 Welcome to the 25th meeting of the environment and climate changes dynamic reform committee. We have apologies from Richard Lyle for any alpha issue. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices so that they may affect the broadcasting system. The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether it can take items 5, 6 and 7 in private. yn sicr dudodau. Are we agreed? The second item of business today is to hear evidence in the Scottish Wamp Commission. I welcome Andrew Thun, the chair, Dr Sally Reynolds, one of the commissioners, and Hameish Trench, the chief executive. Welcome to you all. Members have a series of questions, as you can imagine, and we're going to move direct to the questions. Emma Harper. Thank you convener. Good morning everybody. I was reading in our information that, since spring 2017, the land commission has held a series of public meetings across different places, including Dumfries and Bigger in the south Scotland region, where I represent. So I'm curious what the key themes were that emerged from the meetings. Was there a difference across all areas, and was there a difference in themes from urban and rural areas? I will answer that, convener, if that's all right, because I've attended all of them. First of all, the broad message is that, right across Scotland, there's an enormous interest in the subject. The awareness is not all that high, I think, as to the breadth of the subject. Attending the meetings has been an extraordinarily diverse audience with people interested in just about everything. In the urban context, the predominant issue has been about housing and about land for housing, vacant and derelict land, how do we make more of it. In the rural areas, the predominant issues have been community ownership, as you might expect, but also a strong theme around an aspiration to have closer dialogue, closer consultation between landowners and people who live on and around land and who are affected by those decisions. In a sense, I don't think any of that surprised us. There were also some quite strong feedback about common good land. For example, I was in Clydebank the other night, a very strong theme in Clydebank. I don't quite know why it's strongly in Clydebank, but it's a strong theme there. Quite a lot about access legislation, the 2003 act, actually, more than I expected around that, particularly in rural areas, but not just in rural areas. What I've taken away in the round from all that is fundamental to what we have to achieve here is that we have to achieve a Scotland that is more at ease with itself, that is more comfortable with itself, and that the relationship between people who own and manage land in Scotland with the rest of us needs to be a more constructive, more collaborative one than it is at the moment. Were there any particularly unexpected issues that were brought up and how did that inform you? After all the information gathering that will continue, how will that inform the way that you will move forward with your work programme? I don't think that there were any particular issues that were unexpected. The emphasis at times was unexpected. A stronger emphasis, for example, in some parts of the country on land value taxation, but I think that there may have been some organised effort behind that. However, I certainly hadn't anticipated such a strong thrust on that. The other perhaps unexpected thing, for example, I held one of these meetings in Leith in Edinburgh, had not expected quite such a strong level of concern about land assembly for housing. The real concern that individuals were able to obstruct and block housing developments, that the council had already zoned and was all there, but the council didn't have the tools to pull it together. I knew that was an issue, especially in Glasgow, but I hadn't expected quite such a strong public opinion on that. In terms of what it will do, I hope that you will see these things already coming through in the work programme that we have published. That work programme is going to be a moving feast. It will evolve over time, but the themes are coming through. All of that is published back out on our website, so it's a two-way street. We have these meetings. It then will inform the evolution of that work programme that goes back out so that people can see exactly what's happening and how their views are then influencing what we do. Can I ask how academia has been able to feed into this process? Has it been through these meetings, or are you engaging with academia separately? We're engaging them through separate series of meetings. We held our conference last week where we launched the student plan number of academic representatives there amongst 160 attendees. We're also having separate meetings with the collection of research institutes that forms the Scottish Government Safari Land Use Research Institute group. We're also in touch with the Universities Scotland about collaborating. There are potential roles, for example, for PhD work to contribute to the work programme, for contract research through academic institutions, but I'd emphasise as well that the research that we intend to carry out, I think that some of it will be appropriate for academic institutions to play a role, but some of it will also be appropriate for other wider contractors to play a role in delivering that. I've just gone back to what you mentioned at the land value tax. It's developed the tag recently in the media, the garden tax. Can I ask what your response is to that? And what part will that play in the commission's on-going work programme and strategic plan? I'm just going to pass to Hemish, but let me be clear, we have no preconceptions or preconclusions on this at all. We are going to investigate the subject in a very thorough way, but Hemish will tell you a wee bit more about where our thinking is in its early days. Yes, and clearly we've been asked to look at land value-based tax options. The thinking at the moment is that our work will start by looking at the ways in which land value taxes have been used elsewhere around the world, not just looking at the set of options, but actually the drivers behind those understanding why they were put in place and the implications, both intended and unintended, so that we get a real picture of how they operate. I think that we'll also want to look at the practicalities in terms of what kind of data would be required, how such an approach could be put in place if it was considered appropriate in Scotland. Mark Ruskell, thanks convener. There's obviously quite a lot of stakeholder discussion around post-Brexit agricultural subsidies at the moment, which arguably could have as much of an impact as land ownership going forward in terms of how we use land and what land is for. I can ask you how have you been interfacing with the agriculture champions that have been set up by the Cabinet Secretary and the Council of Rural Advisers? Have they approached you? Have you approached them? So, relatively little direct formal interaction, it is early days, indirectly and informally. There's a huge amount of dialogue going on between people involved in the commission, one way or the other, and people in these other organisations. It is absolutely essential that we're all on the same page as we go forward here. I don't anticipate the commission having a formal contribution to put into that. Why not? I think that it would be duplication, to be honest. The Government has set up a different mechanism to address Brexit, the implications for agriculture and so on, and I'm not sure that it would be necessarily helpful for us to focus quite scarce resources on duplicating that work. Is there not a danger that there are competing visions, though? No, not if we talk to each other. It is essential that we are all on the same page, therefore essential by implication that there is no conflict of vision. The detailed work and recommendations need to come through the channels that have been set up. Brexit features most prominently in relation to the agriculture stream in our work programme, and we had the first meeting of the tenant farming advisory forum just a couple of weeks ago where the theme of Brexit was explored at the top of the agenda there, so we're making the connections in terms of keeping under review the implications of Brexit, particularly for farm tenure, but, as Andrew