 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 4.1.1.7, in the name of Alasdair Allan, on supporting great burners, community land buyout. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I invite members who wish to participate to press the request. Speak buttons, I'll place an R in the chat function if they're joining us online, and I call on Alasdair Allan to open the debate for around seven minutes, Dr Allan. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to members for staying this late in the evening for this debate. Since its re-establishment, this Parliament has helped to empower many communities beginning to address centuries of injustice in the way that land has so often been gifted, sold and sometimes neglected. Around 57 per cent of Scotland's rural land is in private hands, and I should say that many of those landowners work hard to develop their estates and engage reasonably with the communities who live and work on them. However, this is not the case when the landlord turns out to be an absentee with no visible plans for the estate other than the extraction of money. The Land Reform Community Empowerment Act seeks to ensure that landowners uphold their responsibilities, particularly if they are not doing that to provide a legal basis for communities to negotiate a purchase of the land. The island of Great Burner has been connected by a short bridge to the west coast of Lewis since 1953. The construction of this bridge incidentally came about only after islanders threatened to create their own informal causeway by obtaining their own explosives. The people of Burner have a long history of having to battle for their own rights. In 1874, the Burner riot crofters resisted the forced evictions that their then landlord attempted as part of the wider Highland clearances. Burner's crofters eventually won their case against that landlord in court. In 1972, the islands of Great and Little Burner were bought by Count Robin de la Lan Mirellys, a colourful man whose wartime exploits in the Balkans were said to have partly inspired the character of James Bond in his friend Ian Fleming's novels. His title as account was bestowed, I understand, by the Government of San Marino, all of which said that the account did lead a fairly simple life on the island, where I visited him a couple of times. He died in 2012 leaving the islands to his grandson in Germany, Serran de la Lan, but told islanders that they should have the first option of buying the island should it ever be put up for sale. In 2015, 85 per cent of Burner's residents voted in favour of a community buy-out. The district value set a sales figure of £70,000, reflecting the island's status under crofting tenure. The family of the owner considered this sum to be too low. Despite numerous efforts by islanders, including some of whom I visited in Germany in 2017, the negotiations were not very far, there was no intention to purchase through a combination of grants from various sources, but the de la Lan family stalled, not naming a price at which they would be willing to sell. In 2020, the trust began the process of pursuing a crofting community buy-out. In March, I contacted Burner's landlord with a request to meet him to discuss the various barriers that the estate was by then reported to be putting in place, hampering local development and blocking legitimate transactions with tenants. After an initial agreement to meet, my office has followed up three further times to be told that there are currently no suitable dates for Mr de la Lan and his father, but that they might get back in touch shortly. That is a tactic that I understand has been employed repeatedly regarding the island's buy-out efforts, as well as with individual tenants. One Burner acrofter, Mr Neil Macaulay, has been seeking to exorcise his own legal right to purchase his own croft for a number of years now. I am told that rather than respond to any emails on that, Burner's landlord has simply ignored him. Mr Macaulay's daughters want to move to Burner with their young families and hope to build long-term homes on their father's croft, but they cannot do that until their father is allowed to buy it, which generally requires the co-operation of the landlord and the family's next step may involve the co-ops. Another constituent, Mr Ian Murdo MacDonald, had been hoping to retire to his family home in Burner, but had to put the property on the market instead to pay for his late mother's care home fees. For 18 months, Burner's estate refused to agree to its formal de-crofting to allow the sale until Mr MacDonald was prepared to cough up a completely arbitrary sum of £16,000, adding significant stress to an already difficult situation. That kind of sum might not mean very much to an absentee landlord, but it is impossible for most people to magic out of thin air. That practice is unheard of, I should say, on other estates. My constituent stood his ground and the landlord has now finally agreed to allow the sale to be finalised without this completely unjustifiable fee. However, unless something changes soon, Burner's population will continue to decline. The island's school and shop have both closed in recent years, and although there are young families who want to move back to the area, the lack of scope for local development under the current owner