What next for land reform in Scotland?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2015/oct/19/what-next-for-land-reform-in-scotland

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As Andrew Sparrow reported on Friday, the SNP leadership suffered its only defeat of conference over land reform.

After a vigorous debate, delegates voted to remit a resolution commending the Scottish government’s land reform bill back by 570 votes to 440.

While this may have been missed amidst all the second referendum analysis, as campaigner Andy Wightman points out, this marked a moment of some consequence when the grassroots members of the SNP took on the party hierarchy and held them to their much-vaunted commitment to significant legislative change.

And in her Scotsman column this morning, fellow reformer Lesley Riddoch argues further:

Of course, there’s no doubting the massive popularity of the SNP leader and the Still Yes enthusiasm of her audience. But SNP delegates increasingly understand there’s more to politics than the timing of the next referendum and more to being politically active than blindly toeing the party line. That’s why the land reform upset was hugely important. It marked the appearance of a new force in Scottish politics – the grassroots of the SNP...

So what happens now?

Nicky Lowden MacCrimmon, who spoke powerfully against the resolution on Friday, has a notion or three. Speaking to the Guardian on Monday, he first welcomes the fact that Aileen McLeod, who proposed the defeated motion and is the first Scottish government minister to have land reform explicitly included in her portfolio, has promised to listen to delegates’ concerns.

MacCrimmon, from Carse of Gowrie, an area of arable farmland between Perth and Dundee, goes back to the proposals of the Land Reform Review Group, which I reported on back in May last year.

“Even older, conservative with a small ‘c’ branch members felt that the proposals had been watered down in the bill”, he explains, adding that his branch members have seen for themselves difficulties faced by local tenant farmers.

The review group recommended that the bill have provision that a holding company needed to originate in the EU to hold land in Scotland. The Scottish government’s line is that they left that out because the EU isn’t very good at identifying who is behind companies, but you shouldn’t not do something just because it’s difficult.”

As Jen Stout of the campaigning group Scottish Land Action writes for Bella Caledonia on the same omission from the bill:

The fact that 750,000 acres of Scotland will still be held in tax havens by a global, untraceable elite, is inexcusable. The removal from the bill of a measure which would have tackled this is partly what’s caused such anger among SNP members and land activists, as now even the UK government have stronger proposals for this problem.

MacCrimmon also wants to see security of tenure for tenant famers and a cap on land ownerships, again recommendations of the land reform review group which didn’t make it into the bill.

And Lesley Riddoch, part of the campaign group Our Land, argues:

If the present bill can’t be amended to become more effective in making land more affordable and available in our lifetimes, then SNP manifesto writers need to commit to a new land reform bill in the next parliament.

Riddoch adds that the Scottish governments needs to start talking directly to tenant farmers who are currently being evicted without compensation.

Meanwhile, MacCrimmon proposes the formation of a campaign group within the party to keep the pressure on:

Land reform is not just about one piece of legislation. It needs to be a generational shift. I know that in some quarters this has been characterised as a rebellion, but we’re not doing this to give the SNP a kicking. We’re exercising the democratic process that exists within the SNP. I think we’re an empowered party at the grassroots.