says, we won't be leading response and ideas on the mainstream Brexit work there. Good morning to the panel. If I could maybe touch on some of the operational issues and resources, we know that SLC has been a worried budget of £1.4 million over the period 2017-18. The commission has sufficient resources to carry out its work both now and to allow it to meet the objectives set out in your strategic plan. Yes, I would. Clearly, we're in an establishment year this year. We are still recruiting staff, for example. We have further recruitment to go over the next six months, but we have developed a budget looking three years ahead based on that level of funding that we anticipate is appropriate to deliver the work programme. That pounds out in a sort of work programme allocation of £550,000 a year, looking ahead to next year, which is sufficient to start delivering on the work programme. Okay. If you did end up with an underspend, which is maybe likely, maybe not, what would happen to the funds from that underspend? Would it be returned to the Government or would it be allocated elsewhere? Well, in the normal way, if we're underspending, the funds would be reallocated by the Scottish Government, but that would be a matter of discussion between us and the Scottish Government leading up to the year end to look at where we're going to come into land on the budget. This year, it is likely that there will be an underspend given that we're in an establishment year and haven't had the full expenditure on staff and research from the start of the financial year, but we're in discussions with them about next year's budget being set out in terms of the 1.4 and budget in the plan. Okay. You mentioned that you're still recruiting, presumably support staff. I think that the figure is eight that you're looking for in total. With regard to capacity, would you anticipate increasing that number of support staff in the future? As of yesterday, we have nine staff employed by the commission shortly back to start recruitment for two further policy officers who will take a lead role in delivering the work programme that's set out. I would anticipate that core staff could rise 12 to 15 in the foreseeable future, but once we've got those two posts in place, a significant amount of work will also be done by fixed-term, short-term contracts bringing in the right specialists and expertise where we need it. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the commissioners. Clearly you all work part-time. Do you say that there's capacity for all the commissioners to carry out their duties given the time constraints? I'll admit that it takes a little bit more than two days a month, which was what we signed up for, but so far I think we are all managing to make the time. We do share the rules out, so you'll notice I didn't answer your first question regarding the meeting greets because that's not something I've done so far, but we've shared it out and I've done other duties, so I think we are managing so far and I hope we'll continue to do so. So how many days is it a month so far? At least double, shall we leave at that? Okay, thanks. Thank you. Dr Reynolds, you may recall when the full commission was in front of the committee previously, we explored whether there were any conflicts of interest that had been identified by members, and I think at that point one member indicated that they had had one and taken the appropriate action. As you've drilled down into the job and we're going to look at what it might entail, have there been other conflicts of interest that have arisen for members and how are those resolved? I don't think that we've had any conflicts to date. We've attended training and we have discussed this in great detail and we've discussed the potential for conflicts, so for example with myself, with Crofting, but I think that we've managed to deal with them all and I don't think that we've had to have any declared meetings to date. I'm certain that all board members have had full training in this and it is important through the on-board training. The one other area that was not identified in the hearing is in relation to David Adam's role at Glasgow University because we anticipate making use of academic institutions to do work, which might include Glasgow University, but whether it does or not, frankly, there is a perception issue there. However, we have absolutely spent a lot of time talking about that and we're on top of it. Okay, good to get that on the record. Kate Forbes? Very much. You state in the strategic plan that land reform is not a single event. It's a process and the strategic plan defines it as the legislative policy and cultural framework within which land is owned, managed and used. Does the commission intend to focus on legislation and policy on one hand when it comes to land reform or on cultural change? If cultural change is part of that, what does cultural change actually look like? I'll start this, but I think that we've possibly all got something to say on this. It's a really important theme. There is no question that we will put a lot of effort into conducting research, doing thorough reviews and producing evidence-based recommendations for government on legislation and policy. That will be a core bit of our work. And more clear than we were when we were last in this room, that non-statutory leadership is a very important function for this organisation. If we look at what's happened in relation to ag holdings over the last three years, what we saw was, very quickly after the ag holdings review in 2014, Government put in place a non-statutory mechanism, which was me, to produce codes and guidance and all the rest. It's for entirely voluntary. More than just producing codes and guidance, it's to get off my backside and get around and lead and talk to people. What does it look like? It looks like changes in behaviour and changes in attitude. I think that most people who work in this area, now, they may be just being nice to me, but I don't think so. Most people who work in the agricultural holdings area are telling me that behaviours are changing, that attitudes are changing, that expectations are changing, not because of changes in the law, but because of all that work. I think that we can extend those principles out to all sorts of other areas. It may involve guidance, it may involve codes of practice, but the board will be sitting down and thinking that through in a thorough strategic way before we jump into it. There are parallels. A few years ago, the Deer Commission will remember the best practice programme, which was entirely voluntary, which was quite effective. We are going to ask someone from the Deer Commission to come and talk to us about that. I don't exactly know what it will look like, but I'm clear that the commission has a really important non-statutory leadership role going forward. You might very briefly want to hear from the other two on the same subject. Thank you. We held our conference last week to launch our strategic plan. I led on the accountability workshop in the afternoon, which was really interesting. It was a wide range of stakeholders and interested members of the public that attended. I was shuffling through my notes to find my opening from that workshop. The two things that I wrote down in the morning from the conference from different speakers, one was achieving the bigger picture, required cultural change and the second one was good practice, should be celebrated and spread. That was something that came through from the workshop. They felt that they wanted to know what good practice was and they wanted to move forward with not over-regulation but codes of practice and methods and ways to move forward. I hope that we will be able to help with that. I hope that you will be able to see in the programme of work that there are areas that we have identified already where we think that some of this approach will work. For example, vacant and derelict land or charitable land ownership status are two examples where we think the scope for guidance, perhaps codes and certainly better collaboration to actually make a difference on the ground even while we are taking forward some of the longer term work in terms of the research and longer term recommendations. Mark Ruskell. Do you see a challenge in working with different types of communities here to effect cultural