MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 2 March 1976)

§ Mr. Hugh D. Brown
I beg to move Amendment No. 35, in page 22, line 25 leave out '(3)'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this amendment we are to take Government Amendments Nos. 36 and 37.

§ Mr. Brown
Amendment 37 arises out of discussions in Committee—columns 248 to 250 of the Official Report.
I give credit to hon. Members opposite for drawing to my attention the omission in the Bill as drafted to provide for the Crofters Commission's duty of making an annual report extend to its functions under this Bill. Amendment No. 37 provides for this duty to make an annual report to be extended by inserting a reference to this Bill in Section 2(4) of the 1955 Act.

§ Mr. Hugh D. Brown
I beg to move Amendment 38, in page 23, line 45, after 'electricity', insert 'or gas'.
The purpose is to amend paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 of the Bill as a consequence of an amendment to Clause 12 made during the Committee stage. The effect is to add the provision of a gas 1271 supply to those items to which the terms of Section 22(5) of the 1955 Act apply.
Again I compliment hon. Members opposite on raising this matter.

§ Mr. Donald Stewart
The Secretary of State said in answer to the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) that the crofters wanted the Bill. That is perfectly true, although I do not think that they were all demanding it for the night of 2nd-3rd March. I think that the hon. Gentleman's point was valid. We had quite a long discussion on the previous Bill, and I congratulate the Under-Secretary on his stamina.
This is a great advance for the crofting areas of the Highlands. It is not a perfect Bill. On many points we argued in Committee, and I am sorry that many of those arguments were not maintained, but no Bill is entirely perfect and I am sure that nobody expects to get through 100 per cent, of his amendments.
In my part of the crofting area we have suffered from the landlord problem—not so much from tyrannical landlords. The problem has rather been one of indifference. We were in the same position in Lewis as in certain parts of Ireland. One of the Irish farmers was supposed to have said that the country was overrun by absentee landlords. If they are not doing any acts of great tyranny towards the crofters, they certainly were not taking much interest in the land.
There was an example in Lewis recently where a village wanted a very poor piece of ground for levelling for a football pitch. The proprietor, Mrs. Barker of the Soval estate, demanded £600 for some quite worthless land. The people did not have the money, so the pitch was not made.
I regret that there are provisions still in the Bill to which I take great objection—for example, the retention of the mines, metals and minerals by the landlord. I pressed at various stages for the crofter, when he became the owner, to 1272 become the owner outright. In the case of shooting rights, it has to be remembered that the harvest in the Highlands is not in on 12th August, and people engaged in shooting can run over the crofts.
I am sorry that the peat rights were not defined in a wider way to be given to the crofter's family. I regret the withdrawal, when a crofter becomes an owner, of the grant or loan which is still applicable to crofting tenure. I argued—I do not want to go into the matter in detail—that in the long run it would have meant a saving to the public purse.
I regret that Section 18 of the 1955 Act is repealed. I take the Under-Secretary's point that it will fall into disuse because other avenues will allow the same result. However, the crofting community in my area thought that it would be a valuable concession for it to remain.
The great thing about the Bill has been the writing in of the crofter's choice to decide whether he wants to become an owner. The Secretary of State knows that this will solve a lot of problems. The answer to any crofter is that he must weigh the advantages and disadvantages on both sides and make his own decision. That is a great advance.
Despite my criticisms, I think that this is an excellent Bill which will be welcomed by crofters. It is too early to say whether it will be as great as the 1886 legislation. However, the Bill marks a great advance for the crofting community. I congratulate the Secretary of State on bringing it forward.