means that it is impossible to reverse the island's de-population by building any new affordable housing. Presiding Officer, part 3 of the Land Reform Act provides for a hostile bid by a community. That route has never been taken, although it has been threatened previously, where landlords were seen to be particularly uncooperative. The owner of Burner seems to be determined to paint himself into that corner. I hope that the minister may be able to say in summing up the contact that the Government and its officials and the land fund are able to have with my constituents to try to resolve that situation. According to the Scottish Land Fund, private states in Scotland stay in the hands of the same families for an average of 122 years, and I sincerely hope that that does not prove to be the case with Burner. Presiding Officer, the island of Burner should belong to the people who live there, and to those whose families have worked the land there and fished from the surrounding seas for generations. Morally and culturally, the land is already there. We must now continue to do all we can to support the Great Burner Community Development Trust to successfully take legal ownership so that the island's community can begin to develop and thrive once again. Thank you very much, Dr Allan. A gentle reminder to those who have not yet pressed their request-to-speak buttons to do so as soon as possible, and I call the First Speaker in the open debate, which is Donald Cameron, who joins us remotely. For around four minutes, Mr Cameron. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I refer to my register of interests as the owner of a land holding in the Highland Council region? I am very grateful to Anna Sir Allan on securing the bait time on this issue, and I also want to command the work of the Great Burner Community Development Trust. I was first elected to Parliament in 2016. I said that I would all seek to stand up for the most rural and remote communities who often feel that Edinburgh is as far away as London, and that decision making, which reflects the concerns of such communities, does not always happen in the Scottish Parliament. For that vein, I work on the opportunity to debate this particular case, and I hope that shows that we can discuss important matters, such as land ownership and land reform, both in general terms and specifically as they affect our constituents. Before turning to the precise nature of the aims of the Great Burner Community Development Trust, can I reiterate the support of the Scottish Conservatives behind many of the general principles that underpin land reform? It is often forgotten that the very first moves towards greater community ownership of land in Scotland were undertaken by the Conservative Governments of the late 1980s and early 1990s, funding that prominent land reform academics, such as Professor Jim Hunter, have acknowledged. In a more recent past, our benches have noted support for improved transparency of land ownership as a means of tackling tax avoidance. We have also noted support for community empowerment, and it is interesting that aspects of the Community Empowerment Act 2015 were in part derived from UK Government localism legislation. I was patently clear that, while there is a very long way still to travel, we have been moving to a greater diversity and land ownership in Scotland, with many successful community land owners. I see that particularly in the Highlands and Islands from where I'm speaking tonight. From Ag, to Geir, to Calaway, to West Harris, there is a plethora of different community land owners which have been not just successful but transformative in terms of what they have achieved. Going to the specific case, Alasdair Allan touched upon in his speech, there is clearly a long-standing and contentious issue between this particular community development trust and the island's land owner, and I share the worry of the great burner of community about this regrettable turn of events. I'm grateful to Alasdair Allan for setting out the precise history and detail of the issues here, which, as the constituency MSP he will be well versed in. I cannot add much to that detail but I am very concerned to note that the local school and local shop on the island have closed further adding to the unnecessary worry faced by the local community. I touch briefly upon the more general issue of island depopulation, which I feel the issues on great burner are tying to. There are concerning trends of depopulation across our islands and that is a huge cause for concern, the fact that the population of the western isles in particular is expected to drop by 20% come 2041 highlights the harsh reality of this issue. Now there are things that we can do to reverse these trends and we need to ensure that connectivity between our islands and the mainland is reliable. We need to continue to invest and to roll out the bull band for better mobile connectivity and ensure that more investment is directed to delivering more social and affordable housing to give young islanders an incentive to stay. It is also critical that we support job creation where possible. I recently met with one business, which is looking to create several new jobs on Harris, for example, but faces real issues with getting the raw materials to set that up on the island. We in this