change? What I am seeing at the moment, a community right to buy, is that more articulate communities and good resources will drive forward and establish best practice, but there are many other communities that are being left behind. I do not know how you can tailor your approach to supporting communities that are perhaps in very different places at the moment. There is no question that there is a big challenge, but I am really anxious that the board thinks this through carefully and we do not just dive in and start producing codes all over the place. We may produce some interim guidance and codes just to keep things moving. There is no question in my mind that confidence building and capacity building will be an integral part of it in some parts of the country, especially in urban Scotland where awareness is low and there is less of a history of this sort of thing. Equally within the land owning community, we have managed to build very quickly a really constructive relationship with Scottish lands and estates, but of course there are a lot of land owners who are not members of Scottish lands and estates, so we have got to reach them. I sat down with David Johnson, a chairman on Friday, to talk through how he can help me to reach the landowners who are not his members, because he can help, because they may not be members, but they probably know each other. It is not a big world. He is going to help me to reach some of the landowners who are resident in London, which I think would be enormously helpful. There is a big job to be done and I anticipate, without prejudging the board's deliberations, that we will put quite a bit of resource into really getting this right over the next two or three years, probably. But it could be very powerful. It could be really very powerful. My sense is that there is a great deal of appetite for change across all parts of this sector and all players in this sector. However, there is a lack of leadership, because leadership is sectionalised. There is leadership in London and in the community. There is leadership in the community in Scotland, but it is a fragmented leadership. It is not holistic. Claudia Beamish Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. I would like to ask a few follow-up questions from that discussion, particularly in relation to the programme of work. I understand that, of course, you will know, but just for the record, that the workstreams are expected to apply to both policy and practice, and it is important to identify changes in practice that could be implemented in the short term, leading to change and improvement on the ground. I wonder if you could be forthright about any concerns where stakeholders—let's rephrase that. Is it generally the case, as you have highlighted, that stakeholders are willing to participate, whether they are members of the Scottish land and estates or whether they are in different organisations or not? If they are not, how would you deal with that? Can stakeholders be compelled to engage? There is an unequal balance of land ownership, as we know, across Scotland, and that is part of the reason, not the only reason by any means, but part of the reason for the thrust of the legislation that has come forward, whether one regards it as a backstop or not. I am interested to know how that is going to be developing, and whether you have had discussions about that. I think that you are going to have to hear from all three of us again. I am sorry, because I think that we have all got quite clear views and we have done a lot of thinking. Let's start with Hamish, and then we will come to the centre. Yes, and I certainly see the challenge given the wide range of different interests and motivations involved across the work that we are setting out to do here. As Andrew touched on earlier, our relationship and the collaboration with different representative bodies from across the sectors, whether that is Scottish land and estates, community land Scotland or indeed in the urban context, is a completely different set of organisations and groups. I think building strong relationships with those representative groups will help significantly ensure that we make that progress. There will always be outliers and individuals who are unwilling to engage or simply disagree, but if we are able to build that relationship with some of the key bodies, and at the moment, being completely honest, I think there is a strong genuine willingness there across the piece from all the organisations that we have met with, and we have made a point of meeting with many over the last few months, and there is a very genuine willingness there to look at how we make progress, I think. I think I'd back that up. I spoke at the Scottish Land and Estates annual conference this year, and it was absolutely fantastic to see the reaction, the willingness to listen and talk to us. I didn't get a cup of tea. There were so many people wanting to speak to me during the breaks, but it was a genuine willingness, but obviously we know that there are the ones who aren't in that room, and there are people who we need to meet who aren't in those, but I'll also say that there's been a bit of persistence from our side. We work hard to make contacts, and if we don't get a meeting on our first contact, we try, and sometimes it takes a third attempt, but we have been lucky to start building it up. It's enormously important that we can reach the whole land-owning community. I just want to re-emphasise that. It's a real challenge for us because a lot of landowners don't live in Scotland. A lot are not engaged in these things. It's a real challenge, and we need all the help that we can get. The message to the land-owning community is that the Scottish Land Commission is there to help them. We're not there. It is not in the interest of any landowner to have a situation where the Scottish people are uncomfortable with the relationship between the people of Scotland and the landowners of Scotland. That's not in any landowner's interest. We're all in this together, perhaps from different perspectives. The challenge for this organisation, and for me in particular, is to get out and really communicate with these people and find ways of doing that. What I have found is that when I communicate with people and we sit down and we talk, there's an appetite to shift very quickly. I'll give you a very specific case. You'll be aware of the case in one-lock head. You are involved, are involved, very helpful. What's absolutely clear about that is that there's a major communication breakdown, and that parties are not thinking the thing through properly. I had a number of conversations over the weekend with, I'll not name the parties, and I'm very optimistic that we can make progress there. We were not talking to each other. It was a breakdown of communication. That's helpful. Thank you. It's already been highlighted this morning that I think I quote accurately that good practice should be celebrated and spread at the other end of the spectrum. I could ask you, whichever of you feel it's appropriate, to answer whether the commission will highlight examples of poor land management and ownership practices and identify individuals who are considered not to be working collaboratively, either with yourselves or with local communities. How will that process develop if it indeed, you've had those discussions? Let me use the ag holdings to illustrate it, because our thinking is slightly embryonic more widely than that. Under the ag holdings, there will be, there already are, codes of practice put in place. It is open to people to allege that someone has breached that code. If that is the case, evidence will be gathered. There may well be a hearing and the commissioner will decide whether it's true or not. If it is true, that will be made public. They will in short be named and shamed. There will be no ambiguity about that. Absolutely none. In terms of a wider best practice programme going forward, it has to be integral to that programme that we celebrate good practice and we call out bad practice. It has to be integral. Now, exactly how we do that, I don't know, the board is going to spend a lot of time at probably the December meeting trying to thrash out exactly how to do that, so I don't want to prejudice that. But it must be integral to this that you celebrate good and you call out bad. I'm absolutely