Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Official Report 969KB pdf

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Land Ownership Information

The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S5M-16015, in the name of Andy Wightman, on who owns Scotland. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament believes that a modern, democratic society requires open and transparent information on the ownership, use and value of land; commends the report published by Community Land Scotland (Towards Land Ownership Transparency); notes the ambition to create a Scottish Land Information System (SCOTLIS) to provide comprehensive information about land and property; understands that the target to register all land owned by Scotland’s public bodies by 2019 is unlikely to be achieved; regrets that it remains difficult, time-consuming and expensive for citizens in Lothian and across Scotland to obtain land information, and notes the view that information about the ownership, use and value of land should be made freely available to the people of Scotland.

17:08  

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, particularly to my on-going administration of the Who Owns Scotland website.

I am pleased to open the debate, and I thank all members who signed the motion and who will speak this afternoon. The debate is intended to highlight the need for a wide range of information—not just information on the ownership of land—to be more easily and freely available. It is something of a contradiction that Scotland has the oldest national public register of land—the 1617 register of sasines—and yet, today, Scotland has a system of land registration and information that is poor by international standards, and one in which it is next to impossible to obtain critical information easily and quickly.

In 2018, Transparency International published a framework for assessing the transparency of land ownership information, and Scotland was one of the case studies. The authors of Community Land Scotland’s report, “Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland”, concluded:

“There is currently a gap between the desire for a ‘publicly accessible’ land registry and the reality. Access for citizens to anything other than the most basic information is fragmented, expensive and complicated.”

I emphasise, at the outset, that the land information system involves much more than just information on ownership. Of course, it includes information on ownership and associated legal entities, but it also includes valuation data, information on non-domestic rates and council tax, planning permissions, environmental and heritage designations, energy performance certificate ratings, information on flood risks and contaminated land, utilities data, coastal and marine data—the list goes on.

In Scotland today, all that information is available in theory, but it is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to obtain. For example, a constituent of mine was concerned about short-term lets in her tenement in Edinburgh. There were five in all, and she wanted to know who owned them, whether the owners had planning consent and whether they were paying their local taxes. Such a task should be straightforward with a modern land information system. Not only must she look in three different places, however, but the ownership information alone would have cost her £150 plus VAT—money that she did not have.

It is worth noting that we were far better informed historically. In 1872, the Government conducted a survey and published a full return of the owners of lands and heritages. I have a copy here if anyone is interested in perusing it. It is an odd state of affairs that it is easier to find out the ownership, value and use of land in 1915 than it is to find out that information on land in 2018. The Finance Act 1910, Lloyd George’s famous people’s budget, proposed a levy on the value of land. In order to establish a baseline, surveyors mapped out in intricate detail the ownership, occupation, value and use of virtually all of Great Britain and the whole of the island of Ireland, covering 99.7 per cent of the land area of Scotland. Nothing comparable has been produced since.

Countries such as Singapore, states in the United States, and European countries such as Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Estonia are well ahead of us. Indeed, in a ranking of countries by the ease of registering property, for example, the World Bank ranks the United Kingdom as number 42 in the world. Above us are Rwanda, Belarus, Slovakia, Latvia, Finland and Kosovo. One of the best examples of information is the cadastral service of the US state of Montana. Someone can go online—members can do it now, if they fancy—from a computer or smart phone in Edinburgh and examine a wide range of information relating to every parcel of land in Montana. Members could even find out how many bathrooms folk have and the type of heating systems that they use.

England and Wales are making greater progress. For example, with the online land registry of England and Wales, a person can enter a postcode, pay a fee of £6 and download the information. In Scotland, it will cost £30 and cannot be done online by the user. More widely, the UK geospatial commission has been set up and is running with a mission to make geospatial data available free and without restriction.

My motion notes another issue of relevance to the debate. In 2014, following the publication of the final report of the land reform review group, the Government committed to complete the land register by 2024 and to have all public land registered by 2019. As revealed in correspondence with the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee towards the end of last year, however, the public land target will not be achieved. The City of Edinburgh Council said that it

“has neither the resources nor the budget to accomplish the task in the envisaged timescale”.

