Chamber and committees

I have nothing further to add, convener, and I would like to withdraw amendment 368.

Amendment 368, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 369 and 370 not moved.

Amendment 466 moved—[Ross Greer].

In Shuhada Street, in al-Khalil, the occupation has segregated Palestinians from illegal settlements for two decades. What was once a central thoroughfare, a hive of commercial activity and the Barras of the city is now described as a ghost town. Military checkpoints deny Palestinian residents free movement in their home city. Children queue in metal cages to reach their destinations—school, the grocery store or simply home. Those are ordinary, peaceful activities. That is why, every year since 2010, youth against settlements has campaigned to open Shuhada Street, end the closures in the city and end the military occupation of Palestine.

Shuhada Street is but one example of the indignity that Palestinians face every day. For more than 100 years, a war has been waged on the Palestinian people not because of religion, politics or self-defence, but because of land. In the pursuit of a land without a people for a people without a land, there was just one problem: the land had and has a people—the Palestinians. What we are witnessing in Gaza—the catastrophic humanitarian situation, the deliberate withholding of food by Israel, the half a million people in acute malnutrition, and one of the world’s worst hunger crises unfolding in real time—is, in short, genocide against Palestinians. It is not accidental. It is not “collateral damage”. It is by design.

We know that because that is what the Israeli Government told us. Yoav Gallant, then Minister of Defence, said on 9 October 2023:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister, said on 17 November 2023:

“It is necessary to make cultural changes in Gaza, such as in Japan and Germany following World War 2.”

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest. Their words are incitement to genocide. Their actions are ethnic cleansing. Let us be clear: Gallant and Netanyahu are not lone operators. The Likud party, which they represent, is a right-wing nationalist party founded by members of terrorist organisations that expressly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. And the actions of those men and of the Israeli Government, as grave as they are, are not at all surprising. What is surprising is the blind eye that has been turned by so much of the international community. That must not be allowed to continue.

The UK Government must immediately suspend all UK arms exports to Israel, and the Scottish Government must ensure that no public money is awarded to companies that are manufacturing and supplying arms or their components to Israel. Whether our Governments act will come down to the people, as it always does. Through the votes that we cast, through the voices that we raise and through the choices that we make, together we can turn the tide.

Thank you. I would like to take you up on the offer to meet to discuss the matter ahead of stage 2.

My final question also relates to invasive non-native species. They are a principal driver of biodiversity loss globally, they are an intensifying issue in Scotland and they are having particularly serious impacts on islands. I am thinking specifically of projects involving highly mobile species, such as the Orkney Native Wildlife Project that the Scottish Government funds.

Does the cabinet secretary believe that the current legal arrangements for tackling invasive non-native species are adequate? In particular, can operational staff access land with sufficient speed to eradicate highly mobile species? My point relates to Rhoda Grant’s earlier question about designating particular zones so that, where there are highly mobile species, operational staff can get access to land in order to carry out eradication.

I do not have any further questions.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I have three question areas, if that is okay. I will see how we do for time.

The first is about the purpose of the bill. The explanatory notes say:

“The primary duty is to set targets in connection with nature restoration for the purpose of supporting and measuring implementation of the biodiversity strategy”.

A concern has been raised with me that, by linking the purpose to the biodiversity strategy, we potentially create a loophole whereby a future Government could water down the biodiversity strategy. The purpose of the targets would then be to support something that has been watered down, instead of whatever the overall aim or goal is—restoring the natural environment or whatever form of words the Government chooses to use.

Is the cabinet secretary open to looking at that potential loophole and at a way of tightening up the language to make sure that the purpose of the targets is to support the goal, as you have referenced already, and not an external strategy that is not legally binding and which could be watered down by a future Government?

Thank you. My next question relates to invasive non-native species, which Rhoda Grant and Mark Ruskell have already picked up on. As Mark Ruskell said, we have relatively strong legislation on invasive non-native species—it is illegal to release any species outside its natural range—but there are two key areas in which blanket exemptions to that legislation risk undermining progress and damaging the natural environment. They are the lack of regulation on non-native game bird releases, which Mark Ruskell mentioned, and the exemption of non-native commercial conifers. Both of those are exempt from the polluter-pays principle.

Is the cabinet secretary open to revisiting those exemptions through the bill, so that we can help to drive effective action on invasive species in order to prevent further biodiversity loss?

I am pleased to speak to amendment 174 and my other amendments in the group. I thank Community Land Scotland and the Scottish Parliament legislation team for their support in drafting the amendments.

The bill as introduced includes a transfer test that does not make any assessment of the wider public interest in land ownership, nor does it assess whether the buyer or their plans for the land are in the public interest. Successive Scottish Governments have consistently made commitments to diversify land ownership patterns in Scotland but, as it stands, the transfer test in the bill is not an effective mechanism for achieving that.

In order for the test mechanism to be impactful, it must move beyond being a mere assessment of the landholding; it must instead make a forward-facing assessment of whether the landholding and the land management plan of the incoming landowners are in the public interest. That would also create coherence between the otherwise disconnected test and land management elements of the bill.

The committee heard evidence from numerous stakeholders, experts and land users that it is necessary to reframe the transfer test as a public interest test. The stage 1 report noted that the committee

“considers that the transfer test, as drafted, will not meet the aims of the Scottish Government as it does not sufficiently take account of the public interest”.

Unlike the term “community sustainability” in the bill, the term “public interest” is widely used in Scottish and UK legislation. It has more than 200 mentions in primary legislation, including in existing land reform legislation. That means that a public interest test is likely to establish a clearer precedent than a transfer test and would avoid future legal challenges. Research for the Scottish Government and the Scottish Land Commission has been clear on that.

My 174 amendment would therefore insert a forward-facing public interest test into the bill, with that test to be applied to a proposed new buyer in relation to transfers of large landholdings. Under the proposal, land being transferred would remain subject to public interest considerations and existing obligations, such as land management plans; at the same time, it would ensure that potential buyers would fulfil the land management plan obligations necessary for their ownership of the land.

The public interest test in amendment 174 and as amended by the presumed limit in amendment 174A would provide that a proposed transfer would have no effect in a situation where

“(a) section 67G ... or

(b) a lotting decision under section 67N applies to the land”,

if ministers considered that the transfer would not be in the public interest.

I will continue before I take the intervention.

In doing so, ministers would have to consider matters to do with the buyer, as set out in subsection (2) of the new section that amendment 174 would insert, namely where the landlord

“is resident for tax purposes ... the size and location of any other land”

that they control, their “plans or proposals” for land management and their future plans for the use or sale of the land.

By having a public interest test that assesses whether the landholding and the proposed purchaser are working in the public interest, that forward-facing burden, including in relation to lotting, is placed on the transfer. Because lotting is defined as being in the public interest, amendment 174 would not violate a property owner’s rights. Rather, it would create what has been described as a fit and proper person test to ensure that, in managing, buying and selling land, the owners of Scotland’s land do so in the public interest.

I will take Douglas Lumsden’s intervention.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?