Land Reform (Scotland) Bill
The next item of business is a debate on motion S1M-3780, in the name of Ross Finnie, which seeks agreement that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill be passed. I ask members to stick to their time limits. Ross Finnie has five minutes.
It has taken more than a year to reach this point. I commend the Justice 2 Committee for its detailed work, which has enabled us to reach this point.
Before the work of the Justice 2 Committee started, I think that there was wider consultation on the bill than on any other bill that has gone through the Parliament. More than 3,500 written responses were generated. We can take credit for the fact that such an important bill was subject to such extensive scrutiny and generated such a wide public response and wide public interest.
The bill illustrates the real value of the Parliament in allowing and facilitating the bringing to fruition of measures that will hugely benefit all Scotland's public and its rural communities. It will bring about much-needed social, economic and environmental opportunities.
At the outset, Scottish Natural Heritage said about the need for legislation on access rights:
"there is a real prospect of creating in Scotland a modernised approach to access in the countryside which meets in a balanced way the needs both of the public and of owners and managers of land."
That is what the bill will deliver. There is an opportunity to move beyond the arguments that have gone on for years about the current law on access, which have at times impacted on the consideration of the bill. The new, clear and unambiguous rights of access that will be established by the bill will mean that, for the first time, everyone will know where the public can and cannot go and what they can and cannot do. That will give enormous confidence to those who wish to use the countryside, and certainly to landowners and managers.
Does the minister agree that, to ensure that people use the countryside responsibly, the code will be important and will require considerable consideration?
I agree, and I shall deal with that matter in a moment.
The establishment of new rights and the provisions in the bill relating to core paths go a long way to fulfilling the commitment to providing greater opportunities for all people to enjoy the countryside. That chimes with other areas of Executive policy—for example, in respect of social inclusion and rural development.
From the outset, we have recognised that the exercise of access rights must respect the privacy of those who live in the countryside. In addition, there is a need to ensure that owners can continue to manage their land, and conservation of the natural and cultural heritage must be addressed—again, the bill has achieved that. We have achieved a reasonable balance between the aspirations of the public for access to the countryside and the concerns of those who work there.
For many years there has been a gap, which must be bridged, between those who live in our towns and cities and those who live in the country. In recent months, we have heard a great deal about how the population at large lacks any understanding of issues in the countryside. The bill should be welcomed as an opportunity to encourage many more people to go into the countryside, and to increase their knowledge and understanding of rural issues. There is nothing to be gained from trying to keep the public out—quite the reverse. Again, the bill achieves that objective.
However, as Sylvia Jackson has pointed out, the bill is only one step. The outdoor access code has yet to be finalised. The bill places a duty on Scottish Natural Heritage to draft the code. I know that SNH intends to give priority to finalising the code so that it can introduce the code as quickly as possible after consulting the access forum on the final version. The draft code will be subject to a full public consultation, which I hope will occur very quickly indeed.
The community right to buy is a significant step forward in supporting rural communities and in empowering them in their wish to develop local amenities. Equally, the crofting community right to buy is about the empowerment of crofting communities. The entitlement of a crofting community right to buy is of vital importance in the aim of regenerating those communities.
At the end of this long and thorough stage 3 process, the Parliament can take pride in the fact that we will have produced a piece of legislation that makes a significant step forward for access rights for the whole of Scotland, that gives great substance to the claims to a community right to buy, and that adds considerably to the rights of our crofting communities. There may have been disagreements and there are those who might want to adjust some of the provisions in one way or another but, at the end of the day, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill represents a very substantive and reforming piece of legislation. I commend the bill to the Parliament.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill be passed.
Dennis Canavan reminded me a few moments ago that it has taken us three centuries to get to this point. We should be vastly relieved that we are here, but we should also remind ourselves that this would not have happened at Westminster, despite the fact that the general principles of land reform have long been supported by the SNP, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. That support reflects the views of the vast majority of the Scottish people—despite some of the nonsensical assertions that I hear and read.
