 The next item of business is a member's debate on motion 875 in the name of Rhoda Grant on community wealth and the emergence of green lairs. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I call on those who wish to contribute to the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons. I call on Rhoda Grant to open the debate for around seven minutes, Ms Grant. I am grateful to those members who supported my motion, allowing it to be debated today. The Highlands and Islands are at the forefront in the feeling the effects of the new forces at work in our land markets. Those forces are likely to further embed the stark social injustice in our land ownership patterns—very few people owning most of our land. That pattern of land ownership concentrates wealth, power and influence into very few hands. It delivers for the few, not the many. Scotland is also highly unusual in having almost no land market regulation. That makes Scotland the prime destination for capital, looking for an easy, safe and rewarding purchase. A recent report by one of the leading land agents, Savals, made clear that they continued to receive calls from buyers around the world. They refer to our concentrated ownership patterns as one of the few remaining places in the world where green resources can be acquired on a meaningful scale. Come to Scotland and buy what you like, no questions asked. Purchase land in Scotland only depends on the size of your wallet, no questions asked. The scale of many of our land holdings brings with it, in effect, a local monopoly on land, with no questions asked. That is how Anders Polson has probably become one of Scotland's largest private landowners, no questions asked. There is nothing new about unregulated land market. What is new is the latest way that it is being exploited here in Scotland. A new type of buyer is emerging, responding to our real concern about the climate emergency. There is evidence that those who market land see the climate emergency as a valuable selling point. We are seeing the commodification and the financialisation of the climate emergency stimulating private land grabbing. Brew Dogs, seeking to offset carbon emissions, promote its credentials and win new investors by purchasing thousands of acres of land in the highlands. Standard life investment property income trust just bought thousands of acres in the Cairngorm national park, and Gresham House is promoting a £300 million private investment with Scottish Forestry firmly in its site. What unites this group of buyers is the climate emergency. That provides a chance to build corporate reputation, enhance market share and grow corporate wealth on the back of the climate concerns that we all have. It also allows some to continue as carbon emitters while offsetting those emissions through their Scottish land holdings. Some purchases are likely to hedge against future carbon tax liabilities, too. It is a low-risk investment with very high returns. With the land comes access to Scottish Government subsidies, land grabbing, exploiting an unregulated land market and underpinned by taxpayer subsidies. Standard life made it clear that the cost of tree planting on the land that they were happy to pay £7.5 million for would be met through grant funding. The benefits go to those with capital to invest. Enriching the already rich for climate action cannot possibly deliver a just transition through the climate emergency. Many of those purchases take place off-market and secret private sales. That device acts against communities who are seeking a late registration of interest in land to give them the opportunity to purchase it. However, such is the scale of land price inflation in practice that this hard-won right to register an interest in land may be of little value to them. Even with the doubling of the Scottish land fund, it will be hard for communities to secure land, even if they have the opportunity. We know that community ownership of land delivers multiple public benefits. Community owners are not absentee owners. Local people are living in that area. All revenues are kept locally and reinvested, building community wealth. Local affordable housing gets built, population is retained and places are repopulated. Jobs get created, trees get planted and peatlands get restored. While the new owners, the green lords, might be playing to our climate concerns, what regard do they have to those other public interest issues? We have no guarantees because when you buy land in Scotland, no questions are asked. We need to recognise that the time is long past for Scotland's land markets to be regulated. Ministers must be empowered to act on land issues in the public interest, to move from that exploitable unregulated land market to one that regulates land as a national asset to deliver on our collective aspirations. My party and the parties of government are committed to a public interest test in questions of land ownership. That would be an important step, but we need to go much further. It appears to me that a presumption against ownership of land over a set scale is now necessary. We impose a residency requirement on our crofters. Why not our landowners? The land and buildings transaction tax is higher to discourage second home purchases. Why not higher to discourage land grabbing? I will take a short intervention. Does the member agree that the SNP Scottish Government has let down people by not building enough affordable homes and therefore attracting young people and local people to stay where they want to stay, live and work? I agree with that, but I would say that there is a known as on landowners to make land available for housing, especially in rural areas, so both wrongs do not make a right. We need to protect the public interest and act