This is probably one of the most controversial sections of the bill. As I have mentioned, I have noticed a strange alliance between Turcan Connell solicitors and Andy Wightman when it comes to this section, as well as on other points. Don Macleod of Turcan Connell says that the bill is “junk law”, especially when it comes to the definition of large landholdings. If that is not clear, I do not know what is. Perhaps saying that it is ill conceived, badly drafted and impossible to explain is more parliamentary than using the word “mince”, which is what I have heard in other forums.

What constitutes a large landholding? No one really knows; I am not sure that the cabinet secretary knows. She has reduced large landholdings to a series of sizes.

It is impossible, sometimes, to define what makes up a large landholding. It might involve one holder. It might be a family holding that is held by either partner or held jointly in proportion. It could be made up of trusts with different management structures and different end goals. The bill is so incredibly complex that it will be a nightmare for legal professionals to act for a buyer or seller of landholdings of any size. What is clear, though, is that it will result in legal challenges. Good luck to the Government on that. It seems to like employing solicitors to defend its legislation and mistakes; however, I do not think that the Parliament should be passing such things.

Knowing that the Government will inevitably use its majority to get the bill through, and to prevent a plethora of legal challenges, I suggest amending the bill to increase the definition of large landholdings from 1,000 to 2,000 hectares. I have no doubt that that change would reduce the threat that the Government faces when it comes to legal challenge, and I believe that it should accept it.

Amendments 23, 46 and 177 would increase the definition of large landholdings—as I have said, from 1,000 to 2,000 hectares—for land management plans, the prohibition of transfers and lotting respectively.

Much of the complexity regarding large landholdings is due to the way in which “connected” persons are defined. Amendments 137 and 181 would provide a simpler and more practical way of ascertaining whether a holding involves such a connection. Amendment 137 would refine the contiguity of the land management plan so that the holdings would be considered contiguous if the land areas were managed by a single business when it comes to legal status, economic organisation, commercial management and operation. Amendment 136 is a technical amendment that is consequential to amendment 137.

Amendment 181 would refine the term “contiguous” in the same way as in amendment 137, but for the purposes of lotting, and amendment 180 is a technical amendment related to amendment 181. Those amendments seek to define the contiguity of holdings and connected persons—I cannot seem to get that word “contiguity” out; I will get it right at the end, I am sure—in the same way that the Scottish Government ascertains whether business should be treated as a single entity for public funding. In other words, a model already exists; it is in use and familiar to officials.

As for the other amendments in the group, amendment 1, in the name of Mr Eagle, which seeks to raise the threshold from 1,000 to 3,000 hectares, would simply take the threshold back to where it was at stage 1 before it was amended. As that might be too much for some members, my amendments 23, 46 and 177 put forward a perhaps more reasonable halfway house if they seek to reject Mr Eagle’s amendment.

Amendment 266, in the name of Mark Ruskell, obviously seeks to deal with a specific problem within Mr Ruskell’s constituency regarding a property adjacent to the Tay and is not relevant to the whole of Scotland. Therefore, it should not be in this legislation. I make the same comment with regard to his amendments 267, 268, 282, 283 and 287 to 289.

Amendments 6, 8 to 10 and 53 to 56, in the name of Mercedes Villalba, seek to increase the legal challenges that the Government faces by bringing more land into scope. That approach was indeed rejected at stage 2, and should therefore be rejected now, too.

Mercedes Villalba also wishes to remove the word “contiguous”. That has its own problems and, in fact, negates the point of having a management plan in the case of land that is separated, say, by sea and is therefore not linked as far as management is concerned. Ms Villalba’s other amendments 26, 27, 47 and 48 are, in my mind, disproportionate, unworkable and burdensome and should be rejected, too.

Some of the cabinet secretary’s amendments in this group are aimed at rectifying junk legislation that was produced at stage 1 and, as they add clarity, it is difficult not to vote for some of them. However, I am against amendments 141, 164 and 176, which relate to tidal ground and obviously present a completely different interpretation of land when it comes to single farm payments. How Governments can make such a proposal is beyond me. I am also against amendment 178.

On the cabinet secretary’s amendments 184, 194, 198 and 231, I think that it is far too late in the passage of this legislation for the Government to define what a “connected person” is. The fact that that is being done at stage 3 shows that the cabinet secretary has only just realised that there is a problem with this legislation, and I am not convinced that the amendments actually help to clarify the matter.

I believe that my amendments in this group do much more than the cabinet secretary’s, and I therefore ask members to vote for them.

