aim is for land reform to address that situation by delivering maximum benefits to the people of Scotland, so that we can engender constructive dialogue on the way forward, finding consensus where we can do so.
The review group’s report has given us the opportunity to frame the land reform debate around public interest. I am keen for public land to be made available for community ownership and other opportunities to diversify land ownership. I hope that we can grasp this opportunity with both hands. I welcome the chance to discuss the land reform review group’s report with the committee.
I am happy to get back to the committee on that issue. A number of the land reform review group’s recommendations do not fall within the rural affairs and environment portfolio, and this is a good example of that. That is further demonstrated by the fact that Fergus Ewing led on the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill. I need to work with colleagues such as Fergus Ewing to understand the ramifications and see whether there is any scope for taking on board the ideas that have been put forward by the land reform review group.
To respond to your other point, we absolutely want any proposals that we make to address transparency and accountability. I cannot say at this stage what solution we will ultimately go for, because we have had the report for only three weeks. We have a lot of thinking to do about the package of measures that will be in a bill. However, we are interested in delivering measures to ensure that Scotland has a transparent land ownership system that people understand.
When I was a community councillor in Cockburnspath, which seems a hell of a long time ago—excuse my language, convener—I had to find the owner of a building that was falling into dereliction, which was extremely difficult. That took six months—after lots of googling and looking through documents. When I found the chap, he congratulated me on finding him. He was an exiled member of a European former royal family.
That shows that it is extremely difficult for community groups and others to find owners. In that case, it was in the chap’s interest to know that his building was going to fall down; we were trying to help him to save the building. Even if it is in a landowner’s interest for contact to be made, doing so is difficult in many cases.
We need a more transparent system and a complete register so that such issues do not arise in the future. We also need accountability for legal and tax issues. Those matters are important. We will reflect on the report and make proposals.
As we have signalled, we believe that completion of the land register is extremely important for improving transparency. If you focus on the outcomes that we are trying to achieve, you will see that we want greater accountability and transparency on ownership of land, so that people can identify landowners, which in many cases is not possible. To be fair, I mention that that is also the case for public land, so we have made a clear commitment to improving our act, as well.
We need greater transparency and accountability for the actions of the people who own the land; that is the focus. I and my colleague Fergus Ewing, who leads the portfolio interest for the Registers of Scotland, have asked Registers of Scotland to implement measures to complete the land register within a 10-year period. To show leadership, we want all publicly owned land to be registered within a five-year period, and I have already had some feedback from the likes of the Crown Estate, which has committed to completing its registration within 10 years. I welcome that kind of positive engagement on the issue, and I encourage others to take up the opportunity.
I welcome the positive remarks about the report and I share your view that it is an important piece of work that contributes to the land reform agenda. Claire Baker has made fair points about the debate on the cost of registration; I will come back to the committee with Mr Ewing’s thoughts on that.
We have to make choices. If we are to achieve, as a priority, registration according to the timescale that we have set out, that will potentially have consequences in terms of financing the work. We will try to give the committee greater clarity so that members are informed and can bring forward their own thoughts on the implications of the review group’s report.
On coherence, I accept that the Government is undertaking various strands of land reform, as previous Administrations have done. The review group has called for what I would describe as an overarching land policy. That raises interesting issues, and we are considering how we look at land use as well as land reform. I know that some people regard land use as being integral to land reform; I am not saying that they are totally distinct, but we have an existing land use strategy that undergoes continual review and updating.
The land reform review group has undertaken an important exercise in examining a number of aspects of land reform, and I very much welcome its report. The question is whether we take forward an overarching strategy to tie the different areas together. Land reform obviously interacts with the planning system and with other policies on biodiversity and even climate change. Land issues have an impact on a raft of Government policy areas, such as the housing strategy. There is a case to be made for taking a more overarching view that considers how all those strands of land reform and land use could be integrated so that we can understand the importance of land reform in context and how it contributes to economic development, to the housing strategy and to fulfilling the needs of the agriculture sector.
I would not necessarily say—the committee would not expect me to—that there has been a complete lack of coherence. We now have a clear focus on examining and reviewing the review group’s recommendations and identifying the ones that we can progress.
There may be recommendations that we do not particularly support, but we support the overall outcome that the group seeks to achieve, so we would perhaps find another way of delivering it. I would welcome committee members’ views on specific recommendations that could be tweaked to produce a better way of achieving the same result. We will certainly take such views on board, and I would be interested to hear them.
Good morning, minister. I hope that you enjoyed the Community Land Scotland conference on Saturday, which we both attended. Convener, I have to say that the national health service cloning unit is not working very well, because Dave Thomson looks nothing like me. [Laughter.]
I was pleased to hear the minister reaffirm his acceptance of the view that land is a finite resource that is to be used in the public interest and for the common good. That is a paramount principle that we must all bear in mind as we look at the report and implement various recommendations.
The Crown estate is a reserved issue. In the past number of years, there have been many reports on it, running right through from the 2007 report “The Crown Estate in Scotland—New opportunities for public benefits”. The Calman commission recommended devolution of the Crown estate, the Scotland Bill Committee made recommendations on it and there has been consensus across all the parties in Scotland about devolving it, but that has not happened. Nothing has happened. Recently, the Scottish Affairs Committee reiterated its view that the Crown estate should be devolved.
Do you agree that it should be devolved? If so, how can we achieve that given that, despite the consensus in Scotland for the past seven years and more, there is no inkling that Westminster will accede to the request?
I put on record that I am aware of Alex Fergusson’s support for community ownership projects in the Mull of Galloway and elsewhere, and I respect the point that he makes.
Whatever we decide, we have an opportunity to strengthen the drive from the centre to give communities the support that they need and ensure that the advice and procedures are standardised, so that they are of consistent quality and have the depth that communities need. We also have an opportunity to facilitate the process. We are aware that, with regard to their internal capacity, some communities are less capable than others of making bids, whether they relate to demand-led measures or applications for funds. As a degree of professionalism is needed to support communities in that activity, there is an argument for having some central resource in that respect.
However, I take the point about having local understanding and flexibility at a local level. The process in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 involves a significant element of local consultation on community registration and the right to buy, with communities required to have a robust business case that takes account of the public interest. As the minister, I have to determine whether the proposal is in the public interest. I take Claire Baker’s earlier point about the definition; that might evolve over time, and we have various safeguards in place to ensure that we can take a view on whether the public interest is being served by a registration or a right to buy. Those safeguards also take account of local views.
As I know from correspondence with Mr Fergusson, not every consultee is happy with the outcome. However, there is a consultation process—and for good reason; it allows us to take account of local arguments and concerns in making a decision. Any procedure that is followed must involve some degree of safeguard to ensure that things are done not on a whim, as some people have suggested, but with a good understanding of the case that has been made.
It is in the interests of a community group that is taking on ownership to have a strong business case that has been subject to scrutiny, so that the case stacks up and the community organisation has a viable and sustainable future.
I acknowledge that the issue is hugely significant. Land, and land reform, affects every one of us, because we all require housing, even if our only land ownership aspirations in life are to own a house and have a wee garden somewhere.
There are alternatives to ownership, and private rented properties are important in rural areas, where there is often less provision from social housing providers, perhaps because the land is all privately owned and it is difficult to secure social housing opportunities. I put on record that we want to use the land reform process to ensure that communities can fulfil their aspirations for housing, where they need it.
I am aware that stakeholders have expressed contradictory views about the length of tenancies. We certainly need to improve the degree of certainty for people and people’s ability to invest in their property. I would have thought it in a landlord’s interests to have tenants who invest in their properties and maintain them well, if that is part of the lease conditions.
Although we do not have a definitive view that I can give Mr Dey today, I can tell him that some of those aspects are likely to be addressed in the forthcoming community empowerment bill. Unfortunately, I cannot say in what way, but we are certainly conscious of the area being a barrier to fulfilling the aspirations of communities and, in many cases, individuals.
I do not have any questions on carrots, but I have one on taxation. The review group made some recommendations on taxation and increasing the number of landowners in Scotland, and I am interested in the minister’s views on that. One of the taxation recommendations was on ending the exemption for agricultural, forestry and other land-based businesses from non-domestic rates, which I believe the Government does not intend to progress, but perhaps that could be clarified. Land value taxation, species-specific sporting rates, and the review and reform of exemptions and reliefs for agricultural and forestry land in national and local taxation have all been mentioned.
