Chamber and committees

It is a great privilege to close this debate for Scottish Labour and to speak alongside my comrades Rhoda Grant and Richard Leonard. I start by paying tribute to everyone who has engaged in the land reform process. Any success in the bill that will diversify land ownership in Scotland is the collective effort of everyone who responded to the consultations, everyone who provided expert advice evidence and everyone who challenged the Scottish Government to make the bill count. That work will continue, because it must.

Scotland is now prey to mega lairds, private corporations that buy up land for the benefit of portfolio shareholders and investors. Their accumulation of land, wealth and power is often dressed up as climate friendly or environmentally responsible. Let us be clear: it is not.

Take Oxygen Conservation, whose stated business is supposedly to help fight the climate and biodiversity crises. It has quickly taken ownership of numerous Scottish landholdings and estates. Most recently, it bought up BrewDog’s failed Lost Forest estate, which has taken its total holdings to nearly 20,000 hectares. However, its extractive business model and inadequate community engagement have raised alarm bells among land reform experts. A revenue model that is based on polluting carbon credit sales will not deliver what our land, climate and natural environment so desperately need. Aggressive acquisitions and the quick flipping of land as a portfolio treats one of our most priceless common goods as a cheap commodity to be traded by the wealthiest.

That is why it is right that, under the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, some large landholdings will be required to produce land management plans to show how they intend to manage and develop the land. I truly hope that those modest changes make a difference. However, because of the Government’s refusal to accept my amendments to lower the threshold and introduce a presumed limit on ownership of 500 hectares, more large landholdings will be left out of the scope of the bill than will be included in it. Instead, the Scottish Government has taken a blinkered approach to ownership and aggregation of landholdings. Concentrated land ownership is a nationwide issue, yet the Scottish Government has refused to take a nationwide approach to aggregate land holdings.

Gresham House is now the second-largest private landowner in Scotland, thanks to 244 separate landholdings across roughly 74,000 hectares. That kind of superscale land ownership will barely be impacted by the bill, however, as only a handful of those 244 fragments are over the 1,000-hectare threshold. That is why I am proud that my amendment to review whether the size of the areas of land included in the bill needs to be reduced was passed yesterday. I look forward to seeing that review take place.

The examples of Oxygen Conservation and Gresham House demonstrate the inadequacy of Scotland’s current system and how the Scottish Government’s bill—while welcome—will not go far enough. Both examples show how private corporations will always seek private profit before public good, even while claiming that they are acting in the public interest. That is why it was so important to have a forward-facing public-interest assessment of buyers of land in the bill. It is deeply disappointing that, even after months and years of scrutiny, evidence and amendment, the Scottish Government did not accept that.

Large-scale and corporate land ownership cannot contribute to action on inequality while its decisions on land ownership and land management remain focused on extracting wealth. Instead, we need land ownership that works for people, not profit. The Land Reform (Scotland) Bill was an opportunity to challenge the current pattern of land ownership and to create a fairer, more accountable and more democratic system of diversified land ownership. It remains to be seen how much of an impact its provisions will have but, given what was left out of the bill, it seems like yet another missed opportunity from the Scottish Government.

Environmental groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have highlighted the high financial costs for removal of conifer seedlings and seed rain. As things stand, NatureScot and other environmental restoration groups must use already stretched budgets to mitigate the environmental damage that is caused by the negligence of private companies. There is concern that, if the bill does not address that issue, it might unintentionally further embolden big polluters. Does the Scottish Government support the principle that the polluters must pay for the environmental damage that their industry causes?

I press.

Scottish Labour supports amendment 206, which would update the definition of “peatland” in the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024. We have repeatedly raised the issue throughout the parliamentary session, and we see no reason why that cannot be done today. If the Scottish Government is not able to support this reasonable amendment, we will expect to hear why, as well as how the issue will be addressed—perhaps through the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill, for example.

I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 89B is an amendment to the review amendment lodged by Martin Whitfield and would make an express provision that the review must consider the appropriateness of the land described in each of the part 1 provisions, with particular regard to the size of the areas of land. In effect, it would look at whether the 1,000 hectare threshold was still appropriate. Amendment 89D is a variation on amendment 89B and would require the review to have particular regard to whether the size of the areas of land should be reduced.

