The Fool on the Hill: Scottish Government Land Reform consultation meeting Langholm

Contents

1. Platform
2. Summary
3. Notes
1. Introduction, Lorne MacLeod
2. Màiri McAllan MSP
3. Lorna Slater MSP
4. Janet Mountford-Smith
5. Jenny Barlow
4. Questions
5. Where do we go from here?

These are notes written during the public meeting, called by Scottish Government, held in the Buccleuch Centre, Langholm, on the evening of 20th July 2022 to discuss the consultation 'Land Reform in a Net Zero Nation'.

Platform

1. Màiri McAllan MSP, Scottish Government
2. Lorna Slater MSP, Scottish Government
3. Lorne MacLeod, Scottish Land Commission
4. Janet Mountford-Smith, Scottish Government, civil servant leading work on the bill
5. Jenny Barlow, estate manager (nature reserve on the Langholm Moor buyout)

Summary

(Written after the meeting; digest of my thoughts about it).

First, I have a strong impression that, in private, both McAllan and Slater are in private considerably more radical than the government line. Both defended the government line ably, but my sense was that both were uncomfortable in places. Clearly there are people in the Scottish Government who are fiercely resisting radical land reform, but I think both McAllan and Slater are personally, privately, on the side of the angels. I think in particular it is worth pressuring McAllan on issues of social justice, since I think she's as uncomfortable as the rest of the movement.

McAllan said in answer to questions that the reason the government was not seeking to limit the maximum size of land holdings was that to deprive people of 'their' land breached human rights law, and that if the bill breached human rights law she wouldn't be able to get the bill through parliament.

That is, from an ethical view, an untenable position. The right of people who have inherited land originally acquired through violence, oppression, theft, larceny and deception to retain that land, while the heirs of those from whom it was stolen remain landless, is not tolerable in any rational system of justice. The potential lever issue here is tax. The government clearly is prepared to consider land taxation as part of this reform, and sufficiently progressive land taxation would have the effect of making pathologically large holdings unviable.

Mountford-Smith's explanation of the reason for the extraordinarily large size of the 'large-scale landholdings' was essentially that the civil service wanted to have the minimum possible number of such holdings to police, since they didn't have the resource to do it. Which comes back to my point that penalties for breaches should be set at a level to make policing pay for itself.

One thing is critical: Mountford-Smith was arguing that multiple non-contiguous areas of land under the same beneficial ownership should be considered separate landholdings and not as one aggregate landholding from the point of view of considering whether they were 'large-scale landholdings' under the proposed act; so that a single landowner might own several holdings each of 2,999 hectares and yet not be deemed to have a 'large-scale landholding'. It was clear that there was not unanimity in the government team on this. We really must push hard on this one, since it's clear this cannot be allowed.

Another interesting hint at tension between the politicians and civil service came when Mountford-Smith talked about the reason that the proposed bill specified 'UK and EU' citizenship for owners of land. I didn't capture the exact wording that she used, but it was to the effect that 'ministers are very keen to ensure that nothing should hinder Scotland rejoining the EU'. In any case the particular words don't matter very much; the way it was said sounded like a dig — which was possibly just friendly teasing within a team that's working well, but it just raised a question for me.

Slater argued strongly for Land Use Tenancies, and that was interesting. She clearly sincerely believes they are a good thing. It would be useful if someone were to press her on why the government does not simply amend the law on agricultural tenancies to allow all existing agricultural tenants to do the things which Land Use Tenants would be enabled to do. I remain strongly of the opinion that adding further complexity to the law around agricultural tenancies will make it easier for the estates to bully and cheat their tenants.

It was astonishing how much better and more persuasively Slater spoke when she was answering questions than when she was giving a prepared speech. I really think she would benefit from going into a speech with just a few bullet points of notes to keep her on track, and then speaking ad lib — because when speaking naturally she's extremely engaging, and when reading she's just not.

Finally, I don't type as fast as people speak, so generally even where I've used quote marks I'm paraphrasing, although generally I hope I'm catching the flavour of what was said. Sardonic comments at the end of lines are my response to what was said, not what the speaker actually said!

Notes

Introduction, Lorne MacLeod

• first public meeting
• South of Scotland 'one of the fastest growing areas for community land ownership' — (really?!)

Màiri McAllan MSP

ex property lawyer; I think she recognised me, but as usual I was much too socially awkward to make any use of this.

• Described the event as the first of a 'series of town hall meetings'! Town hall, one, Langholm, covering the whole of southern Scotland!
• 'Land reform is a pervasive issue in Scotland' — good
• 'At it's heart is injustice — which we should make it our focus to address for the future' — good
• Land reform is an ongoing process — a journey — 'much progress has been made' — aye, right.
• Expand community ownership of land
• Housing shortages particularly acute in parts of Scotland, and for young people.
• Scotland's 'ambitious' target: 'Net Zero by 2045' — Really? Is that even nearly good enough? Does anyone still think 2045 is soon enough?
• Coastal communities could benefit from 'blue carbon' — was that a mis-speak, did she mean 'blue hydrogen'? If so, should we be tolerating 'blue hydrogen', which is essentially processed fossil fuel, and consequently means the associated carbon has to go somewhere.
• 'Communities must not have development forced on them'
• 'Never greenwashing'

Lorna Slater MSP

• Presentation based on the State of Nature Scotland report
• Nature in Scotland continues to decline fairly rapidly
• 24% decline in species abundance
• 33% decline of breeding seabirds
• 11% of species threatened with extinction
• "what does it say about our stewardship and sense of responsibility"!
• She doesn't speak well. She's reading from a prepared text.
• Good on carbon. "Need to be incentives for doing the right things, and penalties for doing the wrong things"
• Has a consultation 'Scotland's Biodiversity Strategy' which we should probably also look at.

Janet Mountford-Smith

(civil servant responsible for the bill)

• "We can't make good law without input from a wide range of people... the greater input we get, the better legislation we can write"
• All land in receipt of subsidies to be registered in the land register.
• Fiscal and taxation measures.
• 'Natural capital'
• "Why 3,000 hectares..."
  • 'measures which would not affect smaller family farms'- given that the average family farm is 101 hectares, and that consequently 'smaller' family farms must necessarily be less than 101 hectares, there's not much risk of that!
  • we don't want to have to do too much work policing it, so we want to only have to police a very small number of estates (that's a harsh paraphrase, but it is pretty much what she was saying)
• Large landholdings would have to conform to the Land Rights and Responsibilities statement (which implies that landholdings which aren't pathologically large won't have to conform)

Jenny Barlow

• much more fluent speaker than either of the politicians!
• Talking about community buyout of Langholm moor

Questions

The questions I wanted to ask, but wasn't given the opportunity to, and which someone else ought to ask:

1. Carbon trading is assumed in the consultation document. Why? Isn't this absolutely incompatible with everything we're trying to do?
2. The consultation talks of potentially offering pathologically large land holdings which come up for sale to local communities. What are we going to do about resettling those parts of Scotland which have been stripped of their population, and consequently no longer have local communities?

Where do we go from here?

It's clear that this bill will once again carefully avoid implementing any actual land reform. I think that we should start work now on preparing a series of radical amendments with strong supporting arguments, to offer to opposition MSPs.

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