with that. Come on on this. We're focusing on rural land here in terms of engagement. Can I explore with you, in terms of derelict urban land, how in practice you're going to engage with faceless companies who are land banking? I'll start on this because I have some involvement through my, I chair Scottish Canals as well. Scottish Canals is in essence the Scottish Government's wholly owned regeneration company in some way. What we have found there is that it's very difficult to get to the ultimate owner, but what you can do through working very closely with local authorities is that you can still exert pressure. Now, I think we have to be honest and say that if you take, without naming individual owners, if you take a site not far north of the Bacanasi bus station, which is derelict and disused, which is zoned for housing, which is perfectly developable, but the owner is holding out, of a bit of it, is holding out for what I would suggest is more than is reasonable. I don't think a voluntary code will deal with that. So I think let's be clear. Non-starchatory leadership has a very, very important role to play. It is not the only answer here and I don't want to even suggest it will be half our work. It might be, but there's going to be a big, big programme of robust, evidence-driven, thoroughly researched reviews without preconception leading to clear recommendations to ministers setting out options for statutory or other change, and nobody should be in any doubt about that. In relation to vacant and derelict land in particular, there are two parts of our work programme that are very relevant there. You'll see where we're proposing to look at the housing land supply market, and in particular the role of land banking, so that we actually develop an understanding of where and how that is an issue, and then alongside that, working very closely with local authorities on vacant and derelict land. I think part of our work there is wanting to actually understand the causes and the reasons behind that, and in some cases it will be on a certain constraints. In other cases it will clearly be much wider issues such as contamination and wider economic issues, so I expect that we'll be able to identify some vacant and derelict land where it may be easier to make progress and some where we need much longer term. I just wanted to finish up by reassuring you that it's definitely on our agenda and actually our meeting in November, if I'm correct. We're actually going to Glasgow and we're going to visit some sites and we're going to hold our meeting. As you'll appreciate, we've been a bit busy up till now to get out and about shooting our board meetings, but we will be starting to go out once a quarter when our first is to Glasgow. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Can I move you on to some of the bigger picture issues around your objectives and wider issues affecting your future? Let's look at Brexit, for example. What assessment have you made of the effect on Brexit on your objectives for the longer term? Indicated earlier, we have not, as yet, and we probably will not necessarily do a really in-depth piece of work because there's no point in duplicating it. What we're clear about is that Brexit is a major factor in all of this. It's a huge uncertainty into the equation. It's potentially particularly challenging for upland rural areas rather than the urban areas. It's a really important piece of context, but it's not an area where we've done or are likely to do a detailed analysis. We will rely on other people's analysis. To what extent do you rely on top-level briefings with specialist civil servants within the Scottish Government who are involved in European strategy? We certainly rely on keeping close contact with central government civil servants in an all-range of policy areas, including Brexit. I mentioned earlier that we had the civil servant leading the Brexit agriculture research to the tenant farming advisory forum a couple of weeks ago to brief that group on some of the likely implications for the agricultural sector and, similarly, through other sectors, we'll be keeping in touch with them to keep appraised of likely implications. Can we be on to your objectives? Your three objectives—productivity, diversity and accountability—are all very worthy. No one really would disagree with that, but let's drill down to the detail. Perhaps I aren't asked, Mr Thin, to look at this one particularly. If you take the issue about diversity, how are you going to fulfil that objective? Mr Thin, you've always said to the committee that you want to proceed by consensus, but if you take the issue of land reform, for example, but we all know the history and you don't need me to do anything on the history books. However, if you look at egg, which I know well—in fact, it was at the official launch 20 years ago, on a much younger version of myself—Ainnoidart, the Helen Land Leagues, Battle for the Braves. The history of land reform has been about conflict. We have to find that resource. If it's going to be about redistribution, some people will lose land, others will gain. I take the point that local authorities through community empowerment might transfer resources and assets, and that's a good thing. However, how are you going to proceed by consensus when you're effectively in a position that has had conflict in its roots for 100 years? We won't always proceed by consensus, but we won't proceed if we always proceed on the basis of conflict either. I'm absolutely clear that, broadly speaking, it is possible to make huge progress without conflict, but there will be times when people's objectives and priorities conflict. As I've indicated, we will put a lot of resource into non-structure leadership, and I believe that we can achieve a great deal with that. However, we will also put an awful lot of resource into reviewing the statutory tools available to elected authorities, local or Scottish government to use. I'm not going to prejudge what those tools are, because we're a long way from concluding what those tools are. Could I just say briefly a bit about diversity, because I think it's important to be clear that land reform is not all about community ownership. I think that that's an important point to be clear about. It sometimes gets the two public meeting held in Obern about a month ago. It became a discussion about community ownership, so I think that we'll be careful there. Diversity is important because from diversity comes innovation, and from innovation comes economic growth, so it's very important. Diversity is about significantly more. Diversity will at times mean disaggregation. It may well, but it doesn't necessarily mean disaggregation either. I think that we also have to keep an open mind about where are economic economies of scale, for example, useful. Let me just close on that by drawing again on my agricultural experience. The future of agriculture in Scotland depends on innovation more, as much as anything else. Brexit, of course, is usually important, but we need to innovate in that industry. We are most likely to achieve that if we can get new blood and new ideas into that industry, and we are most likely to achieve that by creating a greater diversity of tenure in that sector. Clearly, I'm not suggesting that you see conflict as one of your objectives. I'm really remarking on my experience in history. If you take egg and noida, as you know, historically it was owned by a supporter of Hitler pre-war. It took immense conflict before there was a community buy-out. An egg had a similar difficult background. Do you feel that you've got the strength of legislation to achieve the objectives that you need, to achieve your very worthy objectives? No. I would be quite surprised if we were to conduct all these various bits of research and conclude that there's no change required. That would be quite surprising. The Scottish people are, to some extent, indicating that they think that change is required, but what I'm not going to do is prejudge any of that until we've really thought it through. Again, while emphasising that diversity is not necessarily just community ownership, on community ownership we've identified a very specific workstream looking at whether the tools that are currently available are sufficient, so we'll be able to answer that question. However, the one-lock head example is