Stirling Council said that it would not complete it and Highland Council said that it would cost them £8.5 million to do so. All of that begs the question of who is accountable for the policy. In discussions with the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee in January, the keeper of the registers of Scotland claimed that she is doing all that she can. Local authorities in particular cannot afford to provide the information, and they appear never to have been consulted about the target in the first place.

Regardless of how complete the land register is—and latest data shows that 66 per cent of the 2 million units of property are on it, representing 33 per cent of the land area—it remains impossible easily and quickly to identify and secure access to this and a wide range of other information.

All of that looked as if it might change in 2015. Following a report in July 2015, John Swinney announced in October 2015 the establishment of the Scottish land information system, an online portal that would enable

“citizens, communities, professionals and business to access comprehensive information about any piece of land or property in Scotland.”

ScotLIS was delivered in November 2017, but it did not and does not deliver on the commitment made by the Scottish ministers in 2015. Indeed, it is next to useless. Members can see for themselves online. Most particularly, it is not comprehensive—it includes only some of the information held by the Registers of Scotland, and the user has to pay for it. The public receives a much inferior offering than do business users, who not only enjoy easier and better access but are charged 10 per cent of the fees that the public are.

Like the completion target, Government policy is not being delivered. I would welcome the minister’s views on why that is the case and who is responsible. From what I can tell, governance is the key failing. The system should never have been placed under the control of Registers of Scotland. Such an ambitious project requires a broad governance structure that includes the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, public agencies such as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage, the voluntary and community sectors, valuation boards and others. Most importantly, it requires leadership by Government, a broad governing delivery board, an agreed designed delivery plan and timetable, and accountability for its delivery, and it requires to be developed to match the best in the world.

None of that is difficult, but for far too long, the people of Scotland have been unable to find out information about who owns the country and about the value and use of land and property. In my view, citizens have the right to openness and transparency with regard to information that is held by public authorities about land. It is their right and it is the responsibility of this Parliament and Scottish ministers to ensure that its stated policy goals are delivered on time and in full. In particular, we need a new work programme and a governance framework to deliver the ambitions of the Scottish land information system as a matter of urgency.

17:15  

I thank Andy Wightman for bringing his well-documented specialism to the chamber, and, indeed, for all his work over the years to bring the issues of the lack of transparency around land ownership into a mainstream discussion—a discussion that fuelled a lot of debate in the independence campaign when we, more than at any other time, started to compare our country to other northern European countries where people’s ownership of those lands is seen more as a right, rather than a privilege that is reserved to a wealthy few.

The availability of accessible and free information on who owns and controls every piece of Scotland is also a right, and one of my first duties as convener of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee was to oversee the report that Andy Wightman has mentioned, on how the register of persons with a controlling interest in land will work. The creation of that register will go a long way towards addressing issues of transparency and fulfilling the right of ordinary Scots to get information on who owns and controls the land around them.

The issues that are raised in Mr Wightman’s motion about ease of access to information were in the forefront of our minds as we questioned stakeholders and the keeper of the registers of Scotland. The resource should make it easy to locate and contact anyone with a controlling interest in a piece of land, particularly as one of the issues has been that people have been fronting up for those who really have the controlling interest; they will no longer be able to hide behind any front person who cannot actually answer questions.

Information should be easy to locate, and my understanding of the evidence that the keeper gave us is that the process is under way to make the website to the standard that Mr Wightman has said that it should have. I thought that making the website was under way, from her evidence.

There was debate about the penalties that should be in place for the people who do not put their information on that resource. The committee was upfront in recommending that the penalty should not look like a cost for people to hide what they own; the penalty should be meaningful.

Mr Wightman brought up the issue of having every piece of information in one place. The keeper of the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land said that users would be signposted to other registers without duplicating other publicly available information, a need for double reporting or the register becoming too unwieldy a resource. We do not want any loopholes or any ways to open up that would mean that those who are responsible for land can hide information. We questioned the keeper directly on the user friendliness of the website interface that would make access to all the registers intuitive, straightforward and, crucially, without cost, and we made a recommendation about that in our report.

