Over the last few months the SNP Government has been in cruise control on land reform, confidently talking up the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill currently before the Scottish Parliament as a means for radically reordering the relationship between Scotland’s people and land. Recently, however, some spanners have been thrown into the well-oiled works of that particular narrative.
The first of these was hurled by the SNP’s own members. At the Party’s October conference they voted to reject the pragmatic contents of the Land Reform Bill as insufficiently radical to make much difference to Scotland’s highly concentrated pattern of land ownership. A second relates to the imminent eviction of Andrew Stoddart and his family from Coulston Mains farm in East Lothian, a case that widespread media coverage and focused public activism have transformed into a cause célèbre regarding the perceived unfairness of Scotland’s current Agricultural Holdings legislation (see Malcolm Combe’s recent blog for further comment on that case and its broader legislative context).
The Government’s claims for radical land reform may soon be further undermined by the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee (RACCE) which has spent the last couple of months taking oral evidence from witnesses as part of the scrutiny process of the Land Reform Bill as it progresses through Holyrood’s legislative stages. The Committee will publish its Stage 1 Report on the Bill by December 4th. Although no-one’s idea of a page-turner, that Report matters because it will help set the scene for amendments to the Bill at Stages 2 and 3 of the legislative process.
All of which leaves the SNP Government in a slightly tricky position. Continue reading
Beyond the Horizon 