a very good example. It's not statutory tools that are necessarily the problem there, it's just communication. Some have argued that one of your objectives should be more idealistic, which is that land reform—and I know my colleague John Scott will touch on that later—is about an extension of human rights, to have adequate employment, to look at housing, to look at positive mental health. Is that one of the philosophical objectives that you would subscribe to as well? Maybe Dr Reynolds is the best. Thanks for that. Well, we haven't got it as one of our four objectives, but we do hope that it comes in to all of our work. We are very, very lucky to have Megan McInnes as one of our commissioners and she's actually already one of our meetings has held a briefing from her to us all, so we do hope that it's there in everything that we do through it all. Sustainability sits then within the objectives, productivity, diversity, accountability, the priority areas and long-term outcomes. It's integral to the whole thing, I mean there must be, there's no question of that. But it's not explicit. How are you interpreting sustainability through these objectives? It's not explicit because it goes right through the whole thing. I take the point, maybe it would be helpful for it to be explicit, but it's integral to the whole thing. Do you see the driver of that coming from the land responsibility statement? Well, and other areas of government policy, the land use strategy for example. Mary John Scott Thank you convener. I'm just wondering if you're in a position to tell us with regard to the guidance on engaging communities and decisions relating to land. There was a consultation on that and the final guidance we were told would be laid before the Scottish Parliament in the summer of 2017. Have you an input into that when are we ready to see that? As far as I'm aware, I understand that's due to come forward in the new year from the Scottish Government and yes, the government have been clear that as with the land rights and responsibility statement, they see a role for the land commission in providing ongoing advice on the implementation of that. One of the early bits of work that we're doing that we'll sit alongside that I think is a bit of research to actually look at how we effectively monitor and engage the level of community involvement so that we can actually have some idea of whether we're making progress on that particular theme. Through on that one please. This is an area of concern to the farming community and I think we're going to need to get this one right. I have embarked on a programme of meetings with area NFUS boards and committees. There is an anxiousness in the farming community that our duty to consult could become extremely cumbersome and while it is entirely reasonable that if any landowner or farmer is making a decision that impacts on other people's lives, it's reasonable there should be a sensitivity and a dialogue around that, we need to work through how in practice this is going to be implemented without becoming a serious constraint. Thank you and I should of course have declared my interest as a farmer and as a member of the NFU but thank you for your answer. Can I just explore something else at this point? Obviously your work is attracting a degree of media attention and I think it was last week there was a predictable perhaps reaction to the revelation that you were commissioning a piece of work to look at how other countries had restricted the amount of land that could be in the hands of one person. Am I right in thinking that under ECHR, even if legislation of that type was introduced, it couldn't apply retrospectively? I'm not a lawyer. Clearly ECHR is a factor in all of that. I can't give you a definitive answer at this stage. It's too early. It's a key dimension to the research and clearly we will draw that out. Can I just respond on the wider media point? I mean I have to admit to a slight sense of frustration with some of the media coverage. We're serious people trying to do a serious job and it isn't helpful frankly when that kind of coverage, there was another piece of coverage in the Sunday Mail on land value taxation. What it's told me loud and clear is that we are going to have to work even harder to get out there ourselves and communicate directly and that's what we're going to do. It was partly because of some of that that I went to see David Johnson to get some help in communicating directly with landowners outside of Scotland because I am anxious that landowners who own people and Scotland but don't live here are getting a very skewed perception of that. I think that we should be very clear about this. That is not only unhelpful but a real challenge for us and we're going to have to work at it. Kate Forbes. I understand that the commission is preparing an annual operating plan outlining the schedule of work and associated resourcing and performance management. The biggest question is how will you effectively measure what you are achieving in your priority work areas? Do you have accurate baseline data to go on? Something like engagement and communications is a very challenging area to measure. How are you going to measure the effectiveness of your work? One of the great things is that we've got extremely well-trained academic people so I'm just going to pass to them, maybe Hamish first and then Sally. I think that there are at least two levels to that and clearly within our annual operating plans we'll identify some KPIs that give us an ongoing measure of progress but I think more fundamentally than that. At our conference last week Professor Sarah Skerr from SRUC laid down a pretty blunt challenge to us and everyone else about how do we know we actually make an impact particularly for communities that are not already active and able to take advantage of existing mechanisms etc. Internally we've started looking at what we'll need to do to commission some independent analysis of progress against our outcomes over a three to five year timeline. Clearly very early days in thinking that through but I think it's going to be a combination of the internal kind of KPI work and actually getting some external quite in-depth analysis and then the final part obviously part of our existing work programme for the remainder of this financial year is actually getting some baseline data in place particularly in relation to the outcomes that we've set out in the plan. Absolutely I think the easy answer is there's a lot of work to do we don't have all the baselines you're quite correct and it is the biggest question but we are very very lucky to have a very good team and this is one of the first things we're going to have to do. When will the first operating plan be published? It will be agreed and published in March for the coming financial year. John Scott. Thank you, convener. Can I just ask you your views on the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibility statement and do you feel it strikes the right balance between rights and responsibility? Is it simple? Is it clear enough? Is it understandable? Part of the ECHR stuff looks quite complicated to me. You may or may not be aware that we published some advice to government on this after the first round of consultation and we put it up on our website, everyone's well aware of it, it's in the public domain and we emphasised in that advice the importance of clarity, accessibility and all the rest of it and we think that the second version is a big step forward in that respect. The next step for us is to figure out how do we help people to interpret and use that statement and we're going to do quite a bit of work and I'm going to just ask him to say it's early days but are we a bit more about what we hope to do to try and help people to use what's now been published? Yes, I mean picking up the human rights aspect that you asked there, I think we recognise one of the useful roles we could do in the short term is actually start to explore in a bit more detail what the understanding of that human rights context means in practice so one of the early things we're doing this financial error is commissioning a series of discussion papers on key topics to actually kick off some of the work streams and engage people in thinking through these topics a bit further and we've commissioned one of those on human rights really is a