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Yes.

I said earlier that I would be more than happy to have a conversation about that, but I repeat that, because of some of the issues that have been raised, I would need to seek advice to gauge whether that would be possible.

Community views are hugely important, and I will turn to that issue later. The mechanisms to deal with those processes—ultimately, through planning—are important in ensuring that those views come through.

Amendment 310 from Ariane Burgess and amendments 339 and 342 from Rhoda Grant seek to introduce a definition of the “public interest” in the bill for various purposes. Although I support the aims that have been referred to in relation to a definition, I do not think that it is necessary or helpful to attempt to define the public interest in the bill in that specific way. That is consistent with the opinion of the Court of Session. In the case of Pairc Crofters Ltd v the Scottish ministers, Lord President Gill noted:

“The public interest is a concept that is to be found throughout the statute book. There is no need for a general definition of it. It is for the Land Court and the Ministers to assess the public interest on the facts and circumstances of the case. A general statutory definition of the public interest, if one could be devised, would be unhelpful”.

It is unclear how ministers or landowners would be expected to fulfil the duty that is set out in amendment 310, which would require ministers and other public bodies to

“have regard to the public interest in land reform.”

That would include many objectives that are listed in the amendment and guidance that is produced by ministers in relation to functions in a wide range of legislation, much of which is not even related to land reform.

We are addressing that through the measures that we have introduced in the bill by, for example, looking at the management of our land more widely and making that more transparent, and through the transfer test and our lotting proposals. Ultimately, that is about trying to diversify land supply and land ownership in Scotland. That is why we have prohibitions in place so that land cannot all go to one owner. Does the bill address, or would it ever have been able to address, the significant issues in relation to the management and ownership of land in Scotland? No, but we have to ensure that we have an evidential basis for the measures that we introduce, so that they withstand any challenge that could come our way.

I have mentioned other work that is going on that could potentially help in the urban environment. There is also the community right to buy review. The bill is one step right now. It cannot fix all the problems, but we are introducing new measures and policies that I hope will have a significant impact and will be another step on the land reform journey.

I will comment briefly on Douglas Lumsden’s amendments 343 and 344. As I said when I commented on similar amendments from Douglas Lumsden in group 1, the amendments relate to a matter of interest in my constituency. I make it clear that I am here in my capacity as a minister of the Scottish Government. The position that I am presenting reflects the collective view of the Scottish Government and concerns a matter of law and policy for which I have ministerial responsibility.

Separately, and in line with the Scottish ministerial code, I have made my views and those of my constituents known to the responsible minister in the appropriate way. However, the issue under discussion today is distinct from that constituency interest, and my contributions today should therefore be understood as reflecting the Government’s position and not a personal or constituency-specific stance. Having said that, I am not sure how Douglas Lumsden’s amendments would fit with the current drafting of the bill, which is why I recommend that members oppose the amendments at this stage.

I appreciate that there are many amendments in the group. I will try to get through them as best I can and will speak to the amendments in my name before turning to some of the others.

This debate is important because it goes to the heart of what I think is a fundamental policy decision in the bill. It is one that we gave a great deal of consideration to prior to the introduction of the bill, because we want to ensure that the proposals can be applied as widely as possible.

In the bill as introduced, community engagement obligations were to apply to owners of large landholdings of more than 3,000 hectares so that there would not be a disproportionate impact on small businesses, such as many farms. I did not want to disadvantage those businesses relative to larger landholdings that would have more staff and more capacity.

These are new proposals and I have a responsibility, in my role as cabinet secretary, to ensure that they are proportionate and justifiable. At stage 1, the committee said that it saw some merit in aligning the size of thresholds across the bill in order to create policy cohesion and, importantly, to give clarity to stakeholders. I said in my response to those recommendations that I also saw some merit in that, both because of the simplicity and because it would allow all the proposals to work together.

Amendment 38 would therefore lower the threshold relating to land on which community obligations might be imposed from 3,000 to 1,000 hectares. That would align the thresholds across land management plans, pre-notification and transfer test provisions and would, in essence, cover about 55 per cent Scotland’s land.

As members know, the bill already gives the Government flexibility to seek to alter the thresholds, based on experience. We should not forget that these are new and ambitious provisions and it is right that the Government should review their operation to ensure that they are having the intended effect.

Amendments 34, 36, 40 and 50 are largely consequential to amendment 38. Amendment 40 would remove the separate category of landholdings exceeding 1,000 hectares on inhabited islands, given that the threshold for all landholdings would be lowered to 1,000 hectares.

I turn to amendment 49. The bill as introduced requires that land that is owned by the same person, or by connected persons, must share a boundary in order to be considered as a holding that counts towards the thresholds. During stage 1, the Scottish Land Commission noted that there might be a number of titles where public infrastructure, including railways and roads, will sever large landholdings, dividing them into smaller areas, and that those individual landholdings might then fall below the threshold that we had set out. The SLC recommended that any land that is split by a railway or other public infrastructure should be treated as a single holding and the committee also recommended that approach in its report, noting that there could otherwise be a loophole. I share the committee’s view and consider disregarding any such splitting of landholdings to be proportionate and justifiable for the purpose of defining the threshold.