parliament have an important role to play. Deputy Presiding Officer, I am grateful to Alice Island for highlighting the specific issue around Great Burner and I extend an offer to work on a cross-party basis where possible to secure a more desired outcome for the community there. As I said in my opening remarks, community buyouts often work extremely well and can be powerful forces for good in local communities and I hope that a resolution can be found in this instance and in other instances where communities are struggling to own land where it is in the wider interest of the area that they live in and represent. Thank you very much indeed, Mr Cameron. I now call on Ruth Maguire to be followed by Mercedes Villalba for around four minutes, Ms Maguire. Presiding Officer, I congratulate Alice Island on bringing this debate to the Scottish Parliament and I'm happy to make some brief remarks in support of his motion, recognising the work of the Great Burner community development trust towards a croft in community buyout and the development of their island. The Land Reform and Community Empowerment Act seeks to ensure that landowners uphold their responsibilities and to provide a legal basis for communities to negotiate a purchase of the land. Because, as Alice Rowland said in opening the debate, an absentee landlord might legally own and control the land, or in this case the island, the question remains, though, morally, should they. And whilst we might say that morally and culturally the land already belongs to the people there, it is the case that, particularly when we look at the experience of the citizens of Burner, that in order to develop and thrive, legal ownership could be seen as crucial. I have to say that it's hugely regrettable that the lack of co-operation from the absentee landlord has delayed and halted progress in that regard. I'm sorry that the legislation in place to deal with that, namely the Land Reform and Community Empowerment Act, has not delivered for that particular community yet. Reports of the highly unusual demands for payments from local crofters, from an absentee landlord, are frankly alarming. The community themselves know what's required to sustain the population there. The loss of the school, care home and shop, combined with rising house prices and the difficulties in developing, contributes to a challenging picture for the community. That is not just a matter for the Highlands or, indeed, rural Scotland, but of concern to urban communities, too. The fact that MSPs will contribute from around the country this evening reflects just how important the topic of who owns our lands and assets and what they are used for is. Land reform is defined as changes to land ownership and land use in the public interest. The issue of land ownership in Scotland can be a contentious issue, but it is of concern to many of us that large swathes of our country are being held by only a handful of private and, in many cases, non-resident land owners. As the centre for local economic strategy notes, land ownership matters because it is an expression of economic and political power. The concentration of rural land ownership in the hands of only a few people is a structural problem, particularly when it results in land use that extracts wealth from local communities to their detriment and that of the wider public interest. The situation in Burner highlights that. In closing, I wish them every success in their endeavours. I believe that ownership of the land being with the folk who live there will help to redirect wealth back into the local economy and place control and benefits into the hands of the local people, something that is right and just. I would like to start by thanking Alasdair Allan for bringing forward this important motion for debate today. Land ownership remains one of the greatest injustices facing us in Scotland, because ownership of Scotland's land remains heavily concentrated in the hands of a wealthy few at the expense of communities. Communities that, as Alasdair Allan and Ruth Maguire so poignantly put it, have a moral and cultural case for ownership of that land, and that could not be more clearly seen than on Great Burner. After all, here is a local community that has found its aspiration to purchase land frustrated by Scotland's inadequate land laws. Despite residents seeking a sustainable and prosperous future through community land ownership, progress continues to be delayed by a lack of co-operation from the island's absentee landlord. In the meantime, this same landlord continues to exploit what should be the community's land for his own gain by demanding significant payments from local crofters. Great Burner is the prime example of what happens when Scotland's land laws fail to secure the public interest. This is what happens when a disinterested landowner is able to stifle the needs and aspirations of a local community. However, the truth is that landlords can get away with this because Scotland's land laws favour their interests over those of local communities. Even after 20 years of devolution, our land laws lag far behind other European countries when it comes to protecting the public interest. In Scotland, it is left to communities with few resources to try to exercise complex legal rights in the face of a landowner seeking to frustrate