 Good afternoon or good evening. When I came in there, I felt like I was about to attend a burn supper and there should have really been a piper in front of us. But hopefully the reception will be as warm as we would get a burn supper. Good evening and thank you very much for joining us tonight in the Scottish Parliament. I'm Finlay Carson, MSP, and I'd like to welcome you to the Festival of Politics event on radical use of Scotland's land. This year's festival celebrates its 19th year of provoking, inspiring and informing people of all ages from every walk of life to engage in three days of spirited debate. We're delighted that you can join us today and I look forward to the discussion and hearing everybody's thoughts and views. It is important that everyone is given the opportunity to contribute even when there may be a difference of opinion and we can always do that and treat each other in a respectful way at all times. As the convener of the Parliament's Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, which is the partner of this event, I'll be particularly keen to hear your views and thoughts on the issue, which is incredibly important for all our futures. If you wish to share your thoughts on social media, which is a thing that everybody does now, you can do so using the channel at VisitScotparl or on Instagram. I'd also like to remind everybody here tonight that the event is being live-streamed on the Parliament's SPTV channel. We use Scotland's land for many different things, providing food, sustaining communities and businesses and increasingly tackling the climate and biodiversity emergencies. How can we strike the right balance between all of those? What should Scotland's land look like to help us to create a fair and sustainable community for the future? To answer those questions and more, I am very pleased to be joined today by our expert panel, Andrew Thin, Dr Annie McKee and Stephen Young. Andrew is the chair of the Scottish Land Commission and has over 30 years of experience in leadership roles in public, private and third sector, including as the Crofters Commissioner, the chair of Cairn Gorms National Park Authority and the chair of Scottish Natural Heritage. Annie is a senior social scientist from the James Hutton Institute, based in Aberdeen. She leads the Scotland's land reform futures research project and is the voluntary convener of rural housing Scotland. She is also an active member of the community where she lives in rural Aberdeenshire. On my far left, Stephen is the director of policy at Scottish Land and Estate. He is a member organisation for land managers across Scotland. With Farming Root, Stephen is a partner in the family Dairy Farm and has a background in agriculture and rural cooperatives. There will be plenty of opportunity for members of the audience to put questions and views to the panel, but I would like to open myself by asking our panellists a couple of questions. Let me start with your visions for the future. The Land Commission states that its programme of land reform aims to create a Scotland where land is owned and used in ways that is fair, responsible and productive. Can you explain that vision a bit more? What will Scotland look like when your work is complete? Three words mean completely different things to completely different people. That makes this quite a difficult thing to define. It is very complicated and it does come down to individuals. There is no single answer to what Scotland should look like. Let's look at things that we know. History tells us that any attempt to centrally plan land use is unlikely to be particularly successful. Even Stalin towards the end admitted that, and the Soviet Union fell apart, at least in part because of its sustained attempts to do exactly that. There is one thing we know. Central planning of land use is probably unwise. Second thing that we pretty much know, that economies of scale in relation to land very rapidly become diseconomies of scale at a certain point and where that point is reached depends on the type of land and all the rest of it. In some circumstances, those economies or diseconomies of scale can become localised power monopolies, which inhibit innovation and inhibit growth and diversity. There is another thing we know and have known actually for quite a long time. The third thing that we know, if you stop and think about it, although I am quoting the late Simon Pepper here who said this to a meeting of landowners, he said, ultimately in a democracy you need the consent of the people for what you want to do. Not a bad quote that actually and I think it is something that actually we know that. History tells us that actually. You can get away for a while with doing things that the people don't want you to do, but ultimately in a democracy and arguably even in a dictatorship you cannot get away with it forever. There are three truisms I think are helpful. I think the priorities for land reform and for the land commission, although I won't be chair for much longer so someone else may have another view, we do need to devolve land use incentives and land use regulation. We have put together proposals for local land use partnerships of some former or another, but there is little doubt that centralising all of that in Edinburgh doesn't make an awful sense. Secondly, we absolutely must free up access to land so that more people, far more people actually, can have access to land. We are closing out potential innovators, potential drivers, potential people who can make our rural areas fresh. We are closing these people out and so we must free up access to land. We must find ways of releasing probably mostly small fairly small bits of land and you can see where these bits of land do get released. It's extraordinary what people do with them and we must challenge monopoly power where it exists and I'm not, I don't want to overstate this because it's not a, it's not a, it's not as if the whole of Scotland is a monopoly but there are pockets of monopoly power and we must challenge that I think. And thirdly, I think we must start treating local communities as the hosts that they are. They are the hosts for whatever land has been using. They host pylons, they host wind turbines, they host forests, they're the hosts and actually you know local communities hosts should be treated with good manners and they should get something out of the deal. That's not an unreasonable thing. If we can get this right and it will take time, this is not as if there isn't a magic stretch, there's no magic one, but over time I think we will see significantly more diversity of ownership and diversity of tenure. It's not just ownership. After all if you look at the crofting townships, ownership is concentrated, tenure is highly diverse, but we will see more diversity and I think that would be a very good thing. We will see more innovation, I do not doubt that, we absolutely must. I also think we'll actually see more collaboration. If you look at what happens in the Netherlands for example where my daughter lives, land holdings are quite small, innovation is rife, but so is collaboration. I think we will see much stronger local support for the way in which our land is used as local people feel they've got a genuine say in it. It's because people feel disenfranchised, slightly misusing that word but I will. They feel disenfranchised, that is why a lot of local people are pretty fed up actually with the way their land is being used. Ultimately I think we will get to a place where landowners are popular, respected people in our country and that we are much more at ease with ourselves when it comes to the whole way in which we own and use our land. Thank you Andrew. That's certainly given us some food for thought. I'm going to come to you Stephen. You represent an organisation that has a lot of very large landowners. Andrew is suggesting that innovation is reserved to small landowners or that it stimulates innovation. Would that suggest that the larger landowners in Scotland are not as innovative? Can you share the view and the vision of the Land Commission? I mean our membership is extremely diverse. We've got large landowners, we've got small landowners just like everyone else. I don't think that innovation is the preserve of small land holdings by any means. You can see innovation right across the piece because Andrew mentioned collaboration. We see a lot of innovation through collaboration which is possible and is enabled through scale to allow that to take that. I've got broader shoulders there. So I think there's a huge diversity there. In terms of scale as well, Andrew talked about some of the disbenefits of scale. Certainly in terms of biodiversity, then scale wins, to be perfectly honest, in terms of landscape scale recovery of nature. That does help with scale and you can do it through collaboration. I spent a lot of my life working with farmer co-operatives and believe me it's tough. It can be done but it's extremely tough so scale is extremely important. I think that this comes back to the question of what is land for in Scotland. Anyone who has heard me speak recently, we're bored of me saying this, but land in Scotland is under extreme amounts of pressure. It's been asked to produce so much for society as a whole. It's been asked to produce food and fibre. It's been asked to supply jobs, enhance biodiversity, reduce carbon emissions like every other sector, but no other sector has been asked to do all of that and sequester carbon at the same time. So there's huge pressure coming on to land. We have to try and figure out how we're going to get it to deliver all of those things and to do that we have to be really clear of what we're actually asking before we can decide how we're going to deliver it. So far be it from me to agree with Andrew so I won't. Generally, we do it largely. In terms of the social licence that Andrew is talking about, I totally agree on that. Responsible land ownership is something that we are fully behind. We've done a huge amount of work on that. We've worked with the land commission. Our land owners commitment was superseded to Land Rights and Responsibility statement and we've worked with the Land Commission on how to do that to embed those voluntary principles. I think there's been a huge amount of progress there. Transparency as well. We very strongly support that. There's some issues with resources on the register of Scotland but actually as a whole that is improving and moving forward register of controlling interest as well. We support many of the aims of what the Land Commission are trying to do. There's just maybe some ways around how we do it that we might differ on but I don't think we're miles apart and we have a good working relationship in trying to deliver that. Annie, as someone who lives and supports a rural community in Aberdeenshire, is there any flaws that you can see in the Land Commission's vision or further opportunities we can see? And as I said in the way in, I never speak. I'm always the one asking the question so I would never disagree publicly with that, with the Land Commission. But I think that's really interesting. I think one thing that Andrew didn't touch on was about biodiversity that Stephen brought in then. So that's certainly part of my vision is about having functioning ecosystems, providing ecosystem services to those local communities. So that's part of that natural capital discussion and what land is for. But also that land has its intrinsic value. Wildlife and nature is there because we are part of it as well. So that's something to not forget. But I'm really passionate about involving local people and local communities, how we define that. It's also part of the discussion in how land is managed and how land is used. So there's a lot more to be done on that, I think. We're just tinkering on the edges. When you talk about biodiversity, much of the policies come out now recognise the advantage of landscape-sized projects. Often it's the bigger land owners that can deliver