Commitments to significant land reform were given prominent positions in the manifestos of all three parties for the 1999 Scottish Parliament elections. I was therefore disappointed at the initial slow progress of the bill. When the draft bill was originally published, it gave us great cause for concern, as the legislative proposals on access were a bit of a dog's breakfast. Thankfully, the proposals were significantly improved and have now been further improved in the past few months and days. The right of responsible freedom to roam on the land of Scotland is a right that has long been asserted and dearly held by the Scottish people. I am glad that we have taken steps to secure that right.
There is no doubt that communities across Scotland want to take more control over the management and use of the land on which they live and work. There is a widespread agreement that an overhaul of the pattern of land ownership in our country is long overdue. We very much hope that the bill results in a significant change in the pattern of land ownership in Scotland. I have expressed some concern that that will not happen, but this is one occasion on which I hope to be proved wrong.
Other countries have taken far more radical steps than Scotland will do today. Let me provide some examples. In 1973, Denmark banned the ownership of land for recreation or hobby uses. Non-residents are banned from buying land. In some parts of the Netherlands, only local residents are allowed to buy houses for sale in order to stop them being purchased by absentees. In Norway, the purchaser of a farm must promise to live on it for five years and must manage the farm in the approved way. The Tories should be warned that much more radical measures could have been proposed. Perhaps the Tories should quit while they are ahead.
There has been a general agreement among progressives in the chamber on the need for the bill. The exception has been the Tories. As a party, they are fast becoming an anachronism—like some of their positions during our proceedings on the bill.
As far as the SNP is concerned, the bill may not be perfect, but it has our support.
It is manifestly obvious from what has been said already that the Conservatives are firmly of the view that the bill should not be passed. The aims of part 1 are worthy but frequently impracticable. They are also largely unnecessary and are a classic manifestation of the Executive's constant need to legislate. If the Executive would treat the people of Scotland as adults, perhaps there would be a more positive image of the Executive and the Parliament.
That having been said, the damage that part 1 of the bill will do is fairly minimal. Parts 2 and 3, however, are much more malign. They contain within them the seeds of the destruction of some of the smaller rural communities, and ministers may rue the day that the bill was introduced. An inevitable consequence of the legislation will be a loss of jobs for some of our smaller rural communities, which will in time come to be maintained on a tenuous life-support system of Executive grants. It need not be so. Those communities are self-sustaining at the moment, but when the investment falls, as inevitably it will, there will be very real problems indeed.
This is undoubtedly a dark day for the Scottish Parliament. The bill has nothing to do with land reform and everything to do with the other parties in the Parliament being obsessed with replaying the class wars of 200 years ago. It is an extreme measure, as was well articulated by Roseanna Cunningham, who indicated exactly what more extreme measures might be forthcoming in the unlikely event of the Scottish nationalists ever gaining control of Scotland. It is a grim, grim prospect.
Frankly, the bill is a disgrace. If it is voted through, this will be a day of shame for the Parliament. To those outdated class warriors and political dinosaurs who regard the activities of today and yesterday as a triumph, I say this: they must forget the wrongs and injustices of the past and put aside their current prejudices. The bill reflects badly on the Executive and on the Parliament, and it should not be passed.
It is a privilege and an honour to open for the Labour party in a truly historic debate. The private ownership of crofting land is an anomaly and an anachronism that should have been swept away at the same time that security of tenure, with all the rights that flow from that, was granted to crofting tenants. Security of tenure was necessary because, without it, the crofting population was subject to the whims and prejudices of landlords, often brutally exercised. That is the anomaly that has today been finally addressed.
The pattern of land ownership in the Highlands and Islands today is not a harmless relic from a bygone age, although it is a relic that is, of course, revered by the Tories and their vicar on earth, Alan Cochrane of The Daily Telegraph. That pattern of ownership represents a serious distortion of our social and economic life and the time has finally come to consign it to history. Today, we are lighting a beacon for radical and sweeping land reform right across the Highlands. Today, we are putting 19th century patterns of land ownership behind us and embracing a 21st century model that puts local communities firmly in control.
Generations of socialists in the Highlands have campaigned for land reform and the abolition of the landlord anomaly. They did so even when the cause was unfashionable and the political climate unpromising, but all that changed in 1997 with the election of a Labour Government, which included people who knew the importance of the issue and our commitment to it. That work continued in this chamber on 1 July 1999, when the late Donald Dewar said:
"today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic Parliament. A voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future."