especially on the off-market land purchases. The Land Commission needs the powers to act on land monopoly issues and better enable public interest purchases. We need to make observing the land rights and responsibility statements statutory and its expectations much firmer. We need to consider capping the total amount of public subsidy any large-scale landowner receives. We need to see an uplift in the value of land effectively underwritten by public subsidy, clawed back for public benefit. We should act on community land Scotland's suggestion for a community wealth fund. We need to task co-operative development Scotland with promoting co-operative and mutual ownership of land in Scotland. Those suggestions begin to map up some of the potential ways forward. More radical change is desperately needed here and would be regarded as normal across the world already. The emergence of the so-called green lords shines a light on the inadequacy of our land laws, and it also shines a light on how we subsidise the creation of private wealth from owning land when we could be building community wealth instead. If the minister acts on those issues, she cannot expect fierce opposition from vested interests, but if she takes the right action, she will get support from those benches. I and my colleagues will bring forward ideas. We will also be a force for more radical action, and that action is essential to create a more just and fairer Scotland. Thank you very much indeed, Ms Grant. We now move to the open debate. I call Emma Roddick. We'll be followed by Dean Lockhart for around four minutes, Ms Roddick. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Firstly, I am grateful to my Highlands and Islands colleague Roddick Grant for raising that motion, which I was glad to offer my support to ahead of it being selected for members' business today. I think that in our region in particular people are very well aware of the imbalance in who owns the land and how it affects the daily lives of those of us who live there, so I am glad to see this issue getting attention early on in this Parliament. I am proud to be standing here today as an MSP elected on the strength of an SNP manifesto, which included a specific commitment to new land reform legislation now expected to be brought forward by the end of 2023 and a new community empowerment act. One policy that I am particularly excited by is the presumption towards community buy-outs of land. That will not only help us in increasing the diversity in land ownership, but will ensure that local people are involved in decisions on how their land is used. I am certain that most would not choose to have it used as an indulgent conscience-easing vanity project for big business. I cannot tell you how many times in the past few years I have let out another sigh at the newest in a line of self-congratulatory press releases from companies that have bought up land in the Highlands and plan on filling it with trees, because they know better than the local community what the right use of the land is and because they have the money to collect our land for use as an asset to their business to offset the damage that they are doing to the climate elsewhere. The complete lack of self-awareness of many do-gooders when failing to recognise that they are just another wealthy private buyer of our land who has contributed to the continuation of a skewed and unjust land market is astounding. Like many in my region, my ears do prick when I hear the word rewilding, not because I do not recognise the need to tackle climate change, but because it is so often raised as an action to be taken in my region by people with little to no understanding of those who currently live in or work the land, or indeed those who could be living in or working the land, but are not due to enduring effects of the clearances two centuries ago. The attitude that the Highlands are playground for the gentry or eco-tourists is also one that persists from those horrific events. Rewilding can and should happen in conjunction with repopiling, but it will not if you dream up your big rewilding ideas based on a romantic or even cumberland-esque vision of asparse, deserted Highlands, rather than on the voices and experiences of the local community who currently use it, currently live in it. The Highlands are not just sparsely populated, they are still cleared. I am all for restoration of the natural environment as long as lords and MSPs alike keep in mind that a true restoration of the Highlands includes recognising the need to reintroduce people to our land as well. The fact that it is large landowners who are speaking out against the general principles of a new land reform bill only serves to tell me that it is exactly what we need to be doing. Let's do more to discourage this idea that it does not matter who owns the land as long as there are trees on it. Let's diversify the type of land ownership in this country and, more importantly, let's empower communities to have a say in what that looks like. I call Dean Lockhart, who will be followed by Mercedes Villalba. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and congratulate Rhoda Grant for bringing this very important subject before the Parliament today. The motion highlights the vital significance of the climate change challenge that we all face and the need to transition to net zero in a fair and sustainable manner. I sit on the net zero energy and transport committee and the scale of the challenge that we face was highlighted when we took evidence from the UK climate change committee that told us that the UK will have to invest £50 billion a year in the transition to net zero. Of course, Scotland will have to invest a pro-rata share if we are to deliver on our climate change targets. It was also made clear that the scale of funding simply cannot come from the public sector alone. The transition to net zero will, in large part—not in small part—have to be driven by private sector investment across all areas of the economy, including agroforestry and peatland restoration, which brings me to the motion today. The need for private sector investment at scale was also recognised in the Scottish Government's climate change plan, which calls for a significant increase in forestry and widespread peatland restoration. Quite rightly, it encouraged collaboration between carbon buyers, landowners and intermediaries in order to increase the woodland carbon market by at least 50 per cent by 2025. I think that there is a cross-chamber consensus on the need to meet those targets. Rhoda Grant mentioned some of the private sector investments that have taken place in recent months. It is important to highlight the benefits of those investments. For example, the standard life investment is a project that will restore woodland and peatland areas over almost 1,500 hectares, planting more than 1.5 million trees with between 50 and 100 people working on the project over the next six years using land that has no existing agriculture or other values. I think that land use and the benefits that come with that investment are to be encouraged. It is not just the private sector that is directing money and investment into these areas. The Scottish National Investment Bank has invested £50 million in a managed forest growth fund, a fund that is directed to capture 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 over the next 20 years. Those are just some of the examples of how private and public sector investment can help deliver necessary reforestation, rewilding and peatland restoration, all of which is going to be vital to meet our net zero targets. Without those investments, we simply would not have the capital, the public sector would not have the capital available to help to meet the necessary targets. I understand concerns that are raised by Rhoda Grant about unintended consequences, about what the trend might lead to, the potential impact on local and community land ownership and the implications for public policy. However, additional land market regulation and controls that are set out in the motion today are not at the answer, I believe. There are already in place a mix of legislative and regulatory frameworks that provide safeguards for community benefit, benefits that deliver jobs, housing and wider immunity value, helping to deliver what we all want to see in a thriving rural economy, more jobs, more housing, more economic activity. There is also a range of other factors, local planning consent, community councils and central government regulations, all of which need to play a part in making sure that everyone derives the benefit from those investments. We also have the woodland carbon code, which sets out that land projects can only be eligible for support if it would otherwise not be economically viable without that economic support. Deputy Presiding Officer, let me wrap up. I see that I am up against the clock. The scale of investment that is required to meet these net zero targets will create huge opportunities for Scotland across community and public land ownership as well, and will bring much-needed investment and jobs to rural Scotland. Land is a public good and a natural resource that should serve our common interests. It is vital for our sustainability and Scotland's biodiversity. However, we currently have a system of land ownership that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few. The system operates at the expense of the social, economic and environmental benefits that land offers. That is why I cannot welcome the growing trend of wealthy individuals or corporate interests seeking to use land to greenwash their record. It is not a sign of growing corporate responsibility or the rich engaging with the realities of the climate emergency. It is an unjust transition, a further transfer of wealth and power at the expense of working communities and our natural environment. If we are serious about tackling the climate and ecological crisis, then now is the time for redistribution of land. We must create a new system of land ownership in rural and urban spaces, empowering local communities and delivering for the common good. Rhoda Grant was right to say that the biggest problem that we face is with Scotland's no-questions-asked approach to land markets. The Scottish Government's commitment to introduce a public interest test for land transfers is a welcome step forward. Such a test would send a signal that a common good is at stake when land is exchanged. It would also provide greater transparency around sales, too. The Scottish Land Commission has also suggested introducing land management plans and a review of land rights and responsibilities. Those measures would be welcome but they must have teeth and protect the public interest. That should not be the limit on our ambitions. There is much more that this Parliament could do with the powers that we have. More radical proposals such as caps on private land holdings and a land value tax must be considered. After all, why should money and connections enable a wealthy few to monopolise a public good such as land? Why should landowners continue to benefit from the increasing value of land, which was created by public money? Why should this Parliament not empower communities to take ownership of their space, their land? The issue of land reform has dug Scottish politics for decades. We have had years of discussing and debating this issue, but now is the time for change. I would like to take part in today's debate to emphasise the importance of community wealth