Members are already familiar with my arguments in favour of lowering the threshold and my attempts to do so in the bill, so I will not repeat myself tonight. However, I note that we have heard frequently from the cabinet secretary that the Scottish Government requires further evidence to lower the threshold. My hope is therefore that we can agree to amendment 89D to ensure that the review of the provisions includes that crucial point.

I will listen carefully to the cabinet secretary’s response to both amendments. If she is minded to support amendment 89D, I will not move amendment 89B.

I thank all members who have taken part in today’s debate. As my Labour colleagues Sarah Boyack and Rhoda Grant have already made clear, we will support the bill at stage 1 today, because we recognise the issue at the heart of the bill, which is how we protect Scotland’s 90,000 species, 11 per cent of which, as we have heard from Jackie Dunbar, are threatened with extinction.

Scotland’s level of biodiversity intactness is in the lowest 15 per cent in the world, and the Scottish Government has failed to meet its environmental targets. In the past decade alone, 43 per cent of Scotland’s species have seen a decline. Biodiversity loss is, of course, a global issue, but I think that we would all agree that Scotland has a moral and ecological duty to be a world leader in reversing that decline.

For the bill to meet its goal of reversing biodiversity loss and restoring a healthy, stable ecosystem, it must be amended in several key areas, not least in relation to the issues with part 2 that have been highlighted by Labour members and others today. From what we have heard, if the Government does not lodge serious considered amendments to part 2, there will be proposals to remove that part altogether. Therefore, I hope that the cabinet secretary takes heed.

Although we have heard from Tim Eagle and some of his Conservative colleagues their concerns about whether there is a need for the bill, his citing of the failure of previous non-statutory approaches has, I think, made a strong case for bringing forward statutory targets and for part 1 of the bill.

Particularly important to the debate is how we protect and restore our natural environment and native flora and fauna. The latter are threatened by the devastating impact of invasive non-native species, as Beatrice Wishart highlighted very aptly today. In its 2025 “Inquiry into public financial support for tree planting and forestry”, the Royal Society of Edinburgh highlighted that Scottish Government policy and practice does not go far enough in recognising long-standing problems caused by invasive non-native species.

For example, as we have just heard, Sitka spruce, which accounts for 43 per cent of Scotland’s woodlands, is a major threat, because it dries out the peatland ecosystem and outcompetes native species such as—I will probably say this wrong—sphagnum moss, and no, I am not its nature champion. Additionally, when Sitka is planted on peatlands, there is a risk that carbon sequestered by the land can be released. Yet that ecologically destructive species is currently exempt from the provisions of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011—an exemption that is not based on environmental science but is driven by the profit motive in the commercial forestry industry.

If I or one of my constituents released Japanese knotweed into the wild, even accidentally, that would be illegal, but private companies are, in effect, allowed to commit widespread acts of ecological vandalism that degrade vast swathes of Scotland’s environment without fear of being so much as fined, all in the name of profit. That fact demonstrates the need for Scotland to tighten its legislation around the 2011 act and to look at reworking exemptions for invasive non-native species.

We also need to look at the cost to the public purse of Government subsidies for invasive non-native species such as Sitka spruce, which accounts for 50 per cent of commercial planting in the UK. The destruction of our natural environment to line the pockets of shareholders cannot be allowed to continue. Instead, Scottish Forestry could require that planting schemes include native planting and regeneration and consider the spread of tree seed from non-native invasive species. Actions to consider could include continued monitoring of how seed spread can be reduced and, where necessary, removal of non-native invasive species seedlings. Providing public subsidies to damaging commercial conifer forests completely contradicts Scotland’s biodiversity and environment restoration targets. The Scottish Government should reassess subsidies for coniferous commercial tree planting.

The ethical and financial responsibility for rectifying harm to the environment should rest on the developers and private companies that cause that harm, through the use of a polluter-pays principle, as touched on by Lorna Slater. It is not just we on the Labour benches who are saying that; groups such as Scottish Environment LINK and the RSPB agree. Current environmental restoration efforts, including ones by NatureScot, are using their already overstretched budgets to mitigate the damage to our natural environment that negligent private companies cause. According to RSPB research, the financial cost of removal of conifer seedlings and seed rain in flow country peatlands is already in the millions of pounds. A polluter-pays principle would address that directly through the creation of statutory requirements for the proper management of invasive non-native species. Successful implementation would create a robust framework for liability for environmental damage.

