Future of Crofting

– in the Scottish Parliament at 5:01 pm on 14 September 2005.

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Photo of Murray Tosh Murray Tosh Conservative 5:01, 14 September 2005

The final item of business this evening is a members' business debate on motion S2M-3219, in the name of John Farquhar Munro, on the future of crofting. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament recognises the importance of crofting to the social and economic life of the Highlands and Islands and wishes to see the continuation of sustainable crofting communities; shares the concerns of crofting communities, such as those in Skye and Lochalsh and throughout the crofting counties, regarding the threat to crofting communities from the lack of action by the Crofters Commission over the decrofting of land and sale of crofts, and from absentee crofters and dereliction; believes that crofting tenancies should not be sold on the open market which is currently allowing local people to be outbid by those with no understanding of, or long-term commitment to, crofting and the crofting community, and further believes that if this continues it will, in a generation, lead to the end of crofting in everything but name.

Photo of John Farquhar Munro John Farquhar Munro Liberal Democrat 5:09, 14 September 2005

I am delighted that we have been able to get this debate in the Parliament. I thank everyone for coming and for waiting to hear what we have to say.

I lodged the motion because the draft Crofting Reform etc Bill does not seem to address the concerns of many crofters. The position is best summed up by the Scottish Crofting Foundation's submission to the Scottish Executive, which simply says:

"There is a perception in the crofting" counties

"that there is a move to get rid of ... crofting" by

"decreasing regulation ... and allowing market forces to become increasingly dominant ... in relation to the transfer of crofts ... This perception is not dispelled by this Bill, which in failing to address ... the ... issues ... is likely, perhaps as much by omission as action, to foster the gradual loss" of crofting.

The draft bill has serious omissions. As members all know, crofting bills do not come round often, so we cannot let this one pass without taking the opportunity to address the threats that crofting faces. Croft tenancies are already being sold at market value. A 50-acre croft tenancy in my constituency was recently transferred for just short of £100,000, which was several times the unit's agricultural value. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that, at that price, the land is intended to be used for housing development and certainly not for crofting.

The problem arises from three factors. The first is the demand for housing, the second is the use of crofting as a proxy to deliver affordable housing because of planning system failures and the third is the Crofters Commission's unwillingness or inability to enforce basic crofting regulations. Croft land is traded at near market value only because the commission does not enforce the regulation of its tenure as it should.

For example, at Taynuilt in Argyll this year, an absentee crofter managed to decroft his land to create 10 housing sites. The Crofters Commission argued that because the croft had planning permission for housing, it had to allow the decrofting. That may be so—although it is questionable—but the main question remains: what did the commission do in previous years to ensure that the land was properly used? The answer is nothing. Because the crofter owned his land, the Crofters Commission did nothing when it could and should have imposed a tenant on him.

In the Taynuilt case, many in the crofting counties were angry that the commission was seen to have done nothing when it could at least have tried to challenge the situation at the Scottish Land Court. The similarity between that case and the Scottish Executive affair at Ferguson's shipyard springs to mind, because both the Executive and the commission rolled over and did nothing. Today, the same roll-over situation has happened with Caledonian MacBrayne.

It is strange that in many ways the Taynuilt case has been beneficial, because it has brought into sharp focus the existing system's shortcomings. It has made crofters think about what really needs to be done to secure crofting for the next century.

Many suggestions have been made to improve crofting legislation. At the top of everyone's list is that the Crofters Commission should start to do its job. It already has the teeth, but it must be given a duty to use them.

In the past few weeks, I have made detailed suggestions to ministers in writing, in which I included some of the following ideas. First, on all new croft assignations, crofters should be subject to a 10-year probationary period during which they cannot exercise the right to buy. They should also have to show that they are using the land for agricultural purposes. That would deter those who do not farm a croft.

Secondly, the time in which the previous landowner is entitled to half the value of land that is sold, decrofted or used for development—the five-year rule—should be increased to about 15 years, to prevent property speculation.

Thirdly, the Crofters Commission must have a duty to resume crofts that are not in active use, whether they are tenanted or owned, and to reassign new tenants to them. It must also actively resume crofts from absentees.

I and many others feel that the draft bill is an open door for people who are on the make and who try to exploit crofting land for housing and second homes. We require a system that ensures that crofting remains an agriculturally-based community activity. We need a system that, while not discouraging development, firmly closes the door on so-called carpetbaggers. We need legislation that sustains crofting for future generations. That is what any new legislation must do, but I fear that the draft bill does not do that.