When I pushed the review group and asked its members whether they had considered the economic impact on what we would call normal agricultural farming, they said that they had not, as it was not within the group’s remit, which I thought was a strange answer. I would be interested to hear your views on that, and whether you, and the Government in general, intend to progress those measures.
The community empowerment bill is a good example of how we have worked and engaged with other portfolios to look at the ramifications for other areas, so I will not necessarily agree with Claire Baker on the record that the Government has not been a paragon of virtue in that respect. She has made her point.
We recognise that, when we have a multidisciplinary team, we need to have strong engagement with ministers and officials in different departments and with their stakeholders, because I and my department may not necessarily engage with those stakeholders on as wide a basis. We need to explore and exploit the stronger stakeholder lines that may exist with other ministers in understanding the ramifications of a bill.
It is important that we take stock of what the land reform review group has said, and that we go into the process with support for the direction that the report sets out and the outcomes that the group wishes to achieve while considering how those can best be delivered. In some cases, we might well be able to say, “Yes, we agree with that, and we will take forward the recommendation,” and in other cases, we might have to modify a recommendation or take a different approach.
I give Claire Baker an undertaking that we will try to demonstrate joined-up thinking and working. I would certainly welcome input from committee members and the wider Parliament on where we go.
You will understand that there is a degree of concern in the committee about evidence that we heard about the timescale for completing the register. That is why I asked about a non-definitive method of recognising who owns what. Registration of the actual legal boundaries may well take longer because of the difficulties of surveying them, but surely it should be possible for us to have an outline register that anyone can consult at their local council office to find out who owns a substantial piece of land—let us say, more than about 50 acres.
Dave Thompson MSP—rather than the Dave Thomson who is sitting on my right—has struck on the important issue of whether the Crown Estate should take its direction from Westminster or Holyrood. Colleagues from all parties share concerns about that. We in this Parliament firmly and collectively believe—and ministers have made the point time and again—that the administration of the Crown estate in Scotland should reside with Scottish ministers and that the Crown Estate should be accountable to the Scottish Parliament for its activities in Scotland. We are not asking about Crown Estate activities outside Scotland.
It is regrettable that that request has been ignored to date. As Dave Thompson has identified, the Scotland Bill in 2012 offered an opportunity to do something, but it was missed. I am sure that all of us in this room regret the fact that nothing happened. It would be remiss of me if I did not point out that a vote for independence would mean that the Crown estate would be devolved to Scotland—that is one vehicle by which the people of Scotland can secure that devolution. I am sure that colleagues from the Opposition parties will have their own views about how that devolution can be achieved, so I am not necessarily saying that I speak for them, but the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Government argue that a vote for independence would see the Crown estate in Scotland being managed in Scotland.
In my speech to the Community Land Scotland conference at the weekend, I put on the record that that is not a criticism of the individuals in the organisation who are performing their function and trying to generate revenue for the Crown Estate for public use. We just believe that, in Scotland, it should be managed by us and accountable to the people of Scotland and we have a desire to devolve it to Scotland and pass it on to communities as well. We hope to set out our plans on that in due course.
I have great sympathy with the suggestion that we need to ensure that there is aftercare. As Claudia Beamish identified, HIE’s remit includes a social aspect so, under statute, it has the freedom not only to support communities that are fortunate enough to be in the Highlands and Islands to build up their business plans but to support them in implementing those and to take forward economic development aspects. HIE can ensure that sound organisations that have good business planning are given aftercare support. In some ways, organisations that are taking forward projects in the HIE area have a much better prospect because of that aftercare.
I feel a lot of sympathy for organisations elsewhere in Scotland and we want to ensure that community land ownership is taken forward outside the Highlands and Islands. Community land ownership has significant cultural and social impacts in the Highlands and Islands for historical reasons, and the sparsity of the population means that community ownership can be an important vehicle for furthering economic development in the region. However, we also want a wide range of community ownership projects to happen elsewhere in Scotland, whether that is in the south of Scotland, Aberdeenshire or Angus or in cities. Scottish Enterprise’s current remit is therefore a limitation.
I recognise the challenge that the review group has put down and I know that Mr Ewing, as the enterprise minister, is aware of the issue. It would ultimately be for him and Mr Swinney to make proposals if they agreed with the recommendation on changing Scottish Enterprise’s remit, because I understand that primary legislation would be required to make that change. I hope that what I have said answers your question.
Claudia Beamish’s questions show the scale of the challenge that we face. I will not gainsay what the review group said. We are very sympathetic to the idea that we need to look at what the appropriate architecture is. The point that Stephen Pathirana made about the outcomes that are being sought is appropriate.
10:45If we take it for granted that we want to understand better exactly what community ownership is out there and how we can help to increase that, in line with Government priorities and Parliament’s seeming will to do so, we need to understand the architecture that is needed to support that process, to ensure proper monitoring of progress towards targets, to facilitate progress where necessary and to resolve any disputes. The review group made interesting recommendations about all those aspects, from the establishment of a community land agency to the creation of the Scottish land and property commission, as well as the recommendation that we have already taken forward, which involves the working group that we are building up to consider how to achieve the 1 million acre target.
It is too early for us to rush to a conclusion about whether we will have a commission or a community land agency. However, I assure Claudia Beamish that we are interested in looking at such ideas. As my colleague Stephen Pathirana identified, regardless of whether the proposals are the right way to achieve the outcome that we agree with the review group that we want to achieve—more community ownership—we should try to achieve it, because that is a good way of delivering the common good and the public interest. However, we need to work out how we will do that and what architecture we will need. Because the subject is complex, we will need time to determine the best way of achieving that and we will need to listen to stakeholders’ views on the practicalities.
Do you recognise that the Coigach-Assynt living landscape project has seven owners and that they work together, and that deer management groups are supposed to work together on neighbouring estates to manage particular aspects of our wildlife?
I recognise that there is strong public interest on both sides of the debate around taxation and business rates exemptions. We completed a review of business rates last year, and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and other colleagues such as Derek Mackay have sought views on how the system can better support sustainable economic growth.
An important pillar of Government policy is that we are committed to retaining the most competitive business tax environment in the United Kingdom through our business rates policies, and we certainly have no plans to change that position. Given that we had recently reviewed business rates and how they apply to businesses, including agricultural businesses, we did not feel that there was a case for changing our position. I appreciate that some people have been upset by that view, as they were pushing for that area to be examined.
We believe that we can better support sustainable economic growth while delivering the same level of income that is needed to provide the local services on which businesses and communities rely. If the objective is to support the type of local services that business rates would fund, we think that there are better ways of funding those services—through Government block grants to local authorities, for example—than by having to raise business rates from agricultural businesses, many of which are quite highly geared and have quite a lot of borrowing.
We are undergoing a major CAP reform; today, the cabinet secretary will make a statement on the outcome of that process for Scotland. Farming is in an important transitional period, and giving businesses a bit of stability by not proposing to change the business rates environment will allow them to take on board the impact of the new CAP without having another change coming in from left field that might impact on them. We just did not think that there was a case for reviewing that decision. At this time, we think that it is important that we maintain some stability and retain our competitive business rates environment.
On land value tax, we recognise that there is wide support for such a tax in economic circles, and we are still considering the review group’s recommendations. We do not want to engage in a knee-jerk reaction either way. Because of the strong support for a land value tax, the subject is worthy of further discussion. We understand the role that such a tax could play, but we do not yet fully understand the potential impacts that it might have. I will keep an open mind on the matter and will listen to stakeholders’ views on how a land value tax might fit into the system in future. It is a complex area and one that would require a full economic study, which—as Jim Hume mentioned—the review group did not undertake. That partly reflects the group’s remit, as well as the fact that it did not have the resources to commission such a piece of work.
If we were to consider a land value tax, we would need a full economic study to determine the potential impacts. I understand the reasoning and rationale behind the group’s recommendation, and I acknowledge the strong support that exists for such a tax. We are keeping an open mind. We would need to understand the implications before we took a view either way on whether we should proceed down that route.
Graeme Dey alludes to the point that I was making earlier. I believe that this is one area in which there is perhaps an opportunity for consensus. On some elements of land reform, and some of the specific recommendations, there will understandably be differences of opinion on the way forward. However, it is in everybody’s interest that we have greater transparency and accountability in land ownership.