I want to be clear that Scottish Labour, like others, supports the general principles of the bill. However, if Parliament is serious about reversing the trend of biodiversity loss, we must be clear that the current iteration of the bill needs significant amending. In that way, Scotland can become a true world leader in combating the nature crisis.

As I pointed out to Mr Lumsden at stage 2, a 500-hectare threshold would exclude 97 per cent of agricultural holdings. It is not accurate to say that Labour is anything less than supportive of our vital food production sector.

I start by thanking Community Land Scotland and the Scottish Parliament legislation team for their support in drafting my amendments in this group. I have four areas for amendment in the group, beginning with the 500-hectare threshold for large landholdings. Amendment 6 would revise the threshold in section 1 down from 1,000 hectares to 500 hectares for community engagement obligations for owners of large landholdings. Amendment 7 would revise the threshold down in section 2, and amendments 8 to 10 would revise it down in section 4.

I consulted on a 500-hectare definition for large landholdings for my proposed land ownership and public interest bill earlier in this parliamentary session. If I recall, a greater number of participants engaged with the consultation on my proposed bill than with the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. The proposals that I consulted on found widespread support from participants. A 500-hectare threshold is high enough to exclude 96 per cent of agricultural landholdings, yet low enough to be impactful. It is important to note that many of the landholdings that would be caught by the lower threshold will already be producing land management plans, as is good practice among responsible landowners, so my amendments would simply codify that. The amendments are supported by Community Land Scotland, Ramblers Scotland and others.

Moving to the second area, that of contiguous holdings, amendments 55 to 58 would remove the requirement that holdings be contiguous in order to be caught by the threshold in section 4 in relation to the lotting of large landholdings. Amendments 24 to 27 would do the same in section 1, and amendments 47 to 50 would do that in section 2. Those changes would mean that a single holding is defined as the whole of the

“land in the ownership of one person or set of persons”.

Thus, where the totality of land owned is over the threshold, the measures in the bill would apply.

The Scottish Government had committed to work, after stage 2, on a stronger definition of contiguous landholdings than using 250m. However, the Government has not lodged any such amendments, and I have therefore lodged my amendments in this group, which would increase the simplicity and impact of the bill while addressing the considerable negative impacts of monopoly ownership on a national scale.

On the provision of lotting more than 500 hectares, amendment 53 would amend the bill so that a land transfer would still be caught by the lotting provisions if the land that was being sold was larger than 500 hectares and was part of a parcel of landholdings that was larger than the final threshold in the bill. If my other amendments to lower the threshold throughout the bill fall, amendment 53, along with its consequential amendments 52 and 54, would allow that the lotting provisions would still be triggered for a transfer of 500 hectares if that formed part of a landholding that was larger than the 100,000-hectare threshold.

I turn to the island threshold. Monopoly ownership is especially pronounced in an island setting, which is why I consulted on introducing special provisions to protect islands’ interests in my proposed bill. Many Scottish islands below the 1,000-hectare threshold have only one owner. When it comes to the provisions in part 1 of the bill, amendment 11 and its consequential amendment 12 seek to introduce a separate island threshold at 500 hectares and at least 25 per cent of an island. We understand that that is likely to bring within the scope of the bill an additional 11 islands, many of which are owned by one entity and have small but notable populations.

In many island contexts, there is a small and diminishing population, so not to include islands in the bill works against the Scottish Government’s stated intention to prevent island depopulation and encourage repopulation, whereas, if my amendments were agreed to, cases of poor land ownership in islands could be addressed and there could be public oversight of making island communities as sustainable as possible.

I move amendment 6.

I will, of course, continue to engage, as I have already done, but I would like to hear the cabinet secretary explain what work she is committing the Scottish Government to and when that work will start.

No.

We have heard that the Government will not support the islands threshold, but we have not heard how it plans to address concentrated island ownership or how inhabited islands can be brought into the scope of pre-notification, so I will move amendment 11.

We have also heard that the Government will not support the removal of the requirement for holdings to be contiguous, but we have not heard what action the Government will take to prevent asset managers such as Gresham House from buying up all of Scotland, so I will also move amendments in relation to that.

We have heard that the Scottish Government will not support lowering the threshold to 500 hectares. The cabinet secretary has indicated a need for evidence, but she has not outlined what the threshold for that evidence would be in order for the Government to legislate. It must be remembered that I consulted more widely on that issue than the Scottish Government did for this bill.

Therefore, I press amendment 6.