17/06/2014
Headlines
17/06/2014
Land Reform Review Group publishes its recommendations The Scottish Government-commissioned Land Reform Review Group has published its report, which contains 62 recommendations. Its remit was to: •
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enable more people in rural and urban Scotland to have a stake in the ownership, governance, management and use of land, which will lead to a greater diversity of land ownership, and ownership types, in Scotland; assist with the acquisition and management of land (and also land assets) by communities, to make stronger, more resilient, and independent communities which have an even greater stake in their development; and generate, support, promote, and deliver new relationships between land, people, economy and environment in Scotland.
It has said that: 1. Significant changes are required to make land ownership a more efficient and effective system for delivering the public interest. 2. It recommends that the Scottish Government should have an integrated programme of land reform measures to do this. 3. A single body with responsibility for understanding and monitoring land ownership and management is established. 4. It also recommends that the Scottish Government should establish a Scottish Land and Property Commission. 5. There is an upper limit on the amount of land held by private owners in Scotland. 6. A large increase in community land ownership and establishment of a Community Land Agency. 7. Devolution of the Crown Estate Commissioners’ statutory responsibilities to the Scottish Parliament. 8. Changing the current tax system, which is considered to maintain the pattern of large-scale private land ownership. The changes would aim to increase the number of land owners. The government will give ‘serious consideration’ to the option of Land Value Taxation. 9. That agriculture, forestry and land-based businesses should pay non-domestic rates like other businesses. The Scottish Government has backed the recommendation for a working group to develop a strategy to achieve a target of getting 1m acres of land into community ownership by 2020. Following this, the Scottish Government has announced that it is set to bring forward a Land Reform Bill for Scotland, which will build on measures in the forthcoming Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill.
CAP post-2014: further detail published on English and Scottish implementation A lot more detail has been published, especially by the Scottish Government, on how the new Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 rules will be applied in Scotland and England. Our CAP update and Greening calculator have been updated with the changes. Environmental bodies are challenging the changes to Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) as they claim that they are not based on any scientific or environmental assessment but driven by purely political factors.
Farming Europe to agree plan for reforming GM approval process EU Environment Ministers have approved plans to reform the GM approval process after years of deadlock. The new process will allow pro-GM countries to approve cultivation and anti-GM countries to apply legally-valid bans. The deadlock has been broken as some countries, including the UK, have been convinced that the new process will stand up to legal challenge. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of this Marmite-like subject, both biotech firms and environmentalists are not happy; the biotechs fear the opt outs could undermine sciencebased decision-making while environmental groups fear future legal challenges and a transfer of ‘unprecedented powers’ to the biotechs as the plans do not allow countries to ban crops on environmental and health concerns not already assessed by EFSA.
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