I urge the minister to sit down with crofters and their representatives to radically redraft the bill. Last week, I was encouraged to hear the First Minister suggest in his address to the Parliament on the Executive's legislative programme that the Executive would consult the crofting community extensively on the detail in the draft bill. I hope that he will honour his commitment to do that and I urge the minister to do likewise.

Any new legislation that will affect crofting should be seriously considered. I suggest that the legislation that has governed crofting for the past 120 years has served crofters well. It has retained crofting in the crofting communities and I see no reason to change it. If it is not broken, why try to fix it?

Photo of Alasdair Morrison Alasdair Morrison Labour 5:17, 14 September 2005

I begin by warmly congratulating John Farquhar Munro on securing this debate. Between us, we must represent the vast majority of Scotland's crofters. I also intimate that I am unable to remain for the whole debate due to a prior engagement, which was in my diary before the motion for tonight's debate was published. I will, of course, catch up with what other members said and, importantly, with what the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development says in her response.

Shortly after the general election in 1997, the then Scottish Office published a paper that was to form the basis of how the Scottish Parliament was to progress reform of the iniquitous system of land ownership that had existed in Scotland for too long. Today, we have on the statute book an act of Parliament—the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003—that is a living, breathing memorial to the many people through the ages who fought for such legislation. Indeed, the minister who steered the act through the Parliament, Allan Wilson, is sitting beside me.

The post-1997 Labour Government ensured that the legislation was duly delivered. In my constituency, communities now proudly clutch the act and they are on the march; whether in South Uist, Galson or Pairc, crofting communities are at the advanced stages of ensuring that they take ownership of their land. The estates of North Harris and Bhaltos in Uig are already in the bag, and sitting serenely in the midst of all that legitimate agitation is the oldest publicly-owned estate in Scotland, the Stornoway Trust.

That was, and is, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. We must now ensure that the crofting reform bill complements it and does not in any way, shape or form detract from or dilute the philosophy that underpins that historic piece of legislation. I and my colleague Maureen Macmillan are members of the Parliament's Environment and Rural Development Committee, which will deal with the crofting reform bill. Indeed, we intend to invite ministers—I think it will be Mr Finnie in the first instance—to discuss the contents of the draft bill with us early in November. That will afford the committee its first formal opportunity to discuss the draft bill and there will be many opportunities to effect change.

Although we all recognise that there are many areas of concern in the draft bill, I was encouraged and pleased to hear a crofters commissioner, Roddy Murray from Ness in Lewis, extolling the virtues of one of the proposals that it contains—that is, to make proper legislative provision to create more crofts in the crofting counties. He said that it is an overdue and necessary mechanism to help to address issues surrounding population decline and other related important socioeconomic matters.

We must all recognise that there are areas in the proposed legislation that must be greatly improved upon—either deleted or given some major parliamentary surgery—and, where necessary, the Executive must be prepared to introduce elements that do not currently feature in the draft bill. That is all possible. The Scottish Crofting Foundation has now recovered from the darkest hours of its existence; the shameful Ian Rideout era has now, thankfully, passed and the SCF is rejuvenated, focused and doing exactly what its members expect from it.

Let no one claim that the issue is simple or straightforward. A hurried discussion in the corner of a room in this institution will not produce the form of words that will transform the bill and make it fit for purpose. The formal parliamentary process will begin shortly and I am encouraged that both Ross Finnie and Rhona Brankin will engage constructively. I note from the West Highland Free Press that Rhona Brankin is already engaging with seasoned campaigners. No one understands the issues better than old land campaigners such as our mutual friend, Brian Wilson, who was, incidentally, the chief architect of the 1997 Scottish Office paper that I referred to earlier.

I most sincerely hope that voices and views across Scotland will be listened to, and Rhona Brankin has already assured me informally that that will happen. The committee will also provide an important forum for that type of expression. If we take as our starting and finishing point the principle that the principal use of croft land must be land based, we will head in the right direction and will have an end point that is as constructive as the end point for what is now the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

Photo of Rob Gibson Rob Gibson Scottish National Party 5:21, 14 September 2005

I, too, welcome the debate and I thank John Farquhar Munro for having secured the chance to discuss the matter. This is a unique year in legislation—a year in which we are discussing a housing bill, a planning bill and a crofting bill. We have also discussed transport, which affects crofting, and I am afraid to say that we did not do that very well today. Each of those areas impinges on the others. Planning law changes need to be made. Planning law must begin to deal with the land that is in crofting townships and with the way in which common grazings are used. If there is a need to get land for housing, it must not come out of land for agricultural use but from the inby land. However, unless local plans start to reflect that, we will not be in a position to do anything about the demand for housing in many crofting areas, apart from within crofting families themselves.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill deals with the regulation of various aspects of private housing. We really need it to dovetail with the need to find housing in crofting areas, because the pressure is placed on the very land that we are trying to retain in crofting tenure.