The keeper said in her evidence:

“It almost does not matter that the information is kept in separate registers; what matters is how we allow people to bring together and aggregate the information when they view it. Under our proposal for introducing the register, ScotLIS—Scotland’s land information service—will, for example, allow someone to look at a piece of land and then look through to see whether a controlled interest is registered for that land. It will be seamless for the person who is looking; they will not know that the information about the controlled interest is held in a separate database. They will be able to see all the information that has been drawn together, so that is a much more elegant solution.”—[Official Report, Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, 2 October 2018; c 2.]

It is my understanding that that work is on-going.

Before I finish, I want to raise the problem of long-term unused rural buildings that are left to rot. The land registry will assist communities and individuals to put their finger on the ownership of such properties, although some thought has to be given to how long we allow empty rural estate or farm properties to stand vacant and to what condition we allow them to deteriorate. That is an environmental issue, but it is also a social justice issue, particularly where there is a lack of affordable housing in rural areas and areas that struggle to keep their young people, such as the minister’s constituency.

I commend the work done by the Scottish Government through the empty homes partnership, which has brought more than 700 empty homes back into use. However, I agree with the empty homes partnership’s call for a compulsory sale order power for vacant and derelict land and buildings.

I thank Andy Wightman once again.

17:20  

I am pleased that Andy Wightman has brought this important subject to the chamber this evening and given me the opportunity to set out my thoughts on it. As a member of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, I had the chance to take part in evidence sessions regarding the register of persons owning land across Scotland and the register’s objective of increasing public transparency in relation to individuals who have control over decision making in relation to land.

My Scottish Conservative colleagues and I largely share the sentiments in the motion, particularly in relation to transparency. However, I have concerns about how the information that we gather will be resilient and future proof.

At one of the evidence sessions in the committee last year, I raised my concerns about whether snail mail was the best method for people to contact owners via the register. The register should be flexible enough to adapt to the fast-paced technological times that we live in. Given that electronic signatures and personal identification and authentication is becoming as commonplace as contactless payments, that should have been considered. During one evidence session, I pointed out that, more often than not, email is now the default way for people to communicate. I felt that an email address could have been included alongside a geographical address, which could also have helped to speed up the process of registration.

As the motion points out, the Government’s target

“to register all land owned by Scotland’s public bodies by 2019 is unlikely to be achieved”.

Indeed, only a few days after that evidence session, it emerged from the new keeper of the registers of Scotland that there was a backlog of about 40,000 registration applications. Many applications are taking two years or longer, which, as acknowledged by the new keeper, is simply unacceptable. Fifty-six per cent of registrations had not met the target process time—we would all acknowledge that that must improve. Local authorities are way behind schedule, and the Government must use the carrot-and-stick approach to get back to somewhere near the target.

A balance must be struck, though, between ensuring that the process works in a suitable timescale, and ensuring that the data is robust and secure. Indeed, ensuring an adequate level of data security and privacy remains critical.

There is also concern surrounding the identification of individuals and their names and addresses. For example, south of the border, farmers whose information has been published have been the target of protestors, resulting in protests at farm gates and individuals’ houses. In some instances, that has caused serious disturbances and damage to property and livestock. That was as a result of farmers’ full details being published on the website of the Food Standards Agency in England. Thankfully, there are no plans to do that up here.

I raised the issue of privacy in committee, pointing out that although the registered landowner should provide a response or information to any query within an appropriate timescale, that could be provided through the address of an agent or a lawyer’s office. If personal address details were made public, it would lead to real difficulties. I look to the Scottish Government to let us know what protective measures will be put in place to ensure that farmers, or indeed any landowner, will be protected from the possibility of intimidation or threats associated with the land that they own or what they do with that land.

As technology advances, there will be a greater and greater demand by our constituents for information to be represented simply, quickly and transparently. The land registry is no different. It should not be difficult or costly to access that data. This is all about making the process open and easy for constituents to access.

I disagree with the part of the motion that suggests that there should be information about the value of land, because land value is dictated by the market and can change daily.

The land registry is a system that must do what it was set out to do, while ensuring that the rights of landowners are sufficiently protected. I welcome the debate and hope that the system is fit for purpose.

