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Am Bratach No. 112
New commission may charge crofters
for essential services As can be seen from the advertisement on page 4, interested parties in the North West will be consulted at a public meeting to be held in Durness on Wednesday, June 10. This is a marked departure from the Shucksmith Committee of Inquiry which didn’t deign to travel beyond Lairg into what is one of the most densely crofted areas in the Highlands and Islands. There will also be a meeting in Lairg the evening before. Whether busy crofters, having recently completed their lambing, have the time and energy to immerse themselves in the niceties and legal jargon of the 158-page report in time for the meetings, is questionable. The main crofting representative organisation, The Scottish Crofting Foundation, has welcomed its publication, but in more muted tones than it accorded Shucksmith, which it thought “well worth the wait”. On this occasion, the SCF is looking at the consultation with “optimism” stating that, at “first glance it is a thorough document which attempts to address issues that came out of the Committee of Inquiry on Crofting”. The proposals contain elements derived from left and right — some would say the far left and the far right — of the political spectrum. For example, the Crofters Commission, allowed to survive in modified form as the Crofting Commission, will be able to farm out services currently provided in-house and charge hefty fees for services presently performed at no cost to the crofter — up to £1,532 for a sublet, £3,485 for an apportionment and £844 for a family assignation — while subordinate area committees of the commission, manned by non-salaried lay “assessors” — mainly crofters elected by their peers — will enforce weapons-grade regulations on their fellow crofters, supervised by the Crofting Commission board. Board members, to be paid an average of £18,500 per annum, will comprise the chairmen of the six area boards plus three ministerial appointments, one of whom will be the chairman. Area committees, as proposed, divide crofting districts along old, sometimes discredited, “county” lines. Caithness and Sutherland would comprise one such unit, whereas an east-west divide, as recognised by the crofting foundation committee structure, could make more sense. As well as enjoying two appointees on each area committee, local authorities will police a new “occupancy rule” which requires any house on land that has been taken out of crofting tenure to be used as a main place of residence. Failure to comply will allow the council to fine the culprit up to £5,000. Great play is made of a proposal to provide crofters with the means to take on mortgages without having first to decroft the land on which the house is built. But Iain Morrison, Culkein Stoer, a former business manager with a leading bank, dismissed the suggestion that the Registration of Leases (Scotland) Act 1857 be amended to make a crofting lease registerable and hence eligible for standard securities as making no sense (Am Bratach, August 2008). A leading sheepman from Assynt, who was an outspoken critic of the Shucksmith Committee of Inquiry’s proposals, is also dismissive of the SNP Government’s draft Bill. Iain MacKenzie from Elphin, who only received his copy of the Bill shortly before we spoke to him, said: “They never listen, they never learn, but, by God, Salmond’s government, which fiddled to the NFU’s tune while the hearts were ripped out of many communities in the Highlands and Islands over the past few years by cold economic forces and the iniquity of the NFU-imposed support system, gets even. “Now, in an orgy of spite, revenge and ignorance, they are all set to criminalise some by using local authority enforcers, neighbours and the imposition of huge fines. This police state will be open to abuse and must be resisted. “The crumbling economic system is to be further degraded by more quangos with the power to impose exorbitant costs on those who just might rescue themselves, and if this does not snuff out crofting as we know it, the strangling dead hand of burgeoning bureaucracy envisaged will. “This is not the stuff of reform, but the repression of a conquering host, with all its divisiveness, its authoritarianism and its disregard for civil liberties.” Politicians from the other parties still have to pronounce in favour of the draft Bill. On his website, Labour’s Peter Peacock (Highland list MSP) states: “It also appears many of the ideas, like tackling absenteeism, could be dealt with under existing powers and does not really need legislation. The focus of the proposed legislation is clearly on bureaucracy with the potential to increase costs and slow down decision-making.” Orkney LibDem MSP, Liam Mac-Arthur, voices similar concerns: “The consultation is heavy on administration and bureaucracy, but very light on anything that will address the real needs of crofters and farmers.” Crofters and the general public have until August 12 to respond to the consultation document.
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