When I made my submission on the draft crofting reform bill, I stated that the SNP is committed to sustainable crofting communities and that the Executive faces a challenge to make the legislation fit for 2005 and beyond. We want to have a constructive dialogue that allows the potential of each area to come to the fore. There are many abuses in the existing system, and the situation is summed up by the argument that the Crofters Commission ought to be regulating and using its powers more strongly, as John Farquhar Munro mentioned.

Who asked the civil servants to draft the bill? When we do some pre-legislative scrutiny, with members of the Environment and Rural Development Committee asking ministers what they think about the consultation, perhaps we will begin to tease out whether there are other things that we should be doing to meet the needs that I have talked about. The subject is huge.

When Rhona Brankin told Jamie Stone in a written answer that 53 people had responded to the consultation exercise in writing, I asked her how many responded by e-mail. In fact, 55 people responded by e-mail. I thank her for giving me that answer last night. There is wide interest in the matter, and the names of the respondents who have let their names be known show us that there is an abundance of ideas. We expect ministers to analyse the responses and to put them on the net so that they are available for others to do the same.

I have taken time to discuss those matters because so many issues will come up. The extension of crofting tenure is the logical extension of what we want to do to safeguard crofting and make it sustainable. The anomalies that are thrown up by the potential to create new crofts where landlords are unwilling for that to be done and on the Isle of Arran and other places are something to which the bill will have to adjust because extending crofting outside the crofting areas was previously dismissed.

We then come to the idea of small agricultural tenants, such as the small landholders under the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act 1911, trying to use the crofting bill to find some redress for being missed out of previous landlord and tenant arrangements. We are presented with a great mix of issues.

Above all, there must be a commitment on the part of the Government to give a lead. As the landlord of many crofting estates, it could set an example to all landlords by drawing up modern maps of those estates and making another round of efforts to encourage people to become involved in the development of the estates, because so far such efforts have not worked.

Photo of Jamie McGrigor Jamie McGrigor Conservative 5:26, 14 September 2005

I am sure that most members who will speak in the debate agree that crofting is a good thing and should be encouraged to continue. Crofting is a way of life that has stood the test of time. Through eras of extreme poverty and of comparative wealth, crofting has always been helped by the Conservatives when we have been in Government. We feel that crofting must now be helped to ride the latest wave of trouble: a bill that, if wrongly drafted, could bring about crofting's demise.

In areas such as Stornoway, crofting has knit together town and country and has developed the skills that have enabled people to exist healthily under extremely harsh conditions. Crofting must move with the times. Given that agriculture happens to be at a low ebb in every department and that we are experiencing a housing boom, it is easy for people to give up, take the money and run. That is understandable, but many crofters do not want to go down that road. It is essential that crofting land is still available for those people and for young, would-be crofters, but it cannot be available if many of the best bits are under concrete and brick buildings that are inhabited by people who have never fed a cow, never dipped a sheep and never dug a drain.

Although we certainly agree with the crofters' right to buy, I do not see why land that is owned by a crofter should be regulated differently from land that is rented by a crofter: it is still crofting land until it is decrofted. The inby land, at any rate, has been improved by endless hours of hard work over the centuries. The inby crofting land, where some crops can be grown, often fits in with environmental schemes that produce income. In places such as North Uist, the crops that are grown play a huge role in sustaining the richest stock of wild birds in Europe, which brings in tourists and attracts income—sometimes from Scottish Natural Heritage and RSPB Scotland. Income is important.

The inby land is the heart of the croft land. It is wrong to say that new crofts can be created out of apportionments of common grazings—that is an ignorant suggestion. The inby land is where grazing animals can be fattened to achieve increased income for the crofter. If a croft is created on the common grazing, where is the common grazing for that new croft? Common grazings are often inaccessible, but where there is some access or where new access can be built, that land, rather than the inby land, is the place for extra houses.

I know Taynuilt very well as I live close by. It is certainly a crofting community with different townships in the near vicinity but, above all, it is a crofting community. I was amazed by the decision of the Crofters Commission to decroft some of the best land in the middle of the village. The decision not only went against the view of the vast majority of the locals, but it stopped several young crofting applicants who would have been happy to take on the croft. That was a sad farce that I hope will not be repeated, but it could easily be repeated if the bill fails to protect existing crofting land. I cannot believe that the Crofters Commission, the remit of which, after all, is to defend the interests of crofters, has acted in crofters' interests in Taynuilt on this occasion, except perhaps in the interests of one absentee landlord crofter who stands to make an enormous profit.