their ambitions. As things currently stand, the Scottish Government has no right to formally ask if a landowner is acting in or against the public interest. That is why we urgently need radical and progressive reform of our land laws. Ministers must be given the power to intervene and ask the public interest questions that need to be asked. They must also be able to require the compulsory sale of land when the public interest demands it. While the Scottish Government's commitment to bring forward a land reform bill is welcome, I am worried that it will fail to deliver the radical change that is needed. That is why I will be bringing forward a land justice bill later this year. I am sure that the minister will remind us today that landowners have property rights, and my bill will respect that. However, my bill will not hide behind the timid interpretations of what those property rights might mean, which I fear are likely to emanate from Government lawyers. Powers are needed not just when land is at the point of changing hands. They are also needed when the landed class often absentee landlords frustrate the legitimate interests of the people. That is why I will propose through my land justice bill so that the people of Great Burner and other communities have their interests advanced far more easily than at present. I hope that my fears about the Scottish Government's land reform bill will prove to be unfounded. It will have my support if it delivers the truly bold and radical change needed. Parliament deserves to have an opportunity to consider truly progressive land laws, and I will make sure that it has that opportunity in my land justice bill. I also want to express my gratitude to Alistair Allen for securing the time for this debate. I would like to begin by recognising the huge efforts that the Great Burner or Community Development Trust has made to try and complete the sale of the crofting land that is deeply disappointing that the landlord, an absentee landlord, is refusing to co-operatively engage with the community. For a rural community to be rendered dependent on what is a feudal landlord should be something of the past, and it is not reflective of the progressive Scotland that the Scottish Greens are striving for. I understand that the Burner community has sought to use crofting community right to buy powers, but it has been challenging given that it is a complex and time-consuming process. Other communities across Scotland have instead made progress by reaching amicable agreements with the landlord to complete a buyout. Unfortunately, that has not been the case to date in Burner. I urge the landlord to work with the community in the spirit of goodwill. As Alistair Allen pointed out, this is not the first time in Burner's history that the crofters have fought for the right to own the land that they live and work on. In the 1870s, crofters grazing land was reduced to smaller and smaller proportion of the island to make way for sporting estates. The crofters upheld their end of the agreement paying rents and working to improve the land, but it was not before or long some agents of the landlord arrived with eviction notices. Following local arrests, some remaining crofters took it upon themselves to march, to storn away, to defend their rights and get a fair hearing. Unfortunately, more illegal wrangling was to come ending in a court case, but in 1874 the crofters were found to be not guilty of the charges against them and eventually the case played a part in the first successful challenge of the 1886 Crofting Act and so the Burner Islanders who marched that day took some of the first steps towards land reform in Scotland. Last week I visited the islanders on egg to join them in celebrating 25 years since their successful community buyout of the island and I couldn't help being struck by the amazing possibilities that can be achieved by a community that is in control of its land and resources. We gathered in their brand new community hub at the pier. This hub provides a fine tea room along with food and craft shops and an office space with stunning southerly sea views as well as being a considerable local economic driver. As part of the celebrations I joined the egg electric tour to learn about egg's pioneering renewable electricity system, the first island to generate power from water through hydro wind with turbines and the sun utilising a large solar array and as they said their electricity is now cheaper than electricity on the mainland and along with electricity the islanders also have a successful and growing forestry initiative. Great Burner residents want those same opportunities for generations of islanders to come and it is a responsibility for all of us elected to this parliament to ensure that land reform acts work to support successful buyouts. I know that the Government intends to bring forward a land reform bill later this session and I hope that we can tackle some of the issues raised tonight through that, including developing a public interest test for the sale of large land holdings and exploring what we can do to tackle overseas land owners. In closing, while preparing for this debate, I came across a poem by Burner acrofther Ian Macagwen, who lived on Burner at the close of the 19th century and I witnessed the first push for land reform on the island. The