17:25  

I, too, congratulate Andy Wightman on securing the debate. I apologise to members, as I am unable to stay for the whole of it.

Land is an asset and an economic driver. Land reform was demanded because the beneficial owner of land was too often a dead hand over communities. Their action—or lack of action—stopped community development and forced people off the land. It is very difficult to develop the local economy if people cannot work with the landowner. If the landowner cannot be traced, that becomes impossible.

In the Highlands and Islands, where crofting tenure is common, being able to deal with the landowner is imperative. If a person wants to develop their croft, diversify their business or install renewable energy, they need the landlord’s permission. If they do not know who the owner is and their agent will not work with them, any development that they wish to undertake will be blocked. They cannot appeal to the landowner, because they will have no knowledge of who the landowner is or where they are based. Such a landowner is a faceless somebody who holds people’s future in their hands, but people cannot communicate with them.

If owners prove to be a dead hand over the land, the land needs to be removed from them and made a driver for economic growth and repopulation. Until we have the ability to do that, the very least that we need to know is who the landowner is, and we need to hold them to account.

Community Land Scotland’s report “Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland” reminds us that part 3 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 deals with the ownership of land. The report covers many aspects of ownership and access to information, and I recommend reading it. However, I will focus on identifying beneficial owners, because I have tried with my constituents to trace landowners and have found that impossible. That has to change. Landowners need to be identifiable.

The Scottish Government has yet to publish the regulations on the registering of controlling interests. However, in Community Land Scotland’s opinion, those regulations are unlikely to change the transparency of land ownership in Scotland. That is incredibly disappointing. It seems very odd and wrong that I can walk on a crofter’s land and be entitled to view a publicly available and free-to-access register that tells me who that crofter is while the ownership of the land on which the crofter has their tenancy may remain secret. What is good enough for the crofter should be good enough for the landowner.

One of the reasons for that view is that overseas entities will not be required to disclose beneficial ownership, which will remain secret unless there is a way of tracing it in their country of origin. That, in itself, could encourage landowners to set up offshore companies to avoid traceability. We see estate agents that are selling land emphasising its use as a tax avoidance measure. If that is the motivation of a buyer or an owner, they would also consider setting up a business in a tax haven.

Too many overseas owners cannot be traced. We need laws and regulations that will make it impossible for a beneficial owner to hide. With the ownership of land comes responsibility for the communities that live on that land. How can a landowner be held responsible if they cannot be traced?

The Highland clearances brutally removed people from the land that they called home and replaced them with sheep. A lot of history and culture was lost. Sadly, even today, the effects of that are felt in our empty glens. We need to stop those practices happening again. A lack of transparency on who owns Scotland is allowing that to happen, and that needs to change.

17:29  

I, too, thank my colleague Andy Wightman for bringing the debate to the chamber. The only surprise is that it took him so long. I also take the opportunity—as I do whenever I can—to thank my predecessor, Rob Gibson, for all his tireless work on land reform and registration. I know that he and Andy Wightman have often worked together on the subject—sometimes even successfully.

Scotland has one of the most unequal patterns of land ownership in Europe. We need only read Andy Wightman’s book “The Poor Had No Lawyers” to really understand how land ownership in Scotland works. I particularly recommend the chapter in which he forensically scrutinises the ownership of the Cuillin when it went up for sale in 2000.

As soon as land or a building changes hands, it is required to be registered. The property registers, of which there are 20 public registers, are maintained by the keeper of the registers and are supported by staff at Registers of Scotland.

What about land that does not change hands? As Andy Wightman’s motion points out, there are targets for registering land—the dates are 2019 for public land and 2024 for land that is in private ownership. I recently asked the Scottish Government how much of the land register has been completed. The minister told me that,

“as at 31 Jan 2019 there are 1,808,661 titles on the Land Register representing 66.7% of the total. The land mass this represents is”

only

“33.8% of Scotland’s circa 8m hectares.”—[Written Answers, 19 February 2019; S5W-21336.]

