Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 7 November 2017.

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Photo of John Mason John Mason Scottish National Party

I think that it would be true to say that all the committee members and the vast majority of the people of Scotland consider forestry to be a very good thing and that it should be encouraged.

We may not have met our planting targets in recent years but, as the report says, the details of targets and how we get there need to be in the strategy rather than in the bill.

The committee visited a number of forests and forestry-related sites, such as the new forestry pier on Mull. It was extremely good to see investment in such an asset.

We have heard evidence on a wider range of issues than those in the bill. That was very useful in emphasising, for example, the need to take a long-term view of forestry, the need for tree planting to be more mixed than in the past and the processing industry’s need for stability and long-term planning. We have also heard that, in the past, there might have been too hard and fast a line between what land was for forestry and what land was for farming and that there could perhaps be more room for interaction and overlap, making it easier for land users to change the use and even to have mixed use in some places, which would benefit the tree-planting targets, as well as animals, by giving them shelter in bad weather for example.

The aim of the bill is to complete the devolution of forestry, which we heard has been broadly welcomed. With so much land in Scotland—actually, or potentially—consisting of forests, it certainly makes sense that we should be responsible for the sector here in Scotland.

We spent a fair bit of time on definitions, such as what “sustainable forest management” means and whether it should be in the bill. In paragraph 60 of our report, we recommend that the definition should be

“included in the ... Strategy. The same applies to the term ‘sustainable development’ which is used in relation to ‘other land’.”

I like a bill or an act to have as much of the main content in it as possible. However, I also agree that we do not want to have too much detail in primary legislation, where that detail can be become outdated and would take a fair bit of time to change. Therefore, having the definitions in the forestry strategy seems to be a pretty reasonable position on which we can agree.

It quickly became clear to the committee that the definition of “felling” as “intentionally killing a tree” needed improvement; I am glad to see that the Government agrees.

On compulsory purchase, it is perhaps not surprising that there were a variety of views on the REC Committee. Some of our more right-wing landowning members perhaps saw no place for compulsory purchase and considered that the rich and the powerful should be allowed to do whatever they wanted. At the other end of the spectrum, some might like to see more public intervention on how our land is used. However, the majority of the committee considered that there was a place for compulsory purchase broadly in line with the previous arrangements.

John Scott, who did not take my intervention, made the point that compulsory purchase legislation has not been used in the past. That is certainly the case on the surface, but in reality we do not know how effective the legislation has been, because it has always been there in the background when negotiations have been taking place