on those landscape-sized ambitions. Do you see any issues with smaller collections of communities trying to deliver the same? Is there a critical mass that communities may not be able to achieve to deliver some of the biodiversity and climate change targets that we have? That's a really good question and probably my colleagues in the James Hunt Institute would be better placed because there's lots of analysis, data analysis, data being collected on habitats, climate projections, those sorts of things. I don't think that we should put any barriers in the place of communities who are working at a small scale who are delivering benefits at that level because that's engaging people in the bigger processes and informing them as well. So then they might be able to have a well-informed discussion with the landowner at scale about what they want to see happen. Yes, we know that land management doesn't always work well across boundaries. I'm sure, Stephen, you know and understand this as well. So we need that improved collaboration. We need enhanced deer management groups and including more local voices in that discussion. I'm not having standalone discussions about forestry management plans rather than thinking about the bigger picture and what that means for social, economic and environmental benefits and assets. I'm sorry to stick with that. We have many ambitions for our country but perhaps we can summarise them as maintaining fair and sustainable communities while meeting our climate and biodiversity targets. To concentrate on communities first of all, how do you think we should think about land when looking at building and maintaining sustainable communities? What role does it play and what different options do we have? I'm going to stick with you again, Annie. I hear what Stephen was saying about the pressure on land but land is everything. We can't really do anything without land and it provides all prospects for delivery. I always say that Mark Twain quotes about how they don't make it anymore. Actually, there is new land so I've got to stop saying that. I think that you can't underplay the importance of access to land for communities. That's not only ownership but it's about leasing or gifts or using small spaces as meanwhile spaces for communities and looking at things slightly differently and looking for mutual benefit as well where there's an idea that a community has that a landowner perhaps hasn't sought of that then might provide an additional income source or an asset that they haven't been able to provide. I think that land is really fundamental. It's the main barrier where land is not available to community development. I've done research on community land-based activities so where communities are trying to lead on the development of affordable housing or renewable energy or active travel paths, cultural activities. The main theme is if the landowner is not willing then that doesn't happen and so we need to show the benefits of being able to provide those sorts of access to land. The only other thing I would add to that is it's also the right land at the right time in the right place and often at the right price and so those sorts of layers kind of add into that challenge. It's not just here's a bit of land make best use of it. It's about what can we make best use of, where is the best spot and I hear Andrew about land use planning at scale but I think we could bring in a bit more of a science-based approach to land use planning. I'm thinking about what data we have around making land more resilient to climate change for instance or looking at habitat mapping and how that might overlap with the social benefits that we want from land. So hopefully again what my colleagues are doing in the James Hutton Institute is integrating some of that data that might be able to inform some of those discussions. Andrew, again thinking about land when we look at building, maintaining and sustainable communities how would you define sustainable? It's one of those words that lots of people have lots of different definitions. Does a community need to be growth within a community for it to sustain? What's your definition of sustainable community and how can land support that? Let me answer it in a slightly different way because it's another of these words that everyone in this room will have a different definition so I'm not sure how useful it is trying to put hard definitions down but let's just think about communities and land. So there's been a bit of a tendency I think to say well the community can own that wood and that's their bit and then the other bits belong to different land owners but actually if you talk to people in many rural communities in Scotland if not most they'll just say this is our land happens to be privately owned but it's our land and I think what where we need to get to in Scotland is to a place where the way in which that land is used has the consent of the people that back to my phrase the local people will decide what's sustainable from their point of view which is why I'm not going to define it for them. They'll decide and they should decide you know Stalin was rather good at trying to decide it at the Soviet Union scale didn't work so let's stop this thinking about this idea that communities can have that wee pocket there usually some pretty trashy piece of land and the rest of it somebody else's it is the community's land in a real sociopolitical sense and therefore we have to move to a place where land use decision making is genuinely an interactive place between the community and those who for very good reasons have you know a stake in the game an investment and and all the rest of it but but people aren't stupid you know there's often I often also hear people telling me oh well communities they can't do that they wouldn't understand it you know too difficult that's rubbish and if if it is the case that communities genuinely don't understand it it's because it's been badly explained it's nothing it's not a failure on the part of the community. Stephen. Yeah I think go back to the bigger question of communities should play a role in that and should have a voice within that as well but I think there's also a thing here there's an assumption that there's a homogenous view of the community who all want the same thing and I don't think that's really really true to say we see what's varying views on things forestry can be extremely divisive for example and also I think is Andrew saying you know the community are too stupid to do it I think I've never heard anyone say that but I have heard people say well the land owner would just say no if we asked anyway so actually getting those conversations happening and the other thing I would like to just point out that this discussion as if land owners and community are polar opposites who've never met each other and don't know who each other are to be honest is nonsense you know so many of our members I mean I made it in some work on this one of my members said look this is how to communicate with the community while drinking the same pubs kids go at the same school we shop in the same shop I'm here come and speak to me you know so I think that that kind of maybe it's a cultural thing we need to get past of not actually of that assumption there as well and again in some of the research that we did on the wellbeing economy contribution of estates one of the key things that came out was estates being this community anchor so being able to anchor a lot of the activities in the community whether it is small business units whether it's employment whether it's housing whether it's you know land for the rugby club you know all this sort of thing as well and in terms of the kind of gifting land or land at the right price in the right place so not to come back to it but to gift a parcel of land at the right price you're probably going to have to have scale to be able to do that to a broaden of shoulders to take that on so I'm not saying it's the only way but I'm going to say that that's one of the ways that it does happen and that but do we want to get into that kind of feudal kind of relationship as well where it's gifted as such or you know that's something so we need to have a more kind of mature conversation around that I think sorry I'm not so there need to be a little bit more honesty around the challenges and opportunities and I think what you're saying at your landowners absolutely part part of the community absolutely I think there is that honesty and and maybe some community groups don't have the skills to do what they want to do but maybe the estate next door does so could they do it in collaboration you know so rather than just say well this won't work we'll just bang heads let's walk away let's actually see how it goes far well no doubt come back to in touch on these topics again but they're going to stick with you Stephen as the farmer on the panel or the ex-farmer reformed or otherwise farming has been an essential part of Scotland's for Scotland for it for as long as people have lived here and farming has played a massive role in shaping the landscape that we love and even now in times of international trade agriculture and food security still of particular importance but how can agriculture continue to be a key part of of how we use our land and how can we best manage and decide how we use our land for agriculture yeah I don't think it's a question of how it can be a key part of how we use our land it is a key part of how we use our land and it will continue to be a key part I don't think there's any getting away from that I'm just haven't seen if there's anyone in here that I'm likely to offend with any of my answers as a pretended dairy farmer as I describe myself but I think that we will look at land use and different types of land we've got a real variation in quality of land throughout Scotland we've got some of the best land for green crops raising livestock and all the rest of it we've also got some hill land and things that are not particularly well suited and we've got some scrub land which you can't do a huge amount with so in my opinion I think we're probably looking to say well there'll be bits of Scotland which possibly will become more intensive and will produce food and they probably should produce food because that's what they're really good at but there'll be others which maybe aren't quite so well suited for producing food and maybe they'll produce less and they'll work for biodiversity and they'll work for carbon sequestration I don't think it's good to go down the line of every farm must have x percent handed over to nature whales have tried to go down that route and that's opening up a whole can of worms that you're far better off to say this land is best suited for this activity let's do it there and do it really well this land's not so let's do something there but I think jobs and community are really important in this part as well agriculture is a really integral part of community it's an integral part for a lot of jobs and things and we do hear quite a lot and I know frustration for a lot of farmers as people talk about green jobs you know what is back to Andrew saying what do these words actually mean just saying green jobs isn't a job you know we've got to look at it I'm going to say well what's not green about the jobs we've got how do we develop that how do we keep the skills we've got in rural Scotland and build upon what we've already got rather than trying to start again you've obviously got considerable involvement in rural housing or whatever but again agriculture requires workers and the businesses that depend agriculture depends on the need workers and whatever you know Stephen was talking about we maybe need to I think I'm going to put words in your mouth but we need to farm more actively the land we're already farming just now and farm that hard some people would suggest we we apply biodiversity and climate change policies across the board no matter what the land type might be can you see us having