way of starting to understand how can land reform take forward the economic, social, cultural, human rights dimensions that are set out in the rights and responsibility statement so I think through things like that through providing discussion papers guidance and ongoing advice we hope to be able to tease out what some of those principles mean in practice. Good luck with that. Okay, can I take you on to land for housing and development and you've identified three key work streams now we've touched earlier on the issue of urban vacancy and dereliction so let's focus on land assembly and public interest led development could you paint a picture for us of what that looks like good examples bad examples. I'm going to take you back to North Glasgow if that's all right seems a good place to start the great deal of work done by Glasgow City Council and Scottish Canal sorry to wave that flag but I will to master plan the development of the huge swath of North Glasgow and actually a great deal of progress will be made over the next few years there because the public agencies have some of the tools to to lead and drive the development and regeneration of that area which includes the public agencies actually acquiring some of the land in order to make it happen but the big question in all of that is have we got enough tools in Scotland to do that and what we know is that Germany has a different set of tools and they do a go about this in a different way and they they've got a lot of experience of dealing with derelict land because we presented them with a lot of derelict land during the war and they so they developed these tools and these expertise is so the question we need to ask is are the tools that we have at the moment sufficient and the evidence would suggest possibly not and if not what tools might be helpful now I'm not going to prejudge that because it's very important that we come at everything without preconception without prejudgment but we will do that in a thorough way. Okay but having heard you say that I'm going to try and put you in the spot there is a proposal I've heard kicking about from academia that in an urban setting if someone was to purchase a piece of land or a building and leave it derelict for a period of time essentially land banking till they get their way that a power compulsory purchase power could be introduced to allow in the public interest for that building to be bought if it hasn't been utilised within a certain period and for the figure that was paid for it is that the kind of thing we're looking at? Yes we'll certainly be looking at those sort of ideas and solutions. Clearly there are a number of things Scottish Government's already committed to looking at compulsory sale orders which may form part of that picture. We've already spoken with the team that are looking at review of compulsory purchase order work. We've identified some work on land value capture which may look at alternative ways of actually capturing the investment to make some of that happen and of course there's also the right to buy dimension particularly with abandoned neglected or vacant and derelict land. So the introduction of the new right to buy under the community empowerment act we need to see how that plays out in perhaps unlocking development of some of those sites where it's appropriate for a community body to take that forward. Do you want to add anything Mr Othern or you? No the only thing is let's not leap to conclusions let's really learn from what's happening in other places and think this through. That's my only plea in all this. Sally Reynolds. Possibly contrary to our earlier discussions for me it's very important to remember that this is actually a rural as well as urban problem rather than the other way round. Absolutely but I just did want to get that example on the record. Moving on John Scott. Thank you convener. I've been given and asked for a series of questions about meeting deadlines and how does the commission propose to assess the extent of scale and concentration of land ownership by the end of 2018-19 when the land register will not be completed before 2024? I think it's probably important to emphasise there that what we're looking to do is to actually understand the impacts and implications behind scale and concentration. We're not looking to carry out a full survey of Scotland's land ownership and quantify exactly the numbers. I think that that work is on going clearly the more complete the land registry the easier it will be for us to do that but we can take forward that work for example using case studies examples taking a look at areas of Scotland to start to get behind some of the headline statistics and actually understand how does scale and concentration affect the way land is used, the way decisions are made and the opportunities associated with that. Father can ask you how best practice guidance will impact on the prevalence of charitable status in land ownership if it continues to remain a legal and viable route for the avoidance of inheritance and other tax? What's your thinking on that? Without repeating the earlier discussion I'm quite clear that best practice does change behaviours guidance changes behaviour best practice and all the rest of it changes behaviours we've seen it already in our coldness. Will it change the number of estates held under charitable status not necessarily and that's not necessarily where we're trying to go with that. The reason why that's been put in as a priority in the programme for government I think is not so much to necessarily reduce the number of estates held through charitable status but to ask the question if it is held through charitable status you know how do we make sure that the public interest is fully fulfilled? That certainly leads on to my next question and given the recent programme for government undertook to publish further information on the reform of succession law in 2018 the commission will work with the Scottish Government to ensure that this reflects their vision for a fair, inclusive and productive system of ownership. How do you see this? What's your vision for fair, inclusive and productive system of ownership? How would you define that? Well I'm not I'm starting to link this to the succession question just can you elaborate the question a bit sorry? It's the government have said that they will bring this forward a fair, inclusive and productive system of ownership. In terms of succession law what would your vision be for a fair, inclusive and productive system of ownership given that you will certainly be informing the government's view? I don't think we've got to clear that. I mean we have not discussed succession law it's not I'm only aware of it from the Ag Holdings review actually so I can't really answer that at the moment it was too early sorry. Okay thank you. Finally how does the commission propose to assess the effectiveness of current community right to buy mechanisms by the end of 2018-19 when regulations for the right to buy abandoned neglected and detrimental land have yet to be laid and there is currently no timetable for implementing the right to buy land to further sustainable development? Well I think the focus on that is on reviewing the existing particularly the 2003 act rights so the community right to buy and the crofting community right. Now I think in doing that we will usefully be able to inform the way the next the further two rights are rolled out and implemented so I anticipate if we do that in the short term we will be able to feed back some of the the learning from that and where it's got to into how those other two rights are implemented. Okay thanks very much. Don Cameron. Can I refer to my register of interest as the owner of a land holding in the highlands before I ask this question. On that last question I think it'd be fair to say that huge tracks of last year's land reform act are not yet in force and in fact the key elements that are in force are the establishment of the commission and the statement of land rights and responsibilities and I just wondered what's your view on the fact that we have in essence legislation that has been enacted but is not yet in force. Is that inhibiting you? Do you need a pause before that's brought into place? I mean just what's your general take? This is a long-term process I mean I do not I think it's important that we just go