poem in English is titled Spirit of Kindness and is translated by Derek Thomson and I'll share a few lines. They handed over to the snipe the land of happy folk. They dealt without humanity with people who were kind. Because they might not drown them, they dispersed them overseas. A thraldum worse than Babylon was the plight they were in. Almost 150 years on, from when those lines were drafted, we must start a new chapter for Scotland's crofting communities and the Great Burner's land buyout. I now call on Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Rhoda Grant at around four minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I too congratulate Alistair Allen for securing this evening's important and interesting debate. Beautiful Great Burner on the rugged west coast of Lewis is a population of just over 250. It was linked to the island of Lewis in 1953 by the first pre-stressed concrete bridge in Europe and welcomed 4,000 visitors on its opening day. The bridge was only built after the islanders threatened to build their own causeway by dynamising the hillside. The island boasts the first planned crofting township in the Outer Hebrides, created in 1805, with village boundaries still in use today by the community. Great Burner boasts the marvel that is Bosta, the most well preserved late Iron Age village ever found in Scotland, revealed in 1993 following an Atlantic storm and excavated three years later. It features a series of preserved houses inhabited from the early 1st century with some houses virtually intact. Great Burner's resilient crofters resisted the Highland clearances that sparked the Burner riot of 1874, in which the first victory for small tenants was recorded as they refused evictions and rent increases for expanding sports estates. No doubt that is why the island was not cleared, like so many other, tragic Highland islands such as Tarransi or Mingli, both in the Outer Hebrides. That catalyzed future resistance in what became known as the Crofters Wall of Scotland's modern land reform, rooting from its outcome which, ironically, the island's future now depends on. From 1960, during the turn of his death in 2022, the island, as Arsalan said, was owned by Robin Delann-Mirlies. Of course, he is one of the people, as Arsalan also said, who was associated with James Bond Carrot, but then so was Fitz Roy McLean in loads of other of these landlords, so I take it all with a pinch of salt. However, he offered Highlanders first refusal on buying the island an approximately 85 per cent of the island's population voted in favour. However, the new absentee landlord would not exceed. Get Burner community development trust continues to try to negotiate with the island's landlord to purchase the island despite underhand tactics and a lack of co-operation or a willingness to engage in any meaningful negotiations. Today, the community is mainly dependent on lobster fishing, crofting and tourism, with Outer Hebrides welcoming over 200,000 tourists annually. The islanders' priority is to bring their community into ownership for its economic and social benefits to secure a stronger and more sustainable future. The community hopes to ensure that money is invested back into the island and provide employment opportunities to encourage younger generations to remain in the island, helping to ensure its sustainability. With a growing number of people moving from the mainland to the western islands, house prices on Great Burner have dramatically increased pricing many out of the housing market. Therefore, the need for affordable housing is crucial to ensure that the islanders can afford to remain and ensure that it remains an attractive community, but that cannot happen with the current landlord. Therefore, we need to have the community take control of their land. Support is also required to renovate housing to ensure accessibility for elderly islanders. Currently, 70 per cent of people in the hybrid days are living on community-owned land and community buyouts have been successful, and we heard just from Arrian Burgess of our own experiences on the egg, but also in Gaea, North Haras and West Haras, and in the name of you. Generating significant employment opportunities and affordable housing and highlighting a bright future for Great Burner should materialise when the buy-out eventually happens, as I am sure that we all want it to. The Tynoc community already takes a democratic approach on local matters, surveying islanders to ensure that decisions are made in the best interests of residents and the island, highlighting their capabilities and taking ownership of the island and planning its future. As the MSP for two island communities, Arlan Cymru, I can appreciate first hand the hand that an unresponsive landlord can have, leading to depopulation and indeed damage to anilins economy. I am in full support of the community buyout on Great Burner. Islands have a unique set of needs, and I am proud that the Scottish Government continues to support island and rural communities. I am delighted by the support that the Scottish land fund has provided to Great Burner, offering the cost of the land and funding, the part-time post of a commercial manager and administrative officer to aid the community future as a community on the island. I hope that Great Burner will successfully