Chamber and committees

Elspeth, does your organisation have a view on that?

We have talked about the need for flexibility in responding to opportunities and the need to look at processing. What are your thoughts on the UK Government’s announcement of the £360 million fishing and coastal growth fund? Where should that fund be prioritised, and what will the outcome be?

Do you think that we could see an increase in the Scottish fleet or increased investment in processing? What discussions have you had about that already, and what do you anticipate or hope will come out of the fund?

Oh—sorry. Go ahead, Adam.

I will not move amendments 6 to 9, and I will not move amendments 147A and 147B, which were debated with earlier groups.

I pass on apologies from Ariane Burgess, who is convening this morning’s meeting of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee.

Amendment 468 seeks to extend the timeline for the requirement for the Scottish Land Commission to produce its strategic plan from every three years to every 10 years. The reason for that change is practical. The strategic plan covers the commissioners’ objectives and priorities for the plan period. Undertaking that work every three years constrains their ability to plan for the longer term and adds a heavy administrative burden on staff every three years.

Given that changes in land ownership and use occur gradually and that that will continue to be the case under the bill, a requirement for the commissioners to produce a plan every 10 years would free up more of their time and allow them to take a longer-term approach to their work. Following conversations with the Scottish Land Commission, Ariane Burgess feels that the proposed change would better match the long-term view that the commission takes of the pattern of Scotland’s land ownership and use.

Amendment 367 would require ministers to report annually on the operation of part 1 of the bill, including the production of land management plans and the use of the transfer test and lotting powers. The report would also cover the issuing of any fines by the land and communities commissioner and registrations of community interest in large landholdings.

We believe that it is necessary to give Parliament a yearly snapshot of what is happening in Scotland’s land market as a way of scrutinising the effectiveness of the legislation.

I acknowledge that the amendment covers actions that are taken directly by the Scottish ministers, such as the use of the transfer test and lotting decisions, and actions that are taken by the commissioner. However, we believe that the required information is sufficiently high level that collating it for an annual report would not place a burden on ministers or the commissioner.

Monica Lennon’s amendment 503 seeks to do something similar, and the Greens broadly support the intention behind that amendment. We will listen carefully to the cabinet secretary’s comments on amendment 367.

I turn to the other amendments in the group. We are happy to support Bob Doris’s amendment 182. We do not agree with Martin Whitfield’s amendments in the group, as they seem to create grounds for part 1 of the act to be repealed before the new powers have had the chance to bed in. We will be interested to hear his comments on that later.

Similarly, we do not agree with the addition of a sunset clause that would apply 10 years after royal assent, which is proposed in Martin Whitfield’s amendment 386. Such a provision does not exist in other legislation, such as the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which granted powers to ministers on a range of issues, such as energy efficiency and recycling schemes, although those schemes were not taken forward until several years down the line. We will listen to Mr Whitfield’s comments on his amendments.

I accept the cabinet secretary’s comments about the work on houses being progressed in other ways, but I reiterate the point that that was a recommendation from the Scottish Land Commission. Similar processes are under way in England and Ireland, and we will judge any future progress against that.

To go back to the convener’s point about relative costs, any comparison that looked at how similar processes have worked elsewhere would certainly answer that question.

I will not press amendment 469, but I will talk about Monica Lennon’s amendments, because it feels as if that area of land reform continually gets dropped. Whenever a land reform bill comes forward, people say that considering commonties and common land is too difficult. I recognise that that is probably because a lot of the status of land has been eroded over time. Private landowners may have expanded a garden or private developers may have managed to take over an area—particularly an area of common good land—and develop it without there being clarity as to its legal status. I came across that issue when I was a councillor in Dunblane, and we did a bit of work with Andy Wightman to work out where the common land was. I know that the issue goes way back, probably to the previous Scottish Parliament in 1695.

Those areas of land are held for communities, so we need to give the issue a bit of care and attention. It feels as if another land reform bill has come and gone and, because the work has not been done, there is nothing that we can do legally now, and the problem is just going to sit there. It needs a bit of care and attention in the future.

I will speak to my amendments in the group and to Ariane Burgess’s amendment 470 on Scotland’s land information service—ScotLIS.