If we can achieve that aim in a two-step process, going back to Nigel Don’s comments, that would be helpful. It would certainly improve understanding in the short term, and we will, I hope, get to a point in the 10-year period at which we have a complete register.
We are keen to work with the landowners you mention, and we recognise the opportunity presented by large landowners, such as NGOs or private landowners, for registering large blocks of Scotland in a reasonably speedy way.
I appreciate that there is a resource issue for Registers of Scotland and questions about how quickly the organisation could physically do the work, so Fergus Ewing and I are consulting it on the practicalities. Registers of Scotland believes that the work is doable, although it will have its challenges, so we need to have an honest discussion about the amount of resources that will be involved.
I agree whole-heartedly with Graeme Dey that, if we can work with the likes of RSPB Scotland, the SWT, the NTS and others to register the land, we will be able to eat into chunks of the register. We have had no direct dialogue with the MOD on the issue, but that is a fair point, and we should sound out the MOD on whether it is willing to engage in the process constructively.
Many of us have had experience of community councils, although not in your area.
I have one final point. The report recommends a review of the Scottish public finance manual, which prohibits the transfer of public land at less than market value. Is the minister in favour, in principle, of the transfer of public assets to local communities at less than their market value, where that is in the public interest?
Some land already belongs to communities, in the form of common good, which is covered by a very good section in the report. It is interesting to note that the estimated total of such funds held across Scotland is £300 million, so the issue is significant. The recommendations are probably best summed up at the end of the report, where the group says that there should be a system in place so that common good land is
“adequately safeguarded and appropriately managed”.
The group talks about the need for “a new statutory framework” and a duty to have a common good register. Will you shed some light on the Government’s reaction to those recommendations?
We think that there are circumstances where there is a case to be made for communities to have a right to buy. There are existing provisions that benefit those in the crofting estate, and the crofting right to buy has been exercised in some cases. We are continuing to develop a pipeline of projects.
All that I can say in advance of the community empowerment bill being introduced is that I am sympathetic about the need to provide opportunities. I stress that we must do that fairly with respect to those who already own land and in a way that allows communities to develop their aspirations where there are particular challenges for them, which might include access to land for housing, economic development and environmental improvements where those are justified or needed. There are circumstances in which the public interest, as defined by the land reform review group, is served through community ownership.
I stress that, in the process, ministers always have the ability to review applications and to approve them or not, depending on whether they serve the public interest and pass the tests that are set out under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. So the power would not be unfettered, but we are interested in that area.
You have suggested that a land reform bill will be introduced. There is also a community empowerment bill on the stocks. Could you help us by suggesting the sort of timetable that might apply to both those proposed bills?
I am in a difficult position, because I have a good idea about how we might do that but, for reasons that I hope Mr Thompson will understand, I am not at liberty to divulge the approach that we are taking at this point. Dave Thompson mentioned the Lerwick agreement. Work is being done between both Governments and the island communities to discuss the implications of the yes vote that the Scottish Government advocates, or what a no vote would mean for opportunities for the island authorities. There has been discussion on that, and it is in the public domain that the Crown estate is one of the items that has been discussed.
10:15I am in a difficult position because, as much as I would like to, I am afraid that I cannot help Mr Thompson understand what the issues are. However, I can state that we want the revenues that the Crown estate generates to benefit local communities and make the maximum possible contribution to sustaining communities in fragile parts of Scotland where Crown estate revenues have the potential to grow significantly in future with the growth of the renewables sector—offshore and, indeed, onshore, in some cases—and the aquaculture sector, which is an extremely important source of revenue to the Crown Estate.
Those issues are of great relevance to areas such as Dave Thompson’s constituency. I acknowledge that and hope that, in the not-too-distant future, he will have great clarity on them.
I am sure that we will have the opportunity to discuss the matter further.
Thank you. I look forward to seeing the bill.
It would seem that we need to come up with some suggestions for workstreams, based on the evidence that we have taken, and we will consider that in the near future. I thank the committee members and the minister and his officials for elucidating some of those points.
I reiterate the statement at the end of the land reform review group’s report, in which it says:
“We offer the Scottish Government, a range of recommendations”,
which are summarised in the report,
“and we encourage it to be radical in its thinking and bold in its action. The prize to the nation will be significant.”
That sets the bar high, and we hope that our negotiations with you, minister, and your recommendations will meet those targets. We believe that it is in the best interest—the public interest and the common good—of the nation to do so. I hope that today’s session will be the first of several bites at the cherry in which we interrogate you on the development of your plans to achieve those aims.
I thank you and your officials for your involvement. We will take a short break while we bring in new witnesses.
11:22 Meeting suspended.
The community empowerment bill will be introduced imminently. That is all I can say as regards the protocol—it is for Mr Mackay to lead on it. I assure the committee that it will be with Parliament in short order.
As regards the land reform bill, it is the protocol that the First Minister—it is his prerogative—announces the legislative programme, which is why I have not given further detail on that, but that will happen in the normal manner later in the year. We intend to introduce such a bill during this session; I put that on the record at the Community Land Scotland conference on Saturday to give people confidence that there will be an opportunity to address longer-term substantive issues, rather than our having to try to shoehorn them into the community empowerment bill. We need time to consider the recommendations and to take a considered view on them.
I put it on record that I was a community councillor; I am not criticising community councils in any shape or form.
I apologise for not addressing that point in my answer; I dealt with the other part of your question. I am happy to give an assurance that, although I cannot say what will be in the community empowerment bill, all the significant provisions that will be presented for consideration at stage 1 have been consulted on. The land reform bill will offer us the opportunity later to address the issues on which we feel that there needs to be consultation, more work or evaluation of evidence that has been presented. It will give us an opportunity to take forward issues that we believe deserve proper parliamentary scrutiny and consultation.
I do not have in mind a huge number of stage 2 amendments. We will reflect on the points that the committee and stakeholders make in response to the provisions that we present at stage 1, and we might have to make amendments at stage 2 in the normal way.
I take the point that you make. That is why it is important to have a land reform bill that gives us a second chance to put forward a considered view—one that reflects the opinions of all sides—on the review group’s recommendations. I hope that people will engage in the process constructively and look for opportunities to achieve a consensus, which I am keen to build.
I propose to have a programme of stakeholder engagement on the review group’s report, in an effort to get feedback from all parties on its recommendations. I welcome the committee’s examination of the group’s recommendations, but we will need to engage more widely with groups outside Parliament, as the committee has done, to hear directly from them about the recommendations that they are very supportive of, the ones that they might support and the ones that they have concerns about.
I give an undertaking to Mr Fergusson and colleagues around the table that, as we build towards the introduction of a land reform bill, stakeholder engagement will be extremely important to our gaining an understanding of what we can take forward in that bill.
Yes—thank you. I asked the question from the perspective of broader Scotland beyond the Highlands and Islands. I appreciate your response.
Will you speak briefly about the concerns that stakeholders expressed about the cost?
I agree that we need to get that kind of understanding and that that information is vital to optimisation of land use and ownership in Scotland. We understand the challenges in completing the register in time—some people have criticised us for taking 10 years. We know that it will be an extremely challenging task that will not be without resource implications, and we will need to evaluate in full what those resource implications will be. That is why we are consulting Registers of Scotland on the practicalities of delivering the register. There is a positive attitude from Registers of Scotland and among stakeholders who are willing to sign up to the project. There is consensus that it is a sensible and important thing to do, and we are keen to tackle it. I will ask Stephen Pathirana to talk about the details of a definitive land register as opposed to a non-definitive one.
Before I bring in other members, I have a question. Most Forestry Commission Scotland land is not registered, and I put it to a member of the panel last week that we should perhaps be looking to the bodies that own land to put up the money for registration. I suggested that the Forestry Commission could sell off a few affordable housing plots to cover the cost of making the maps. Such an approach could apply to private owners, too. Should we insist that people spend money to get the process of mapping their land started?
Thank you. That was the first of our 10 questions. We cannot afford to spend as much time on each of them or we will still be here tomorrow. I remind committee members and the minister that we have quite a lot of ground to cover. The next question is on the ownership of land.
