Chamber and committees

I, too, offer my condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Christina McKelvie at this tragic time.

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to prevent instances of water scarcity in 2025. (S6F-03968)

The minister will be aware of the complex regulatory landscape offshore, with multiple regulators and landlords being responsible for overseeing wind, oil and gas, fishing and marine protection, all of which leads to congestion and overlap. I would be interested to hear what consideration the minister or the Government has given to the creation of an umbrella regulatory body to align that space and whether the Government believes that that would fall within the Scottish Government’s purview or whether that would be for the UK Government or cross-Government working. I appreciate that he might not have the answers today, but if he could write to me, that would be appreciated.

I thank the First Minister for that response. Any commitment from the Scottish Government to improve the resilience of our water system is welcome.

Upgrading our water infrastructure will be crucial to preventing water scarcity, flash flooding and wildfires. However, according to the outgoing chief executive of Scottish Water, the company is investing only 40 per cent of what is required to upgrade our water infrastructure, while, at the same time, we are seeing it becoming increasingly reliant on outsourcing services, maintenance and upgrades to private interests.

Does the First Minister agree that the people of Scotland deserve public services that reinvest profits in-house, rather than outsourcing and privatising public goods by the back door? Does he support that principle?

Will the member take an intervention?

Is it fair to say that those who opposed part 1 tended to be representatives of those who own large amounts of land in Scotland?

I do. It is important that urban land is looked at, and it is unfortunate that it has not been up until now.

It does not have to be this way. If legislated for correctly, land reform can be a vehicle for empowering communities across Scotland. That will mean amending the land transfer test so that it is properly redefined as a public interest test, to ensure that land transfers benefit the public—us, the people of Scotland. It will also mean introducing a presumed limit of no more than 500 hectares on the aggregate amount of land that any person can own unless that public interest test can be met.

Those are not new or fringe ideas—they are popular and well-supported ideas, and I have the receipts to prove it. They are the very proposals that I consulted on for my proposed land ownership and public interest (Scotland) bill, which received majority support from respondents. The consultation on those proposals received greater participation than the Scottish Government’s consultation.

Land is a public good, and land reform is a question of who owns that public good. With the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, we have an opportunity to right a centuries-old wrong and finally bring land back to the people—for the many, not the few.

Will the member give way?

On the point about scale, does the member really believe that there should be nothing—no questions asked and no intervention—and that anyone could own as much land as their bank balance would allow?

Will the member give way?

Land is a public good, and land reform is a question of who owns that public good—whether it belongs to the people who live on and work it, or whether it remains concentrated in the hands of those who have come to own it through chance and happenstance.

The question of who owns Scotland is at the heart of today’s debate, and it should and could have been at the heart of the Scottish Government’s Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, but, in its current form, the bill will simply not address the concentration of land ownership or challenge the interests that perpetuate it. It does not include a presumption against a single individual owning all of Scotland’s land. It does not set a realistic threshold for a public interest test to be applied on the sale or transfer of land. It does not even include a public interest test. Therefore, I and my colleagues will lodge amendments to strengthen the bill so that we can finally begin to address the centuries-old concentration of Scotland’s land in the hands of so few.

Today in Scotland, our land remains in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy individuals, estates and organisations. Recent research shows that 421 landowners now own half the privately owned rural land in Scotland, which means that just 0.025 per cent of Scotland’s population own 67 per cent of Scotland’s total rural land. I repeat that: just 0.025 per cent of our entire population own 67 per cent of our rural land.

In its evidence to the committee, the Crofting Commission highlighted how Scotland’s highly concentrated pattern of private land ownership is “economically dangerous”, as it creates localised monopolies. Having ownership in the hands of so few severely limits access to affordable homes, stifles job creation and harms the environment. The owning and controlling of large landholdings by wealthy private individuals does not meet the public interest. We are talking about a monopoly of a resource that no one created and no one produced—it was freely created, yet it is owned and controlled by a handful of individuals for the extraction of private profit.

So, ownership matters, scale matters and concentration of that ownership matters. We cannot rebuild and empower rural communities unless we break that monopoly, but the bill as introduced does not include a presumption against a single individual owning as much land as they can afford. It does not set a realistic threshold for a public interest test to be applied on the sale and transfer of land. In addition, as I have said, it does not even include a public interest test.

Just this week, as we have heard, the Clan Donald Lands Trust on Skye suddenly announced its intention to sell all its land and properties. That is a glaring example of why the bill needs to be substantially strengthened to work in the public interest. The trust manages 20,000 acres of land, which is used for agriculture, crofting, deer and woodland management, wild fisheries and renewables. No advance notice was given to the community, and no public interest test will be applied. The Scottish Land Commission is currently powerless to do anything about it, and it will continue to be powerless unless the bill is drastically amended.