The register of persons holding a controlled interest in land was established in 2021. The committee spent a long time looking at the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 (Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land) Regulations 2021, which was a super-affirmative instrument, working out whether the register itself and the penalties and provisions associated with it would be effective. The instrument could not be amended, but we reached a point at which we approved it, even though we had some questions and concerns about how effective it would be.

Since the register came into being, landowners have been required to publicly register their ownership and controlled interests relating to their land. At the time, the Parliament and the Government recognised that there was a lack of transparency in relation to who owned Scotland’s land and who controlled it. Currently, landowners who do not provide their details for inclusion in that public register are committing a criminal offence. However, there have been cases in my region that constituents have brought to my attention in which Police Scotland has chosen not to investigate people who were thought to be flouting the law in that respect because of a lack of capacity or expertise in what is quite a technical area of law.

If the register is to be enabled to work, it needs to be revised. We took a bit of evidence on the subject at stage 1. I have lodged amendments 375 and 376 as probing amendments that present two options for how the register could be reformed to ensure greater compliance.

Amendment 375 would change the current position, whereby someone who does not comply with the registration requirements receives a £5,000 fine, to one in which they would receive an annual recurring fine until they complied. That would be one way of tackling the issue within the provision of the existing regulations. Of course, many landowners would view the payment of such fines as the cost of carrying on with business as usual, so the imposition of such fines would have to be accompanied by a strong commitment on the part of the Scottish ministers and Police Scotland to tackle the problems that are hindering enforcement of the current regulations.

Amendment 376 offers a slightly different and perhaps more complex approach that would provide a quicker way of addressing the problem and dealing with enforcement. It would make failure to register ownership a civil rather than a criminal offence and would give the land and communities commissioner the ability to issue a £40,000 annual fine. Although that does not have the heft of a criminal conviction, it is a stronger up-front financial penalty, and it perhaps aligns more with the penalties and provisions in the bill as they relate to environmental management plans and community engagement. We have discussed, for example, what an appropriate level of fine might be. It is a bit odd that there is no similar penalty in respect of the register for persons holding a controlled interest in land, and I think that that is causing problems. I will listen to the cabinet secretary’s comments and her reflections on what steps ministers can take to strengthen enforcement of the register.

Ariane Burgess’s amendment 470 seeks to expand Scotland’s land information service, or ScotLIS. In 2015, following previous land reform legislation, John Swinney committed to bringing forward a comprehensive, publicly available mapping tool to make available a range of information about how Scotland’s land is owned and used. The ScotLIS service that is available on the Registers of Scotland website makes available information on ownership and sale that is held by the keeper. Although that is important, it falls short of the comprehensive information service that was envisaged in 2015.

Knowing how land is used and what activities are being supported by public subsidies is important for giving us all a fuller understanding of Scotland’s land use and its contribution to the economy and to achieving net zero and other public objectives. Amendment 470 would require that, within two years of the bill receiving royal assent, the current ScotLIS service be expanded to include information such as biodiversity status, active travel routes, flood records, the location of public services and land held under agricultural tenancies. Those categories were recommended by the Government’s digital land and property information service task force, which reported to ministers in 2015.

Making such information publicly accessible in a single database would add greater accuracy to our view of Scotland’s land use and ownership. We just discussed the implementation of carbon land tax, and, before anything like that could be brought in, we would need to have a much more comprehensive view of landholdings. An expanded ScotLIS would be the first step to implementing such a tax.

I note the interest of Bob Doris and a number of members in the issue. At the end of the day, the 2024 act is a piece of legislation that is not functioning in the way that it should. I am less interested in the area in which grouse can be killed and more interested in the area in which raptors are being illegally persecuted and killed. If the primary intention of the licensing regime is to drive down levels of raptor persecution to ensure that land managers are sticking to the law, it is clearly not functioning at this point.

My point is about when we can fix that, if this is not the appropriate bill in which to do so. I do not want to get to a point with the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill where a similar amendment is raised and it is seen as not quite right for that bill either. There is a need to fix this right now. The commitment that the cabinet secretary has made to look at this again is important, but I will withdraw the amendment only on the clear understanding that a fix will be found for this and that it will be introduced into the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill by the Government, or I will lodge an amendment myself.

I will not be pressing it.