It has been confirmed by the Scottish Government that work is to start imminently to ensure a Crofting Reform Bill is passed in the course of this parliament.
The Government crofting bill team will be led by the existing crofting policy team, which makes sense as they already have a great deal of experience in crofting.
The stakeholder crofting bill group, made up of those of us with an interest in crofting law, will be reconvened soon.
I think of crofting law as an overgrown garden – there is actually very good substance underneath the brambles.
It was recognised back in 1998 that the law needed remedial work and there has been a series of amendments – some of which added problems and some written specifically to try to then plaster over the damage.
It is certainly an impenetrable thicket now, in need of branch and stem pruning.
In the last term of Scottish Government, a serious attempt was made to get in there with the brush-cutter.
Because the work was started quite late in the session, and had to start from point zero with a crofting bill team completely new to crofting legislation, it was deemed best to have a realistic target of one ‘light-weight’ bill going through and a second prepared for the next parliamentary session.
Phase one was to clear up the most urgent and straightforward amendments previously identified in ‘The Sump ‘ and phase two would work on the more complicated, or controversial, stuff.
Given the time limits, this was a good approach as attempting to do it all in one lot could result in a bill not being ready in that session, and so being dropped.
As it turned out, it was dropped anyway due to the requirement to put all legislation teams on to the task of preparing for Brexit. However, much work had been done.
The approach this time around is to pick up where it left off, to write up the 31 amendments identified last time in phase one, add the stuff from the Scottish Law Society research work, plus some of the amendments that were resolved for phase two last time.
In addition – and representing a win for the Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) campaign – the Crofting Commission has been asked by Scottish Government to generate a list of amendments that they need to enable them to discharge their duties effectively.
There may be a few ‘phase two’ issues that the bill team do not envisage getting done easily, so want to exclude to prevent the main bill being held back, but we have to aim to get as many as possible sorted out, as realistically we cannot count on the next government picking it up again.
When all the amendments have been carried out and the law is used for a while – given its test run – a consolidation bill is required to bring all the amending acts together in one act. This was last done in 1994. So there is still a way to go until we enjoy a stroll in a well-tended garden.
In the meantime, we have been pressing the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for Crofting, Mairi Gougeon, to support the Crofting Commission in its function.
An increase in budget has been awarded and the Crofting Commission is getting additional staff. It will now be able to put more resource into the Regulation and Land Use team and so use the existing legislation more effectively.
It is clear from recent SCF village hall meetings that crofters want the Crofting Commission to regulate well and to free up unused crofts for new entrants.
- Patrick Krause is chief executive of the Scottish Crofting Federation.