§ Mr. Gray
I congratulate the Secretary of State on having brought in the Bill. It is the natural successor to the Bill introduced by the Conservative Government in 1974. We welcome wholeheartedly the change of view of the present Government. We particularly welcome the change of view of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) who, despite the vitriol which he poured on the previous proposal, has now been wholly converted. It is a welcome conversion not only to hon. Members, but to the hon. Gentleman's constituents and everybody in the Highlands.
Like the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart), I find that there are 1273 a number of matters about which I still have regrets. For example; I am sorry that it was not possible for the Government to accept the amendment which would have had the effect of making grazing committees legally constituted bodies. We argued this matter at length in Committee and the Government replied with reasonable arguments. Nevertheless, it is a pity, especially as those bodies might justly have been entitled to EEC aid in future.
I had my say about building societies in Committee, but I reiterate what I then said. It is wholly unfair that certain building societies, which accept contributions and deposits from people living in crofting communities, should be reluctant to make loans on occasions when asked. Indeed, as a result of some of my speeches on this subject, I received a communication from a prominent director of one building society—for obvious reasons, it must be nameless—to the effect that his building society was prepared to lend money in any part of Scotland. That was an achievement. I shall make a point of trying to pursue the matter further with other societies in due course.
I was tempted at one stage to engage in the practice common to the present Secretary of State for Scotland when he was in opposition. The right hon. Gentleman used to rise to speak, probably at a much later hour than this, during the Third Reading of a Bill and give the impression that he would talk for only a few minutes. I have sat in the Government Whips' seat on one or two occasions only to find that the right hon. Gentleman had a great deal that he wanted to say on Third Reading, and we all had to sit and listen. I assure him that I shall not try to return the compliment tonight.
I whole-heartedly welcome the Bill. The people in the crofting communities will welcome it. I know that the crofters in Ross and Cromarty whole-heartedly welcome it. I am sure that the crofters in Caithness and Sutherland will welcome it, as they did its predecessor. I wish the Bill well.

§ Mr. Watt
Although I welcome the Bill, there is one matter that I should like to bring to the attention of the House. It is the deep regret fell by my 1274 colleagues in the Scottish National Party and me that the Government did not see fit to sell die crofts to the crofters outright. It is disgraceful in this day and age that the shooting and fishing rights should be retained by the landlord and that the crofter is duty bound to grant a lease to the landlord of the shooting rights over, and the fishing rights pertaining to, the croft. It is somewhat ludicrous that when someone buys something he cannot get a clear title to that for which he has paid.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he must relate his remarks to what is in the Bill and not to what he wishes was in the Bill.

§ Mr. Watt
With the greatest respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it is in the Bill and one would have thought that such a clause would not be in a Bill introduced by a Socialist Government.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman may be right to say that it is in the Bill, but he is not in order when he says that it should not be in the Bill.

§ Mr. Watt
I understood that one was entitled to regret the inclusion of certain items. It is dreadful that as the shooting rights are to be retained by the landlord, the crofter has no right to stop marauding deer or marauding vermin of any kind from doing damage to that which he has bought. This is the only part of the Bill that I deprecate.

§ Mr. William Ross
I am glad that the Bill has received a fairly general welcome. I am sorry about the note of despondency which came from the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt). As he knows, in dealing with land many items have to be included for the simple reason that some rights do not automatically go with the land. Certain rights can be sold separately from the land. Therefore, there is the extremely difficult operation of placing an obligation upon a landowner who does not even own the mineral rights. Indeed, the shooting rights may have been already sold, probably not by him, but by someone else. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not appreciate that.
I wish to pay a tribute to the Standing Committee which dealt with the Bill. 1275 It did a splendid job. There has certainly been an earnest effort to have the Bill completely clarified for the benefit of those who will have to operate it and those who will benefit from it. The Committee has done an excellent job and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the way he has handled it. There are few Ministers who have dealt with a Bill on Second Reading, in the Scottish Grand Committee on principle and then proceeded to deal with an angling Bill and a crofting Bill. As someone has said, "Well done, Hugh".
Let us not under-estimate the importance of the Bill. It is a watershed in crofting history because it means a new era of rights for the crofter that he never possessed before and a new freedom in development and participation in development. I am perfectly sure, knowing the crofters, that they will make up their own minds. The right exists if they wish to take the opportunity to exercise it.
There are differences of opinion among some of my hon. Friends about what we have done. They feel we should have made wider and more sweeping provisions. The Bill is, however, a major step forward and I am glad that the House has received it as it has.