Dave Thompson MSP

Dave Thompson, SNP MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch and member of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment (RACCE) Committee used a recent (03/02/16) Committee Meeting to pursue the debate on the conditional right to buy for those with secure 1991 farming tenancies.

Mr Thompson also highlighted this during a Scottish Parliament debate on Stage 1 of the Land Reform Bill and underlined the fundamental requirement to use land for the benefit of the community and has been advocating for this right since 2002 when he put forward a Motion at the SNP Conference to this effect.

Mr Thompson said, “The introduction of a conditional right to buy for those with secure 1991 farming tenancies must continue to be considered as part of the Land Reform Bill process.

“This is an issue I have been campaigning on since I was first selected in 2002 to stand in Ross, Skye and Inverness West. I attended one of the founding meetings of the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association (STFA) and I put forward a Motion to the SNP conference later that year advocating for this conditional right.

“I agree with the STFA who suggest various conditions that could be applied to the right to buy to ensure fairness for everybody, such as the tenant demonstrating greater investment in the holding than the landlord during the tenancy, evidence of the landlord being in breach of obligations, or of farming business being inhibited by the scale of land ownership or the actions of a landowner, demonstration of eligible succession so that a landlord would not expect vacant possession in the near future, claw back in the event of resale within a reasonable period of time, and a landlord’s right of pre-emption if the farm is sold within 10 years.

Note:

Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee Meeting if 03/02/16:

Dave Thompson (Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) (SNP): The subject is fairly dear to my heart. When I was first selected in 2002 to stand in Ross, Skye and Inverness West, I went along to a meeting in the Tower hotel, which was one of the founding meetings—if not the founding meeting—of the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association. I put forward a motion to the SNP conference later that year that advocated a right to buy—which the conference approved, by the way. That was 14 years ago, and here we are still talking about the issue. The big problem and issue, which Mike Russell referred to, is to do with the ECHR. That is written into the Scotland Act 1998, which set up the Parliament, and it very much ties the Parliament’s hands. There is a difference between legislation having to be ECHR compliant, which is a matter of opinion and is untested in the courts, and people being able to challenge legislation under the ECHR. Those are two different things. That is a wider issue that will not be dealt with here today. The fact that the ECHR is written into the 1998 act needs to be looked at. That provision needs to be removed so that we have the same freedom in proposing legislation as any other legislature has. Legislation could still be challenged under the ECHR—as, say, UK legislation would be—in the European Court of Human Rights.

The Scottish Tenant Farmers Association wrote to us just yesterday to indicate its support for a conditional right to buy, and Mike Russell’s condition is holding a tenancy for 50 years. I will be interested to hear the cabinet secretary’s response, but the STFA suggests various conditions that could be applied to the right to buy to ensure fairness for everybody, such as the tenant demonstrating greater investment in the holding than the landlord during the tenancy; evidence of the landlord being in breach of obligations or of farming business being inhibited by the scale of land ownership or the actions of a landowner; demonstration of eligible succession so that a landlord would not expect vacant possession in the near future; clawback in the event of resale within, say, 10 years; and a landlord’s right of pre-emption if the farm is sold within 10 years. I hope that all those things, along with the factors that Mike Russell and Claudia Beamish mentioned, will go into the pot and into the debate when the subject is considered in the future. It must be considered early in the next session. It is a boil that has been festering for many years, and it is souring relationships between landlords and tenants. We need to lance it, and the only way to do that is to bring in a form of conditional right to buy along the lines that we have heard discussed today.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=10356