Chamber and committees

If the land was being sold to an individual for them to build a house, would that trigger lotting? That is not the same as a sale of land to a community.

Given that one of the aims is to free up rural housing and allow land for development, that may be a negative. You think that a further bit of work may be required in relation to cases where the sale is for a small-scale development such as a couple of houses for local people to live in, but it is not a sale to the community?

I will go to Douglas Lumsden for the next question, and that will bring us to the end of part 1, although I have a question before we finish it. I will then take a short pause before we go on to the intricacies of part 2.

I have another question before we finish this topic, and Jackie Dunbar may want to come in on the back of something that I will ask. When the Bute house agreement was in place, Lorna Slater announced that £2 billion of investment would be needed from private investors to help us to reach our net zero and tree-planting targets. Will part 1 of the bill effectively stop those investors wanting to come to Scotland? Will it frighten them or will they continue to invest, as the Government has said is needed?

We have heard, for example, that Gresham House is quite a big landowner in Scotland and it would say that it is delivering benefit for Scotland in reaching our net zero targets. Do you think that Gresham House will be unperturbed by the lotting and notification provisions and all the other things in part 1?

It looks like I have opened up a lot of questions, but I promised that Jackie Dunbar would be next.

Okay. Thank you.

Without giving us a whole book on that, does anyone want to respond? Emma, is there anything that you want to say?

I love technical things.

I will push you on something that you said. The new legislation will be applied retrospectively. Every time that the Government does that, it puts landlords off. Is that what you are saying?