I reiterate that the bill should protect land. Crofting land, or certainly inby crofting land, should not be available for planning purposes unless the land has first been decrofted or is for buildings that are relevant to the people who live on the croft or which are part of the crofting business. The process should be regulated by the Crofters Commission. It should check that crofts are kept in a fit state for agriculture, which it is meant to do in any case.

Minister Brankin has stated that the Crofters Commission is powerless to refuse a decrofting once the local authority has granted planning permission. If a decision has already been taken by a body with no real interest in crofting—in other words, the local planning authority—why do we have reports from Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department officials and public Crofters Commission hearings?

Photo of Eleanor Scott Eleanor Scott Green 5:31, 14 September 2005

I thank John Farquhar Munro for securing this important debate. I also thank all members of the cross-party group on crofting, especially those who travelled a great distance, for managing to get to the fairly hastily convened meeting this lunch time. Further, I thank the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development for managing to come to the meeting, which was a useful information-sharing session.

I want to emphasise the positive value of crofting. I believe that, if we get it right, the proposed crofting bill could offer a huge opportunity to extend crofting and its benefits not only in the existing crofting areas but in other parts of Scotland.

Crofting is a cultural system that has common land, in the form of common grazings, at its heart. It involves sharing the land and its benefits and co-operating in its management. Instead of concentrating on individual property rights, more emphasis needs to be placed on those communal values and on strengthening support for crofting communities.

Sometimes, the Executive seems not to appreciate the communal values of crofting. Common grazings committees are not even entitled to apply for the latest system of agricultural subsidy, the land management contracts, so the vast bulk of crofting land is excluded from that support. Let us see more and not less support for land that is shared. Let us see support for township shepherds, cattle clubs and community-supported agriculture on the common land, for example. Such ideas have more to do with the way in which SEERAD deals with agricultural subsidies, so I recognise that they are not likely to be part of the new bill, but they are worth flagging up nonetheless.

Croft tenancies being sold on the open market is a problem, but there may not be a direct way of prohibiting the practice. If the Executive were to regulate crofting properly and to ensure that those who take on a croft use it as a croft, it would at least eliminate those who want not a croft but a house. As members know only too well, affordable housing is a problem in the crofting counties, as it is everywhere else in Scotland. We also have a lot of empty and vacant land, but crofting land, particularly improved crofting land, should not be seen as a soft target for land for much-needed housing.

One way of taking the heat out of a market in which demand outstrips supply is to increase supply. I hope that the bill will be used to create literally thousands of new crofts throughout Scotland. I am thinking of woodland crofts on Forestry Commission lands and new crofting townships on land that belongs in the first instance to the Scottish Executive, which can show the way on the issue. I also believe that the right to buy should not be included for the new crofts that are to be created under the bill. A supply of tenanted crofts is needed to allow young people to enter into crofting.

I said that crofts must be used as crofts. Unusually, I echo the words of Alasdair Morrison on the subject. I agree with what he said about the use of crofts for land-based activities. Currently, when a croft assignation comes before it, the Crofters Commission can assess an applicant's business plan and how they will use the croft to see if they will be suitable tenants. However, the commission has no means of policing things thereafter. It has no power to check whether the plan is put into place.

I was glad to hear this lunch time that the commission is providing an aftercare service in some areas through which it helps people to put their management plans into place. That is excellent news and the service should be extended. Ultimately, a measure of enforcement is needed. A debate is needed on the subject. I would like to see local communities doing it. One point that emerged clearly from the meeting today is the need to join up crofting legislation with other bits of legislation, notably the forthcoming planning bill. It also needs to be joined up with the Executive's forward strategy for agriculture and its rural development strategy.

Another issue that was raised was the interface between crofting and planning. Other members have mentioned the subject and I will not go into it in any detail, particularly as I am short of time.

Crofting has many positive values including the potential to provide high-quality local food. Let us support it. The increase in crofting land values is a problem. However, it would be a tragedy if it were to lead to an erosion in crofting values such as local food production, self-sufficiency and the shared use of common ground. The crofting culture and its ethos are equally as important as crofting's undoubted environmental benefits.

Photo of Jamie Stone Jamie Stone Liberal Democrat 5:35, 14 September 2005

I, too, offer my warmest congratulations to John Farquhar Munro on securing the debate. What is the future strategy for crofting? That is the question at the heart of the debate. Like John Farquhar Munro, I feel that the draft Crofting Reform etc Bill does not, as it stands, make that clear, so I will outline what many of us believe that the Parliament should agree on as a future strategy.

I am convinced that the strategy should be about sustaining the local population that already lives on and works the land of our crofting townships. It should be about giving the children of those people a viable future in the historic land of their fathers and their forefathers. We should look at the matter this way: Scotland is a diamond, each facet different and special in its own way. The unique Highland way of life is one of those facets. We must protect and enhance it.