Today, that voice has spoken in a clear and unambiguous manner.
Our work in this young Parliament has given us the bill that we have today. For our crofting communities above all, it will be a stepping stone to a better future. It goes a long way towards redressing an historic wrong, but the best memorial to those who championed the cause of land reform over the past century and more will lie in a successful implementation. That is what we must now address ourselves to.
It has been a privilege and an honour for my generation of Highland and Labour politicians to see a centuries-old aspiration becoming law and a Keir Hardie manifesto pledge being fulfilled. As the party of progress, we have delivered.
Finally, it gives me great pleasure and it is a great privilege to say the following in the language of my forebears. Tha latha an uachdarain seachad, agus an-diugh tha achd Pàrlamaid ùr againn: Achd Ath-leasachaidh an Fhearainn (Alba) 2003. Tha e crìochnaichte.
Glè mhath. A large number of members have submitted their names at the last minute to speak. The debate must be concluded within eight hours of its start yesterday. That gives us until 5.14 pm, and not a minute more. I shall do my best. Speeches will be three minutes.
One thing that has marked the progress of the bill is the energetic engagement in proceedings by many strands of Scottish life. That has been heartening and I hope it presages a golden age in the countryside—perhaps it will not.
Crofting communities may now have the opportunity to plan their futures with greater certainty than they could in the past, secure in the knowledge that if they wish to buy land, and they fulfil the requirements to do so under the bill, they can. Would that the decision had been made in the 19th century to include Aberdeenshire in the crofting counties—there would have been no limit to my delight today. However, I am happy to share in the pleasure that will be felt in crofting communities, even if the bill is more limited than what we wanted to achieve.
Under part 2, communities throughout Scotland "may" have the opportunity to acquire the land that will help their economic development. However, the bill, in its timidity, leaves much of Scotland's land—that held by companies, trusts and enduring partnerships—beyond the reach of the right to buy that is provided under the bill. In reality, only land that is under private ownership when it comes up for sale will be open to communities. The history of land in rural areas of Scotland suggests that a very small proportion of land will be affected by the bill. It is a matter of regret that the SNP amendments that would have extended rights under certain conditions and allowed communities throughout Scotland to share in the opportunities that the bill will create were not agreed to.
I hope that all who walk in Scotland will enjoy the new secured access rights that the bill provides at least as much as we have enjoyed passing this legislation. Unlike Bill Aitken with his gloomy adumbration of a future led by Beelzebub, I am absolutely confident that, although the bill might not do everything that my SNP colleagues would have wished, it creates opportunities across Scotland for increased economic activity in many of our society's vulnerable rural communities.
I am very happy to support the bill.
I begin by thanking many people for their contributions to stages 1 and 2 of the bill, including all those who gave oral and written evidence. All the submissions were accounted for and read. I know that I speak for the whole committee when I thank the Justice 2 Committee clerks for their exhausting work. They seemed to understand our ramblings and converted them into what I thought was an excellent stage 1 report. Despite our disagreements, the Executive kept its cool throughout the process and I commend the ministers for that.
Last but not least, I thank the members of the Justice 2 Committee, who worked tirelessly, as did members of the other five committees that were involved in the process. All the committees provided excellent reports. I am sure that all committee members will agree with Bob Reid of Aberdeen City Council, who said in a letter to me that the Justice 2 Committee "pursued the issues brilliantly" at stage 1. I hope that Magnus Linklater's next article in Scotland on Sunday quotes that remark.
This is a landmark in the Parliament's legislative programme and a proud day for devolution. With cross-party collaboration, we have achieved a great piece of empowering legislation for the people of Scotland. The bill gives legal rights to roam in the countryside. It is an achievement of which we should all be proud. Echoing Scotland's first First Minister, who often said,
"There shall be a Scottish Parliament",
we should be proud to say, "There shall be a statutory right to access." This marathon bill began as a Labour commitment in 1997. We know that many others who have been notable for arguing for land reform will also be pleased by the decision that is about to be taken. The legislation will place Scotland in the lead on issues of civil rights, sustainable development and empowering local rural communities.