policies in the future where we we really farm intensively in the areas that we know we can and maybe take the fruit off the gas so to speak in areas where biodiversity and climate change could take a bigger priority that makes me feel quite uncomfortable I'm not an expert in this but that sounds like the land sparing land sharing debate which doesn't sound very successful I do I'm more of an advocate of integrated land use so I don't think that we should have figures or necessarily apply that to every single holding but I think we should be encouraging farmers to farm with nature because there's so many benefits and we can see that you know with many examples we can also see the social benefits of it so some research I read recently from Australia looked at a forestation and in particular where farmers had planted trees on their farm that helped to sustain in particular their farming family having an additional income source but also the secondary services locally that they relied on where farms were sold or were leased for forestry on a bigger scale then communities changed they didn't necessarily decline but it wasn't the same people that were there and certainly weren't the same sorts of services and kind of integration so I think it's a really complicated question and putting it into that sort of black and white let's farm hard I think also it's about food systems again I'm straying into territory how you started with housing and I was like oh that's why and now we're talking about food systems we need to be enhancing local food systems and working on ways that we keep food local and producing what we need in in those sorts of spaces and again involving people and different types of people in in that sort of food production because we're at risk if we're just producing more we're not actually solving a global issue around food and nutrition and we should be looking at what you know nutritional produce land produces what nutrition the land produces not just what food and where you know what type of food and where that's actually going I think there's a big question there about growing grain for whisky or growing grain for people to eat and what they actually need locally but I think also we we need to be building in you know we need to be encouraging more young people into agriculture and that's where that housing question comes in one of the main barriers to young people taking on farms or having access to land is lack of housing and housing is fundamentally a land's question we also know from research that if people succeed on farms are inheriting farms earlier they're more likely to take innovative steps and not follow a kind of pathway that previous generations have set and new entrants are certainly more interested and able to take on agroecological farming as well that seems to be a pathway so I think building in more diversity in agriculture and encouraging more young people through all sorts of different routes is really important and again it's not only about farm inheriting farms or owning land it's about joint ventures share farming working with community owned lands you know options for new crops all sorts of innovative ways Stephens etching to come in before I bring Andrew back in just to clarify I wasn't meaning that kind of farm it hard in certain ways and we would support kind of nature friendly farming techniques as well but I think there are areas of the country which are best to producing food which we should do more production of food from but I don't think that has to be at the expense of biodiversity and climate per se I think there are ways of integrating to the other thing I was going to say in terms of food and local food chains we're at a real critical mass point in Scotland at the moment we're losing production we're losing processing capacity so so much of quality produce in Scotland goes south goes abroad to get processed and then we buy it back again and all the value leaves the country so we have to have that processing capacity and that's timber, beef, lamb it's everything we lack processing capacity sorry so I'm going to go off script here a little Andrew but we're talking about the values of land when it comes to biodiversity or food security and whatever and should we start and baseline everything and work out exactly what the natural capital is of every piece of land in Scotland and work out the value of that in terms of biodiversity and climate change mitigation and should we also decide as a nation how much food we want to produce as a nation how much we want to import and then decide how much land we need to actively farm and provide that food security is that not a sensible place to start rather than where we are at the moment so I actually work out what the end game is rather than almost you know we're looking at agriculture but we feel we're kind of tinkering around the edges should we should we be more radical when it comes to looking at how different patches of land are used so well I'm very cautious about trying to centrally plan land use of Scotland for the next 20 years I just inherently cautious about that the reality is that actually quite a lot of people are baselining on ecological status on carbon status because they know perfectly well if they've got a baseline then they'll be able to sell credits and if they haven't got a baseline they won't be able to sell credits so that's happening anyway I don't think government needs to do it I am very confident that Scotland will sell carbon sequestration on a global market we've got tremendous opportunities to do that now you can argue but whether that's greenwashing or not there's lots of arguments to be had around all of that and people will get very hotlands the colour about it but that's my expectation is that we'll sell carbon sequestration opportunities widely and the market will do that I'm not sure that you know government needs to regulate the market rather than start you know baselining and all the rest of it we've not already seen problems with that where we're seeing land prices for example and in my part of the country the Frucen Galloway where an acre of productive agriculture is now selling at £10,000 where you know we would expect it about six and on the back of that it's tree planting or whatever that's really you know set in the base for agriculture land and is the horse bolted so I think we need to be very careful to not to conflate tree planting with carbon sequestration so it is absolutely right that the pretty generous incentives for tree planting and the relatively light touch obligations that go with those incentives mean that land prices are soaring in certain places where you can plant trees that's happening we've said very clearly that we think that those incentives should be reviewed very carefully to make sure that with the rate if you like to plant trees and get money for it go significant obligations significantly more than now so I think that's fine it is true that land prices are rising because speculative investors are thinking if we buy that we may be able to sequester carbon 20 years down the line and make a lot of money so that's happening too I don't think and our research shows that that's not the main driver trees the trees is the main driver and I don't think we should be afraid of using Scotland's to land to sequester carbon if there's a market there if we can make make a decent income for the country out of that why not and the more difficult one I think is biodiversity credits because it's not at all clear how that will work but there are speculative investors in land for quotes unquote rewilding who are baselining it you know measuring birdsong levels and all the rest of it with a view to selling hoping to sell biodiversity credits on that that's much more speculative and again I don't I don't think that's driving prices anywhere near as much as the tree planting so I think disaggregating that would be helpful just before we go to the audience has some question we're going to pull it all back together so how do we balance all these competing demands now we've not even touched on you know you were the chair of a national park authority so tourism is obviously very important so maintaining our landscape to attract tourists is also a demand if you like so it might be a false dichotomy but what is more important for the immediate future is it tackling climate change and biodiversity or is it empowering communities and diversifying land ownership where how does it all come together so parliament put in place in 2002 whatever it was national parks act this requirement that national park authorities would produce a park plan so that was the that was the earliest attempt in scotland to go to to go to some sort of localised or regionalised land use planning and it has worked to an extent I would say I wouldn't overstate this but it has worked to an extent and I think that's fine I am quite clear that we we need to get to a place where where we are providing particularly particularly around incentives but also to an extent under regulation that needs to be more locally driven than it is I don't think it makes sense to have the same incentive for tree planting in galloway as caithness or whatever it just doesn't and the people of galloway are probably telling you that actually so let's let's do that but let's let's not over plan I mean you can go so far you can create framework you can create incentives you can always do it but then let's let small-scale innovation flourish and and just while I've got to the floor I'm I am not arguing that all land should be held in small pockets I'm not arguing that what I am saying is that we need a lot more small pockets and there are an awful lot of people telling us that they want small pockets to do stuff and we're holding back innovation and enterprise and all the rest because there isn't enough in the way of small pockets but there will also be bigger holdings as well that's fine and if parliament does proceed to put a public interest test in place as has been proposed and much talked about then there will be a mechanism for assessing whether the size of something has got too big that it's no longer in the public interest I'm going to bring Stephen in but there's one little thing I want to ask what's the role of regional land use partnerships and do you think they'll recognise exactly what you explained to us so we don't want to have a plan of what's happening it's surely that's what regional land use partnerships are to have set out today well we'll have to see but it's we're still experimenting and this is this is all very new stuff and I think it's all very difficult and and other people and no doubt we'll hear it actually other people will have a different view I do not think that producing a kind of blueprint for Galloway you know we'll put potatoes here barley here trees there cows there I don't think that's the job of government local or national actually I think creating frameworks absolutely is as to how you want to prioritise so do we want to spend so much money on trees or should we not be spending some of the tree money on this or if we're going to spend money on trees should there not be some community demand put into it as well there's a whole different things that that can that sort of thing is sensitively done through a local land use partnership but I personally do not think a local land use partnership should be producing some sort of blueprint that's taking us down the central planning route which failed 100 years ago. Taking it back to the competing demands I think it's pretty clear you know that the climate change is the number one at the moment and I think the forestry issues are a symptom of that to an extent because that is a market intervention to try and sequester more carbon to meet climate change targets so I think that is what's happening and it is that government market intervention which has probably not been dynamic enough to adjust to the emerging markets and emerging situations. In terms of the regional land