SCOTLAND’S Land Reform Bill has passed its first hurdle at Holyrood.
The legislation, tabled by the SNP Government, passed by 91 votes to 29 with no abstentions after a ballot of MSPs on Wednesday.
However, supportive votes from opposition parties may not be reproduced without significant changes to the bill, the Scottish Government was told during the first stage debate. Key issues were on the threshold at which the bill would trigger, and the lack of a public interest test.
Scottish Labour’s Sarah Boyack said that the 3000-hectare (7413-acre) threshold at which land owners would be asked to consult the community and produce a land management plan was “too high”.
The Labour constitution spokesperson said that if the bill is going to deliver on the SNP Government’s policy aims, it will have to have a lower threshold. She backed one being set at 500 hectares, echoing past calls from her colleague Mercedes Villalba.
The Scottish Greens' Mark Ruskell also called for a lower threshold, telling MSPs that the bill should be measured against a "Taymouth test" to see if it would benefit the local community.
Speaking with The National ahead of the debate, Ruskell had highlighted how the controversial development on Loch Tay and at Glenlyon would not fall under the scope of the proposed 3000-hectare limit due to the total estate being parcelled up into smaller pieces.
Speaking in the debate on Thursday, SNP MSP and former minister Emma Roddick said that the bill needed to consider ownership of many parcels of land in the same way as a single contiguous plot.
Roddick argued that local Highlanders would better know how the land could best be used – and said the bill should empower them.
Another former SNP minister, Ben Macpherson, said that the bill should include public interest tests, which would allow it to make a difference for urban communities as well as rural ones.
This position was backed by Scottish Labour.
The bill also seeks to increase opportunities for community buyouts of land, and also proposes that when large estates are put on the market ministers could break up this land – in a process known as lotting – into smaller areas, if certain conditions are met.
However a Holyrood committee has already said the changes to allow more community buyouts “are unlikely to accomplish much on their own”.
MSPs on the Net Zero, Energy and Transport committee said earlier this month that “significant change” was needed to the bill.
In her closing remarks, Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon, who tabled the Land Reform Bill, said that she would closely consider the proposals put forward during the debate.
She noted: “In Scotland we have one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in the world – 421 land owners own 50% of privately owned rural land.”
Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur meanwhile raised concerns the proposals could require “fairly fundamental revision” later on – warning this could place the Parliament in an “invidious position” where it has to “radically overhaul legislation during the scrutiny process”.