Although I reject the position of the Law Society of Scotland and the Executive on trespass, I am happy that that debate will now take second place to the real debate, which is on how we ensure that the statutory right of access begins to happen after we pass the legislation. The local access forums and the development of a core path network are crucial. We should emphasise that it is not only about access on foot; it is about access for cyclists, access on horseback and access to water, which we have not said a great deal about.
There has been a lot of scaremongering in the debate by many members, not least Conservative members. We have been told that Al Fayed will leave the country and that Madonna will never come back to Scotland—shock, horror. As a Madonna fan, I am not too shocked about that; she has never had a concert in Scotland, so I do not see why I should protect her interests.
However, there is an important point to be made. I stand up for those who want their privacy to be protected. I see no reason why that should change, but there must be a right of responsible access to the large estates in Scotland. I, for one, will take advantage of it to visit the Ardverikie estate, better known from "Monarch of the Glen", which has broadcast its 36,000 acres of beautiful Scottish scenery. If it were not for that programme, many people would not know what they are missing. Ordinary Scots will see the relevance of the bill, because it gives them a right to roam that they did not have. There are good landowners who believe in the legislation and there are ramblers and walkers who believe in it. I believe that it is a great piece of legislation. We should all commend ourselves for that achievement after an exhausting couple of days.
I am minded to accept a motion without notice to move decision time to 5.15 pm.
Motion moved,
That motion S1M-3798 be taken at this meeting of the Parliament.—[Euan Robson.]
Motion agreed to.
Motion moved,
That the Parliament agrees under rule 11.2.4 of Standing Orders that Decision Time on Thursday 23 January 2003 be taken at 5.15 pm.—[Euan Robson.]
Motion agreed to.
What the Executive has failed to do throughout the process is to make the case that what matters is the ownership of land, rather than the use to which it is put. If the right-to-buy proposals in the bill are to be successful, that will entail large sums of taxpayers' money—millions of pounds—being put into the transfer of property titles. That money will not be put into creating wealth or jobs; it will be put directly into the pockets of the very landowners whom proponents of the bill are so anxious to disinvest of their interests in the Highlands. If all that money is available for rural Scotland, would not it be better to use the money for job creation, economic regeneration and transport improvements rather than to use it to transfer the ownership of titles, which, in themselves, will do nothing to promote economic regeneration?
All sorts of comments have been made about the right to buy salmon fishings and the safeguards that will be available. I claim no expertise on those matters—the experts are the people who live and work in remote areas and who derive their living from salmon fishings. Those people have been treated disgracefully by the Parliament and its committees in not being allowed to give evidence to the Justice 2 Committee. The people on the ground—unlike the legislators, the parliamentarians or the civil servants—know what their experience is and what the outcome of the legislation will be. All the evidence points to disinvestment in salmon fishings as a result of the bill. That is happening already, although members should not take just my word for it: even Highland Council, which is hardly a bastion of landlordism, Toryism or even readers of The Daily Telegraph, came out and said that we should reject the right to buy salmon fishings. Members who support the proposal should listen to the people on the ground and trust them, even if they will not listen to us.
When Highland Council gave evidence to the Justice 2 Committee in Inverness, did it produce a shred of evidence to support its assertion?
I am sorry that Mr Stevenson discounts so abruptly the views of Highland Council, which consists of the elected representatives of people in the Highlands. The evidence was already there and Mr Stevenson should have listened to it.
The bill does not address the real issues in rural Scotland, such as low farm incomes, unemployment, low pay, poor transport links, loss of local post offices and the closure of rural schools. The bill is merely a sop to the land reform cranks outside the chamber and the members of parties who wish to refight old battles. If a fraction of the time, energy and money that have been expended on the bill had been spent on the real issues, the prospects for rural Scotland would be much better than they are today.
It does not matter to me one whit that, in the chamber, the Tories are the only people who oppose the bill, because we know that, outside, in the real world, there is widespread opposition to the bill. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that, in years to come, we will look back on today and say that we made bad law.