I am very pleased that local communities throughout Scotland, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, which has an awful lot of the coast—the vast bulk of it, I suggest—can look forward to getting control over those assets and starting to make decisions to benefit the community.
I turn to state aid, the interpretation of the current Scottish public finance manual rules and the apparent aversion to risk that those who interpret the rules show, which gives us all sorts of problems with helping community developments. Will you tell us a wee bit about your views on turning that negative view of state aid into something a bit more positive and helpful that would allow us to move on?
It was not without a sense of irony that someone sent me a cheeky tweet the other day. Before I went to the Community Land Scotland conference, I was at the Hawick common riding—as were other members, no doubt—which is a celebration that involves riding the community’s boundaries.
Common good land is a very important issue. One problem has been a lack of transparency about land ownership. I am sorry to fall back on personal experience again but, when I was a community councillor, there was a wind farm application that would have impacted on the old Ayton common. None of us was informed about it, because nobody knew who the trustees were, and it had been so long since there had been any contact with the trustees of the common good land that we missed the planning process completely.
There are procedural issues about understanding engagement in the planning process when there is an implication for common good land. As you rightly said, another issue is how the associated revenue and funds are used to the common good, which is what they were intended for.
I welcome the review group’s examination of the issue, which comes back to the definition of the public interest. The recommendations are intended to address a particular issue, but it is important that we see common good in the context of the overall pattern of land ownership and the model as it emerges.
Common good land is an important and emotive issue. I know from experience that people in places such as Selkirk and Hawick believe that they have lost control of the common good. The local authority is perhaps the custodian of the funds, but people do not believe that they have a full say in how the land is managed. We certainly have to get transparency about what and where common good land is, and we have to understand how we can use it for its intended purpose, which is the public interest and the common good.
We will indeed.
As we have very limited time—about six minutes each—for our final five question areas, I am going to put a guillotine on questions and answers so that we can get through everything. This is a first stab at a process that is very much in development, and I realise that some of the issues that we are going to ask about soon will require slightly more time. I therefore ask members to curtail their introductory remarks, please, and the minister to curtail his answers. We will move on to land development and housing.
Good morning, minister. I was pleased to see in the review group’s report a call for a “vibrant self-build sector” for housing in rural areas. Last week, I brought to the attention of the committee and the stakeholder panel the our island home initiative, which asked architects to design an affordable two-bedroom starter home costing about £100,000 that would be suitable for the Hebrides, suitable for extension later on, easy to build, cheap to heat and in a walk-in condition. I believe that the self-build cost is sitting at about £70,000. I also believe that 50 architects entered the competition, which is a healthy number, and that they were narrowed down to six finalists, with the winner being Tom Morton of Arc Architects from Cupar.
With so many architects keen to get involved in the rural housing initiative, what still needs to be done to ensure that communities can fulfil their wishes for affordable and social housing to be available in rural areas?
Indeed. As we know, that does not happen in some cases in which there are large land holdings but, equally, it can work effectively when there are small land holdings. There is a danger in being too simplistic, and I know that Government is sometimes accused of being simplistic, so I am trying to take a sophisticated approach. I do not want to paint a picture in which all private landowners are a problem—far from it. Many of them do a very good job, but we must recognise that there are some who do not, and that there are some community ownership models that do not work as effectively as they should, while other community ownership models are excellent.
We need to have a mature discussion that does not polarise the debate. We should reflect on the fact that there are good models of private land ownership in which private owners work with local communities and there are excellent models of community ownership in which communities work with private owners and release land for private ownership. We need to have a less binary view of the debate, because opportunities for private ownership are coming out of community ownership, as well as opportunities to work with private landowners to deliver wider public interest.
My only other question was on species-specific sporting rates—that is never easy to say.
The IACS register covers most of the farming land that is involved with the common agricultural policy—we will see whether that is still relevant after today’s announcement, although I am sure that it will be. Have you seriously considered—as Stephen Pathirana mentioned—using that as a very easy system and having an extra box on the form, rather than sending out extra forms across Scotland?
The big concern about the Crown Estate is that, as the review group report states, its whole purpose is
“to maintain and enhance its value and the return obtained from it”.
In other words, the sole purpose of the Crown Estate Commissioners is to get as much money as possible out of their properties, assets and foreshore to feed into the Treasury. That money is not going to help communities, because that is not the purpose of the Crown Estate; its purpose is to make money, and we have seen plenty of examples around Scotland where public works are going ahead but the Crown Estate is charging a commercial rate.
I am pleased that you mentioned further devolution, minister, because I am interested in that. The report clearly states that it should be a two-stage process, and that Scotland should get control of the Crown estate, or the Crown Estate’s powers should be given to Scottish ministers. The report also mentions the Lerwick declaration, in which the First Minister and Western Isles Council, Orkney Islands Council and Shetland Islands Council agreed various things. According to the report, that
“appears to demonstrate a commitment to the decentralisation of CEC responsibilities if they are devolved.”
You have confirmed that you believe that that would be the right way to do it. You mentioned local communities. Would that further devolution be via local authorities or local development trusts? Do you have any idea how it might be achieved?
We have great sympathy with that suggestion, because we have a public policy objective of community ownership and the use of public land by communities. There has been a lot of focus in the debate on the implications for private landowners of community ownership. The Government has a strategy on community ownership. It is right to try to encourage communities to take on ownership, whether the land is in the rural payments and inspections directorate estate, the crofting estate or the national forest estate. We want communities to have high aspirations for their future and to take forward ownership of the land.
The issue that the member mentions can be a bit of a barrier to us. In effect, we end up paying ourselves, through the land fund, to buy public land. That is not an ideal situation. It would be far more satisfactory if we could gift the land at a low price—£1 or whatever—to ensure that the community gets the benefit of the land, that the common good is served and that public policy interests are satisfied without a financial barrier being put up.
The public finance manual is being reviewed by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth. Although the issue is outside our direct portfolio responsibilities, we have put those points in the mix. My colleague Stephen Pathirana is engaging with the cabinet secretary’s team on those issues so, if there are any supplementary questions, I can ask him to answer them. However, I assure Dave Thompson that the issue is under review and that we are looking at it from our portfolio perspective to try to enable more community ownership if possible.
I recognise that the quality of land inevitably has an impact on what it can be used for. That is a fair point. However, I have put it on record—in a way that I hope was not confrontational; it was certainly not meant to be—that if I as minister were asked to design a system of land ownership, there is no way that I would come up with one that ended up with 0.008 per cent of the population owning more than half of the private land. That is not meant as an attack on any individual who owns a substantial amount of land. The pattern of ownership is just a fact of life, but I certainly would not design a system that ended up with such an outcome, and I hope that members agree that it is not necessarily in the public interest to end up with that position.
We have to be mindful of the need to be fair, which is why we have the land fund. As I have indicated, we have extended that up to 2020 and, indeed, we are prepared to consider on a case-by-case basis individual projects that would stretch it. For example, there might be a big project that would go over the threshold for the maximum grant that is allowable from the land fund in a normal year. We will look flexibly at that. We give an undertaking that, if an opportunity to own a larger estate comes on to the market and a community wants to take it on, we will be sympathetic to that and engage with the community to see what is possible. An important objective is to work with communities to further community ownership.
There is a debate about upper limits and other such matters. We will study the report’s recommendations, but I should put it on record that at the moment we have limited powers in that area. As has been said, there are different ways to achieve the outcome that we want, and we need to evaluate the options. The review group has made its recommendations on how to help achieve the move towards what the group calls a pattern of “fairer” land ownership. I agree that we should try to achieve that outcome over time. There is the potential to use thresholds at some point to assess whether it is in the public interest for someone to own land.
Last, but by no means least, we come to the subject of crofting.
I am pleased to hear that.
I hope that we will move seamlessly into the issue of agencies to support communities and oversee governance. I preface that by stressing my support for the direction of travel on the broader diversification of land ownership and community empowerment.
The review group stressed that an
“integrated programme of land reform measures”
is needed, and you referred to the spirit of that quote in your opening remarks. The review group also recommended that
“the Scottish Government should establish a Community Land Agency, within Government, with a range of powers, particularly in facilitating negotiation between land owners and communities, to promote, support and deliver a significant increase in local community land ownership in Scotland.”
