Was there an elephant in the room at the crofting cross-party group meeting?
The cross-party group on crofting met last Wednesday at Holyrood.
It was very ably chaired by Tavish Scott MSP. He is one of the three co-conveners of the group, having been elected along with Kate Forbes MSP at the last meeting to replace Michael Russell MSP after Mr Russell became Brexit Minister. Rhoda Grant MSP is the third co-convener of the group.
Fergus Ewing MSP, cabinet secretary with responsibility for crofting, was a special guest at the meeting.
Mr Ewing made it clear at the outset that he couldn’t comment in any respect on the current controversy regarding the convener of the Crofting Commission given the allegations made by him against Mr Ewing which are the subject of an independent investigation.
Mr Ewing outlined all that the Scottish Government is currently doing to assist crofting and its future.
In particular he discussed future crofting law reform. The Scottish Government wants to modernise crofting law and make it transparent, understandable and workable in practice. Mr Ewing made it clear that they very much wanted to listen with no precise timetable in mind.
Mr Ewing stressed the importance of taking time to get it right. I couldn’t endorse that view more and trust that we won’t see the chaos of a huge number of last minute amendments that was encountered in creating the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2010. That was possibly partly responsible for many of the issues (not common grazings ones that were not affected by the 2010 legislation) that has led to the current Scottish Government having to tackle crofting law reform so soon again.
After Mr Ewing left the meeting we continued with the topic of crofting law reform. Derek Flyn outlined the background to the crofting law sump report which he described as a “collection of what is wrong with crofting law”.
Michael O’Neil, the newly appointed Head of the Scottish Government Legislation Team, then outlined proposals to take crofting law reform forward.
Mr O’Neil indicated his intention to involve as wide a range of stakeholders as possible. He will get out and about and meet anyone he needs to speak with.
He will refer to the information contained in the crofting law sump and in the Shucksmith Report.
Some questions Mr O’Neil had in mind included:-
- Why do we need crofting legislation?
- What changes need to be made to it?
- How do we go about delivering the changes identified?
- Are there other options to new legislation?
A small team has been assembled by the Scottish Government to take crofting law reform forward.
It will be interesting to see this process move forward and we will keep you posted on the Crofting Law Blog as it does.
Bill Barron, the new Chief Executive of the Crofting Commission, was attending his first cross party group meeting. On the agenda was an “update on grazing committee removals and other current Crofting Commission business”. He appeared to dodge being able to provide that update on the basis that it was his fifth day in the job.
However, sitting next to him was the Convener of the Crofting Commission, Colin Kennedy. Mr Kennedy did not offer an update on grazing committee removals and other current Crofting Commission business. Indeed, other than to introduce himself as all attendees did at the outset, Mr Kennedy sat silent throughout the entire meeting. He didn’t speak and no one asked him to speak.
This was, of course, the first crofting cross-party group meeting that Mr Kennedy has attended in this session of Parliament, having avoided the last two. He has thus not expressed the views of the Crofting Commission to the cross-party group since this session of Parliament commenced.
Mr Kennedy has, however, been very vocal in expressing his own personal views (which don’t necessarily coincide with those of the board of the Crofting Commission) in the media over the past few weeks including, in particular, in four successive editions of the Scottish Farmer.
His presence at last week’s cross party group meeting was referred to by some as the elephant in the room. But can the situation simply be ignored?
Brian Inkster
It has been suggested that this blog is a good barometer for how well or badly the Crofting Commission are doing. This, we have been told, can be measured by the number of blog posts appearing about the Commission. The more posts there are the worse they are doing: the less posts there are the better they are doing.