Our fragile environment in the Highlands depends on a sustainable method of agriculture—the Executive has done good work in that regard. Linked to the special way that people have managed the land for generations is a culture and a language. All those factors in turn create a unique way of life, which is a key support to tourism in the Highlands. That tourism is itself part and parcel of the viability of crofting, by which I am referring to the croft bed and breakfast and the croft tea shop. We can all think of similar businesses in the crofting counties.

The strategy that I commend to the Parliament is about sustainable land management combined with sustaining remote communities and their culture in a way that underpins and boosts tourism and our environment. However, as it stands, the draft bill will do nothing to restrain the wild, foreign beast of market forces. It will do nothing to restrain the whirlwind spiral in croft values that accelerates the sale of crofts and land only to those with the deepest of pockets—and there are few deep pockets in the Highlands.

Crofts, whether tenanted or owner occupied, are already changing hands at prices that practically no local can afford, as John Farquhar Munro said. I quote from a letter that I received yesterday from a constituent:

"Just last week a small croft here with a very poor house has just changed hands for around the £100,000 mark. This is causing resentment locally, and is leading to a considerable division within what used to be a wonderfully coherent society where we all used to work together."

There we have it. With the virtual disappearance of affordable housing in the Highlands, we can see the nature of the dagger that is pointed at all those who live in and love the Highlands.

However, John Farquhar Munro and others have pointed the way forward. The draft bill must be changed so that it will halt and reverse the damage, rather than accelerate it. It must impel the Crofters Commission to make full use of its powers. The bill must give the commission new powers, in particular a power regularly to inspect an owner-occupier's land management regime and, if that is inadequate, a power to impose a new tenant. That would create a big hole in the property speculation balloon.

Eleanor Scott rightly referred to another necessary change, but I will go further: the bill must firmly state that there should be a presumption against property development on good-quality agricultural land. Goodness knows, there is quite enough stony ground in the Highlands. In parallel, as Eleanor Scott said, the forthcoming planning bill must express the same sentiments in equally strong language. Those two pieces of legislation must say one and the same thing. To me and to all those who live in and love the Highlands, the issue is simply too important for anything else to happen. I support John Farquhar Munro's motion.

Photo of Maureen Macmillan Maureen Macmillan Labour 5:39, 14 September 2005

All of us in the chamber are grateful to John Farquhar Munro for lodging the motion. The consultation on the draft Crofting Reform etc Bill has raised a number of issues and worries in crofting communities, as he and others outlined.

John Farquhar Munro and Alasdair Morrison have an advantage over most of us, as they are the genuine article—they are genuine crofters. Like others, I am just an onlooker. However, I do not romanticise crofting; I know that some crofters do not work their land. I hate to see the crofts in some parts of the western Highlands where there are only nettles, thistles, rushes and rusting cars. I wonder what on earth can be done about that and why something is not being done. I do not want that to be the future of crofting, nor do I want the future of crofting to be what I saw in a solicitor's window in Dingwall recently: three crofting assignations up for sale, with upset prices of £50,000, £60,000 and £80,000. I wondered what the real price would be, who would get the crofts and what they would do with the land when they got it. Would they just keep a pony or would they genuinely want to work the land?

We must have mechanisms to remedy the situation in which land that could be used for agriculture is neglected and the situation in which people with deep pockets can buy crofts and not too many questions are asked about what they do with them afterwards. There are two main concerns. The first is that the Crofters Commission should have sufficient powers to deal with crofters who do not use their land properly. The second is that there should be a way of regulating the housing market as it impinges on crofts. It is obvious from some high-profile cases—such as the case in Taynuilt that was mentioned and others in Shetland and Tiree—that the crofting community feels insufficiently consulted in the planning process. Local authorities make housing decisions that shock the local crofting community when they are put into practice.

We must get the balance right between the housing needs of the non-crofting community and the needs of crofting. We must reward retiring crofters and encourage incomers who are genuine crofting enthusiasts. One Shetland crofter has said that they do not care whether people come from Lithuania, Hungary or wherever, as long as they want to croft, because we need more crofters coming into our communities. However, we must be careful not to disadvantage young local people who are seeking their first croft. A balancing act is required.

No one solution will fit all the areas from Shetland to the Black Isle. We need to be aware of local circumstances, especially where housing pressure impinges on crofting. If we can deal with the pressured housing areas through housing legislation, surely we can, through the draft bill, protect crofting areas that are under similar pressure. At the cross-party group meeting today, the Crofters Commission hinted that it could perhaps consider that matter and find a way of dealing with specific problems in certain areas.