We all agree that land ownership in Scotland needs to be transparent. That requires time, funds and political will. We have the first and the third aspects, but the second—the funds—is limited. As Andy Wightman said, the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee recently wrote to local authorities, asking whether they were confident of hitting the 2019 target. City of Edinburgh Council said:

“It is not likely”.

Stirling Council said:

“the Council will not complete the registration ... by 2019.”

Aberdeen City Council said that it would not be able to complete registration because

“We have no resources available”.

Work must be done to help local authorities to complete registration. The keeper of the registers has said:

“We are working as hard as we can to meet that target”

but

“The completion of the ... register requires lots of organisations to submit information to us ... it is helpful ... that ministers set out that aspiration”.—[Official Report, Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, 29 January 2019; c 5.]

Comprehensive and multilayered land registers can take decades to complete. Spain and Switzerland have systems that are among the best in the world. The cadastral system in Switzerland began in the early 19th century. The official Swiss federal land registry has operated since 1912, since when all land ownership throughout the country has been secured by official entry into the land register.

Transparency in land ownership is a fundamental lever of Scottish National Party land reform policy, but it is a journey that still has a long way to go, because many powers over land still reside at Westminster.

Andy Wightman will be aware of Poppea Daniel’s independent research, which was published last year—in fact, I believe that he contributed to it. The research makes the following observations:

“Better information will enable better communication and help communities better influence land related decisions which affect them ... Better information on patterns of ownership will promote better understanding of inequalities relating to land, and help promote fair and equal access ... Better information on influences on land use, ownership and transfer will help design better land policy.”

We all want more transparent land ownership, and the debate is still open on how we get there.

17:33  

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

I thank Andy Wightman for securing the debate. I share his view on the need for openness and transparency about land ownership. There is nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to owning land.

Let us be clear that lots of groups around Scotland own land. You—sorry, I mean Mr Wightman; I will get it right in a moment, Presiding Officer. Mr Wightman asked a question about valuations, and I will adjust my speech to allow him to intervene on the subject—

Andy Wightman rose—

There will be a moment to come in later. If I can make a bit of headway, the point will become clear.

The Scottish Government owns a huge amount of land, not only because it manages the national forest estate but because of land ownership in the Crown estate, which involves about 91,000 acres that cover farming, residential, commercial, sporting and mineral operations. Charities also own a lot of land—the National Trust for Scotland owns 190,000 acres and RSPB Scotland owns more than 120,000 acres, with an ambition to double that figure by 2030. In the past 20 years, we have seen a large rise in community land ownership, with 400 groups now owning just over 500,000 acres in total. I believe that Scotland is becoming a country whose land is owned by a more diverse mix of private individuals and businesses, public bodies, charities and communities.

As I stressed at the outset, I believe that the public has a right to have an interest in who owns Scotland. The Scottish Conservatives agree with the principle that information on land ownership should be open, transparent and readily available on a register. We cannot see any need for secrecy. I also believe that it is very important that land managers are clearly identifiable at all stages, so that people who want to use and access that land or who have an interest in it know whom to contact.

The point on which I disagree with Mr Wightman is the need to value land. As an ex-surveyor, I can tell members that land values are very subjective. The only true way to value land is to put it on the market. Although I agree that transaction values should be included in a register, asking landowners to submit values for their land would be expensive and of little use. For example, it may cost about £3,000 to value a small parcel of land of 500 acres using the definition of valuation that surveyors use. I question whether that is money well spent; I do not think that it is.

I will respond to Edward Mountain and Finlay Carson on the evaluation point. At the heart of my motion is the suggestion that existing sources of information should be more easily available in one place, and the valuation information that I am talking about is that held by the Scottish assessors. I am not asking for new valuations; I am just asking for existing data to be much more easily available and integrated with other data.

I thank Andy Wightman for making that point. I think that that is something to which we can sign up. If information is available on land transactions, it is very important that that is published and easy to get.

Discussions about land ownership can lose sight of probably the most important thing to take into account, which is what is done with the land. For example, it matters to me that the Forestry Commission’s figures show that, since 1999, the Scottish Government has sold more than 64,000 hectares of forestry and bought only 34,000 hectares. We need to know that—the public has a right to know that—because that contravenes the Government’s policy on the repositioning of Scotland’s woodland estate.