utilise part three of the Land Reform Scotland act. I trust that ministers will understand and sympathise with the islanders' reasoning behind this endeavour. I also support continued land reform to ensure that we are not in this situation again. I urge the current landlord of Great Burner to engage and co-operate with the island community development trust to reach a fair agreement that will reap huge benefits for current islanders and future generations on Great Burner. Thank you, Mr Gibson. I now call the final speaker in the open debate, Rhoda Grant, for around four minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I congratulate Alasdor Allan on securing this debate as well. This situation rises wholly from the failure of the Scottish Government to legislate to make the community right to buy possible in the face of a hostile landlord. They have had 15 years to do this, and they must urgently bring forward a new land reform bill. The battles, particularly in Parc, showed that the 2003 legislation, while well-intentioned, was far too complicated in the face of a determined land owner. If there is serious intent to help communities such as Burner, that would have been fixed long ago. New legislation must ensure that anyone who owns large areas of land in Scotland must do so in the public interest, and if they do not, there must be powers to remove that land from their ownership. Of course, there needs to be checks and balances in any system, but at the end of the day, people like Kieran Merleys should not be put in charge of a cat far less the people's future and wellbeing. Indeed, there are more powers in Scotland to remove a cat from a bad owner than there are to remove land. Burner is a community in decline for the same reasons as many others. The key issues are housing and jobs. Both can only be addressed with access to land. It is scandalous in a place that has so long been associated with the history of resisting landlordism that it is still cursed by this 21st century person with absurdenty landlordism without government lifting a finger to stop it. The Burner abbiote has been mooted for more than a decade, but it can go nowhere because the intransigence of an individual sitting in Frankfurt and that shames Scotland and it shames the Scottish Government. In the face of similar hostility, other communities do not even bother to try and go and have a buyout. This case shows us what is wrong with Scottish land owning patterns. The Scottish Government procrastinates people's sufferings. My colleague, Mercedes Valalba, is consulting on setting a limit for the size of land that a person can own. The limit would of course disinvest Mr Middle East off the majority of his land owns in Scotland, which would be beneficial to those who were no longer held hostage by his unreasonable and unlawful demands. He states that he is being advised by Savils to extort huge amounts of money from house sales in the islands, something that has no legal bearing. If this is the case, and I sincerely hope that it is not, it begs the question should they be practising in Scotland. Agents representing these estates have to take some responsibility for the abuses that are being perpetrated. In this case, a 26-year-old student in Frankfurt hides behind a legal firm in Stornoway who seems powerless to extract any communication from him, leaving people in dreadful circumstances and the community in dismay. The agents for these land owners need to consider whether they are representing the interests of the community by continuing to represent them and provide them with a shield of virtual anonymity. The lack of progress by the SNP on land reform is a disgrace, and the work done in the early years of Holyrood has never been built on or advanced. That is the hidden scandal. Burner symbolises that bigger issue. I commend Dr Alland for securing this debate, and for the way in which he powerfully narrated the circumstances of his constituents in Great Burner, and for the way in which he explained the powerful and intrinsic links between land ownership, development and sustaining a growing population. I also recognise the contributions from colleagues across the chamber that were delivered in a constructive and thoughtful tone. It should never be the case that any land owner should be able to exert such control over the lives of those who happen to live on land that they own. That is especially so in this case, given that the previous owner had already given the community first refusal to purchase Great Burner following his death in 2012. When it was put to the community, 85 per cent of them turned out to vote on the buy-out. In total, 142 backed the purchase of the island with 37 against. The community trust received £100,000 from the Scottish land fund financed by the Scottish Government to help to purchase the 2,260 hectares of the Great Burner estate, including 69 croffs around Kirkebost, Topsin, Hacklett, Brachlett and Croyer. Ideas to boost the island's economy range across various areas, including particular development and renewable energy and, indeed, a pier. Why has not this happened? Other crofting communities have faced similar challenges and have still succeeded. In 2007, Golson estate trust took ownership of 22,000 hectares in the north of the Isle of Lewis. On the same island in 2015, park