Chamber and committees

It is about joined-up thinking.

We do not want buildings that are—

I volunteered to ask about rent reviews. I thank everybody for their evidence on that. There is quite a lot to unpick in that regard. Earlier, we talked about disagreements on tenant’s right to buy and about the registration of tenants’ right to buy not being implemented. In addition, we have the provisions on rent review in the 2016 act that have never been brought into force. I want to kick off with Christopher Nicholson. Is anything missing in the bill as to how rent reviews will work in practice?

Gemma Cooper, do you want to comment on the issue?

Does anyone else want to respond on the issue of getting arbitration that works rather than people having to go to the Scottish Land Court, which is very expensive? Is support available, or is support for negotiations between tenants and landlords needed? Is there something that would make that work better, or are the measures in the bill enough?

That is a good point to finish on, because it feeds into Christopher Nicholson’s comment about not necessarily being consulted on all the detail in advance. That is what the committee’s questions are all about. We want to make sure that we get all your points on the record so that we can consider them as we draft our report.

Those are all the questions that I wanted to ask.

It is interesting that, even in this discussion, it is difficult to get 100 per cent agreement. If we are talking about arbitration, the rules and the support need to be in place, and we need to make sure that what is in the bill will help to make the situation clear in the future. I do not know whether the other witnesses want to come in on that issue. It seems that they do not.

We want to make sure that the bill provides the right framework. We have talked about rent reviews and the issues of improvements, game damage and diversification have been discussed. Is everyone happy that the bill is framed in such a way that people will be able to go through the process of dispute resolution without having to go to the Land Court? Although it does not sound as though there is 100 per cent agreement on the matter, are people broadly happy with what is proposed in the bill?

I am not against the SI, but I would like to know what monitoring will take place. Four of the 10 species were previously sold commercially in the UK, and there is an issue about what will happen once businesses are allowed to sell them again. Who will be doing the monitoring? Where will the species be coming from? Mark Ruskell made the point that our climate is changing, so we need to make sure that we keep an eye on the matter. I hope that we can put that feedback to the minister.

One of the other suggestions that you made was about “related earnings capacity”. Do you want to speak to that at this point?

Thanks. I wanted you to explain that and to put some of that on the record.