use partnerships we were quite supportive of them in terms of doing that and as Andrew says providing that framework of these are the sort of activities that we want to see in Galloway or the Borders or the national parks but in terms of national parks Andrew the national park plans literally do what you're saying I've seen them draw lines on a map and say we want trees there and we want to do something else there and I think I quite agree a framework not a kind of a mapped out this is the activity that must happen here I think we have to remember the national parks as well they're national parks not nationalised parks so there are people within the parks trying to run businesses and trying to run their own lives as well so while you can encourage things it's not a case of government stamping them and saying this is what happens from now so it's getting that balance and the other thing I was just going to say is that all of this particularly biodiversity we've touched on carbon credits we've touched on biodiversity credits sorry Annas you want to speak NatureScot has said there's a £20 billion finance gap over the next 10 years this needs private finance to work so we have to work with people to deliver that for everyone Annie I can ask you to touch on your views on the competing demands but also I want to go back you commented about whisky and the rights are on a whisky I'm being devil's advocate here but whisky generates a huge tax take and a lot of that money is then put into the general spending pot which then goes back to support biodiversity climate change food production how do you decide how much we should allow our land to be used to grow whisky which ultimately has knock on benefits and knock on issues so can you touch on that as well please no idea but sorry that was a bad example I mean a colleague has got a map of all kind of the distribution of different land uses if we package them together so if we put all of whisky growing it's basically like the whole of Aberdeenshire or something like that but golf courses are the whole of Shetland and vegetable production is basically Aaron you know so actually there is a bit of a balance there that we need to rip way up should we be actually trying to grow more fruit and vegetables that we're going to eat but yeah the economics of it is really fundamental and so we need to think about that but we also and again going back to the work that my colleagues do is look at barley production under different climate scenarios so we are relying on this as a large income source for the country but actually are we going to be able to keep producing the barley that then we rely on and where should it then grow and how can we make that land you know that land resilient from flooding wildfires all these sorts of things I'll go back to competing demands because I think that that is a false dichotomy that you touched on at the beginning and actually the final part that you say that Stephen about drawing people in is really critical we need to ensure that we have a just transition so that relies on empowered communities whoever they are because I think there's a lot of discussion there communities within communities communities of interest informed participants and citizens so I think we can't let people let people kind of be left behind in any way I think what I'm very concerned about is just the increasing power imbalance and inequality that's happening because of this drive because of this market focus on land at the moment that communities so local people let's put it in that sort of language I've really been left behind and it's not the language that they speak so for me as a rural Aberdonian who does social research now I'm all of a sudden having to understand funding and speculation and hedge funds and stuff like that and I think we need to rapidly allow communities to have capacity to engage in those sorts of conversations and also bring these sort of market forces down to the local level and to look at what the impact is on the local scale so yeah there's a big there's loads of interesting research to do in that I know I Stephen that's a really important point you've touched on there but what is the public interest you know is this national interest which is tree planting which is government national policy local interest we regularly see local people don't want what they see as a 10 intensive planting and lorries and all the things that that brings so so that is the big big question what is the public interest I think that's the sustainability question as well that Andrew didn't answer I think trying to define that those things is is quite important but also we don't want to draw lines around things either so defining sustainable development also then means that something else isn't sustainable development or sustainability but we definitely need to do that bottom up top down because what's in a local community's interests from a sustainability perspective may not be from the national interests and so at what point is there that kind of compromise and who decides on that I think is quite tricky so when I talk to communities I always say look you're informing the public interest by telling me what you think at the moment because you are the public and we just need to look at this at a national scale. We often talk about local and rural and in my view well I think about countryside areas but what about urban where does urban fit into radical land reform Andrew communities we think about local communities what was my mind always thinks about villages and small towns but how do you apply radical land reform does any of what we're talking apply to urban Scotland so it is interesting and a lot of Scottish voters also assume that land reform has got something to do with with rural and probably something in the far north west in many ways land reform is absolutely relevant to urban and we have done some work I would like to do more actually because that's where the bulk of scots are and that so only working on rural is in many ways excluding the interests of a lot of scots we did a lot of work I mean Scotland has an appalling record on vacant and derelict land in urban areas appalling by European standards it's really disgraceful particularly west central Scotland but and what's also really appalling is that the if the bottom sort of 20 percent if you try and zone things by socioeconomic welfare the most deprived areas in Scotland are the ones that are closest to vacant and derelict land and there's no doubt there's some sort of correlation in there so we did a lot of work on that I think Scotland is beginning to do the right things and beginning to make progress on that but it's got a long way to go the other thing I think to say briefly but urban although there are a lot of things to say but the other thing that is particularly relevant is is the the power issue applies just as much in urban as it does in rural there are localised monopoly power blocks in urban in urban land holdings and actually quite small bits of land can create enormous power in an urban environment. I chaired the Scottish Canal for eight years which is a land landowner but it's a public corporation answerable to the Scottish people and we we did our level best to make the very most of that land holding for the benefit of the Scottish people but we were frequently blocked from doing so or or it was made a lot more difficult by the fact that private individuals were sitting on chunks of land and exerting that power in a minor country to the public interest. You know if you task me as a rural constituency MSP when it came to land reform where is the biggest challenges and I don't get letters from lots of communities complaining about rural land most of the concerns are over our town centres and a lot of those properties are owned by pension funds banking groups so it's on rather the problems that the George hotel and Newton Stuart it's the the grapes hotel and Castle Douglas it's the Merrick and Dumfries it's X, Y and Z and there seems to be a real impasse there but most of my inbox it's urban land issues that focus the constituents focus on. That hasn't actually been my experience so I hold a public meeting every month somewhere in Scotland and in fact since the pandemic we've gone online which which I didn't want to do but I've oddly has made it more accessible for a lot of people so we've stuck with it but we hold public meeting nonetheless for a particular geographical location every month and what's really interesting is that actually a very high proportion of those who come and want to tell us about their priorities are people who want to tell us about rural priorities not urban priorities even though often the audiences if I hold a public meeting in Glasgow they want to talk about rural so but but that's partly because I think the politics of land is informed by history and all sorts of other things and we have to try and find a way through that and I I I do believe that Scotland will need to no let me give you another example of work we did in an urban environment we looked at the possibility of compulsory sail orders where you've got a speculator and an investor sitting on a piece of land doing absolutely nothing with that piece of land blighting that particular bit of the city that that land could be used put to very good public interest use housing whatever and that person is sitting as a speculator for 10 20 30 years and that is not in the public interest and we have recommended and we've done a lot of work on what it would look like whereby local authorities would be given the power in the public interest where they could show that it was in the public interest because this takes you into the human rights act to force that owner to put that piece of land up for auction to someone who would buy it at auction they'd get fair price by definition an auction gives you fair price but it would be then put into good use of that that would be urban land reform in action and it seems entirely reasonable and sensible to me. From your perspective Annie did come in the rural housing there's often the argument that there's actually plenty of houses there a lot of them are derelict they need to be brought up to a fit and proper standard can you apply that to urban areas what's your views on that? Yes although I'm not as familiar with urban housing I would say so now communities in urban areas have the same rights as rural communities to buy assets so land and properties and we've seen some really good innovations of cooperative housing and renovation and you know building new housing in urban areas because there's still good access to funds I know that community land Scotland are very busy supporting new community landowners and it's mainly to buy either very small bits of land or buildings to convert into the use that the community require whether that's housing or community help. One of the challenges from a research perspective we've done some research on urban community land ownership and the groups or the constitutive community bodies that are trying to take this forward are challenged just by the scale of the problem that they have or by the scale of the community that they have to engage with so it's quite hard for them to ensure that they've done full community engagement to show whether people are supportive and how it's going to benefit them and also to demonstrate that benefit as well so against these kind of larger powerful landowners so I think there's actually that capacity thing we think often about small scattered rural communities who don't have you know the support but actually urban communities could really do with that but there's some really good examples I mean you've got Portobello here in Edinburgh and I believe that there's a first part five sustainable development right to buy that's happening in Glasgow I might be wrong but that's a big innovation and that's happening in an urban place so yeah there's a lot to learn on housing and setting aside community housing which is