building, which is as important in urban areas as it is in rural areas, because exploitation is common. Across our country, we see widening inequality and increase in poverty among working-class communities and an astronomical rise in the levels of wealth being hoarded by the super rich. It is against the backdrop that the premise of community wealth building is more important than ever before. It is a concept that brings a people-centered approach to local economic development, redirecting wealth back into local economies and putting control back into the hands of local people. We know that it works. Just look at communities such as North Ayrshire, where a Labour Administration led by Joe Cullinane put community wealth building as a model at the heart of everything that it does as a local authority. Its approach means that more social housing is built to the benefit of the community, publicly-owned energy-generating facilities are developed to the benefit of the community, and democratic ownership models are prioritised to the benefit of the community. That is in stark contrast to what we have seen across Scotland in recent years, where local authorities have been faced with significant financial distress as their budgets have been disproportionately cut, and they seek an easy capital receipt with land disposals. Indeed, we know of the hundreds of millions of pounds of public land disposed of by the Scottish Government and Scottish public authorities in recent years, and at least 12 per cent of it has been purchased by one volume house builder, Cala Homes. A good example of that is Bormure house school in Edinburgh sold for £14.5 million in 2015 and has recently been redeveloped with over 100 luxury apartments, where Cala advised their prospective buyers of over £800,000 of property that they will seek to get a very handsome return on their investment. Why was that return on investment not achieved by the community? Instead, it is achieved by anonymous landlords and landholders from all over the world. No one knows who those people are. They are siphoning our community's wealth away from the city of Edinburgh, and it is an example that is replicated across Scotland. There is an alternative, of course. North Ayrshire is one example. Preston is yet another. Glasgow could benefit from such a model, of course, where Preston is reopening libraries and building new libraries. Glasgow is closing its libraries because it is facing severe financial problems. Once Glasgow led the world in municipal socialism, a city authority that owns its tramways, its electric system, its telephone system, its entire structure of public transport and was the biggest social landlord in the world apart from Hong Kong. Yet, over the past 30 years, we have seen all that social infrastructure rapidly dismantled and sold to private interests, where it does not serve the people and the profits are extracted. The Scottish Government has indicated that it is exploring rolling out a nationwide community wealth building strategy. I would welcome that, but I would like to place on record that it must not be done as a mere sticking plaster to mask the continued local authority budget cuts that we see handed down from this place. It is all more compounded by the insulting greenwashing that we are seeing in Glasgow in the run-up to COP26, with a myriad of corporate interests sponsoring pathetic interventions in the city's built environment while we see the broad decline and decay of the city's urban infrastructure as a result of decades of disproportionate budget cuts in the city. If we are to adopt a community wealth building model, it must be done alongside the creation of an industrial strategy that puts people and its communities at its heart. I would encourage the Scottish Government to revisit its proposed compulsory sale order policy, which it quietly dispends with in the past Parliament. It is an urgent requirement that we bring that sort of power back to the forefront of our agenda to ensure community wealth buildings put back in the hands of communities. We must do this to take action in communities that have long been blighted by industrialisation and the disinvestment caused by budget cuts. I truly hope that the Government embraces the opportunities that it brings and does not squander them like they have done so often in the past. I thank members who have participated for doing so, and I am going to say from the offset. I think that there is a lot that we agree on here, Rhoda Grant. This motion, your motion and today's debate, is wide-ranging. It covers a number of key interlocking issues that coalesce around issues of land use and ownership, natural capital, climate change and just transition. Those issues jointly and severally are very close to my heart and at the very top of my agenda. I would like to assure the Parliament that I am giving full and active consideration to the issues raised in today's debate and that I am doing so with colleagues across Government, Civic Society and I would like to continue to do so with members across this chamber. Scotland's legal climate targets, underpinned by a commitment to just transition, are still regarded as one of the most ambitious in the world. We are also committed to tackling the twin crisis of biodiversity loss. One reason that we can be so ambitious in those twin emergencies is because of the ample potential of our natural environment to sequester greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and to support biodiversity. However, that means that in the coming years there will be challenges on how best to optimise the enormous value of Scotland's land, but always to do so in a way that is fair and that leaves no one behind. We need to put our people and their wellbeing at the very