at this systematically calmly methodically it's not holding us back at all but I don't you know I don't expect to have come up with all the answers and resolved all this by the end of next year sorry and actually I think it's really important that we do I think you know you can you can look at this two two ways you can say oh it's all a bit slow or you can say it's been done carefully. Thank you Mark Ruskell. Thank you convener so I mean we have the the initial work programme which is welcome to see and there's a lot of priorities in there. What's the next step beyond this work programme? What other aspects will you be focusing on in the period new themes or perhaps developing themes beyond this initial work programme? Well I'm not expecting particular new themes to to emerge in the short term I mean the the next steps in the immediate future are actually delving into the work that's required to deliver the work streams that are set out in here and you'll appreciate that what's set out in here is still a fairly headline level and in each of these there are several bits of work that we are now starting to put in place for example on the vacant of Erlich land or the community right to buy review we're now starting the process of actually the at a project level of how we take those individual bits of work forward that's clearly going to be informed by the board discussions that we referred to earlier where we're going out and about and seeing the relevant examples on the ground and speaking to other partners and the continued public engagement so it's really fleshing out how in practice we take this forward now. It's life more difficult we do go out and about a lot and for example last week at the conference we held three workshops and we threw together the information which is then going to be summarised and then used to help expand on the work we do so new things are coming all the time but we are trying to remain very focused and strategic. Okay and can I just turn to the planning review I mean I noticed that you made a submission to the planning review can you just say a little bit more about what you what you what you see as your role in relation to that? The link between planning and our work particularly in urban Scotland is very very and I hope it's obvious but it's very important and we therefore thought it was really important we will not normally be you know routinely responding to every consultation the Government produces but we thought it was important to publish that to respond but also to publish that response we did that. We will continue to have dialogue with Scottish Government planning officials as this whole thing rolls forward and Hamish is already doing that but we're not going to take over their their function. Okay but I mean I noticed in your in your submission to the planning review you did raise some very interesting points including the point that communities are starting to feel that the plan led system is being undermined by the appeals process. Now that's an interesting and quite a weighty conclusion. So when it comes back to you know how you see planning and you know what role you see going forward I mean it seems to be an area a little bit like agricultural subsidies where you've got one foot in the door you have a view you have a responsibility to liaise with stakeholders it seems pretty pivotal to the future of land and yet I'm struggling to really get a sense of whether this is a major strategic priority something which you'll continue to kind of put your all into and you know quite gratefully you know bring for the views of communities into that process as well but I'm struggling to see how central it is to your to your work. Landform has implications for an extraordinarily diverse range of public policy and a significant number of the big priorities of today planning reform housing all these sorts of things and I hope we do sometimes have weighty things to say and when we have got weighty things to say we'll we'll not be afraid to say them which is what we've done but we do have to be careful we're a very small NDPB and it's important that we focus and prioritize and that's that's probably been one of the biggest early priorities for the board is to is to decide what we're not going to focus on so so in relation to planning review I think it was right to make the contribution we did because I hope we did have something sensible to say and useful to say but I don't think it would be right for us to go you know to divert resources into into going too much further with that because you know we have a civil service and we have a planning division within civil service who can take that forward and it is entirely open to them to talk to us about that and and vice versa and that happens all the time behind the scenes and Hamish does that but I don't I don't you know the temptation for us to get heavily involved in a lot of different things is when we should resourced okay Corey Beamish. Just following on from that I think it was touched on earlier the land use strategy was mentioned and I wonder um I'm listening carefully um Andrew to what you're saying about not getting involved in everything uh but and and respect and understand the point you're making I'm wondering um whether you see a value in the land use strategy and whether the fact that it isn't statutory at the moment but it only has to be referred to is some relevant in terms of your work. Hamish's got a lot of experience I'll pass it to him as you certainly see a strong value in the land use strategy and I think the more we're able to articulate what the public interest is in land use the easier it is to resolve many of the issues that we've talked about so I think it's got a clear role in that and I think our we see our work in particularly the area of work we've identified as land use decision making being strongly linked to the aims and objectives set out in the land use strategy and I think perhaps what we can bring to this is is that additional focus on the mechanisms of how the structures of land ownership management can help deliver some of those aims within the land use strategy and do you see the fact that it isn't statutory but just has to be referred to at the moment as something that is helpful or unhelpful? I don't see that as holding things back or making a difference I mean I think there's very widespread support amongst all the groups that we work with to be honest for the idea of the land use strategy and actually got a strong commitment to try and move it forward. I've got just a couple of questions the first is just in respect of the title of this committee which is of course the environment and climate change and land reform committee and in terms of climate change could you tell the committee how the commission or has the commission considered how it is contributing to Scotland's climate change targets? Not explicitly no it's implicit it's implicit in a number of areas that we're likely to be working in but it's not an explicit area of priority that we've focused on. Can I ask it going back to some of the questions that have been raised before now? I think it's fair to say that one of the biggest land owners in Scotland is the state in its many guises be that state agencies such as the Forestry Commission, the Government itself, Scottish Canals I'm sure, the Ministry of Defence Crown Estate who we heard evidence from last week. To what extent does that factor in your thinking in terms of things like land valuation tax, cap on acreage etc? We've not said anything about a cap on acreage, I just thought it was a resistant reaction to that. Sorry, maybe the telegraph did but we certainly didn't. I'm not suggesting you did but in terms of diversity of ownership if I could put it like that. I'm going to pass this to Hamish, sorry just for the record. We've talked about diversity, we've not talked about disaggregation and we've not talked about caps, I just want to, we have been clear that it is an important priority to try and diversify ownership for a number of reasons, not least of which is the whole business of innovation, inclusion and so on and so forth, but I wouldn't conclude from that anything at this stage, I do want to get that on the record. We're not going at this with any preconception, but sorry to the substance of your question I've got to Hamish. I'm sorry, could you just