Before I ask about the other proposed agency, will you talk about the scope of that recommendation? Highlands and Islands Enterprise has a social remit, but no organisation has such a remit for South Scotland, which we both represent, or for other parts of Scotland. Will you reassure me that there will be a focus across Scotland on the support that some have said—although I strongly disagree with them—that the south does not get?
That is a significant factor. We need to understand what, if any, financial ramifications there might be. We have been reducing the number of public agencies that we fund, so we understand that, if there is a rationale for creating a new one, it will have to have a pretty good business case. We do not yet understand fully what the financial ramifications would be, what skills would be needed and where we would get the skills from.
Unfortunately, we will need time to think through the recommendations. We are sympathetic to the outcomes that the review group is trying to achieve, which are to facilitate community ownership, monitor it and understand its impacts and the benefits that it brings for the public interest.
If I may say so, I am pleased to hear you highlighting the fact that there are good examples of private ownership, because mention of that is sadly lacking in the report.
The term “public interest” has been used a lot in the debate, and I think that some people would argue that the land reform process is all about the public interest. How do you see the public interest being defined? Will it be defined at local level or will it, as I fear, be defined by one of the agencies that have been mentioned, or by a combination of those agencies? I worry about the idea of a centralised definition of public interest being adopted when I see it as a local thing.
I know that there are contrasting views on that issue. At present, the position is that taxation such as a land value tax or business rates would be a form of taxation on land and not necessarily on the species for which the land was used. There is an element of debate on that point, and I am not saying that I have a definitive legal position, but I understand that there may be no scope in the law to distinguish between different species by operating differential business rates on that basis.
A non-definitive register would be useful. We should certainly explore how that could be taken forward at a practical level; it is something that both the review group and stakeholders have pointed to. The sooner we have a clearer picture of the land ownership pattern in Scotland, the better for decision making.
The first step is to get positive engagement from all stakeholders and acknowledgment that completion of the register is a valuable exercise. I think that we are beginning to see that. As I said, some stakeholders have written to me to say, “We’re up for this”, and I very much welcome that constructive approach.
We need to do our best to understand the financial implications and what the process will cost. We have a rough idea, but we need more definitive figures, because we are accelerating the timescale for completion of the register, for which we had costings, which will make the process more expensive.
As to who pays for the work, we need to come back to the committee on that, in due course. The Forestry Commission is keen to engage; we acknowledge your point about a lot of its land not being registered. I think that we all agree that that is not acceptable and that it is in everyone’s interests to have that land registered. From a public sector point of view, we will take that on the chin for our organisations and incorporate the cost into our budget, but we need to work through the implications of completing the register for people who are outside Government.
That is a very sensible suggestion. We should look at the options if there is a possibility of avoiding the need for areas to be mapped twice. If there are existing maps, we can see the data that has already been provided and decide whether it is of sufficient quality to inform the process of building the register.
I am happy to look at that issue, and I recommend that we consider it. Obviously, it is part of Fergus Ewing’s portfolio responsibility, but we can pass the message back that that might be an opportunity. We have considerable expertise in our portfolio on the IACS system, as the committee would expect. I can confirm that there will be a common agricultural policy statement today, so Jim Hume does not have to worry about there being no CAP provision in Scotland.
We will progress constructive proposals, such as the one that Mr Hume describes, on how we can use existing information. We do not want to create a situation that is overly bureaucratic for people if we can avoid it, and Mr Hume’s proposal would be a sensible way to move forward if such information could be used by the register.
The review group looked to address the issue of offshore ownership to improve traceability and accountability. Does the minister accept the need for those things, and can he identify the difficulties with the current system when it comes to identifying ownership?
I have another brief question. The report says that the review group’s proposal that a legal entity would have to be registered within a European Union member state would not necessarily address the issue of beneficial ownership. Perhaps the minister would like to comment on that.
I was a community councillor, too.
That is a hugely important issue, which I addressed at the Community Land Scotland conference. We have had some challenges in terms of state aid, particularly in relation to the national forest land scheme, under which we have been keen to encourage community ownership of woodlands in Scotland.
There is an interpretation issue with state aid. We want it to be used positively and, as Dave Thompson alluded to, potentially to facilitate good community projects that do not distort cross-border trade and intra-EU trade. Clearly, a community project that focuses on improving the amenity of an area will not interact with commercial timber extraction or the commercial timber market. However, in the case of a community project with an element of commercial forestry operation that involved selling timber in the market, we would have to take a view on whether it was realistic to suggest that that would distort EU-wide trade. I am confident that, in the vast majority of cases, we could demonstrate that it would not, but we need to do it case by case rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach.
As we have done with recent awards to the national forest land scheme, we take the view that we are satisfied that such projects do not distort trade within the European Union. Therefore, we have supported them. It is a matter of using the state aid policy intelligently and taking into account local circumstances to ensure that we can facilitate projects that clearly have significant community benefits by improving a local community’s resilience, improving its economic future and perhaps making environmental improvements, while ensuring that that will not distort competition in the commercial timber market or any other sector.
That is the nature of the debate that we have to have about state aid. A lot of work has been going on. I am conscious of time but, if I may, I will briefly bring in Stephen Pathirana, who has been examining the issue closely.
We come to community ownership.
Given the report’s inclusion of matters that it suggests be dealt with in the forthcoming community empowerment bill, can such matters be addressed at an early stage, or should we expect any kind of consultation ahead of their being dealt with, which could be at stage 2, if the introduction of the community empowerment bill is imminent?
I would like to get clarity on whether Scottish Enterprise could have adopted a social remit but chose not to. I understand from previous committees that that is the case. I might be wrong, but I think that Scottish Enterprise’s choice about how it works is the important issue.
With your comments in mind, convener, I will not rehearse every aspect of the subject. The review group made several recommendations on land development and housing. I accept that not all of that is within your remit, minister, so what discussions have you had with the housing minister on the recommendations and how to take them forward? I am thinking of, for example, the possibility of reintroducing the rural home ownership grant scheme.
Secondly, can you take action to address concerns about land banking and the cost of building plots?
In the speech that I gave on Saturday, I identified two aspects, one of which relates to Mr Dey’s point about the housing sector and the fact that we have opportunities in rural areas for self-builds and for identifying plots. I also pointed out to the Community Land Scotland conference the number of plots that have been created in the community ownership projects that have been taken forward, but I will just check the figure with Mr Pathirana.
I will come back to the question of the public interest in a minute, if I may.
You have stated on more than one occasion that, as the concentration of ownership decreases, there will be room for more community owners and, you believe, private owners. How do you equate that with other strands of Government policy such as the land-use strategy and the climate change targets? There is evidence to show that such targets are often reached more easily when land management is in larger units rather than very small ones. How do you equate all that in formulating the policy?
The review group recommends that we need a “modern and robust” statutory framework for crofting. It was not that long ago that we went through those issues. The crofting law group has collated a sump—that is an interesting word—that highlights significant anomalies in crofting law.
Should we—as some would suggest—tear up crofting law and start from scratch, or should we take another look at the subject based on what the crofting law group has produced?
I understand that Highland Council commissioned such a register in recent years. I think that it covered areas of a minimum of 200 acres, but it allowed a general picture of who owns the bulk of the Highland Council area to be made quite quickly, within a few months. We have information being held by public bodies such as Scottish Natural Heritage, the Forestry Commission and Scottish Water, as well as the agricultural IACS—integrated administration and control system—records, so surely it should be possible to tap into those sources in each area and to use some of that information, given that it points to the people who own or who are the holders of particular pieces of land.
When the review group’s members appeared before us, I pressed them on whether the term “any legal entity” would include individuals, and they recommended that it should. I also pressed them on whether their recommendation would boil down to individual building plots and mean that nobody from outside the EU could buy a building plot—I have given the example of somebody who went to New Zealand and came back with a New Zealand passport—and they said that that would be the case. I asked about retrospection—whether there would be ramifications for people who already own land. There are a couple of questions in that.
The minister has covered most of the ground. Part of moving forward is about helping communities to understand state aid better. They need to be able to understand what they are doing, articulate it well and test whether what they are doing should be subject to state aid rules. That dialogue between communities and funders will be an important part of breaking the historical deadlock on certain projects.
I might have been incorrect; we can come back to you on the point.