happening but let's just bear in mind that in Scotland the vast majority of houses are built by a very small number of companies the vast majority of Scotland's potential building land is owned by a very small number of companies it follows I think logically that if you don't intervene in that then that power concentration will not act in the public interest because those those companies will bring that land forward for building and they'll bring their housing supply forward in a manner that maximises profit and unless you've got a fully competitive market working and I'm all on from markets I'm not anti competitive markets but unless you've got a fully competitive market working then then actually what that will not work in the public interest it will work in the interest of maximising the profits of those companies so it's a very good example and an urban example of where concentrated land ownership produces concentrated power that acts against the power of the public interest. Yeah I'm trying not to get involved in things that are urban to be perfectly honest but I think that you know Andrew is saying about you as he's a roadshow it is part of that that people are conditioned to think because that's the rhetoric and that's the language that land reform is a rural issue so people don't think that so when they're writing to you family they're probably not thinking it's land reform they just want a pub they're not thinking about how that all works but what I would say in in terms of legislation and things that the forthcoming bill there's nothing in there that covers urban issues at all really there's a little bit about data zones but no one knows what one of them is anyway so there's a bit a bit the focus on scale over concentration completely misses out all these issues it can there is no tools in the box to look at that there's no real focus on it so from my point of view I think there should be partially because I've got plenty to do and the more about urban the less I have to do but I think we need to need to look at that and try as as you say as Andrew said that make this is not a rural issue yes there are rural issues but there's a distinct urban part there as well particularly on housing just on housing as well I know our members are major providers of housing in rural areas we've seen members recently doing joint ventures with social landlords housing co-ops is something I'd really like to see more of in Scotland I'm not sure why we don't have that many I've done work in Canada in the past and they're all over the place so there's opportunities there so I think again that joint venture working working together and trying to make that work is is an opportunity for us can I just ask can I have a we show fans how many have got rural interests and how many come from an urban background just to give us an indication to split with the audience if you're rural raise your hand an urban so I've probably got two thirds urban that's interesting we're now going to invite the audience to participate in the discussion so if you'd like to ask a question I've got a question gentlemen down here it was very quick with his hand if you raise your hand and keep it raised until you get the microphone and unlike me if you could keep your your questions a brief as possible so we can get as many questions covered and if you have a particular witness if we'd like to call more panelist you would like to address your questions if you could say that so the gentleman down here thank you very much for really interesting discussion my name is Andrew Heald I'm a forester if we're talking about tree planting and forestry it's a request for clarity please can be we clear about what we mean it is future timber demand that is driving forestry planting it is not carbon forestry planting is heavily regulated one of the reasons we haven't hit targets targets 15 000 hectares a year we only planted 8 000 hectares a year 8 000 last year 11 000 year before if you speak to the people trying to do that planting they will be very clear that it is some of the regulation around that planting that's restricting that so we need more woodlands of all type more for carbon more for biodiversity more for communities and more for timber the UK is importing a million cubic metres every month of sawn timber and board osb mdf that's not paper it's not wood fuel it's not chip it's sawn timber and board that's going into construction timber production in england wales is declining long term global demand for timber it's going to double double by 2050 so please when we're discussing tree planting and forestry at events like this please can we have a lot more clarity about what we're being discussed thanks very much okay right that's there's a lot in there um and i'm not sure there was a question but i'm sure andrew given some of his road shows it was recently in galloway um i'm quite sure you've got some comments andrew and then i'll go to steven of course what you say is true doesn't alter the fact that the Scottish government is pouring very large amounts of money into you can call it forestry you can call it woodland planting i don't really you know whatever language you want to use the fact is that there is a very generous financial program going on at the moment um we do need to think about how we direct that program to optimise the uh the public interest or maximize the public interest and i i think i i do believe that a one size fits all is probably unwise and secondly i do believe that there is enough room in there i mean given how many owners of land are rushing to take advantage of those schemes um there's enough room in there to make greater demands of those and recita for us to ground to to to target can i just finish um so i think it is reasonable given given how uh the demand for those grants for want of a better word expression um i think it is reasonable to expect people who are applying for that that public money to seriously consider the wider public value of what they propose to do in collaboration with with local communities i think that's a reasonable thing to ask it's public money. Stephen just just on that you know i i'm going to go back to galloway we do have some particular issues there where there was lots of mistakes made back in the 1940s and we're looking forward i think we've got the draft UK forestry plan i haven't seen it but it hopefully that that's coming forward which does address some of the issues but again some of the mistakes we made are being made again and and it's not necessarily the right between the right place how do we get the balance right again and thinking about communities and sustainable rural areas? I think there is um modern forestry is very different from forestry that we were talking about maybe back in the 70s and 60s there is far more thought within and planning and you know there is a planning process you have to engage with communities there's you know a lot more regulation around it than there was we're now seeing you have to set a percentage of natives and and all the rest of it so i think there is i think forestry just like everyone every other industry has evolved and changed i think there have been big improvements now whether it's enough you could you know argue but it's not you know that people talk about blanket sick a spruce that doesn't happen you can't really do that you know but we have to look at natives and we have to look at that commercial timber point as well just as when you food security and energy security timber security is quite a big thing and it's back to that point around processing as well and and some of these plans and what we want to do it is around natives and you think well what is the kind of where are the jobs in that what is the community getting from that they get the immunity but are they getting the jobs and all the rest of it as well there's a push on it more for natural regeneration now i i think that's a nice idea but then if you look at it and say well if you want the right tree in the right place natural regeneration will you get the tree that you get that's kind of how it is so i think we do need to look at forestry but i think we have to look at forestry in in the round with every other land use as well and not on its own and it has been kind of treated on its own up to this point but i think Andy's right it is it is regulated it's not it's not the wild west you certainly a lot of rules around it a lot of planning elements go into that as well annie with your rural community hat on so we're hearing we're not hitting the targets for tree planting should we forgo the community so the sustainability communities and for john and make sure we get these trees planted and what's the priorities there well i think that andrew your question is really is not a question but a point was very very helpful because i didn't know that so it's really helpful to have that clarity and i think my my point back to that is that people in local communities also don't know that so they're seeing trees being planted and they don't know what for or they're hearing about it where they're being invited to a woodland consultation which is probably following a process that's been well defined and but i'm hearing through research that we're doing at the moment and that's touching on a forest station all sorts of different reasons why trees are being planted that don't seem to be very accurate so i think there's a message there as well for landowners who are planting trees to be completely open about what their plans are and why and whether there's an opportunity for community to be involved in that either you know planting trees or other sorts of jobs or training opportunities in forestry and i'm hearing good things about that as well from the landowners and land managers so yeah i think the lessons from the past are probably what people are coming back to now whilst they're seeing what they think is quite large scale change and maybe it's not actually large scale change it just feels like it in a local place so i also recently went to new zealand i tell this to everybody because it's so exciting that i went to new zealand um but they're also having a very similar discussion at a national and local level about land use change for trees um and the perception is that this is a great massive shift away from agriculture and it really isn't and and again the government are quite concerned about meeting targets and ensuring that they meet net zero targets which may be different from timber producing timber and actually we need to capture that and there's just a lack of knowledge and a lack of research both locally and nationally to inform that discussion but yeah thank you i would quite like to stick to the forestry thing it's a supplement in forestry i'm going to go to the gentleman here and then the gentleman will write the very back with his hand up we'll maybe take two questions that are we got two mics no we've got a runner we'll take two together if it's on forestry my name's dave morris um i used to work for the ramble association and we're much involved in these issues um a year ago i spoke to the forestry minister marina callum and i told her that the scolish government was wasting millions and millions of pounds every year on tree planting and that is because they're planting the trees in the uplands and they are releasing far far more carbon in that process than they're actually capturing the trees which you see being planted today the vast vast majority are going to be releasing carbon through the disturbance of peaty soils for decades to come if i agree that we do need to grow trees for timber purposes particularly to replace steel and concrete in construction and uh you've got to plant those trees in the lowlands farmers have got to accept that they're going to have to be growing trees on much of their land where you can grow trees on soils which have been repeatedly cultivated are low in carbon at the present time and will grow much faster than in the hills but going back to the first