Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, Edinburgh - Briefing Document Five

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Parliamentary Officer:Rev Graham Blount
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Briefing Document No 5 - Page 2 of 4

"Down to Business": The Scottish Executive's Legislative Programme and Priorities - Continued.

Land Reform (B): Feudal System
There will also be a more technically legal Bill to abolish the feudal system of land tenure, while ensuring "the survival of conditions which are necessary to maintain common facilities and to protect the amenity of property".

Churches (especially the CofS) have a financial stake in the feudal system, but the General Assembly of 1998 gave approval to steps towards its abolition. The separation of the two Bills seems likely to imply a new unfettered basis of land ownership, rather than the "conditionality" for which the CofS report argued on theological and community grounds; it called for land reform to be widely based "including legal, social, economic and environmental perspectives".

National Parks
There will be enabling legislation to allow the creation of National Parks in Scotland, the first of which is likely to be based on Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.

Churches have not expressed direct views on this, but there are clear links to our environmental concerns, and other issues within our perspectives on land reform (eg re community control of the pace of development, and so possibly doubts re further quangos).

Local Government (Ethical Standards)
This is presented as a "first step" to modernising local government, and will establish a Scottish Standards Commission and a code of conduct for local government. Presumably it will build on the Scottish Office document "A New Ethical Framework for Local Government in Scotland" (April 1998). The Executive is open to considering whether this should cover quangos as well.

In addition, the McIntosh Commission on local Government and the Scottish Parliament has already gone through two consultations (in which churches have participated) and is expected to report on 22nd June. The Deputy First Minister stated "we intend to respond rapidly and comprehensively to the proposals of the McIntosh commission … that is likely to mean more legislation".

Some of what the churches contributed to the debate on a Code of Conduct for MSPs will be relevant here (including an "aspirational" vision of what these forms of public service are about and not simply a series of "thou shalt not" provisions). The recent General Assembly of the CofS has instructed its Church and Nation Committee to look at the impact of corruption in local government.

Incapable Adults
In proposing this measure to protect the rights and interests of up to 100,000 people in Scotland who suffer from a confused legal situation (which means, for example, that, if a man develops dementia and he and his wife have a joint bank account, their account will be frozen), the Executive recognised that there had been areas of great concern with the Westminster version of this Bill. The Scottish Parliament will not be asked to legislate to give effect to "living wills" etc, nor on the withholding of treatment from incapable patients.

With the removal of these clauses, the churches should be able to give support to this measure (which will answer a real pastoral need); indeed, we may wish to join in the coalition supporting the Bill, although we will also want to monitor the remaining medical provisions (eg re therapeutic research).

Transport
This is presented as an environmental measure which will also tackle "unreliable journey times caused by congestion". Legislation will establish a framework to enable road user charging "where it is sensible" and allow local authorities to introduce a levy on workplace parking. It will also modernise the regulatory framework for buses.

Debate in Parliament on this raised issues about whether tolls simply drive traffic on to other, less suitable, roads, and whether charges were a disincentive to enterprise; several MSPs spoke of the need to improve public transport as a priority.

A Church & Nation report in 1998 on "Car Usage and Environmental Responsibility" led the CofS General Assembly to call on government and local authorities to recognise the impact of car usage on the environment and to develop "appropriate transport strategies". The report also noted that "prohibitive charges carry their own injustice, as has been said of universal tax increases for fuel".