The amendment does not focus directly on public infrastructure because there could be factors other than train tracks and public roads, including private roads held by other landowners, to which similar considerations would apply. Following consideration of the width of railways and road infrastructure, amendment 49 allows for non-contiguous areas of land to form a holding, provided that they are within 250m of each other. That allows us to address a known issue, while still being in line with the evidence base that we have that concentration of ownership can impact local communities.

Again, I would have to fully understand that and see what the implications might be, but I am more than happy to have that conversation with the convener between stages 2 and 3. I still ask that members support my amendments in the meantime.

The final amendments in the group—amendments 45, 46 and 48—concern how composite holdings are defined in the bill. They are technical amendments that strengthen the definition of a composite holding and ensure that multiple holdings that are owned by connected persons form together to comprise composite holdings in the same way in which holdings that are owned by the same person form a single holding.

Those amendments will also support the introduction of non-contiguous holdings, which I have just spoken about, in relation to amendment 49. I therefore recommend that the committee supports the amendments in my name.

If you are talking about aggregate holdings—holdings across Scotland that potentially fall under the thresholds—they would not be caught by the measures. Essentially, we need to make sure that we have the evidence base for that and that we address the impact of the concentration of land ownership. The amendments that I am bringing forward do not cover aggregate holdings, because those would be across Scotland.

As far as I am aware, there is no legal definition of what that would mean. We would be inserting a legal definition of something, which would have wide-reaching ramifications beyond what we have set out in the bill. I am about to come on to a few other points and issues in relation to that.

A wider point has been raised about measures that are being taken in the urban environment. It is important to remember that the bill was intended to deal with a specific problem that was identified by the Scottish Land Commission, which was about the issue of the concentration of land ownership, particularly in rural Scotland. However, that is not to say that no other work is going on to address some of those issues in the urban environment. Monica Lennon raised that matter with me during stage 1 consideration of the bill.

I am about to come on to the community right-to-buy powers and the on-going review of them. Significant work has also been taking place in relation to compulsory purchase orders and compulsory sales orders. All those different mechanisms will help to deal with some of the issues in the urban environment. I do not think that we can address those issues in the bill—in this legislative vehicle—alone.

Different stakeholders have voiced support for the concept of sites of community significance, but they have done so in different ways. Some have sought to expand the scope of the bill; others have sought to limit it and to require communities to undertake more work before the provisions in the bill could apply.

The process of assigning sites as being of community significance would be complex, and the enforcement and monitoring of any registration could have significant costs for the Scottish Government, which would have to establish a way to register the sites, and for local authorities, which might be required to be involved, too. There has not been any impact assessment to consider how many more sites could be brought into scope and what the costs of that could be for landowners and the public sector.

The benefits of including sites of community significance are unclear, and how the lotting provisions and transfer test would be applied to such sites is also unclear. There is an existing process through which urban and rural communities can register a community interest in land through the community right-to-buy processes in part 2 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. An additional process could add significant cost and complexity for both the landholder and the public purse, with unclear and limited benefit.

In rural areas, there is a need to add an existing route to the community right-to-buy process, which is why we have introduced the notification measures in the bill, but we do not believe that that would be proportionate when there are no issues of concentrated ownership. In fact, if we were to expand the provisions of the bill to apply beyond the target area of large landholdings, that could risk taking the bill away from the evidence base on which we made the proposals.

There would also be issues with legislating in that space before we have been able to consider the findings of the community right-to-buy review, which is still under way and is due to report by the end of this year. I appreciate the concerns that were raised by the committee in relation to that review. If legislative changes are required as a result of that review, we would be happy to propose the right legislative vehicle to address those.

Although I appreciate the approach that Michael Matheson has taken, I believe that it would take the measures in the bill away from what they were intended to do and beyond the issues that they were designed to address. I ask him not to press amendment 11 or move amendments 35, 42 and 106.

Through amendment 22, Bob Doris proposes that the Scottish ministers publish a statement when they are exempting any land that would otherwise be subject to future regulations that require landowners to have a land management plan. As Bob Doris has outlined, and as I said in the conversations that we have had, I would expect the Government to do that as a matter of course. I am always nervous about adding requirements to a bill that I do not believe are necessary, but I am happy to support amendment 22, although I might revisit it at stage 3 if any unintended consequences are found or drafting issues are identified.

Tim Eagle’s linked amendments 398, 399, 402, 403 and 406 seek to disapply the community engagement obligations in certain circumstances, including when land is used mainly for agricultural purposes or the owner has not engaged with a community body in the past five years. Rachael Hamilton’s amendments 400 and 404 similarly seek to disapply the obligations when the land is transferred to a new entrant to farming or agriculture business.

I am mindful that the obligations and thresholds should be designed to avoid disproportionate duties on small-scale landholdings or smaller farms. That is why I do not propose to lower the threshold below 1,000 hectares, at which level only the largest of farms—1.4 per cent of Scotland’s farms—are expected to be in scope. We will make all efforts to ensure that the community engagement obligations are as straightforward as possible and that they align with other plans and requirements where possible, to minimise duplication. However, I do not believe that it is right to disapply those obligations to as broad a class of land types and landowners as the amendments suggest. That is why I recommend that the amendments should not be supported.