heart of environmental ambitions. My vision, which I hope members share and which has actually been articulated by members here today, is of a net zero Scotland where thriving and growing rural, island and urban communities live and work sustainably on land and waters that are owned more fairly and more diversely. It was a really interesting point that Marodic made about rewilding and re-peopeling. I often question the term rewilding because I asked myself, where are the people in that? We have to bring them together. However, let us be clear that there are no simple answers, those are complex points. We must pursue our ambitions in a way that is compliant with the human rights act. As a former lawyer who worked both in property law, in land reform law and indeed in human rights, I am very seized of the way that those matters interact. Dean Lockhart is right. Would the minister agree that human rights have to be balanced by the wider human rights of the wider community? That should reset the balance away from those who would exploit our lands and back to the hands of those who live and work on that land. I agree that human rights need to be something that pertains to the individual and the collective. Not only that, they actually have to be realisable. People have to be able to have those rights but also have them acted upon. I agree with the member in that regard. I was going to say that private investment will be essential to our net zero ambitions and can play a positive role when done responsibly and in a way that has regard to the rights of our communities. It is very encouraging that the motion of this debate notes the Scottish Government's commitment to community wealth building, which, of course, is led by my colleague, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. I think that we should all take a moment to note that the elevation of that matter to ministerial level is a reflection of this Government's commitment to it. Community wealth building has its roots in the post-industrial cities of North America, but interest in Scotland is growing rapidly. The comprehensive place-based economic development model focuses on five key pillars, one of which pertains to land and property, which is, I think, the greatest relevance to today's discussion. I know that my colleague is working with five pilot areas and is to take forward plans developed by local authorities. In our recent programme for government, Mr Arthur committed to a community wealth building act. Nature-based solutions are critical to meeting our net zero objectives. A just transition to net zero can provide real opportunities for rural and island communities, including green jobs, tree planting, peatland restoration, renewables and the means that we take to tackle fuel poverty. We will need a blend of private and public investment to realise those benefits, because, frankly, the public sector cannot do that alone. However, we must seize those opportunities and mitigate the risks at the same time. I think that there is an immediate window of opportunity to take action to ensure that increasing levels of natural capital value are harnessed in a way that benefits communities and I am very pleased to say that the Scottish Land Commission, who my sponsor and who our last land reform act set up to advise the Government, is taking forward a package of work in this area as a matter of priority. That work will help us to find a pathway that balances the need for private sector investment, which has been discussed with community rights and with that legal commitment to a just transition that this Government is committed to. Scotland's continuing journey of land reform will take another step forward during this term. The upcoming land reform bill will help us to tackle some of the challenges that we have talked about today, and I am committed to full and widespread consultation on the proposals that I hope to develop in collaboration with members across the chamber. Thank the minister for giving way. She mentions the forthcoming bill on land reform. Will that include provisions for compulsory sale orders and reform of compulsory purchase powers, as recommended by the Scottish Law Commission's report on the matter? I have just finished saying that I will consult widely on all proposals. I am not writing anything off at this stage. We have years to develop that, and I am keen to be as ambitious as possible within the auspices of the Human Rights Act, but I think that the member's point about that the sale order was raised in regard to community wealth building, which I suspect means that it pertains more to the portfolio of my colleague. All of that will be happening on the backdrop of ever strengthening community ownership across Scotland. I would like to highlight that, even during the pandemic, recent statistics show that community ownership is still on the rise and has increased by 2.5 per cent in the last statistical period. As community ownership in Scotland continues to grow, so does this Government support. Rhoda Grant mentioned that our recent commitment to double the Scottish land fund from £10 million to £20 million per year by the end of this Parliament. I believe that that will help us to support more communities to acquire land and assets. I am conscious of time tackling climate change fairly, supporting empowered communities to thrive in rural and urban Scotland and continuing to redress Scotland's historically unfair patterns of land ownership. Are some of the most important issues facing us in Government and members across the chamber? It is up to us to deliver for the people of Scotland a fairer, greener, more equal future. I very much look forward to working with members on that. I suspend this meeting in Parliament until 2.30 this afternoon.