I welcome the moves towards transparency when it comes to land ownership information. We should know who owns what land in the countryside and in our cities, and there should be no problems with including details of whom to contact regarding the land. However, in the rush to do that work—which is the right thing to do—we must not lose sight of the fact that it is what happens to the land that is critical. That is what we value. Therefore, although I support some of Andy Wightman’s call for transparency, I do not support it all.

17:37  

Having a debate on who owns Scotland—led by the author of the book of that very title—is, indeed, timely. It seems appropriate that Andy Wightman has secured the debate, as I readily acknowledge that his work and passion for the subject of land ownership transparency have helped to shed light on exactly who owns Scotland.

Andy Wightman’s work builds on that of the late John McEwen, who devoted a lifetime to opening up understanding on Scotland’s anachronistic and wholly unjust land-ownership patterns. However, as far as their work has taken us, altogether too much secrecy remains on land ownership. That matters: the few who own land hold great power and influence over the many who occupy, explore or look at it.

How the land is managed has profound implications for a range of issues, including the scenic qualities of our landscape and how we enjoy it; whether the land is ecologically sound or in decline; whether it supports our needs as climate change accelerates; whether it supports vital economic activity; whether it creates economic opportunity for the many and not just the few; whether it provides for our national housing needs; whether our sources and supplies of water are of good quality; and whether its management contributes to or mitigates flood risks. Many other issues could be added to that list.

Land use is to a very large extent the consequence of the preference of the owners of that land, so its ownership is vital to its use. Andy Wightman has highlighted a range of other related matters that are relevant here.

We are all affected by land use in the ways that I have just listed. Knowing who owns all our urban and rural land is vital because communities that want to negotiate a purchase cannot do that unless they know who the landowner is and—this is of fundamental importance—how to contact them.

Having free access to land ownership details is part of the land justice approach of Labour and many others in this chamber. We, the people of our nation, have a right to know who owns our land. Too much of this is secretive, with owners hiding their identity behind shell companies, sometimes in overseas territories. One has to ask why, and whether that can be in the public interest. I say that it is in the public interest that information about who owns Scotland is entirely transparent. The only exceptions should be in cases where secrecy is justified to protect someone from harm, such as cases involving someone in an abusive relationship. There should be no more hiding of ownership as a matter of preference of owners who are not in such circumstances.

Today’s debate is an opportunity for the minister to update us on the progress that Parliament has long been seeking on the opening up of land ownership information. Andy Wightman’s motion mentions a Community Land Scotland report, “Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland”. That report signals that Scotland could become a world leader in these matters, but it has to want to be one. Perhaps, in replying to the debate, the minister can be clear about whether that is the Scottish Government’s ambition. Does it want to lead in these matters?

The minister will recall that, as her predecessor piloted the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 through Parliament, that legislation was amended by Graeme Dey, then a back bencher. That amendment was crafted by Community Land Scotland and Global Witness, and it created provisions for a truly radical advance in land ownership transparency. Along with Labour’s spokesperson on land at the time, Sarah Boyack, I was pleased to support that amendment. The Government subsequently moved to replace that provision with the promise of something even better, which would be achieved through the use of regulations. That was a couple of years ago, and progress has been slow. Therefore, can the minister confirm that we can now expect to see the matter completed quickly? Can she confirm that the final proposals will fully meet the will of Parliament to have the matter resolved finally and in the interests of the people, so that we can have completely open and free—I stress free—access to details of who owns Scotland?

16:26  

A lot of issues have been raised, and I will try to cover them. However, I hope that we can also debate the issues in future days, weeks and months, because these matters are a part of my portfolio in which I have a very personal interest; over the past months, I have taken an active interest in the way in which the Registers of Scotland is progressing plans and in the point that has been made quite frequently in this debate about the political will that exists.

I begin by answering Claudia Beamish’s question. We absolutely want to be a world leader when it comes to transparency but, at a time of change, transformation and transition, there is clearly further that we need to go. The report that is referenced in Andy Wightman’s motion makes that clear. It identifies a number of positive steps that have already been taken and highlights the need to go further.