go back to the starting question? Yes, no, I just, what I was asking about was obviously the state if I could put it like that is a large landowner and I just wondered to what extent that fact is into your thinking on your various themes that you're exploring. Across the themes we're making no prejudgements or distinctions between types of ownership, as far as I'm concerned our work will look at these issues in relation to all types of ownership, be that private, public, charitable or community. The same themes are relevant across all sectors. I just want to come back to the area around climate change and public sector reporting duties. As a new organisation, obviously your commission isn't on the list of those who have a mandatory responsibility to report under the Climate Change Act, which came in in the last session of Parliament. I'm wondering whether you would see going forward, perhaps not immediately, but in the future, in view of the very wide remit in terms of land and land ownership and sustainable development, which my colleague Mark Ruskell highlighted, whether you would see it as useful to move towards reporting voluntarily on that and whether, as you're a new organisation, whether it would be appropriate for the Land Commission to be added to the list of those that should report on a statutory basis. The context for our work is and will always be the priorities of the Government of the day, so clearly, certainly for the time being, climate change objectives are a high part of that. That and other Scottish Government priorities will drive our strategic thinking. They will therefore drive our annual reporting as well. The extent to which we'll be explicit, I don't want to prejudice that at the moment, and therefore the extent to which it would be helpful is hard for me to judge, but I think that if the committee considered that it would be helpful, we'll certainly do it. That's not a problem. I simply think that it is a really positive opportunity in that you are a new organisation with significant remit in relation to the future of our land in Scotland. Of course, I respect that there are other wide-ranging issues to take into account, but it is something that, if I may suggest, you might possibly be a leader on in the future, having been involved with the public sector reporting duties for the last committee. We'll do that, thank you. I emphasize that we will be extremely anxious to report our contribution to the whole spectrum of Scottish Government priorities precisely because we have a really important job to do over the next few years, which is to really communicate the significance of land and land reform to the welfare of our society in all sorts of ways. Thank you. Have members got any other questions, any other areas of the wish to cover? I would contend with that. It just remains for me to thank you for your time this morning. That's been very useful. If anything does come to mind, feel free to write to us. I think we would also encourage an on-going dialogue, so regular updates of anything of relevance to the committee when in writing would be helpful. I thank you. We'll absolutely do that in writing and also would very much welcome an opportunity to do this from time to time. Thank you very much. I'm going to suspend briefly before we move to the rest of the business. Welcome back to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. We move to agenda item 3, which is subordinate legislation, specifically the following negative instruments, the public water supply Scotland amendment regulations 2017, SSI 2017 forward slash 281, and the water intended for human consumption private supply Scotland regulations 2017, SSI 2017 forward slash 282. I refer members to the papers and can I invite any comments? I'm not objecting to the legislation. We could just flag up, just for the record, that effectively delegates the UK from the drinking water directive, which means that it could be less frequent sampling under certain circumstances of water quality, had some issues in Barnoff and Shaspay in the nature of water quality, but I would suggest that what we do when we do meet Scottish Water, a future meeting, that we put this down as a question to them. Are we agreed to that? I see an agreement. Any other comments on these two instruments? Mark Ruskell. Concern convener, this is the second statutory instrument that we've had, which has had major drafting errors within it. Obviously, given the volume of statutory instruments, we're likely to get next year in the run-up to Brexit. Those kind of errors do raise concerns. I don't know whether the limit value errors within the statutory instrument have any material impact in terms of environmental quality, but it does raise questions about drafting. If this is to be an interim measure ahead of an amendment being brought forward, does that have any impact in terms of the water quality regimes in that interim period? It's something that we should perhaps raise with the Scottish Government just to get some clarity and some reassurance over how these instruments are being drafted and the due care and diligence that's brought to that process. Do you mean by the general picture about drafting errors or the specific points that you've just raised your concerns around this particular SSI? Concerns about the SSI that has been brought in front of us this morning, but it does follow a theme. John Scott. I would just like to support Mark Ruskell in what he's said and express my concerns about the Public Water Supply Scotland amendment regulations 2017, SSI 2017, slash 281. I just hope that when the next instrument is brought forward, which, of course, I very much welcome, that these matters will be resolved, but I think that there is a broader point here and I think that it's very important that these instruments are correctly laid in the first instance. That would be hugely helpful for all concerned. Do we write to the Government on both of those points? That being agreed, are we also agreed that we don't wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instruments? No. Can I ask that the letter or letters to be sent in this regard are delegated to myself as convener? We are agreed. Thank you for that. The fourth item on the agenda is for the committee to consider correspondence from the Scottish Government in relation to a petition by Logan Steele on behalf of the Scottish Raptor Study Group, calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to implement urgent action to introduce a state-regulated system of licensing of game bird hunting. I refer members to the papers and I invite any responses. Kate Forbes. I certainly think that we should be asking for an update from the Scottish Government as to where they are at with, in light of our previous discussions. I would agree with that. It's important that I note from the letter from the cabinet secretary that it says that I'm commissioning a research project to examine both the benefits and costs of large shooting estates of Scotland's economy and biodiversity, particularly in view of the fragility of rural economies and the lack of progress that one might define towards some 2020 biodiversity targets. It will be helpful to us specifically about that as well. Perhaps the committee, once we've heard about how the review group is developing and the research, could then be in a better position to make an informed decision about whether to close the petition or not. Any other views? I would be happy to keep the petition open. I think that that would be not unreasonable. I do think that we would be pleased to hear from the cabinet secretary as well how she's progressing this request from the committee. I have to say that I'm not necessarily in favour of this licensing. I think that it will be much more red tape, but I'm therefore not necessary or welcome, but let's hear what the cabinet secretary has to say. Okay, so what I'm hearing around the table is that we should write to the Government seeking a detailed update and continue the petition. Is that agreed? We are agreed. At its next meeting on 31 October, the committee will begin taking evidence as part of its inquiry into air quality and will consider subordinate legislation on land reform and wild fisheries. As agreed earlier, we will now move into private session. I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is now closed.