As others have said, the planners, the commission and the crofting communities must work together to ensure that crofting is not overwhelmed in areas where there is high housing pressure, but the crofting community must be prepared to co-operate in tackling housing needs, perhaps by releasing parts of common grazings, although that is not always appropriate.

Photo of Jim Mather Jim Mather Scottish National Party 5:43, 14 September 2005

I, too, warmly commend John Farquhar Munro—a respected friend and sometime fellow traveller—for securing the debate. I also put on record the apologies of Fergus Ewing, who has to honour a commitment to meet people who attended the CalMac debate earlier.

Crofting is all about the common good and the public interest in productive management of land and retention of an active population. The draft bill's stated objective is worthy: it aims to develop crofting legislation, not so much in the historic defensive sense, but more as a means of active development to ensure that crofting, crofters and the crofting communities continue and prosper.

However, as Jamie Stone said, the crofters would like that aim to be beefed up; they want the strengthening of sustainable crofting communities, with the Government sharing the concerns of those communities. I am delighted that that is in process tonight. Without that, the concerns of the Scottish Crofting Foundation will remain. It recently stated:

"There is a perception in the crofting community that there is a move to get rid of the crofting system through decreasing regulation for the system and allowing market forces to be increasingly dominant".

It also said that that "perception is not dispelled" by the bill, which

"is likely, perhaps as much by omission as action, to foster the gradual loss of this unique system."

No member wants that to happen.

The commercial world is leaning heavily on all parts of Scotland and there is a feeling that market forces are likely to erode the core principle of crofting law and the security of crofting tenants that that law provides. That has even led Brian Wilson to say in the West Highland Free Press:

"All history suggests that the new interventionist powers of the commission would be in the same category—a fig-leaf of protection for a system which would be totally ruled by money, to the widespread exclusion of the local population. That is the true logic of this Draft Bill."

I am confident that that will change and will be addressed.

Matters as they stand are exacerbated by the implicit risks in the new pensions legislation. I am looking for support for a parliamentary motion that I have lodged on new pension rules that are to be introduced in April 2006, which will allow people to put residential property on to their personal pensions. Essentially, that means that higher-rate taxpayers will be able to buy any property with up to 40 per cent discount, which would clearly be damaging for other local people. Awareness of that issue and what we are discussing, combined with support and action are needed, because the combined effects of the new pensions legislation and the measures in the draft crofting bill could be absolutely catastrophic. We must take every step to avoid that catastrophe.

Steve McCombe, who is a crofter from Harris, has written that not protecting croft land from housing developments and allowing wind farms and the like to be built on croft land were attempts to solve Highlands and Islands-wide issues at the expense of crofting. Crofting is too big a baby to throw out with the bathwater—the bill needs to be redrafted and the legitimate and material concerns must be fully addressed. In that context, I warmly support John Farquhar Munro's motion.

Photo of Ted Brocklebank Ted Brocklebank Conservative 5:47, 14 September 2005

I, too, congratulate John Farquhar Munro on securing this important debate.

"Clearance" is an emotive word in Scottish history. Between 1750 and 1880, more than a quarter of a million people left what are now the crofting counties. Many were economic migrants, but others were forcibly removed from their homes and land and decanted all over the globe. In the light of that sorry past, crofting and land ownership hold a justifiably special place in Scottish history.

Few could demur when crofters' right to buy was introduced in 1976. As long as the land was retained in perpetuity as crofting land, the right of ownership could not be denied, notwithstanding the fact that the crofters' actual tenure was already secure. The owner was not buying the croft—which was unsaleable—but landlords' rights over the croft. Scottish Tories have totally supported that principle.

The point of crofting law has always been that the agricultural and community interest should take precedence over money. As a natural capitalist, I am perhaps loth to buck market forces, but common and historical sense dictate that things cannot simply be left to the highest bidder with a matter that is as emotive as crofting land.

That is why I am confused by certain aspects of the draft crofting bill. On the one hand, the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development claims that it contains no new freedoms in relation to buying or selling crofts, but on the other hand, the view of the Minister for Environment and Rural Development is that the Executive has no right to interfere in a free market of crofting land and that crofters should be allowed to

"cash in on their assets".

Who is right? Is crofting land held in custodianship or is it the property of the individual to do with as he or she decides?