point you made about transparency i have been arguing for the last two or three years about the planting by prudog and now by Aberdeen standard life asset management last week i was told that Aberdeen asset management having bought that land near newton moor for 7.5 million pounds have now been given 2.5 million pounds of forestry commission ground to plant ale side which does not need any planting whatsoever because it can be naturally regenerated and when i asked since god is forestry to explain to me what the 2.5 million was for they refused they refused to provide the information so much for your transparency it just does not exist there was another another one on forestry to the back the gentleman of this is hand up right at the very back and then we'll we'll cover that thank you good evening my name's fennan wellstead i had two questions one was there's been a lot of talk about the money going into forestry from grants and financial support from the government is there any prospect or what prospect is so that forestry grants will be integrated with farming grants so that land users could make a coherent picture and the second point related to the urban areas if food security is important why are we developing grade 2 grade 3 farmland for housing while there are gap sites in the cities thank you i'm going to go to steven to kick off with those yeah a couple of things there from both of them i think i think we do need to plant some of that once i don't think we can do all the planting on loans i think there's a lot of upland ground which is perfectly capable of growing good quality trees as well i do disagree on natural regeneration being a suitable alternative i think in some places it can be but i think to get the scale of planting that we're looking for i just don't think that would be fast enough there as well in terms of the grants i don't know the specific case obviously and what it is in the transparency of forestry land scotland i'm sure they'll publish their the information that they can but forestry grants are there because there is a huge risk in planting trees it's not it's a very slow process as well so that there does need to be an incentive to do that now whether the forestry grant scheme is the right scheme to do that and if there's other methods possibly yes but i think we have to accept that the forestry being such a long-term game game for people to do that and make that long-term commitment and take that long-term risk there has to be some sort of incentive there it won't be there and i think as was mentioned even with the incentives we are behind where we want to be national we in that as well in terms of ferring's question at the back yes absolutely i think that we'll see more and more of that and i think there is something that we can look at in terms of forestry grants and being a bit more dynamic in that and saying well of these commercial plantations could they could they have slightly less support in some areas but we can use that for riparian planting for small ceilings which aren't worth a greater cost but you've got to be careful with that the economics is to make sure because we have got these targets to hit so but i think there is ways of kind of cutting the deck of cards slightly differently to do that and absolutely it needs to be integrated reforming so that we have a holistic view of what we're doing. Annie the agri forestry grants but also maybe touch on transparency and you know there's very views about the research that we need i know there was a forestry stakeholder group in November reported that the carbon sequestration of the the majority of the trees were planted just now is only two-thirds what they thought it was a few years ago so it's a changing game how do you make sure there's transparency and the decisions are making are based on proper science and research that was what i was going to say they should be based on proper science and research and colleagues of mine have been doing some really good work about the sequestration rates of different tree species in different types of land and i think there is quite a lot of concern around planting on peat or or planting down the hill and this is something that we've also talked about about the squeezed middle so there's this sort of optimum space where everything is happening and is required as so there is that kind of competing demands that i said earlier that there shouldn't be and i think there needs to be a lot more openness and hopefully as researchers we can also communicate that better so it's not kind of hidden in a box somewhere or i'm not very well explained so yeah do you have an explorer of our terrible website but we do have some really good storyboards around these sorts of things i wanted to go to the gentleman's point about housing if that's all right i don't know whether there's something more we could talk about there about integrating housing with growing so one of the innovations in rural housing scotland that we've worked on is what we've called smart clacken so trying to reinvent the the clackens of the past where people lived and worked in a kind of shared community space and we've we've got designs and these are being developed on the western aisles in particular and the opportunity there is that we meet affordable housing requirements but we also provide people their own growing space and shared growing space to meet some of their own food demands as well as other shared resources like car charging points or community spaces shared recycling all those sorts of things so i think it's a bit of a flipping planning on its heads slightly so it's not something that the planners in the western aisles are very happy about because it's out with settlement boundaries for instance and it may be on land that is you know tricky to access again there's no money to be made in building houses in rural places unfortunately so i think yeah there's something there to think about individually meeting our own needs and also supporting community food growing and then also supporting local producers local processing as well i think there's just one other point that i was thinking about about new owners that you touched on as well and that this gentleman in the front touched on and i think there's perhaps something the Scottish Government need to think about are the is a level of risk and when kind of things are talked about by politicians unfortunately sorry Finland they do influence the market and what we are maybe seeing is people coming in with big ideas or kind of big money and a lot of power because they're pension funds and things and if they hear something that they don't really like then they pull away and some of those benefits or potential opportunities for communities like new housing opportunities or access to land isn't then delivered or maybe put on hold and the community aren't necessarily the person in the room kind of dictating that so i think there's something there that maybe the new land reform bill will tackle around risk and kind of opportunity that's what i'm hearing in the researchers communities are really quite positive about the tree planting in particular for whatever reason they like the idea of having more access to new good walks and tourism opportunities but what their main fear is that it isn't going to happen because something might change that means that these kind of new landowners change their minds Andrea quick on both points so on the on the housing so we have a planning system in this country that that is democratically accountable and which should in to some extent deal with the point you've made but but we are unusual by European standards in that that we rely on the private sector to acquire land on a speculative basis and then bring it forward in most of most other northern European countries in particular the public sector is much more assertive or muscular in terms of what land is brought forward for housing so we've we've done a lot of research on this and we've published on it so I'm just going to refer you to the website but we could do things a different way in Scotland you are absolutely right on that one on the question of of of integrating forestry and farming I think there's a wider question here you know even when the economies fly and the public finances are in good order we ain't got enough money for all the things we want to do and at the moment our public finances are in a polling state and our economy is not much better so of course there isn't going to be anything like enough money for all the things we want to do and support in rural Scotland which is why I think firstly because I think we'll get a better outcome if we make that more locally accountable but secondly frankly because I think if it's not more locally driven people will get increasingly exasperated and your postbox will get even bigger for both those reasons I think determining what what we spend finite resources on is better than at a local level and therefore I'm actually agreeing with you better done in an integrated way right we're going to open up again there's a german here who's arm will fall off if we don't ask him because he's had his hand up right from the start and then I'll go to the lady directly behind him so again we'll we'll take one question this time in a week and then associate it with other ones thanks that's better already I'm taking up Dr McKee's point about land being everything and greater inequality I think I'm right in saying there's fewer tenant farmers than there's ever been the radical land reformer Andy Whiteman has estimated that half of the private land in Scotland is owned by 430 owners and of course we now know these owners are not necessarily aristocrats their hedge funds pension funds banking conserved terms a lot of them are foreign a lot of them are there because of tax avoidance um so people have also said that it's probably the greatest concentration of land in in Europe and and Mr Professor Thin has said as much it's always feudal and what I've heard today I don't think breaks through and we were supposed to be talking about radical change um and the question is you'll be glad to know and by the way you know that the Scottish Government's got the land register and it's and it's created the community buyouts but what I understand is that the community buyout now is being circumvented land exchange estates are now being sold underground if you like to bypass that so we haven't just got a cleverest people in the room when we're in these these owners but the most ruthless and probably the most greedy so um would the way forward be um land value tax thank you right I think we'll start with Andrew so 53 roughly of the nation's wealth is held in the form of land and that wealth contributes relatively little to the public finances so logically what you say must make some sense that taxing the value of land the value that is inland does make more some sense so and we've said that clearly we've produced uh please please look at the website um it is not it is not a straightforward free lunch so to speak it's actually quite a complicated thing and we did quite a bit of research and we went to other countries that have tried this including other countries that have tried land value tax and then abandoned it because it was it didn't work so I think the short answer is in principle yes in practice there's an awful lot more thinking through it's you've got the potential for a serious car crash if you go into this half bite Stephen what's your members thoughts on land value tax I think they agree with Andrew no I think Andrew's covered it there it is a ffiendishly complex thing I think land management activity is low margin um kind of work there's no direct correlation between the value of land and the income that it delivers so yeah I think Andrew's covered it to be honest it's hugely complicated what one thing I would pick up on um there was the you mentioned underground sales to avoid community buyouts that if a community is registered an interest in land that