For a farmer, a land management plan of 10 years will not mean anything. Land management plans for farmers tend to cover a much longer term than that. If someone invests in machinery and livestock, they do not invest for 10 years; they probably invest for 20 years. Does the member not believe that five years is a blink of an eye when it comes to management of land, livestock and landholdings, and that 10 years would be more reasonable?

I rise to speak against the business motion, which sets out the timings for the important stage 3 debate on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. Before I say why, I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that my family owns in the region of 202 hectares of land in Moray, that I rent about the same amount of land under a non-agricultural tenancy and that I have a tenancy for about 12 hectares under the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991.

I have been embedded in land reform since the Parliament was reconvened in 1999. I have seen the 2003 and 2016 land reform acts. As convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, I have followed and steered the current bill through stages 1 and 2—listening to witnesses, attending external meetings, visiting community groups and, ultimately, convening stage 2, which took 16 hours and 3 minutes.

I lodged no amendments at stage 2. I chose to listen to the evidence on the 507 amendments that were lodged. I weighed up the strengths and weaknesses of each amendment and then voted independently on them. After stage 2 had concluded, I considered and formulated my stage 3 amendments.

The Government has lodged 245 amendments over stages 2 and 3. One has to ask why. The flawed bill consists of 137 pages that are riddled with errors. It is clear that, when the bill was presented to the Parliament, it had not been fully considered.

Presiding Officer, you do not have to believe me. One of Scotland’s pre-eminent lawyers, Don Macleod, has said that the bill is “junk law” and is

“an appalling mess that deserves no place on the statute book”.

If members do not believe him, perhaps they will listen to one of our most pre-eminent land reformers, Andy Wightman, who has condemned the bill. He said:

“It would be irresponsible of Parliament to impose new, complex, legalistic and bureaucratic mechanisms on the people of Scotland that will not deliver the outcomes that ministers say that they will. That is just making bad law.”—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 3 December 2024; c 64.]

The bill is bad, “junk law” that will not deliver land reform or any more agricultural tenants.

On the issue of new tenancies, I believe that the bill will go a long way in killing them off. Who would enter a contract with someone if that contract could be changed unilaterally by somebody else?

However, it is not all bad news. I believe that many of the stage 3 amendments—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Presiding Officer, but I am finding it quite difficult to hear, given the noise to my right.

I believe that many of the stage 3 amendments would help to improve the bill. The problem is that we will not fully debate them. Why? The Parliament is limiting the speaking time for each speaker to five minutes in each group of amendments. That is formulaic nonsense and it is being done because it has always been done that way. That does not make it right. Repetition of a mistake must be a mistake in itself.

If my time is that brief, suffice it to say that I do not support any of them except for Douglas Lumsden’s amendments, which I find entirely sensible and reasonable.

My amendments in the group are to do with lifting the prohibition order. Amendment 43, if enacted, would add a general public interest ground. That would mean that ministers would have to lift the prohibition on the transfer of a large landholding if they deemed that it would not be in the public interest to continue to apply the prohibition.

In the bill as drafted, there is a fundamental flaw: the Government might want to buy landholdings and so would prohibit their sale on the basis that it is in its self-interest to do so. In my mind, frankly, that is not good practice.

Amendments 44 and 45 are consequential to amendment 43.

Amendments 129 and 261, in the name of Rhoda Grant, would place huge obligations on landowners, including breaking up farms, transferring their energy resources to communities, giving up land for housing and creating new crofts, which may be outside crofting areas. All those obligations would make it virtually impossible for landowners to function and run their businesses. That would have an adverse effect on their ability to gain finance to carry out the projects that they wish to action. The fact that those powers would then be devolved to the Scottish Government—to identify how they would be enforced in each management plan—would add an unhelpful and bureaucratic level of administration and complexity.

I find Ariane Burgess’s amendment 15—which would, apparently, mean that land could be sold only to someone who lives in Scotland—strange. I am sure that Ms Burgess knows that the large foreign investment in Scottish landholdings has been hugely beneficial to Scotland. For example, we could argue that Anders Povlsen of Wildland and Danish companies in the Highlands have contributed to building up sustainable communities and, in the case of the latter, ensuring that the local community’s school is kept open, despite the fact that the local council wanted to close it. Limiting the future sale of that land will limit the desirability of that investment, and Ariane Burgess probably knows that running large estates costs a huge amount of money—something that the Government does not have.

I am not sure that I will quite go with Fergus Ewing on that point. There is a question about the agreements that were made with the foreign owner to keep the aluminium smelter, which may come back to haunt the Government in the future.

Running, say, a 20,000-hectare estate will cost in the region of half a million pounds each year, and that comes from taxed income. Therefore, it is a true investment. I really do not like amendment 15.