I put it on record that some estates are very supportive of our land use and climate change strategies and have been helpful in delivering land-based projects at ecosystem level or large-scale or landscape-scale projects in which community ownership, private sector ownership or NGOs have been involved. That is an important feature, but we can achieve a similar level of engagement among a larger number of landowners. It might take more time, but we can still achieve the same result if there is a positive will.
To go back to a point that I have just made, I think that, when community ownership is taken up, we need to consider how we can marry those two things. How can we have growing community ownership and at the same time create new opportunities for the private sector? I have just referred to housing plots. A community might take over a large estate and then release on to the general market lots of smaller plots or small farm units that are not felt to be core to the purpose of the community project. In that way, private sector owners might be created. My basic point is that there are opportunities through community ownership to release more land for private ownership.
On co-ordination, I accept that there are circumstances in which having a small number of large landowners can be a relatively efficient way of getting early agreement on how to proceed with a landscape-scale project. I recognise that there have been good examples of that, but we should not necessarily assume that it will be impossible to do it with a larger number of smaller landowners, who will identify with the same public interest and will know that the end goal is in their interests, too.
Given the complexity of taxation issues, which you have mentioned, I take it that there could be a workstream that would include the various aspects of tax that affect land. Those aspects could be taken forward together and the land value tax inquiry could become part of that work over a period of time.
We have consulted on the forthcoming community empowerment bill; I hope that the committee will have seen our sense of direction in that proposed bill, as we sought to address some of the streamlining of community ownership measures, which ties in with some of the recommendations of the land reform review group. We will use the community empowerment bill to take forward things we believe we can take forward. We have consulted on those, and we have a clear view of where we want to go.
Members may well decide to raise matters at stage 2 of the community empowerment bill, but we urge members to think about the opportunity to take a more considered view of the recommendations that will be presented by the wider land reform bill when it is introduced. The Government intends to consult on any proposals that we will make under that bill.
The land reform review group saw that as a very important issue. Let us try to understand why the issue has been raised before we look at the specific proposal. It goes back to the issue of transparency—people knowing who the owners are and the owners being accountable for their performance as landowners. That is what is driving this. Whether the proposal is the solution that we will ultimately choose, I cannot say at this stage because we need to listen to views about the practicalities of it and consult on it. However, I support the land reform review group’s sense of direction, which is that it wants greater transparency about who owns the land and greater accountability. We do not want a complete lack of understanding of who owns the land, which may be an overseas owner in some cases and a domestic owner in other situations. Nor do we want owners not being accountable for their actions.
I understand the points that the land reform review group has made about its proposal that a landowner would have to be registered as an EU legal entity, which is designed to give the owner a legal persona that would make them accountable in a European legal context. That is one of the areas that we are looking at to improve transparency and we will come back with our thoughts on that in due course.
I ask Stephen Pathirana to comment on beneficial ownership.
It is 141.
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 allows a degree of discretion in interpreting public interest at a local level. In assessing the case for registration, I want to see a strong demonstration of public interest. Community owners or potential community owners could be encouraged, through engagement with Scottish Government officials or with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and others who support them, to define as clearly as possible what their objectives are, how they will fulfil them and how they will engage in delivering the public good and public interest. That should give confidence that there are methods by which we can be sure not only that there is community support through a democratic local vote in favour of registration, but that there is a robust business case for it.
We can have guidelines and a common understanding of the things that would, generally speaking, be considered to be in the public interest, but there will always be a degree of ministerial oversight—as there is with the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003—in signing off decisions and saying, “This one is in the public interest, but that one is not.” There could be a situation in which someone applies to take over land that has been run perfectly well, there has been a good level of engagement and a high degree of economic impact has been delivered for the community, and it might not necessarily be in the public interest to have the ownership changed for a poorly defined project without a clear public interest.
We have rejected some applications; it is wrong to assume that we have not. I sometimes regret having to do so, because I feel sorry for the community, but if it has not made its case or if there has been a technical breach of the 2003 act, we cannot support it. There are safeguards in place to ensure that projects are properly defined, that they are in the public interest and that they comply with legislation and with the requirement to demonstrate community support. I am confident that, although we need to streamline the system to make some things less bureaucratic and cumbersome, the principles that underlie the 2003 act are sound and demonstrate that community ownership is in the public interest.
I recognise that crofting is a hugely significant area. During the passage of the Crofting (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2013, we had to address the decrofting problem. I gave an undertaking to members on all sides of the chamber that, although some other challenges were presented with regard to crofting law, we had, out of necessity, to cut short the parliamentary procedure for the bill and to keep its remit fairly limited in order to ensure that it went through to address the problem at hand.
That being the case, we said that we would look at those other issues. We are engaging with the crofting law group’s sump—I agree that it is not the most charming term—and I welcome that helpful initiative, which has been taken by specialists in crofting law. It will, I hope, help us to identify, on the 80:20 principle, the 20 per cent of problems that are causing 80 per cent of the difficulties. In turn, that will help us to understand the options that exist for dealing with the situation. Should we amend existing legislation to deal with a relatively limited number of high-impact issues, or do we require to undertake a more fundamental exercise?
I have in mind the fact that there are potentially significant resource implications for the committee and for Parliament in scrutinising the crofting law situation. We have engaged a crofting stakeholder group that involves all the key parties to look at the future of the regulatory framework and provision for crofting. It is a huge issue and, as the year progresses, we will get more information from the sump and from our engagement with stakeholders, which will give us an idea of what the next steps should be.
I am aware that, if we were to take the view that we should scrap crofting law as it stands, that would be a huge undertaking, and I would not enter into it lightly. We need to understand what needs to be done first. We need to consider whether we should address a relatively limited number of issues that will make the maximum possible impact. Do we need legislative change, or can administrative changes at the Crofting Commission address some of the issues?
We need to understand where the balance lies with regard to legislation versus administrative change and how extensive the change needs to be. We will then reflect on what the best approach is.
You said that crofters have to put up the money for their own registration. It seems only fair that larger landowners, who are far more wealthy than crofters in every sense, should put up the money, too. If we could get guidance on that from you soon, that would be helpful.
Another point is that half of Scotland consists of tenant farms, and it would therefore be the tenant farmers who would input that data.
The report that we are discussing suggests that there might be a large menu of rights for communities: the right to register an interest over land, the right to pre-empt the purchase of land, the right to request to buy public land and the right to request a compulsory purchase order over land. I seem to recall that there is also something about the prospect of a compulsory sale order in appropriate circumstances and, in some circumstances, even the right to buy. Clearly, restrictions and criteria apply to all of those rights. What is your reaction to the general idea of a menu of rights?
I take a different view. I encourage the minister to see the community empowerment bill as a possible vehicle for land reform. That bill has been consulted on for almost two years and there has been a lot of engagement with stakeholders on community ownership. It would be sensible to consider the option of using that bill to address land reform, especially when we think about how broad the review group’s report is. It will be hard to fit everything into the land reform bill. It would be sensible to spread the work and to take some action a bit more quickly, because there are concerns about timescales.
I want to ask about the definition of the public interest. Last week, there was discussion about how robust that is. How confident are you in your ability to define the public interest?
There has been close engagement between the officials who are developing the community empowerment bill and colleagues in housing and planning. As the lead minister on that bill, Mr Mackay has taken a close interest in issues such as land banking and other points that have been made in the consultation. I cannot say what is in the bill, but I assure you that there has been good joint working between officials in housing and planning and my own portfolio interests in the context of the community assets and land team.
I have not discussed any provisions directly with Ms Burgess, as Derek Mackay is the lead minister on the bill, but we can come back to the committee with information about the engagement that has taken place. We can get a response to you on rural housing grants, if that would be helpful.
I agree that the process of identifying and understanding the general pattern of land ownership will help in economic development and community planning and will have great value. A definitive register will also come to the aid of the landowners themselves. I know that crofting is a different issue, but being able to register a definitive boundary for a croft gives people certainty when it comes to engagement with lenders and resolving disputes with neighbours, so there will be advantages to landowners in having a definitive register.
I certainly take your point about using existing data to fully inform us at local level about the general pattern of ownership, so that we have a rough idea of who owns a piece of land, or can at least narrow it down to two different landowners, rather than not knowing who owns it at all. That would be helpful for all economic development partners, as well as for planning purposes.
09:45
There is a possibility, for larger estates that have many tenants, that we could co-ordinate that work in some way, or at least give the tenants some guidance on what they need to do. We will certainly take that positive suggestion forward to see whether there is some way in which we can work with that.
