24 June 2015

Land reform: through the looking glass

An awkward admission: by far the biggest hurdle to "radical" land reform in Scotland is the European Convention on Human Rights.

In terms of traditional political loyalties, we're through the looking glass here. Tweedy landlords, conservative estate owners and land agents may vote Tory to back the established order -- but if Gove is permitted to strip Convention rights out of Scots law, those self-same property owners would find themselves entirely at the mercy of a democratic majority in Holyrood hell bent on a substantial rejigging of the territorial map.

They may not give a ha'penny toss for many of the freedoms the ECHR enshrines, but their right to property -- well, that's a different story. Without it, they would quickly discover that their vaunted rights at common law aren't all they're cracked up to be. They'd find Magna Carta mum. People inclined to defend your Convention rights, by contrast, find themselves stymied again and again by Article 1 Protocol 1, and the right to property it enshrines. This right to property isn't absolute. States enjoy a broad margin of appreciation within which they can raise taxes, regulate property and so on -- but the right has real teeth. Fans of cognitive dissonance, eat your heart out. The basic text of the Convention reads as follows:

(1) Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. 
(2) The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a state to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.

For many land reformers, our history of a strikingly unequal distribution of landed property is a nightmare from which they are trying to awaken. Our situation recalls the well-known joke about the tourist in Ireland, seeking directions. "Well if I were you," a local replies, "I wouldn't start from here." But ownership is, inevitably, backwards looking. Without a revolution, we don't begin at year zero, with a clean slate. It isn't a matter of hitting reset and redrawing the maps. 

History also teaches us that the landed interest have the wealth and willingness to go to law where they believe their rights have been violated -- and win.  The first Act of the Scottish Parliament to be struck down by the courts on human rights grounds concerned a challenge by a landowner to the rights of one of his tenant farmers.  The owner won; the farmer killed himself shortly afterwards. These strictures aren't to be sniffed at and they aren't all that easy to get around in a systematic way. 

Although the text of the Convention doesn't expressly require the state to pay compensation to people whose property it expropriates, it has been interpreted in that way by the European Court. For example, in James v. The United Kingdom, judges made clear that the state must give fair compensation to those whose property is taken or transferred:
"... under the legal systems of the Contracting States, the taking of property in the public interest without payment of compensation is treated as justifiable only in exceptional circumstances not relevant for present purposes. As far as Article 1 (P1-1) is concerned, the protection of the right of property it affords would be largely illusory and ineffective in the absence of any equivalent principle. Clearly, compensation terms are material to the assessment whether the contested legislation respects a fair balance between the various interests at stake and, notably, whether it does not impose a disproportionate burden on [property owners]."

Compulsory purchases can be justified in the general interest -- but kicking the lairds out of their castles and estates without stumping up cash is doomed from an ECHR point of view. As a result, finding a mechanism which (a) effectively redistributes and rebalances land ownership while (b) working within the current owners' right to property ain't easy. 

In the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, we find the Scottish Government's latest attempt to do so. You'll find the most controversial provisions in Part 5 of the Bill, which sets out a revived right to buy.  That right will only be exercisable by community bodies or a third party which they nominate -- and with consent of Scottish Ministers. Ministers must not consent to the transfer of the land unless all four of the following criteria are met. And the criteria to be met are pretty ferocious.

  1. The transfer of land is likely to further the achievement of sustainable development in relation to the land, 
  2. The transfer of land is in the public interest
  3. The transfer of land - (i) is likely to result in significant benefit to the relevant community  and (ii) is the only practicable way of achieving that significant benefit, and 
  4. Not granting consent to the transfer of land is likely to result in significant harm to that community.

The third and fourth conditions are particularly onerous. Perhaps reflecting this, if would-be purchasers fail to secure consent, Scottish ministers will foot the bill for their application. If the community body does get the nod, however, the Scottish government will appoint a land valuer, who will independently assess the market value of the land, giving the parties the opportunity to contribute to the deliberations on fair compensation. The government will foot the bill for these valuations too, and if the owners or purchasers are disgruntled, they'll be able to go to the lands tribunal and air their dissatisfaction. Once the decision has been taken, owners will not be allowed to foil the process with a quick fire sale or sneaky transfer to their preferred purchaser. 

The land lobby have predictably attacked these criteria as vague and undefined, crying Mugabe, land grabs and bloody murder. They are nothing of the sort. The language of the legislation is necessarily impressionistic, allowing ministers to apply broad principles to different situations and applications from across the country. But surely the landowners are - also characteristically - protesting too much here. A thick vein of (understandable) caution runs through these proposals. As politicians and property owners shadow box, enjoying the mutual recrimination and batting at phantoms, a property lawyer friend summarised the reality more pithily.

"This Bill is not as radical as claimed by Scottish Government (given the thresholds for use of power to sell). Not as awful as claimed by landowners (for similar reasons). Basically, making something like this ECHR proof means they can't do something revolutionary."

There's a lesson somewhere in here for Tory enthusiasts of human rights repeal. When you're through the looking glass, you should be careful what you wish for. 

17 comments :

  1. Excellent and clear explanation of the issues, even if, as someone who lacks knowledge about legal definitions, I still struggle with critera that includes terms such as "significant" (notable? indicative?) or "public interest".

    I'd appreciate further explanation of why "the third and fourth conditions are particularly onerous", especially to a skilled lawyer, who I imagine could come up with a number of reasons as to why depriving a community the opportunity to own the land they work/use is significantly harmful, and that with a solid plan, by the community, of how to make use of the land, should a purchase be approved, would represent the significant benefit.

