Report
to the People
27th
January 2003
Taking on Vested Interest
Last Wednesday, as I made my way into Parliament, I was accosted by a gentleman with an aristocratic bearing and a Barbour jacket. "Will you be voting for the end of a civilised Britain?" he demanded, as he thrust a leaflet complaining about the right to roam or something equally sinister into my hand.
I was about to point out that he had freely roamed from the country into the town to campaign against people from the town roaming freely in the country, but thought better of it. Under the cream Italian leather passenger seat of his Range Rover, there could easily have been a 12 Bore with my name on it.
The reason that the landed gentry had once again descended on the capital was, of course, that MSPs were about to sweep away Scotland’s outdated land ownership laws. The Land Reform Bill – the final details of which we spent a day and a half debating – will at long last give crofting communities an absolute right to buy the land on which they work. Non-crofting communities will also get first refusal when the land they lease is put up for sale. And those of us who don’t live in, but enjoy exploring, the countryside will find this easier now that a right of responsible access has been enshrined.
Calls for land reform have been about for almost as long as the Labour movement itself. Indeed, it was, as my colleague from the Western Isles Alasdair Morrison reminded the Chamber, a Keir Hardie manifesto pledge. And it’s a testament to the Scottish Parliament that it has achieved in three and a half years what its bigger, bolder brother at Westminster could not in over a hundred.
Not that our Parliament’s averse to taking on powerful vested interests. In fact, it’s getting quite a taste for it.
Since the turn of the year, for example, another step has been taken towards ending the power of insurance companies and their sharp lawyers to deny justice to asbestos victims.
In its full report on the petition submitted by campaign (with which regular readers will be familiar), the Parliament’s powerful Justice II Committee calls for a fast track justice system for asbestos sufferers.
The next major hurdle for those of us campaigning on this issue, though, is to ensure these plans are taken forward.
But, if we can take on the aristocracy and win, the combined forces of the judiciary, legal profession and insurance industry should be no bother.
Click here to read the Justice II Committee’s report in full.
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