There are lots of challenges in addressing transparency and it is harder to establish beneficial ownership than it is to have a clearly accountable person within—for argument’s sake—the EU, which is what the review group proposes. Denmark tackles the problem by saying that someone who owns farm land has to be a natural person—no one can own farm land in Denmark if they are only a legal person. There are different ways of dealing with such issues and the Government’s objective is to explore the intent behind the review group’s recommendation, rather than to focus on the specific recommendation and think about how we can do what it suggests.
While the land reform review group was preparing its report, we very much respected the group’s independence and did not direct what the group was looking at. We engaged with the group as it developed its ideas, with a view to the forthcoming community empowerment bill. We tried to get early feedback about issues relating to the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 that the group thought might need to be tackled, such as community registration and community right to buy provisions.
As you may have noticed, we floated some ideas that came out of that in the consultation on the community empowerment bill. In that consultation, we tried to reflect areas in which there was early knowledge from the land reform review group that things could be tidied up and streamlined. We also looked at issues such as pre-emption and the right to buy.
I am tied, in that, in advance of Mr Mackay’s introduction of the community empowerment bill, I cannot reveal precisely what will be in it. However, we have already consulted on a number of those issues and, in due course, you will see those that we are taking forward in the bill.
I share Claire Baker’s view that we have had a lot of consultation on community ownership. There is a reasonable degree of consensus on the need to streamline the process. Even those in the land ownership community—the private sector—support that. It would benefit landowners for community ownership right-to-buy applications or registrations to be determined more quickly and more easily, as that would give landowners certainty. It is in the interests of all sides to have a streamlined process.
I am optimistic that we can deliver quite significant measures in the community empowerment bill, and we will have a second opportunity to take forward measures on which more work needs to be done to prepare the case and to understand the impact. The review group pointed to a number of issues on which it thought that further work needed to be done.
On the public interest, there is an element of subjectivity in any definition. We need to get some consensus on the issue. I believe that there are circumstances in which the public interest is not necessarily being served. People might be unable—perhaps because of a very localised monopoly—to get land for social housing, to facilitate an economic development project or to grow their own produce on allotments. There are good examples of landowners collaborating to achieve those things. It is not true to say that such developments do not happen in every case, but it is clear that communities’ aspirations are being thwarted in some circumstances. We need to consider whether it is in the public interest that we allow that to continue.
The review group has given a strong steer on what it feels to be the public interest. We need to reflect on that and respond in the land reform bill. We might not be able to come up with a definition that satisfies everyone, but we should be able to reach a consensus on what the public interest is in particular situations. I would welcome the views of Claire Baker and other committee members on that. We will listen to them.
I think that Dave Thompson is happy with that.
Land registration is viewed as being pivotal to understanding who owns Scotland, and to giving people access to that information. Would it be more useful to build a non-definitive, rather than legal, title register at an early stage?
That leads us naturally on to carrots and sticks. Jim Hume has a question on land taxation payments and markets.
You will certainly get such guidance. You will appreciate that Fergus Ewing is the policy lead for the register and that I do not want to make policy on the hoof for him. However, Mr Ewing and I are in dialogue about how we can achieve completion of the register; I will contact him after the meeting on whether we can give a more considered view on how charging might work in the future.
I remind the committee that the recommendation is from the review group rather than the Government, although we are looking at it. I understand that the desire is not to stop people from outside the European Union owning land but to ensure greater transparency about who owns land and to ensure that they have a legal persona in the EU that technically owns the land. As Mr Pathirana said, that could be a natural person or a legal person, such as a company.
I understand that the desire is to ensure greater transparency and accountability for landowners. The group has recommended other measures, which we may or may not take forward, on the extent to which an individual of any description—whether they are from Scotland or elsewhere—can own land in Scotland. The recommendation must be seen in the context of a package of measures that the group has proposed. I understand that it is trying to improve transparency and accountability and not to limit the nationalities of those who own land in Scotland.
It would be good to get clarity.
Thank you.
The review called for
“longer and more secure tenancies in the private rented sector.”
Given that, like many committee members, you represent a rural area, you will be aware of particular issues about estate tenancies—not necessarily tied tenancies—in which there can be a unique relationship between landlord and tenant. Estate tenants very often find that ultimately, although they have invested in their properties, they have no more security than anyone else. Should we do something about that?
The countryside is peppered with housing plots that have derelict properties on them. Is there an opportunity to bring such plots back into use, even if the houses are in no fit state to be rebuilt? Such an approach would address the issue of local opposition to proposed housing developments in rural settlements and villages. There is almost always such opposition, even though we all know that we need more rural housing. Will you respond briefly to those two points?
It is sometimes argued that community ownership is taking away private ownership opportunities, but in this case opportunities have been created for self-build projects, and I think that about half of them have been started. In many cases, there are opportunities for stimulating the local self-build sector, which will then feed through into work for architects and local construction contractors and will generate local employment in construction sector jobs.
However, that might not happen in every case, which is why it is important to assess the business case for community ownership to ensure that it is robust and will add value rather than damage an area’s economic performance. In most cases, the business cases have been robust, and that is why the projects have been able to proceed.
We have an opportunity through that vehicle, and we are also looking at some of the review group’s recommendations about provision for housing and land for housing development as a way of stimulating that. There has already been some success with community ownership as a vehicle for stimulating the self-build sector, and I would hope that, as community ownership expands up to the 1 million acre target, other opportunities will come. That is why we can be confident not only that community ownership will be aided but that private sector opportunities for smaller landowners to gain access to land will also be enhanced.
That is another example—like the one that I described in my response to Claudia Beamish—of a workstream that would primarily involve another minister rather than me or the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment. We must engage with our colleagues on that, as their officials would be likely to undertake or commission such work. We will feed back to the committee as soon as we have some clarity on how we will address that issue. We are clear that some modelling needs to be done to gain an understanding of the impacts, and the impact of the CAP reform package would need to be taken into account.
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Some witnesses raised the point with the committee that extra input is needed to help people in completing the mapping process for crofting. Will you find some answers for that in due course? I guess that it has cost implications.
I welcome the minister’s opening remarks. I hope that members who are committed to land reform can bring forward a radical agenda.
On cost, at last week’s meeting, stakeholders expressed a feeling that although transparency is important, there might be other ways to achieve it than by completion of the land register. It was suggested that the money could be better spent and bring greater gains.
At stages 2 and 3 of the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill, Fergus Ewing was pretty clear about the costs, which was one of the reasons why he did not commit to a timescale. At the time, some of the language in the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee was not particularly helpful. Members were asked whether they wanted money to be spent on the land register instead of on schools and hospitals—that might have been committee banter, but Fergus Ewing certainly identified an issue to do with how much registration would cost. More clarity on the issue would be welcome.
The land reform review group commented that land reform has been pursued in a pretty piecemeal and incoherent way. The Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill is a key example of that. During the bill’s passage, it seemed that there was not much awareness of the land reform agenda. Can we ensure that when the community empowerment bill is introduced we have a more coherent approach in Government, so that the bill is regarded as a vehicle for community ownership and for taking forward the land reform agenda?
We move on to public land ownership and community acquisition costs.
My understanding has been that a change in statutory provision would be required to enable Scottish Enterprise to adopt a social remit. Stephen Pathirana might be able to clarify that.
Yes.
Agenda item 2 is the land reform review group’s final report. Today, we are taking evidence on the report from the Minister for Environment and Climate Change. I welcome the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, and his officials, who are Stephen Pathirana, who is head of the Scottish Government’s land reform and tenancy unit, and Dave Thomson—a regular attender at our committee, one way or another—who is the head of the Government’s land reform policy team. Good morning, gentlemen.
I invite the minister to make an introductory statement.
We are at an early stage, given that the bill has only just been announced, but can you say whether the consultation will address that issue? Do you accept that the solution that has been proposed by the review group might not be the one that the Government chooses to support? The proposal was made during the passage of the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill and the Government did not support it at that point. Will the need to address the issue of transparency and accountability be covered by the proposed land reform bill?
An amendment to the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Bill was lodged that dealt with beneficial ownership. At the time, the minister said that the matter could in some way be built into regulations around the land register or could be a condition of the land register. Is the minister able to say more about that today, or is that something that he could look into in more detail?
