Reforming Crown Estate is shorter than a tweet.
The Scottish Government has today launched a consultation on proposals to enure Scotland and its local communities benefit from renewable and low carbon energy developments. This is a welcome initiative. The document makes some interesting points but it is evident that the limitations of devolution are inhibiting the authors. I have blogged on this at length before on this topic.
Scotland’s crown lands are separate from England’s crown lands and they are public land defined by the Scots law of property. The only weird thing in the whole set up is that by law (the Crown Estate Act of 1961) these rights (which remember, belong to Scotland) are administered by the Crown Estate Commission in London who also collect all the revenues.
The simplest thing to do is to amend the 1961 Act to the effect that it does not apply to Scotland. This is something the Liberal Democrats who run Scotland in Westminister could effect pretty easily. The question is why MPs like Alastair Carmichael, John Thurso, Charles Kennedy, Alan Reid and Michael Moore are not doing this.
The amendment is shorter than a tweet.
Crown Estate Act 1961 Insert new Section 1(8) “This Act does not apply to Scotland”
All those who want to see control of the seabed and associated crown property rights return to Scotland should make this very simple observation to the Scottish Government in their response.
And who exactly will manage Crown land then? The numpties at the wee-pretendy-parliament? The ones that spent 450 million quid on a 45 million quid building? Or maybe the ones at the council in Edinburgh that have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on laying a tram track from one end of princes street to the other? No thanks.
According to the web site the crown estate makes money for the taxpayer that would go to the royal family instead. Sounds a good deal to me.