Chamber and committees

Will the member take a quick intervention?

Good morning, convener. I note my entry in the register of members’ interests as a small farmer in Buckie.

Amendment 14 and its consequential amendments seek to remove the land and communities commissioner from the bill; instead, any new duties and responsibilities are to be carried out by staff who are employed by the Scottish Land Commission.

I do not support the creation of a new commissioner, due to the associated costs. The financial memorandum sets out that, over six years, the commissioner alone is expected to cost more than £130,000, and staffing costs are expected to be £420,000 annually. I believe that the commissioner landscape in Scotland has become bloated over the past decade.

In its response to the financial memorandum, the Finance and Public Administration Committee warned:

“The Scottish Land Commission’s submission emphasises the statement, in the FM, that the Commission will require ongoing resource funding to cover the costs for the new Land and Communities Commissioner and additional staffing costs. The FM proposes that these costs would be partially met through existing funding to the Commission by reducing their current activities, such as their policy work, while it also acknowledges that additional funding will be required in order to fully fund these new functions. In their submission, the Commission explains that meeting part of the additional costs through their existing budget will mean cutting delivery of policy research and advice, with implications for existing functions. It further states that the staffing assumptions in the FM represent a minimum requirement and the Commission expects additional costs in relation to IT and professional advice”.

I therefore do not support the creation of a new commissioner. I believe that it would be more efficient for any new duties and responsibilities to be carried out by the staff who are employed by the commission.

My amendment 463 seeks to add “agriculture” and “traditional land management” to the required expertise that the person who is appointed as the new commissioner should have.

My amendment 177 relates to our package of amendments that seek to delete the role of a new commissioner.

My amendment 179 seeks to restrict the powers that are proposed in new section 38B of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016. That section allows for the commissioner to authorise certain others, including a committee, an employee of the commission and any other person, to carry out the commissioner’s functions. Amendment 179 would delete “any other person” because I believe that provision to be too wide.

My amendment 180 seeks to delete the entirety of section 6. For reasons that I have already argued, I do not support the inclusion of a new commissioner.

I turn to other amendments in the group. I am interested in hearing the policy intent behind Ariane Burgess MSP’s amendment 464, which seeks to add reference to

“problems in the operation of natural capital markets”.

Also, I am content to support Michael Matheson’s amendment 178.

I move amendment 14.

Can you give me a case study? What is a practical example on the ground of what might happen on an estate or a lowland setting?

Just out of interest, I wonder whether you have given any thought to asking your officials to work on the code of practice now, so that we can have a draft before stage 3 and scrutinise it before the end of the bill proceedings. It is quite an important document.

I fully accept that point, but, although that gives flexibility to Government and public bodies to respond, the problem for practitioners on the ground is that they will then be uncertain about what could happen in any given situation. There is no way you can ever set everything out in a bill, but that takes us back to the point about relationships. Stakeholders and businesses must be clear about what NatureScot’s intentions might be. Does that make sense?

Excellent—that was going to be my follow-up question. I am not necessarily expecting you to be able to give a comment on that right now, because the bill was only introduced on Monday, but I presumed that you might have had conversations in the background. The point is that we have been hearing that some public bodies need a bit more detail about what exactly you are looking for them to do. That could be in the bill. You said that you would take the point away. Will you give a commitment to write to the committee to let us know what your thoughts are on that, so that we can understand your position?

Is this the right time for me to ask my question? [Laughter.]

If that is the case, would you give consideration to an amendment at stage 2 that would allow for a de-escalation to a control agreement from a control scheme if the land was sold to a new owner who—taking the goodwill approach that we have talked about this morning—wanted to work with NatureScot?

There is no procedure for that in the bill, is there? However, you could introduce something that says that, after a certain amount of time—

Your advice is that people should make sure that they are carrying out deer management, so that they will not be selling their estate with a control scheme in place.