The Liberal party has been committed to land reform for more than 100 years. Indeed, the Liberal anthem at the time of Gladstone's land reform legislation stated:
"'Twas God who made the land,
The land, the land,
The ground on which we stand.
Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?
God gave the land to the people."
It is appropriate that the Liberal and Labour parties, in the first Scottish coalition, should have placed land reform at the heart of the legislative programme in our first parliamentary session. There have been four pieces of legislation on the matter.
As I said, the Liberal party has been committed to land reform for more than 100 years and today we deliver on that commitment. There is a clear division among members, which was obvious from the speeches of the Tory party members—or the landlords' lapdogs, as some would describe them. The narrow, concentrated and often absentee pattern of land ownership is failing rural Scotland. It is easy to tell that Bill Aitken has not ventured out of Glasgow many times in his life, because the failure is there for all to see. There are rundown farm buildings, a lack of investment—
That is the Scottish Executive's fault.
Calm down.
Communities are frustrated because of a lack of access to land for housing and community facilities, such as halls. Of course there are exceptions: there are good landlords who invest, are paternalistic and have their community's interests close to their hearts. However, I reject the proposition, which has been expressed by the Tories and other opponents of land reform, that rural development in modern Scotland should be predicated on whether people are lucky enough to have a good landlord. That is arrant nonsense and, during the past 100 years, that system has been shown to be a failure.
The bill seeks to tackle that failure by widening land ownership in Scotland. The Liberal and Labour parties believe fundamentally that wider land ownership is a good thing. We believe that it will be a spur to rural development and that it will create jobs and opportunities for all who live and work on Scotland's land. The most important point is that the bill seeks to empower people and give them responsibility for their destiny. That is also a good thing.
The Tories, who have opposed the bill since day one, are on the side of those who take the absent view; they see land as a tax shelter or an investment vehicle. The coalition parties are on the side of the many ordinary Scotsmen and women who live and work on Scotland's land. By backing the bill, we will empower the many and diminish the power of the few. I support the motion.
I call Stewart Ewing, to be followed by Rhona Brankin. I am terribly sorry—I meant Fergus Ewing.
Actually, Presiding Officer, Stewart is my middle name.
My constituency contains many of the high mountains in Scotland, including the Cairngorms, Glen Coe, the Aonachs, Creag Meagaidh, the Monadhliath hills and the Drumochter hills. Because of that, it perhaps contains more people who are dependent for their livelihood on access to the outdoors than does any other constituency. Those people will be celebrating the passage of the bill today.
I would like to look forward to the tasks that lie ahead, as I do not believe in allowing too much self-congratulatory stuff. There is a job of work to be done. The first task is to establish the access code, which SNH has a duty to formulate. I hope that, in the light of what I have said about my constituency—which contains the Glenmore Lodge outdoor centre—the minister will accept that the logical place for the access code to be formulated by the small number of SNH staff who will work on it is Scotland's outdoor centre. I hope that that dispersal of civil jobs will begin right here, right now.
Secondly, there is a problem as far as community purchase is concerned. Today we have passed the mechanism for community purchase, but what about the money, which is dependent on a £10 million budget line from the new opportunities fund? We heard from Beverley Francis the other day that the money is running out: there is only £2 million of that budget left. I know that people in the community land unit are concerned about that. We have not heard whether the money will be renewed. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport at Westminster refuses to say that it will be renewed because it is undertaking a review of all lottery funding. That is placing in jeopardy the expertise—which has been built up over a long period—of the staff in Inverness, who are on short-term contracts that will expire in August. If those people are lost, their expertise will be lost. I hope that the minister will sort that out with the DCMS soon.
Two members have referred to the fact that the Labour and Liberal parties have had commitments to land reform, community ownership and access for about 100 years. They have claimed credit for their parties for what has been done today. However, one does not have to be Einstein to realise that we have achieved what we have achieved today because we have a Scottish Parliament. No single party can claim credit for what we have achieved today, because it is an achievement of the Parliament, not of one party. The fact that it has taken 100 years of failure in Scotland to achieve it speaks for itself.