trust took ownership of 11,000 hectares. Neither of those was without their challenges, most notably in the park trust case, but they both succeeded. The most obvious answer lies in the tenacity and belief of the community themselves. Both communities believed that they could take on the running of the land around them, improving the circumstances of their own community in doing so. Both communities were determined to see that through, no matter what obstacles were put in their way. The Scottish Government brought in legislation aimed at giving rights to communities to purchase land and the crofting community right to buy was aimed at just this type of situation. However, it is notable that neither of those two successful groups concluded the transfer of the estates using the right to buy. Both in the end concluded the transfer through a negotiated sale, and that should always be the preferred way to achieve these outcomes, where both parties reached a common ground on the way forward. In the case of park, it took several years and a few legal challenges, but it still got there. Although neither community concluded using the right to buy, it is equally worth noting that, without those rights, it is unlikely that either would have got a seat at the table. Both communities began the right to buy process and, through that, brought the owners of those estates to a position of negotiating with the communities or faced a compulsory purchase through the right to buy. That is a strong tool for a community to have at its disposal. In the case of Great Bernard, the community are facing some of the same challenges that the park trusts face. They have an owner who, through various means at their disposal, is not willing to entertain any discussion with the community about purchasing the whole estate. They are exerting influence on those who live on land at their own to what ends, we can only speculate, making it more and more difficult to plan for any kind of future. Any owner of land has responsibility to the land itself and to those who call it their home. The Scottish Government's land rights and responsibility statement, which was published in 2017 and is the first of its kind in the world, says exactly that in two of its principles. Namely, the holders of land rights should exercise those rights in ways that take account of their responsibilities to meet high standards of land ownership, management and use. Acting as the stewards of Scotland's land resources for future generations, we contribute to sustainable growth and a modern successful country. Additionally, there should be a greater collaboration and community engagement in decisions about land. If the Great Bernard community development trust feels that this is not being followed, then there is the crofting community right to buy. The trust has already been investigating this route and has been in discussion with Scottish Government officials. Admirably, they have been continuing to pursue the negotiation route and I recognise it as a view that the time has now come for a more forceful line of action. Officials are considering how the trust could access this route and will continue to do so, as it did in the park case and the Galson case. Looking forward, the trust has been touched on in the debate v 2021-22 programme for government committee to a further land reform bill in this parliamentary session. Over the summer, we will be working with all stakeholders, including land-owning interests, to develop policy and legislative solutions to progress our proposals. We will undertake a wide-ranging consultation on proposals for the bill, which we aim to introduce by the end of 2023. Our proposals will be fully compliant with ETHR, including the right to private property and the terms of the current devolution settlement, but they will also be ambitious, aiming at making sure that land plays its full part in delivering the vision set out by the Just Transition Commission—a fairer, greener future for all. This reflects the principled position of the Scottish Government and our explicit commitment to respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights for every member of society. The programme for government is also committed to doubling the Scottish land fund to £20 million by the end of this parliamentary session. The fund was put in place to make it possible for community groups to apply for awards to purchase assets, no matter which route that ownership takes. I would like to close by congratulating Great Burnlow Trust for continuing to persevere on the face of adversity and to encourage them to pursue the fund by any means at their disposal. Indeed, in responding to Dr Allan's specific request, I hope that the fund will now be able to enter into more detailed discussions with the Biow Trust to examine the options that it wishes to pursue. The crofting community right to buy has never been used to completion, but maybe it is about time that it was. In this case, it might be able to bring the owner to the negotiating table, but if not, then I feel that this community is the type to follow through on their plans and take this as far as they can until they become the owners of the land. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much indeed. Minister, that concludes the debate, and I close this meeting apartment.