I do not want to push you into areas where you cannot go—I respect that—but the thrust of the report goes right the way through to a community, quite simply, having the right, under certain circumstances, to say, “We want to buy that,” and being entitled to do so under some fairly restricted circumstances. As a general principle, do you see that as an acceptable end point?
It is good that you have undertaken to work with the Minister for Housing and Welfare, but will you also undertake to work with the Minister for Local Government and Planning to ensure that the issue is streamlined?
I can certainly give that undertaking. Because of our close engagement on the community empowerment bill, we have a good opportunity to discuss the issues.
We will have a couple of points to sum up the debate, first from Claire Baker and then from me.
Yes—that issue exercises me on a regular basis. We now have a mandatory register and people will have to register any regulated activity through the Crofting Commission. The register will be updated as time goes on, but we do not want that process to take many years. We would rather reach a position in which we have as complete a register as possible for crofting.
I put on record that I welcome the constructive approach that Registers of Scotland has taken on the issue—indeed, it has put in some of its own resource to help to tackle the challenge. We will come back to the committee with further detail on that area.
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I think that what the minister said is correct. There would need to be a statutory change in the remit that is given to Scottish Enterprise.
I stress that the review group has identified an outcome that it is interested in and a possible way of delivering that. We should focus on the outcome and, if we support it, ask ourselves what the best way of delivering it is. Is the review group’s proposed solution the best way? Can the same outcome be delivered in other ways? That is an important point. I generally ask those questions about every recommendation, because it is important to look at the best practical way of making things happen.
We will move on to the pattern of rural land ownership. Alex Fergusson will lead the questions.
I turn to the agencies that the review group proposed should be established. As you know, the group considered that, in addition to the creation of a community land agency,
“there is a need for a single body with responsibility for understanding and monitoring the system governing the ownership and management of Scotland’s land, and recommending changes in the public interest. The Group recommends that the Scottish Government should establish a Scottish Land and Property Commission.”
I could not attend last week’s committee meeting, when I understand that evidence was given that largely supported those recommendations, although concerns were expressed about the costs involved. What are the minister’s views on the recommendations? Would three separate bodies be required? How would they be resourced?
This morning’s discussion has been interesting, minister, and many of the areas that you have talked about cross over into other portfolios and departments. There is quite a lot of pressure to include in the proposed land reform bill policies that come under areas for which others have responsibility, and Government is not usually very good at that sort of thing.
How do you plan to ensure that the bill is as broad as possible, that it takes into account the responsibilities of other ministers and that it is Cabinet focused?
One of the report’s headline-grabbing parts was the idea of a cap on the amount of land that is owned. I do not think that today is the right time to get into how much is too much and whether there should be such a cap, other than to say that I was fascinated by Andy Wightman’s statement last week that nobody should own more than 1 per cent of Scotland. I would be very surprised if he would be happy with a situation where 100 people owned the whole of Scotland, but that is a potential outcome of his proposal. However, I guess that there will be room to discuss that side of the issue later.
Does the minister agree with the review group’s statement that ownership is the key determinant in how land is used? Many people would argue—and I am certainly sympathetic to the idea—that the key determinant is the type and quality of the land, rather than ownership.
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Good morning, minister. What you have described is very much a three-stage process in which land reform itself is the third element. It is clear that land reform can come only after the second stage, which is a definitive legal register. Stage 1 would seem to be the production of an apparent-use-and-ownership type of register.
I recollect from my time as a city councillor in Dundee that we were already trying to build such a register. I acknowledge that this area does not fall under your portfolio, minister, but is the Government exploring whether such databases already exist? I am referring to databases in the plural, as I suspect that local authorities—and possibly other organisations—already possess a great deal of information that would form part of a non-definitive register. Has somebody explored how much of that information we already have, spread around the country?
I will bring in Stephen Pathirana on that point.
Sorry—when I spoke earlier, I should have continued my point. There are a lot of different registers out there that serve different purposes, some of which—the IACS register, for example—have already been mentioned today.
The resources exist to produce a non-definitive register, but the question is how the information can be brought together and on what timescale. It can be done quickly, but we must acknowledge that such a register would be non-definitive. It would create greater transparency in the first instance, but it would not necessarily deliver all the benefits of having a complete land register, which is the goal in the background that we should be working towards. The existing information is being explored, and we are looking at how it can be used.
I caution against bringing things together that do not need to be brought together, as long as people know where to find the information that they want. I suggest that you do not need to produce one register for the whole of Scotland just so that we have such a register.
To illustrate the point, if people want to find out what land the Forestry Commission owns at present, they can go on to the organisation’s website, which holds a map with all the land on it. Despite that information not being on a land register, it is visible to the public.
I will develop the point about a non-definitive register. The minister mentioned that there was a positive response from stakeholders, and cited the Crown Estate specifically.
Where do non-governmental organisations such as the National Trust for Scotland, RSPB Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, which take great care with their image, sit in terms of engagement and willingness to participate? Beyond that, with regard to wider public bodies, what thought has been given to engagement with the Ministry of Defence, which is a very substantial landowner in Scotland and would presumably be co-operative?
It strikes me that we could fairly quickly reach the point at which we have a pretty instructive non-definitive register.
My question has been partly answered, but I want to put on record a concern that I have. I am on record as supporting community ownership, and I would like to see more of it in the south of Scotland. However, I dislike the element of compulsion in the recommendation—I am just genetically opposed to that.
The point that I wanted to make is that I believe that community benefit, community ownership and the decisions that surround those things are local issues. There are different issues in different communities, as I am sure that the minister will agree, but when I see suggestions to introduce four new rights and three new agencies to oversee and guide all of that, I see something that is anything but local; I see a very centralised, bureaucratic operation. Of course, I know that that is not what the land reform review group wants to happen. Can you reassure me that that will not be the case?
I seek clarification. In your opening statement, you mentioned the possibility of introducing measures at stage 2 of a bill. I have no idea whether the aspect that we are discussing is what you were referring to.
In written and oral evidence to us, a number of stakeholders have pointed to what they view as a failure to consult or a lack of consultation, particularly on the second part of the land reform review group’s exercise. They feel fairly strongly that they should have been consulted. Will you assure us that the Government will not introduce at stage 2 of a bill anything that not all the stakeholders have been fully consulted on?
First, I challenge the position taken by some people that there was no consultation for phase 2 of the review. I will bring in Dave Thomson on that point shortly.
When the land reform review group needed greater clarity about what was submitted for phase 1 evidence, it might have approached individual groups for clarification on points. The group has had discussions. I understand that, in response to some of the criticism, the vast majority of stakeholders have pointed to that and have said that there was consultation when it was required for the phase 2 process.
I appreciate that one or two stakeholders feel that they were not adequately consulted and were disappointed with the content of the review group’s report. However, it is wrong to say that there was not consultation; when the review group felt that it was necessary to supplement its knowledge or to clarify points that people who submitted evidence made, the group had discussions.
I appreciate that Mr Fergusson wants to come back on that, but I will bring in Dave Thomson to expand on that point, as he was closely involved.
There were two phases to the review group’s work. From the beginning, the first phase was identified as being the collection of evidence, to provide a broad base. The second phase was primarily focused on the end goal—the report. By the midway stage, the group had ideas about the topics that it wished to explore further and those on which it needed clarification. That is where it focused its energy.
Over and above speaking to organisations or individuals to clarify points, the group had a team of 13 advisers, who had experience and good knowledge of particular areas, such as housing and planning. The group used that expertise to develop its ideas further and to point it in other directions, so that it could speak to other individuals and organisations. In the second phase, the consultation was more focused on particular points that the group wanted to put in its report.
Given the width and topic of the group’s remit, it was inevitable that the group would never be able to collect all the evidence on all the topics from all the people who wanted to say something. That is the reason for the focused approach in phase 2.
I understand that, although I might not agree with it. My point is that, if the Government were to lodge a stage 2 amendment to a bill, that might impact on the Scottish moorland group, for instance—it is quite possible that a community right to buy might impact on that group’s interests. That group said that it was not consulted. All that I am asking the minister to do is to assure us that he would not introduce at stage 2 of a bill something that had not been fully consulted on and which might have a considerable impact on one of the main stakeholders.
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