Although I understand the aim of Mercedes Villalba’s amendment 76, it relies on the Government approving of the future management of land. In 40 years of land management, not everything that I have done regarding land management supported the Government’s objectives. For example, on climate change, the last thing that I would do is introduce beavers all over the countryside to eat the trees that we have spent years funding. I do now know why we now consider that beavers are better for trees than the deer that we spent years trying to kill.

The Government is in a position to make the decision, but I struggle to understand whether it would prepare guidance in the short term. My concern is that we could be waiting another 10 years and that, by then, it will be time for another land reform bill, because the other ones will be considered irrelevant.

I will leave my comments there, Presiding Officer, so that I do not incur your wrath at this stage, as I may do later.

Thank you, convener. I realise the pressure that is on the committee as we come to the end of the parliamentary session. I would like to go back to a couple of comments that were made when the petition last came before the committee on 5 February. At that time, Ash Regan said that she believes that public bodies are “defensive” and Fergus Ewing said that he profoundly believed that the current system is “inherently flawed”. That remains my position, and I think that that is the position of the petitioners.

Since I came to the committee on 5 February, more cases have come to light in the Highlands, some of which are deeply concerning. Pupils are being dragged out of classrooms by their feet and teachers are being suspended but no evidence has been given as to why they have been suspended. As far as their colleagues are concerned, it remains the case that they have done nothing wrong when the parents and the pupils know that they have done something wrong. That is why we need, more than anything else, a whistleblowing officer to look at issues and to address them.

If we are going to get it right for every child—which we must do—we need to ensure that children are heard and that, when evidence is provided on mistreatment, especially in schools, it is made available when the person is suspended. At the moment, too many teachers across Scotland are getting away with things because the authorities are hiding behind GDPR regulations that say that they cannot disclose whether a person has been suspended.

I think that that situation will go on for ever, until we get a whistleblowing officer, which is why I am keen to ensure that the petition continues. As I said, I know that time is an issue for the committee, but I think that your committee is the only one in Parliament that can keep open petitions into the next session. Considering that the children of Scotland are affected, I urge the committee to consider keeping it open, because we have not got things right at the moment. I will leave it at that, because I could get emotional over this, as I think that we are letting our children down.

I want to make it clear at the outset that, although I am a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee—I am its convener—I speak in the debate as an individual. In case anyone asks me questions on farming, which I am delighted to talk about, I also declare that I have an interest in a farm in Moray.

We are in a difficult position. Budgets have been produced that the committee and the Parliament have had to consider. The problem is that they are not like any other budget that I, as an individual, have ever looked at in my entire career. We are told that we are to achieve targets but not how we will achieve them, the route to achieving them or the costs. That causes me problems.

If the Parliament is to have a climate change plan, the most important thing is that we move forward in a credible way and take the people of Scotland with us. If we do not do that and families do not know what it will cost them and how much they will have to invest in it, when they come to the stage at which it gets tougher, as Patrick Harvie suggested—as we get closer to the targets—they will start to balk at the route that they are taking. We cannot afford that.

I will concentrate my speech on the fact that we are getting very close to the back end of this parliamentary session. What concerns me is that we have delayed the process because of the way that it has been changed, and we are still at the stage of approving or disapproving the carbon budgets, but a climate change plan will not be laid in front of the Parliament before the end of October or early November. The cabinet secretary has said that she aims to produce it at that point. That is only an aim. I would much rather know that she will produce it, so that it can be discussed.

We will then go through a process of 12 weeks of public consultation and work by parliamentary committees. There will probably then be a month in which to summarise those views. For those who can do the maths—I am sure that all members can—that takes us to March, giving us about 27 days in March, not all of which are sitting days, to go through the climate change plan. Once that process has finished, the Government will have 90 days in which to lay its climate change plan before the Parliament. If it chooses not to lay the final climate change plan after the consultation, the Parliament will be in a situation in which the plan does not come to fruition.

I seek some certainty from the cabinet secretary that she will do more than just aim to lay the draft climate change plan by the end of October and that she will do it by the end of October. If she cannot do that, she should give the Parliament an assurance that it will be done before 7 November, so that we will have time to get through the process, do the right thing and consider the climate change plan. I hope that, when the cabinet secretary gets a chance to speak, unless somebody else sums up, she will clarify whether the Government is going to do that rather than just say that it aims to do it.

There are nearly 1,500 war graves across the Highlands, spread over 192 graveyards, with veterans of the first and second world wars buried in them. Will the minister undertake to speak to his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that proper guidance is issued to local authorities regarding the upkeep of those graves? During my travels in the past 10 years, I have found too many war graves to be in very poor condition. In some cases, the gravestones are collapsing and have not been maintained to a standard that allows people to read the inscriptions on them.