    Is it the wording that makes it so difficult to meet such conditions, or is it the lack of positive arguments for the case?

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    1. Citizenfaith sums up the issues well below. It is the intensifiers which raise the hurdles high and make it more likely than more applications for consent will be turned down by Ministers. In particular, the "significant harm" criterion seems to me particularly challenging to demonstrate, in the absence of a capricious, negligent or absentee landowner. That, presumably, being the point of why the civil service have drafted it in this way.

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  2. Argh! From a blogger such as your self who usually seems to value accuracy it is more than a little disappointing that you suggest that the current government is seeking to repeal Human Rights. Which of course it is not. As you are very well aware the proposal in broad terms is the repeal of the Human Rights ACT. The way some people talk you would think we were all serfs prior to Mr Tony coming along...

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    1. Iain,

      A bit of shorthand to avoid the tortuous restatement of the difference between ECHR incorporation in the Scotland Act and the provisions of the Human Rights Act. I have covered these issues pretty clearly here -- I'd hope readers would understand what I meant.

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  3. I'm no lawyer either, but I suspect a big part of the problem with conditions 3 & 4 is the difficulty proving such claims for definite either way.

    Surely the potential difficulties with the ECHR (assuming they remain pertinent!) suggest that the main strategic vehicle for radical land reform has to be fiscal policy i.e. LVT?

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    1. The thing is, with these tests, ministers will have to make judgements based on the evidence. They aren't clear or categorical rules which can be straightforwardly implemented. They are nuanced, context-dependent, and will be based on a range of factors. Given the breadth of situations to which these provisions will apply -- this looseness may be no bad thing.

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  4. I think the problem with 3 is going to be showing that transferring the land is the ONLY way to achieve the benefit to the community - in reality there is almost always going to be some other way to acheive that benefit even if the other way is very expensive and impractical.

    4 means you won't just have to show that transferring the land would result in significant benefit, you'll also have to show that not transferring the land would result in significant harm. That's a completely different, and much tougher, requirement. Effectively, 4 introduces a much higher burden of proof.

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    1. Bang on. Yes, those are the aspects which seem - to me - to ratchet up the challenges which communities will face, in applying to exercise these rights.

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  5. Are HR path dependent then? Would it be against HR for Scotland (after a party stood on such a platform and won) to implement the wholesale adoption of the statute book of a HR-compliant country?

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    1. I'm afraid the answer to that question is a bit complicated. In terms of the ECHR, if the HRA is repealed, Holyrood could introduce its own Bill of Rights to restate many of its core provisions -- but this would have limited effect in terms of reserved powers exercised by the UK government, which would be subject to a different regime. Fragmentation and mess.

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  6. Just a quick point , the new bill will speed up the completion of the land register in Scotland , the ownership of the land has been concealed and reform in this area has been resisted for at least 100 years . Ask yourself why the true identities of owners is such a secret. The bill , as is , does not go far enough in identifying the real owner but we can hope to beef it up before it becomes statute.

    The real job of the reform is to break down a system which has perpetuated itself for centuries ( freely acknowledged as feudal ) and it will take time . The land register and inheritance laws are the cement which holds this structure together. No proposals in either of these areas could be described as a affront to human rights , in fact, the current situation qualifies better for that accolade.

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    1. That too! I wasn't aiming to be comprehensive with this post, but to flag up the most controversial part of the Bill. I could also have mentioned the elimination of shooting estates from business rates relief, for example, or the absence of trailed changes to succession law in the Bill.

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    2. The exemplar of the lack of clarity on the ownership of much land was of course when the McLeod of McLeod desired to sell the Cuillins (or part thereof) in order to access the readies to fix the leaking roof of his pile at Dungavel. After much searching of the records and a court case or two it was established that an ancestor of his had already disposed of that asset. So even the landed aristocracy can be unsure about their land holdings.

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  7. Fascinating Andrew. In the echo chamber of my heid i hear Tony Benn agreeing with Enoch Powell that the Common Market is a stitch up designed to progressively reduce the power of British legislators.

    Maybe Land Refom needs a new slogan - Banff not Brussels

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    1. A different legal Europe -- but a lesson that the old left case against these institutions still lingers, forgotten, beneath the surface.

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    2. It will be interesting to see how this works out. Significant harm? It surely depends on what kind of harm? For a community to have access to outdoor leisure areas enough to be of benefit to them, per head of the population, or else the mental and physical health of the community could be at risk, should be enough to count as significant. Is it going to be open to interpretation? If someone for example, requires a social work assessment there are clear guidelines as to what constitutes significant need, different I know, but it's not open to interpretation.
      Anyway, how did those land owners get the land in the first place? Who does really 'own' it? Scotland has lots of land, let's get it back, we have buy bloody vegetables from down south and abroad most of the year! We need loads more allotments, the benefits are immense, not having them is detrimental to communities on so many different levels.

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  8. Two quick points. First, there was a criminal law statute that fell foul of the ECHR before section 72 of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003 was given a shake, but no matter. Second, and more importantly, remember there are positive tugs towards land reform on a rights basis as well. I am thinking here about the UN Convention on Cultural, Social and Economic Rights, where article 9 enshrines a right to housing, food and sanitation. To paraphrase Prof Alan Miller of the SHRC, human rights are not a red card for landowners to show, nor are they a trump card for reformers to play.

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