Mercedes Villalba MSP It's a great privilege to close this debate for Scottish Labour, so I want to start by paying tribute to everyone who has engaged in the Land Reform process.
Any success of this Bill to diversify land ownership in Scotland is the collective effort of everyone who responded to the consultations; everyone who provided expert advice and evidence and everyone who challenged the Scottish Government to make this Bill count. And I know that work will continue, because it must
Any success of this Bill to diversify land ownership in Scotland is the collective effort of everyone who responded to the consultations; everyone who provided expert advice and evidence and everyone who challenged the Scottish Government to make this Bill count. And I know that work will continue, because it must
Application of Powers
Because Scotland is now prey to ‘mega-lairds’ – private corporations buying up land for the benefit of portfolio shareholders and investors.
This accumulation of land – and of wealth and power – is often dressed up as ‘climate friendly’ or ‘environmentally responsible’.
Presiding Officer, let’s be clear, it is not.
One example thankfully included in the scope of this Bill is Oxygen Conservation, whose stated business of ‘other letting and operating of real estate’ supposedly helps fight the climate and biodiversity crises.
Oxygen Conservation have quickly taken ownership of numerous Scottish landholdings and estates
Most recently they bought-up BrewDog’s failed and failing ‘Lost Forest’ taking their total holdings to 49,000 acres -nearly 20,000 hectares.
Their extractive business model and inadequate community engagement has raised alarm bells amongst land reform experts.
Because A revenue model based on polluting carbon credit sales won’t deliver what our land, our climate, and our natural environment so desperately needs.
And because aggressive acquisitions and quick flipping of land as a ‘portfolio’ exploits one of our most priceless common goods as a cheap commodity to be traded by the wealthiest.
So it’s right that under this Land Reform Bill, large land holdings will be required to produce Land Management Plans showing how they intend to manage and develop the land.
And any future transactions will be subject to the prior notification and lotting provisions
I truly hope these modest changes will make a difference.
Limit of Powers
But because of the government’s refusal to accept my amendments to lower the threshold and to introduce a presumed limit on ownership of 500ha, there will be more large landholdings left out of the scope of this Bill than will be included.
Instead, the Scottish Government has taken a blinkered approach to ownership and aggregation of landholdings.
Concentrated land ownership is a nationwide issue, yet the Scottish Government have refused to take a nationwide approach to aggregate landholdings.
Gresham House, which has also been much discussed in the course of this Bill are now the second-largest private landowner in Scotland thanks to 244 separate landholdings across roughly 74,000 hectares.
But this kind of super-scale landownership will barely be impacted by the Bill as only a handful of those 244 fragments are over 1,000 ha.
Which is why I’m proud my amendment to review whether the size of the areas of land included in this Bill need to be reduced was passed yesterday.
And I look forward to seeing this review take place.
Need for a Public Interest Test
Both the examples of Oxygen Conservation and Gresham House demonstrate the inadequacy of Scotland’s current system and how, whilst welcome, the Scottish Government’s Bill will not go far enough.
Both examples show how private corporations will always seek private profit before public good, even whilst claiming they are acting in the public interest.
This is why it was so important to have a forward-facing public interest assessment of buyers of land in this Bill.
It is deeply disappointing that, even after months and years of scrutiny, evidence, and amendment, the Scottish Government did not accept this.
Conclusion
Large-scale and corporate landownership cannot contribute to action on inequality whilst its decisions on land ownership and land management remain focused on extracting wealth.
We need a system of land ownership which works for the people, not for profit.
Please note that in delivery , Mercedes made some alterations to this speech.
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