The bill may well have merits in other respects, but it appears to do nothing to prevent a crofter from buying his holding from a landowner at a knock-down price in the knowledge that he can flog it five years down the road to a housing developer—we have seen that in the Taynuilt case, in which the Crofters Commission was apparently used as a willing ally. Affordable housing is needed in the crofting counties, and I see no reason why a cash-strapped crofter should not be allowed to sell off a plot for a house on his croft. However, as we have heard, there is no shortage of land for housing in most crofting areas, although there may be planning constraints. The Scottish Crofting Foundation has made it crystal clear that crofts are for crofting and houses are for housing. Using quality inby land to build houses does not support the crofting system or begin to answer the demand for housing.

Anyone who has read anything of Highland history knows that the nation owes a special duty of care to crofting. I ask the minister again: Is the intention of the bill that crofting land should be held in custodianship or is crofting land individual property? If it is the latter, the drafters of the bill should make that clear. Let us have an honest debate about the future of what is still the most successful system ever devised for keeping people in some of the remotest places in Europe.

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour 5:50, 14 September 2005

Crofting is a unique and valuable part of Scotland's culture and the Scottish Executive is passionately committed to sustaining it. We are committed not just to sustaining or preserving the present crofting structure but to ensuring that crofting is strengthened and expanded to enable both crofters and aspiring crofters to make the most of the considerable opportunities now before them.

We believe that prospects for crofters and crofting have never been better than they are today. That is most apparent in places such as Skye, some parts of the Highland mainland and Shetland, where crofting can readily be combined with other sources of income. As a result, crofting communities that were not so long ago characterised by poverty, disadvantage and depopulation are becoming increasingly prosperous and are attracting new residents.

Our fundamental aim as we prepare the first crofting legislation ever to come before a Scottish Parliament is to build on that success. We are determined to provide a legislative, administrative and regulatory framework that will further boost those crofting communities that are doing comparatively well. We are equally determined to create circumstances that will enable less successful crofting communities to do much better.

At the same time, we would like to encourage constructive debate on how we might replicate in other parts of rural Scotland some of the most attractive and successful features of the crofting system, notably its capacity to sustain relatively large populations in remote rural communities and to make small areas of land available for active cultivation.

In some crofting areas we already see local food initiatives, organic crofting and increased horticultural activity. All those constructive and creative uses of crofting land must be encouraged and developed. Indeed, Eleanor Scott referred to some of those uses.

Our approach to crofting legislation is in no way driven by negative perceptions and stereotypes of the sort that were common in the past. We regard crofting as neither a failed farming system nor a quaint, curious relic of a bygone age.

Photo of Mary Scanlon Mary Scanlon Conservative

Can the minister confirm that the pockets of crofting land to be allocated for housing will come under pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation and will be included in the up-to-date development plans proposed in the new planning bill?

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour

I cannot give you a definitive answer today. At the moment, we are looking at the responses to the crofting bill. However, I hope to be able to answer that question soon.

We have no intention of weakening or undermining crofting, let alone abolishing it. It is important to say that to John Farquhar Munro. On the contrary, we think that crofting offers Scotland and its Government an excellent means of achieving—under one heading, as it were—many of the rural development objectives to which we all aspire. In that context it is important to stress how comfortably crofting sits in the wider rural policy framework to which the Scottish Executive, the United Kingdom Government and the European Union have signed up.

That was not always the case. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s the legislation that still governs crofting was put in place. Policy was driven then by a wholly understandable desire to do everything possible to maximise food production. Farms everywhere were mechanised and made bigger and more efficient in output. If thinking of that sort had prevailed in crofting, crofting would not have survived. The agricultural policies of those times meant that crofters and crofting had to rely on special pleading and on legislation to avoid mechanisation, amalgamation and the drive towards output efficiency.

The crofting legislation of those times quite explicitly set out to ensure that crofting was not exposed to trends and forces of the sort that were being unleashed elsewhere. Today, however, we need to break free of that protectionist mentality. We need to appreciate that crofting, far from being wholly out of line with wider policy objectives, is very much in accord with those objectives. We want a well-populated countryside. We want an economically diversified countryside, where families can combine agriculture with all sorts of other activities. We want an environmentally rich and scenically attractive countryside, which appeals equally to residents and visitors. Crofting is tailor-made to meet all those requirements.

If crofting is fully to realise its potential, we have to equip the Crofters Commission, which administers and regulates crofting and which we are committed to retaining, with legislation that takes full account of present-day circumstances and possibilities. Existing legislation cannot do that. The Crofters Commission is increasingly assisting crofting communities that wish to see crofting and the crofting system work to sustain their people.

In recent years, that has meant that the commission has been working with crofting communities. For example, it has been working with the community on Lewis to plan the release of common grazing land for housing for local people in Knock and Swordale; with the community in Skye and Lochalsh to identify which croft land should be designated in the new local plan for development; and with the community on North Ronaldsay to secure organic status for the whole island. We need much more of that sort of creative development work from the commission, but the commission needs legislation that simplifies the regulatory processes and allows it to shift resources from pointless bureaucracy to development work that supports crofting communities.