that doesn't happen um I think we may be talking about off market sales which is a private sale between two individuals that's not underground that's two people selling a business between one and the other it's the way most businesses are sold across the country so it's not um although you really don't see it in the paper um it's not a it's not an underground sale it's just not openly marketed and I think that happens right across all kind of business types that's not specific to land and it certainly wouldn't circumnavigate community buyout regulations so Annie we've got two people who sort of agree that it's a very difficult place to be land value tax but we've also got the situation and we've discussed it right up to now where landowners manage land to produce benefit to the population so whether that's biodiversity whether it's climate change whether it's food security so they deliver public goods is it right that we should have a land value tax which then taxes on for that how do you get the balance right on public goods for public money and and and tax okay I have again I have no ideas it's really complicated stuff this is why we do um long-term research so I do have colleagues that are working on what we mean by value of land because land has many different values again to all sorts of different types of people with different interests and that's why we need to think carefully as Andrea Stevens have said it's not just about the financial value that's held in land um I would dispute what you say though Finlay that landowners are primarily doing land management for public benefit I've never heard that before but I think we could try and work towards that and I'm really keen on a school of thought from the states that's around progressive property rights and this is around where we own land for the social good that's the purpose of property ownership and I think there's a lot of evidence of that in Scotland but maybe we need to again nudge you know use the carrot in the stick in a lot of a lot different way again I mean devil's advocate here so you have farmers who produce food which is the most essential energy those same landowners have winter binds which reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emitting services um we have landowners that restore peatland which captures so they do deliver public good um it may not be their primary reason for business but there's very few businesses whose primary reason other than sub-sector is to deliver public good so again it's about the balance isn't it absolutely yeah and I think well the thing is private companies are delivering to their private company objectives and perhaps we just need to again reshuffle maybe it's more radical or maybe it's more tinkering and there's a lot of discussion around that to ensure that the public good is maximised in those sorts of decisions I want to come back on what you said Stephen about off-market sales because there has been some really good research commissioned by the land commission but done by colleagues at SRUC and I think there's again just a lack of transparency within local communities about what's actually happening so one day they get out of bed and there's a new landowner and that shouldn't happen I think there should be a lot more pre-discussion pre-sale discussion informing because that's actually one of the main controls that the landowner has so we often hear that it doesn't matter who owns the land it's how it's used it really does because they can decide who to sell it to and when and there's some really good examples down in Buclw where they had an open discussion about their land management plan and what they plan to sell and when and that gave the community the opportunity to think through their own priorities and then to be able to develop a plan to be able to purchase some of that so if we could encourage more of that again through legislative routes I think that would be really good. It's not always possible you know people sell land for all sorts of reasons sometimes it has to be done quickly sometimes you know you're saying they can choose who they sell it to well they can't really because you have to have a willing buyer a willing seller so there has to be that so I just think that the narrative around that makes it a lot makes it sound like it's some illegal activity and it's not it's selling it's selling something and it's and whoever owns it we've got land rights responsibilities principles so it doesn't matter new owner old law they've got the same principles which they they should be adhering to so yeah very briefly very quick one sentence there's 18 countries in Europe that have regulatory interventions in land sales it's not an uncommon thing and it's and to argue that it would be very difficult or impossible is not the case lady with our hand up at the moment thank you my name is gents doubt I was really happy Andrew to hear you talk about the did you call it the social a genuine social political sense in which people who cross the land or run the land on the work on the land feel like they own it that was certainly my experience growing up in I don't think it was a smart clacken who didn't really have any electricity most of the day but you know it was it was a clacken and I want to come back to crafting I've got two questions I'll make them brief one thing I do want to say first there was that I really agree with what the gentleman here says there's nothing radical about what we've been speaking about and arguably there's nothing radical about this debate whatsoever for the last 10 years and it is maybe that's because there's nothing radical about our parliament these days cast your minds back right because I feel like I'm in some weird collective amnesia to 2014-2015 when we had this incredibly vibrant big debate about land reform and if we're talking about power and democracy which I think we should be in this debate a wee bit more yes you can't keep using land in a way or you can't maintain a situation which the majority of people disagree with and the majority of people in Scotland disagree with us having one of the most concentrated forms of land ownership in Europe right but that hasn't changed and all of those measures that were proposed back in 2014 most of which never made it through particularly the more radical ones anything to do with caps on ownership none of those made it through we have had good stuff right community buyouts but there are really big problems with all those the tenant farmers have you mentioned so many evictions there's so many things you get into that are wrong and haven't been fixed and the tinkering is a lot and so has the parliament failed us in that sense have we failed to actually tackle this in any meaningful way and is that a failure of that's a democratic failure I'd argue on the crafting thing crafting is actually one of our big hopes it does as you say with the clacken idea it does actually provide a really great model ironically given its tortured history for how people can live and work and grow food and do all sorts of innovative things in small communities but they can't because crafting is broken and the federation has been crying out and saying that it's in complete crisis this system for so long it's almost impossible for young people to get into this to find a craft the airbnb thing the housing crisis is a massive part of that and it feels like it's falling on such deaf ears in this parliament why on earth is that thank you for that contribution Jen um this is maybe the the appropriate point to ask the panel as to what their radical reform is if they pick one radical reform their favorite radical reform that we'd like to see the parliament implement um Stephen I'm probably the most least radical person in the room I would say the radical form is we need to stay focused on outcomes I think too often we've got caught up in petty squabbling and looking at kind of my new shy and we really need to look at the outcomes that we want from land and then we're really clear on that um I think a radical solution is let's not legislate for absolutely everything we mentioned uh agricultural holdings there and and crafting as well I mean we've legislated agricultural holdings out of existence they just don't happen anymore we've potentially done it with crafting as well crafting system is I totally agree it's it's currently broken so we've got to fix it so um so legislatures don't always answer and we have to make sure that we don't end up with kind of stagnation and paralysis and and people just getting angry about things how do we focus on what the outcomes we want are and then work together to get them but a lot of that comes down to setting out what we want to achieve clearly Arnie um first of all thanks that was a great point I really liked how you tie all these things together I think that's the challenge of these sorts of discussions as it's kind of everything but it's really important and you're absolutely right that the fundamental question here is around power and democracy which is tricky but also like a primary interest and there's a lot to learn from other places and their approaches to democracy as well so my radical reform maybe I'm again not as radical I'm a very you know I'm trained as a researcher to be completely objective um so this is a rare opportunity to say what I think um I think we do need to have much stronger rights for communities to make decisions around land and I think that one of the things that should happen in the bill is that land holdings perhaps it's a scale question and there's a cultural discussion there as well um have community representation local representation in in the decision making room around the table and maybe we talk about elected officials or you know community representatives that everybody knows about but there needs to be a lot more communication and transparency of all scales between those sorts of new corporate owners or the more traditional owners and breaking down of social hierarchies as well in rural Scotland feudalism unfortunately still very much exists and that's both a cultural and a kind of mindset change and some people feel quite worried and reluctant to kind of step away from it so we need to make it you know accessible and and a way that young people expect that the way that decisions are made I think going forward radical sometimes as as the definition is something that happens really quickly radical change doesn't need to take place overnight and we have seen changes with and you know it there's examples of beclu and and langham and whatever and in my constituency we see public ownership of the Muller Galloway and so on are we getting there does radical necessarily mean it needs to be really really quick or does it actually take a long time to deliver radical change and you've been at the coface for quite some time wearing different hats so if you give us what your radical policy would be and does radical mean that it needs to happen really quickly or is it a slow transition to make sure radical change actually delivers what people expected to. Let me make two or three points I will answer that. The first is that I think I think what you said you were speaking for a lot of the Scottish people when you said what you said and I think that's very important because if the Scottish people get frustrated by this I think that's that's actually dangerous. I think that will produce political demand for change which may not have been properly thought through and might actually be unwise so I think Parliament absolutely needs to be listening to what you've said let me just say that first of all and I think from the point I'm not going to tell you what I think about radical what I'll tell you is that what people tell me is and a lot of people tell me is it is not radical enough for their taste for their point of view so I think that's politically that's actually a very important thing. The problem I'm now going to defend the Parliament the Parliament property rates are really important