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Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 10 August 2025
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Displaying 2389 contributions

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Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

No—that is fine. Between the two committees, I was just getting it clear in my head that that has been resolved.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

The other week, NatureScot said that it could make those changes if there was guidance from the Government. If there is a big issue with features encroaching on to existing designated sites, why does the Government not just issue guidance to NatureScot about how regulation 9D could be used?

It seems that this is the only issue that has come up in committee beyond the submission of PDF electronic documents. I am struggling to hear from any industry sector body how the current provisions of the habs regs are restricting economic growth and other benefits. I am hearing about PDFs and a technical issue about site designation; I am not hearing any other reasons. I still do not understand why this power is needed.

NatureScot says that if the Government gives it guidance, it can act on it. Why are you not giving guidance to NatureScot when DEFRA is clearly giving guidance in England?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Does that include ecosystem health and integrity?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Could a trigger mechanism be put into the bill on that topic in particular, so that it is not left hanging for lack of evidence and there is a clear pathway? We all know that ecosystem health and recovery is hugely important. It would be nice to put a target on it. If we do not have the data yet, when could that be?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Is there any point in signing up to the global biodiversity goals for 2030 and 2045 if those are not reflected in legislation? The Government seems to be saying that the 2030 goal is lost and that we will do what we can through biodiversity action plans and strategies but we have no chance of meeting that target. It also seems to be saying that we might meet the 2045 target but we should not put it in legislation, because that would bind the Government to action that is beyond what we can actually achieve.

I am trying to understand the thinking behind that. Does it make sense to have such a target if we cannot meet it? If we have such a target, why not put it in legislation?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Rhoda Grant raised the issue of invasive non-native species. I can barely remember this, but I think that INNS came up in 2004, in the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Bill. In fact, I might have lodged an amendment on the issue, back in those early days. The issue is getting worse. I have become aware of NatureScot’s powers to access sites, emerging issues around the expansion of Sitka spruce into native woodland restoration areas and growing issues around a pheasant population that is exploding. Those were not necessarily huge issues 20 years ago, but there are now big issues to do with INNS that could restrict our ability to restore ecosystems. Would you be open to looking at those issues in the bill? It feels like this is an opportunity to make a change, given that the previous bill that considered INNS was in 2004—a long time ago.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Okay. If there is a way to introduce some agility into the bill now to sort an issue in future, that would be worth having a conversation about.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee

Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Section 13 adds “nature restoration” as a ground for intervention in deer management. However, control schemes under the section 8 powers in the 1996 act have not been used until relatively recently. Do you envisage the position changing under the bill, with more use of section 8 powers?

Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]

Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 3 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Populating the debate and explaining examples is a really good way to proceed. The farm that you describe sounds like a great farm. It sounds as though the farmers already have a plan for what they want to do in the future, including with regard to peatland, and they have a really clear idea about where they are going.

Surely it comes down to the format of the land management plan and the associated guidance. If it was a case of consulting on the land management plan or any access arrangements and their future farm management plan, it sounds to me—because it is a professionally run farm with a farming family at the heart of it—as though all the information is already there. Therefore, a land management plan could be a fairly simple thing to pull together and perhaps the subject of a really exciting conversation with the local community about how it can support and feed into what Cora Cooper and her farm are attempting to do.

Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee [Draft]

Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 3 June 2025

Mark Ruskell

Ariane Burgess sends her apologies. As members know, she is the convener of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, and stage 2 of the Housing (Scotland) Bill is concluding in the committee today.

I will speak to amendment 310 and other amendments in the group. We are all aware that Scotland is very much an outlier among many of our European neighbours in that ownership of land is hugely concentrated, and this bill delivers the next step in land reform. However, any land reform legislation must deal with private property rights, so it is crucial that the process is underpinned by the concept of public interest. That is a widely used term in Scottish and United Kingdom legislation, with more than 200 mentions in primary legislation, including existing land reform legislation on community rights to buy. The concept of public interest is also widely accepted in international law. It forms an integral part of the protection of private property in article 1, protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, which says that

“No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest”.

The Parliament and the Government can curtail that right in particular circumstances, provided that those are set out in law and that the curtailment is in pursuit of a legitimate aim and is proportionate. In many forms of legislation, those circumstances are determined by a public interest test. In this legislation, questions of addressing the public interest in the ownership of land have been inexplicably avoided, with a transfer test and lotting decisions being determined by the impact of the specific landholding on community sustainability, a concept that implicitly deals with the public interest but which remains quite poorly defined and which has no apparent legal precedent. Centring the public interest rather than community sustainability would be a far stronger legal position and would be likely to establish a clearer precedent to avoid future legal challenge, as research for the Scottish Land Commission has made clear.

That raises the question of why the Government has not explicitly engaged with public interest considerations, despite the SLC’s recommendations and the fact that the Government’s consultation was clearly framed in relation to a public interest test. As it stands, the bill provides little clue or definition as to what the relevant public interest considerations are in the ownership of land. The bill needs to consider the public interest in the sale, ownership and management of land.

09:15  

Amendment 310 seeks to place public interest considerations in the bill. That will ensure predictability, transparency and coherence for the landowners who will be producing land management plans and potentially engaging with a transfer/public interest test. If the amendment passes, landowners will produce LMPs based on public interest considerations that would also underpin any assessment if they were to buy or sell land over the threshold. On behalf of Ariane Burgess, I thank Community Land Scotland for its support in preparing the amendment.