The existing crofting legislation dates from different and more defensive times, when the Highlands and Islands economy was contracting year by year, when depopulation seemed unstoppable and hundreds of crofts lay vacant, and when, despite the fact that people could have had one of those crofts for the asking, there were no takers for them. Thankfully, things today are not like that. Now, the wider Highlands and Islands economy has expanded hugely. For the first time for centuries, far more people are moving into the Highlands and Islands than are moving out.

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour

If Jamie Stone does not mind, I would like to try to finish.

Crofts are now in big demand, with the inevitable result that crofts and croft tenancies, which were once worth next to nothing, are changing hands for large sums. There are of course downsides to that. One of those downsides is that, just as younger and more established residents in any increasingly buoyant rural area find it difficult to compete in the housing market, many aspiring crofters with no great wealth behind them find it increasingly difficult to get crofts.

How are we to tackle such problems? One suggestion is that we empower the Crofters Commission to place a monetary value on crofts that are being given up by their current occupiers. Even if that could be done—it is hard to see how it could be—I very much doubt whether outgoing crofters would appreciate being compelled, in a way that no one else in this country is, to deprive themselves of the market value of assets that they have created.

Surely the better solution is simply to do whatever we can to create more crofts, something that is already happening in a way that has not been seen for many decades. New crofts have been created in Jura, Eigg, Lochalsh, Colonsay and Islay, and are under consideration in many other communities.

Photo of Jim Mather Jim Mather Scottish National Party

I hear what the minister is saying. In that context, does she agree that it would be reasonable if we were to keep a constant finger on the pulse through the measurement of the working-age population of the Highlands and Islands?

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour

I see no problem with that and I am happy to discuss the matter with the member. We need to have a clear view of what is happening in the Highlands and Islands economy.

One of the greatest attractions of new crofts is that they can be let only to people who will live in the community and who intend to work the croft. For that reason, new crofts are invariably let to local people as a base for a home and a business. However, some communities need new people with new skills, and such communities are deliberately creating new crofts to attract people with the skills that will help the community and the crofters prosper.

There is limited scope under the current crofting legislation to create new crofts, although the Crofters Commission has been determined and creative in using what scope there is to assist communities.

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour

If the member does not mind, I would like to draw to a conclusion now.

Photo of Rhona Brankin Rhona Brankin Labour

Our crofting bill is designed to make the creation of new crofts easier and quicker and to make it easier for the Crofters Commission to assist the communities that recognise the potential of the crofting system to support their own development.

We are optimistic that public agencies such as the Forestry Commission will help us to achieve our ambitions for new crofts. The Forestry Commission, in partnership with the Crofters Commission and my department, will report on the potential for woodland or forest crofts in the next few months. That is only one example of initiatives that are under way to ensure that the crofting system is used to fullest advantage for those remote and fragile communities. I am confident that we can ensure that new crofts are available to exactly the sort of people who are finding it difficult to compete in the open market.

There will be other opportunities to elaborate on the detail of our crofting bill, but I have chosen to end by highlighting the bill's provisions on new crofts. Nearly 30 years ago, the last significant piece of crofting legislation was passed by Westminster. That legislation—the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 1976—took it for granted that the supply of crofts was fixed and that, although existing crofts might readily cease to be crofts, no new crofts would appear. Our approach is the opposite of that. We want there to be very many new crofts. That, surely, is a pointer to our crofting bill's intentions.

The Scottish Executive is not in the business of winding up crofting. Instead, we are committed to ensuring that crofting plays as big a part as possible in the new Highlands and Islands that we are proud to be helping to shape. It is a region that the Executive is committed to providing with a university; a region where, thanks in part to our investment in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise network, far more people are in work than ever before; and a region where, taking advantage of our commitment to land reform, more and more communities are taking on the ownership of the land on which they live.

Crofting, as we are all well aware, has been shaped more than most things by its history, but the crofting past, for all its many fascinations, ultimately matters far less than the crofting future. I am convinced that that can be a good one and I am equally convinced that our crofting bill can help us to secure it.

My friend John Farquhar Munro has suggested that crofting could be dead within a generation. Without our crofting bill, crofting will continue to be impeded by unnecessary rules and strangled by pointless bureaucracy. Without our crofting bill crofting could be dead within a generation. I look forward to discussing and developing the bill with my colleagues in committee and in Parliament and to continuing discussions with crofting stakeholders in different parts of Scotland. Let us work together constructively to give crofting a future.

Meeting closed at 18:02.