A complete rejection of any legislation giving farm tenants a right to buy their properties with future tenancy agreements between landlords and tenants being based on a complete freedom of contract, were included in a rural commission document submitted to the Scottish Conservatives.
The commission, established by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson to help inform party policy and chaired by Hughie Campbell Adamson, said it had approached the issue of agricultural holdings with a blank sheet of paper but with the recognition the current tenancy system was in a state of gridlock.
The current speculation over the introduction of a right to buy for tenants was closing down the tenanted sector, the report claimed, and confidence would only be restored after politicians across the spectrum rejected it.
The report was also critical of the 2003 agricultural holdings legislation that introduced short limited-duration tenancies and limited-duration tenancies. These had not worked and should be phased out to be replaced with agreements between two consenting business partners.
The freedom of contract plan as the basis of future tenancies was further endorsed by the report which compared the relative success of the English letting model of farm business tenancies with the decline in the Scottish tenanted sector.
The report which was over a year in the making and covers all aspects of rural life, does not touch on the detail of the Common Agricultural Policy other than considering farm subsidies were coming to an end; thus leaving farming to recover from Cap subsidy dependency through new forms of income generation such as carbon trading.
The report supports plans for increasing the acreage of land under trees in Scotland pointing out this country has a lower percentage of forestry than the EU. It does not believe the additional woodland would negatively affect agriculture and sums up its view by stating: “If we can grow trees, then we should grow more trees.”
In total, the report produced 97 recommendations many of which Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said would end up in the party manifesto.