Call for absolute right to buy heard at Holyrood committee

reform: State intervention ‘could ensure land is available to let’, says MSP

If landlords do not as a result of this bill increase or perpetuate the amount of land in tenancy, is it possible we’ll end up with something that doesn’t meet either objective?

MIKE RUSSELL MSP

The four most controversial words in the agricultural lexicon burst back into the limelight yesterday.

Absolute Right To Buy (ARTB) for secure farm tenants has been such a divisive issue among land reformers, landowners and farmers that it has been quietly tucked away out of sight to allow for a degree of consensus on the terms of the new Land Reform Bill.

That didn’t, however, stop former education secretary Mike Russell from using a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s rural affairs committee as a springboard for reviving the concept of ARTB and furthermore suggesting state intervention to ensure the availability of land to let.

This goes far beyond the land reform proposals currently before Holyrood which would only give tenants a right to buy if a landlord is not fulfilling his or her obligations. It may well be that Mr Russell’s enthusiasm for ARTB has been encouraged by the call from last month’s SNP conference for a more radical Land Reform Bill.

Cabinet secretary Richard Lochhead, whose responsibility it is to steer the bill through parliament, defended the current draft ,which excludes ARTB, explaining to the committee that it aimed to strike a balance between increasing the rights of tenants and giving confidence to landlords to let land.

Mr Russell responded: “If landlords do not as a result of this bill increase or perpetuate the amount of land in tenancy, is it possible we’ll end up with something that doesn’t meet either objective?

“Would it not be better to look at, where the circumstances demand it, and there are circumstances certainly in Scotland that demand it, an absolute right to buy, and thereafter circumstances where landlords don’t want to rent land, the state is able to intervene and ensure that land is available to let, through the market mechanisms?”

Mr Lochhead said he was confident the measures contained in the bill would be successful, adding “whether it goes far enough, only time will tell”.

MSPs have previously been told that the granting of ARTB could be open to challenge by landowners under European human rights legislation.

Mr Russell said: “Don’t we need to focus more closely on the human rights of those who use the land, the human rights of those who have put effort into the land – some people have had tenancies for up to a century and put those into the balance against perhaps those who are trying to argue that the rights of property trump everything?”

David Johnstone, chairman of Scottish Land & Estates (SL&E), took the Cabinet secretary’s side, saying: “Mr Lochhead identified the need to create a tenanted sector that will serve the needs of farmers and those looking to let land over the decade, and this is an ambition we have long shared with the Scottish Government.”

Specifically on the issue of ARTB, Mr Johnstone said: “The Agricultural Review Group ruled out absolute right to buy on the basis that it would not be in the long-term interest of the tenanted sector. The Cabinet secretary subsequently confirmed his support for this position, along with the majority of those in the sector.

“At a time when there needs to be an emphasis on the letting of land, especially for new entrants, most industry bodies are clear that ARTB would substantially hinder the aim of seeing the tenanted sector flourish.”

He added that SL&E was disappointed that some of the European Court of Human Rights implications had been misrepresented.

“We have provided consistent evidence to the committee across the full range of agricultural holdings measures in both written form and oral evidence sessions,” he said.

“We are not looking for complete freedom of contract, nor, as seemed to be suggested in the session, have we stated that most of the Bill is outwith the legislative competence of the parliament. We remain firmly committed to working with the Scottish Government and the parliamentary process to produce the best possible legislation for the good of the sector.”