Tim Eagle’s amendments 37, 41 and 44 would remove the bill’s definition of what constitutes a composite holding for the purposes of community engagement obligations and, instead, via amendment 405, leave those definitions to future guidance to be prepared and published by the Scottish Land Commission. I appreciate that there is often quite a lot of discussion in Parliament about what should be in a bill and what should be left to regulations and guidance. In this case, however, it is right that Parliament can consider what constitutes composite holdings in the bill. Those can, of course, be changed by any future regulations, so I ask members not to support the amendments.

Amendment 39 would raise the threshold for land on which community obligations may be imposed from 3,000 to 5,000 hectares. That would dramatically reduce the ambition of the bill, particularly when there has been such widespread support for land management plans and the community engagement obligations, as the committee will have seen when it took evidence on that.

Amendment 401 would increase the percentage of land that forms an island under the current islands criterion to 33 per cent from 25 per cent. As I have outlined, I propose lowering the threshold to 1,000 hectares, which would then remove the islands criterion. That is a sensible compromise and I therefore recommend that the amendments are opposed.

Tim Eagle’s remaining amendments in the group—104, 105 and 110—would remove ministerial powers to modify chapter 2 of the 2016 act by regulations and instead add more restricted powers to modify the chapter. Amendment 110 would stipulate that future regulations could not reduce the number of hectares in section 44D of the 2016 act in relation to the land on which obligations would be imposed.

Mercedes Villalba’s amendment 109 would do almost the complete opposite of what Tim Eagle is trying to do. It would restrict the power to modify chapter 2 of the 2016 act by stipulating that future regulations could not increase the thresholds for land management plans and community engagement obligations.

Both approaches would substantially restrict Parliament’s future flexibility. Although I probably lean more towards supporting the intent behind Mercedes Villalba’s amendment than Tim Eagle’s—I know that it was worth a try—as a parliamentarian, I am mindful of constraining the actions of future Parliaments, which is why I do not support the amendments.

As I have outlined, we are probably not too far apart in our thinking, but these are new measures that we are introducing so, being responsible in our role, it is only right that we monitor their effectiveness and look at any potential impacts. I do not want to tie the hands of any future Parliaments in relation to that, which is why I propose not to support the amendment. I am happy to have further conversations with Mercedes Villalba after stage 2 as we look towards stage 3, but I am not minded to support amendment 109 at this stage.

Ariane Burgess’s amendments 3 and 4 would lower the threshold for land on which community obligations might be imposed to 500 hectares. For the reasons that I outlined earlier, I believe that that is too low. I want to ensure that the proposals are justified in relation to the policy aim of not having a disproportionate impact on smaller landholdings. The amendments would impose costs on a much more significant set of landowners. As I outlined in my response to Mercedes Villalba, the provisions in the bill are new and it is important that the Government can review and monitor how they are being implemented. We would have the ability to seek to adjust the thresholds in future if that is required. That is why I oppose the amendments.

I thank colleagues around the table for their engagement on the bill more widely, but particularly on the matters that we are discussing in this group in relation to the process for and implementation of land management plans.

I welcome amendment 20, lodged by Bob Doris, which looks to require specifically that regulations ensure that landowners engage with

“tenants, crofters and small landholders with rights associated with the land on the development of, and significant changes to,”

land management plans. That was always going to be the intention of the regulations, so I am happy with that amendment, which makes things more explicit.

Amendment 33 from Bob Doris and amendment 10 from Tim Eagle seek additional guidance on how landowners will comply with their land management plan obligations under the regulations. As it was always the intention for there to be additional guidance, I am happy for that to be made explicit in the bill.

For drafting reasons, however, I ask Bob Doris and Tim Eagle not to move their amendments, and I am happy to work with them ahead of stage 3 to produce amendments that meet the stated aims in both. Each takes a different view on how guidance must be produced, what it should cover and who should produce it; one suggests Scottish ministers, while the other suggests the new commissioner. I agree that the content of both the amendments should be covered in further regulations or in guidance, and I will consider how best that can be reflected in the bill and whether that responsibility should indeed lie with ministers or with the commissioner.

Amendments 21 and 315, on the proposed timescales for the review of land management plans, seek to increase the intervals of reporting. Ariane Burgess’s amendments in this group seek to introduce a new plan period of 20 years, with a review and a report every five years. I do, of course, understand the rationale for that, which is to encourage plans to set out activity for the next 20 years. However, the bill already requires plans to set out a long-term vision, and it is appropriate for guidance and regulations to set out more detail of what that means, including the timespan that the plan should cover.

In its stage 1 report, the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee noted that the five-year reporting cycle that we have set out seeks

“to strike a balance between ensuring plans remain current and not imposing unrealistic or unhelpful obligations on landowners.”

To me, that indicates that what we have set out does strike the right balance, and to that end, I ask members not to support amendment 21 from Tim Eagle, amendment 315 from Rhoda Grant or amendments 311, 313, 314, 316 and 337 from Ariane Burgess.