Colleagues, today is indeed an historic day. Land reform has been a central policy of the Labour party for more than 100 years. Indeed, the Labour party was founded on a call for land reform. [Interruption.]
Order. We are almost finished. I ask members to keep their voices down, please.
I believe that the bill is a radical piece of legislation; however, for the Tories to characterise it as a Mugabe-style land grab is an absolute disgrace. The bill is radical, but it is not a revolution. It is about having a responsible right of access and creating opportunities for rural—often remote and fragile—communities to become involved in building a future for themselves and their families. It is about empowering communities and it is about sustainable rural development. Colleagues, the bill is pro-countryside.
I turn to the issue of access for people with disabilities, which I was concerned about at an earlier stage of the bill. Responsible access to the countryside must mean access for everybody, whatever their ability. That has important implications for local authorities and the access forums that will be set up. They will be required to consider opportunities for access and to develop a core path network that will enable everybody in the community to get out, take exercise and enjoy the countryside, whether they are young or old, on foot, on horseback, on a bicycle, in a wheelchair or on an electric scooter. The bill, as amended, will achieve that, which I very much welcome.
The second issue that I have been concerned about is the issue of charging horse riders for access when walkers and cyclists go free. I am aware that that could still happen under the bill. Although I am disappointed that existing charging schemes can continue, Forest Enterprise's decision to cease charging is very welcome. I also welcome the minister's assurance that continuing to charge horse riders would not be in the spirit of the bill or its intent.
Many of us have argued for land reform and access to the countryside for many years. This is an important bill and today is an historic day for Scotland. I urge all members to support the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.
I thank the Executive for accepting two of my amendments: the Balmoral amendment and the anti-curfew amendment. The former will ensure a public right of access to the Queen's estates in Scotland; the latter will ensure that people have a right of responsible access to the countryside during the hours of darkness as well as in the daylight.
Scotland's mountains, hills, glens, lochs and rivers are not simply the property of the landed gentry but part of our natural and national heritage, which ought to be accessible to the people of Scotland and to visitors who come here to enjoy outdoor pursuits in some of the finest natural environments in the world. The bill will help to achieve those objectives and that is why it deserves the unanimous support of the Parliament.
Hear, hear.
Like Pauline McNeill and other members, I begin by thanking the clerks to the Justice 2 Committee, who put an enormous amount of work into the bill, which is a historic piece of legislation. I thank all the committee members and I give a special mention, of course, to Bill Aitken, who made it so easy to get the bill through. I thank Opposition members for their stamina in coping with the volume of evidence and amendments.
There are days when we remember why we got involved in politics and why that brought us to the Scottish Parliament. Yesterday and today have been—for me at least—two such days. To see Jamie McGrigor during the debate this afternoon, flapping in the wind and impaled on a hook of his own making—like one of the salmon that he talks about in the chamber—as he spoke of land grabs, was the icing on the cake of my political career so far.
As I said to comrade Finnie, commander in chief of the Scottish land-grab unit—[Laughter.]—it was the prospect of this day that kept so many of us going through the dark and often desperate 18 years of Tory government. We were determined to create the Scottish Parliament. The joint determination of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party in the Scottish Constitutional Convention was to realise this day and to deliver land reform.
Like others, I quote Donald Dewar:
"Who could imagine such a land reform bill passing unscathed through the massed ranks of the House of Lords?"—[Official Report, 16 June 1999; Vol 1, c 406.]
Not I, nor anyone here.
A Tory press release this week spoke of revenge for the Highland clearances. However, it is the Tory party that is living in the past. Comparing mild-mannered, west Highland crofters with the thugs of Zanu PF, or ramblers with the North Korean people's militia, does a disservice not only to the struggle for the liberation of the people of such countries, but to the Tory party.
As Brian Fitzpatrick and Alasdair Morrison said, from the first days of the Labour movement in Scotland, land reform has been unfinished business. From the land league men of Raasay, Skye and Lewis through the mass trespass of the 1930s and on to today, I am proud and privileged, as a Labour minister in the Liberal-Labour Executive, to propose to a Scottish Parliament that the land of Scotland should belong to its people and that the Parliament should pass the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.