they underpin our economic model if you're not confident in your property rates you won't invest in your property and if you don't invest into property then our whole economic model falls apart so property rates are enshrined in the human rights act and the European Convention of Human Rights above that and Parliament finds that intensely frustrating and difficult and I've already fallen foul of it once already and got into serious trouble over limited partnerships with tenant farmers which cost the taxpayer a great deal in compensation and so on so it's not you know the Parliament's already made one mistake so I I think we have to be pretty sympathetic to people like Finlay he's got a very difficult job to do to find a way through that to satisfy on the one hand what is undoubtedly a significant level of impatience among Scottish voters and on the other hand a very difficult framework to work to work with him so I'm not excusing it but I think we have to be understanding about that. What do I think realistically we could do and should do I think there are two linked things they're really just one I think the public interest test which is proposed for and I believe will come through from the consultation is proposed for the next bill I think the public interest test is a potentially a massive step forward if we get that right because it is going to create a framework for testing the question at what point do property rights and the public interest come into balance it is right to protect property rights but not at any cost and when do they come into balance so if it's well framed and it's robust I think it will ask and provide a mechanism for answering that question really well I think that's enormously important because I do think that the the the very highly concentrated pattern of ownership we've got compared with anywhere else in Europe is highly unlikely to be the best model given what everyone else is doing so I think that happens and linked to that I want to take your crofting point because you know I've just joined the board of the crofting commission and people said to me what on earth are you doing that for and the reason is that actually I think we need in this country going forward a really effective regulated system of small small-scale land tenure whatever that is and crofting that's what crofting was created for crofting only exists in the crofting counties it's frankly arcane and archaic now and it's not working and the crofting commission is up its own backside trying to make it work so we need to radically rethink that but if we had in this country a completely new system of regulated small-scale land tenure that applied to the entirety of Scotland and was linked to the question of the public interest test on large-scale land so one of the one of the questions would be well this is pretty big but if you stick some of it into small-scale regulated land tenure then maybe you could retain the ownership then maybe ways around it if you put those two things together those two things I think would be enough for the next five years and then we'll have another land reform bill okay I've got one of the most difficult jobs now tonight there's two people who have had their hand up for a while I really want to bring in so but I will shut you down if your question is not very very short and I'll also shut down those on the platform if it's too short so the gentleman in the back there with her hand up if you could just ask your question very briefly and we'll come to the gentleman at the front here and ask the question yes cheers so similar event of previous questions but I was mainly interested in what expect change can we actually expect from the planning system itself uh as mentioned it's obviously a lot more market led than it is people or community led or plan led uh it also massively stacked against communities uh developers who hold this huge amount of land and power get an instant right of appeal against any decision they disagree with communities communities don't get that that is a massive question it's a fantastic question we should probably have come to that before thank you for that and then the gentleman here thank you thank you very much everyone very much uh interesting and enjoyable um i'm slightly surprised we've got to this point on uh august 10 without any reference at all to grouse shooting which will ingloriously start uh on saturday or not start because there won't be a lot of it and actually that's the basis of my question really it's about public interest and when private interest isn't concerned with profit because it seems to me that grouse shooting loses money year off year just occasionally it might make a bit of money but meanwhile nature is losing we're doing bad things with carbon and communities uh contrary i think to some of the things andrew said are not as able as they should be they're hollowed out they can't really exercise the kind of so my question sorry is about pace of change it's going back to pace of change that has to change how is it going to happen faster than it is currently happening even though the business is bust okay i'm going to start at the end of the to give you a wee idea my committee is dealing with the grouse smear and a wildlife bill right now we're also going to have an agriculture bill we've also got a new biodiversity plan where the climate change plan is going to be reviewed we've got the land reform unfortunately um we don't have a lot of parliamentarians to scrutinise legislation so that there is a natural slowness unfortunately but there is there's also a desire by politicians to get these pieces of legislation in place but it's a very busy landscape at the moment but i'm going to start with steven where we want to touch on well if you could briefly answer both questions go the speed of change and a planning you forgot a natural environment bill coming next year as well which i'll cover a lot of these things speed of change um i'm sorry i'm trying to think of two questions either i was i was thinking around gravestream i mean gravestream does deliver a lot for the for the economy it does deliver it there's clear evidence that biodiversity on managed mirrors is greater than on unmanaged mirrors you can refute evidence if you want but that's it it does create a lot of employment does create a lot of benefits through areas so we have to think of it it's back to this green jobs thing if we're creating change what's going to build on what's already there what's going to create more jobs what's going to help biodiversity rather than just taking something we don't like and removing it because it'll be delivering in different ways so i would i would disagree with your statement there planning planning's planning's planning it's totally and mildly really difficult no matter who you are it's a bit of a nightmare i can't i can't answer in a short way it's a nightmare annie i'm quite sure in Aberdeenshire that the local authority planning department is equally under massive pressure and under resourced as every other particularly rural planning department in scotland i'm sure they are i've never really engaged with the planning system i'm certainly not in Aberdeenshire i think again it's about giving space to communities to engage with that so having local place plans that are then integrated with the local development plan i think that's really fundamental and there are some really good examples where resource has been put heavily into a community to spend the time to have the reflection and integrating local officials as well so they they get to hear that voice so i think it's a call to everyone to take part if you're here tonight and you're interested then go and attend those sorts of meetings that don't sound very interesting because they will be important in the end. Grau shootings in absolute minefield i think i completely agree with you steven about what do we mean by green jobs that's something the government is very interested in finding out from our research is are the new types of land uses that we're seeing in the uplands are they green jobs are they actually contributing to a new economy a green economy and i think that there is potential for it to be very productive actually new types of land use but it's going to take some time so that's part of your pace of change you know people who are skilled at peatland restoration are not quite there yet and they're maybe still at school and we need we need to fast track them into that so yeah i think there's a bit of work to be done on encouraging creating and innovating in what we mean by you know green jobs and what we want the uplands to be for. I'm not going to repeat myself but i completely agree with you the nuts needs to be much stronger public interest leadership in the planning system if you go to almost any other developed country in europe you'll see a completely different model that does exactly that we're way behind the curve so i agree with you on that on the grace move point built into the land reform bill i think and certainly built into the consultation is the concept of much much tighter regulation of the way in which land is used in in these bigger holdings where there is a significant level of monopoly power now if that comes through and it'll depend on parliamentarians not on me but if that comes through then i think the Scottish voters will start to feel that we are getting a grip on this that the public interest is getting a bigger say in it all and that pay some momentum on building but you know the process the bill's not published yet we don't know what it'll look like it it's going to be a difficult one for parliamentarians they've got to balance on the one hand as i keep emphasising this is a property owning democracy the human rights act and there are good reasons for that they've got to balance that with on the other hand the very legitimate right to intervene in property rights where there is a public interest case for doing so and we've got to get that right and we're not getting it right at the moment well folks thank you very much for your contributions to this event but before we close i'm going to give each of the panelists a few sentences i was going to give them a minute but we are way over time about a few sentences to deflect on what they believe the key points are from the discussions tonight so start with you and Andrew annie and then steven please engage with the process of the land reform bill as it goes forward annie i think you know it's possibly going back to Jen's point about how integrated this all is and that's a challenge for the government having all of these different pieces of legislation coming through but it is you know back to the fact that land is the kind of basis for all of the sorts of discussions you can't get away from that yeah i agree i think land is crucial to all this i've got to integrate policies integrate thinking legislation and i think that kind of communication on both sides is is really important and this demonising people for who they are not what they do is is not helpful on in any sphere so greater communication would be all for that thank you well we must end it there and i'd like to thank you all for coming along today and taking part in the debate and also like to thank our panellists andry thin annie mckee and steven young for their insightful views on the discussion as convener of the rural affairs committee i can assure you that this item and land reform will remain a key priority for the scotish parliament over the coming years and with that in mind i'd like to thank the parliament's future future forum for the support and putting the event together today and i'd also like to take the opportunity to remind you that there are more festival events taking place tomorrow including scotland's poverty problem where are the ethics and ai and aviation and sustainability to fly or not to fly to name a few but i hope you'll be able to enjoy those other events and thank you very much for your participation tonight thank you