Land is one of Scotland’s key assets, if not the key asset, and our land reform agenda must be based on a simple, transparent understanding of land. We must be transparent about who owns, manages and uses land.

The point that has been made around valuation is interesting to me because, of course, I also wear two other hats in relation to public finance and digital government. One of the things that I am actively considering at the moment—although I am not making any promises just now—is the way in which other countries have made information such as that around non-domestic rates far more accessible not only to rate payers but more generally. Northern Ireland is a good example of a place that has found a way of ensuring that rate payers, businesses and citizens can access far more information around valuations through a simple portal—I do not know whether Andy Wightman has any opinions on that. I am looking at what kind of prototype we could develop in Scotland to ensure that the information that we currently hold can be made available to the public. The portal could be expanded to include information around planning as well as registration, but that is a far broader issue.

Transparency is not limited to information about who owns land; it also applies to what land is used for. The Scottish land rights and responsibilities statement and our guidance on engaging communities in decisions that relate to land encourage people who make decisions about land to engage with communities, so that they understand what land is being used for and why. I completely agree with Rhoda Grant that if there is a strained relationship with an owner or the community does not even know who owns the land, there is an inability to engage properly.

Community Land Scotland’s report highlighted the strengths of the current system and pointed the way to necessary improvements.

The report also highlighted that for a member of the public, such as the constituent whom I mentioned, a search of the land register costs £30 plus VAT, whereas for a business user, such as one of Scotland’s biggest law firms, the cost is £3.

The fees are set out in a fee order, which ministers make and the Parliament agrees to—I think that the most recent one was made in 2014. Does the minister have plans to consult on a new fee order, and will she use such an opportunity to introduce a rather more benign and fair fee system?

I am pleased to be able to respond positively to that suggestion. In the coming months, citizens will be able to download and purchase a copy of property information from ScotLIS for £3. That includes the title plan and title sheet. Previously, that service was available through the customer service, for a fee of up to £30 plus VAT. I can assure the member that we are seeking to change the fees and make the system more accessible for ordinary citizens.

That takes me on to ScotLIS, the new, map-based, online Scottish land information service, which was launched in October 2017. With my digital hat on again, when I look at the ways in which different parts of Government are trying to digitise, I am impressed with how Registers of Scotland has adopted a more digital system. That relates to Finlay Carson’s point about the changing ways in which we communicate and submit information.

The ScotLIS system is impressive, and it is on a journey. For the first time, there is online, public access to information about land and property held on the register, including title numbers, property prices, boundaries and sales information. We need to continually develop the system, and new features are constantly being introduced, for businesses and citizens, based on feedback. Registers of Scotland has issued an open invitation to any member who wants to visit and see the system in action.

On the target in relation to land owned by public bodies, much depends on collaboration. Progress is being made, but I recognise the point about not meeting the target by the end of 2019. Registers of Scotland is working on a programme of keeper-induced registration of some public sector property.

When the minister was a member of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, I think that she sat in on work for our report on crofting. Crofters who were very keen to register were finding that difficult and did not have the funds to do so. The committee thought that it was a good idea to complete the register, as far as I remember, and I agree. Will the minister make more funds available to crofters, to allow them to continue the registration process, which everyone thinks is so vital?

It is not just about funding; it is about Registers of Scotland coming alongside individuals who are trying to register, to support and guide them. Funding is a challenge for public bodies, as has been highlighted in the debate; there is also the question of priorities for busy people such as crofters and farmers, so the ability to support people with expertise and guidance is an issue. I would be very happy to consider the matter.

Registers of Scotland receives no public funds and is entirely self-funding from the fees that it charges and the services that it provides. That means, for example, that the cost of providing information must be either met by those accessing the information, as at present, or subsidised by home buyers, through higher land register fees. However, I believe that it is right that those who want information can access that information, and there has been no increase in the fees that are charged for access to information since 2011.

I realise that I am now well over time, so I will conclude by saying that the land reform agenda, in which I believe passionately, depends on the availability of transparent information about land and its ownership, use and management. As the minister with responsibility for Registers of Scotland, I take that very seriously.

Meeting closed at 17:50.