As lairds and greenwashers salivate over £127m of taxpayers' money, radical land reform is stymied – Brian Wilson

Even some estate owners can see the problems being caused by rising land prices – by as much as 450 per cent in four years – as a result of the Scottish Government's funding of carbon offsetting schemes

There have been times when land reform was a hot political topic in Scotland. Indeed, there was probably no subject that attracted more idle rhetoric and angst; if only the powers resided in Edinburgh, land reform would quickly follow.

Our status of hosting the most inequitable system of ownership in Europe would melt away. The private kingdoms that history bequeathed us would be broken up. The unregulated trade in vast acreages, regardless of public interest or place of residence, would be slain.

Aye, right. As with many matters, that was a wildly optimistic prospectus. Meaningful land reform always depended on political will and leadership which constitutional change alone could not ensure or even make more likely. And so it has proved.

Residents of the island of Ulva succeeded in a community buy-out, but soaring land prices are putting similar bids at risk (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Yet few with an interest in the subject could have predicted just how little of that political will would be maintained after devolution. Instead, with the demand for radical reform neutered, the market was left to take its course and further entrench the status quo.

Paying landlords to ‘restore’ peat

Actually, it’s worse than that, as an article by Alison Campsie earlier this week illustrated quite dramatically. The owner of a working estate near Kingussie called out the “scam” whereby its value has more than doubled to £25 million on the back of its “potential for carbon offsetting projects”.

Fuelled by public money, this is happening over large areas of Scotland with valuations soaring to cash in on the extremely dubious environmental claims of tree planting and “peatland restoration” with absolutely no regard for wider social implications or community benefit.

In her Budget statement which cut vital spending on so many fronts, Shona Robison proudly announced £127 million under these headings on grounds that “effective support for nature can bring a substantial impact in sequestering carbon”. Maybe it’s because I live on an island composed largely of peat that I am sceptical about paying landowners to “restore” fractions of it as good value for money!

However the “scam” is further distorting the land market and has put valuations further beyond the reach of community buy-outs even where that was a hypothetical possibility. Make way for the bankers and greenwashers.

At Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth on Wednesday evening, these issues will be up for discussion at the first memorial lecture in the name of Simon Fraser, a lawyer on Lewis who was a crucial supporter and adviser to several of the community land buy-outs which took place in the 1990s and early 2000s.

This was the last wave of serious interest in land reform when places like Assynt, Eigg and Gigha captured some degree of public imagination. In each case, the exceptionally bad records of private landlordism led to local initiatives which culminated in community buy-outs.

Speculators driving land prices sky-high

It developed into a movement which was taken up mainly in the Western Isles where the low valuations of crofting land made buy-outs feasible. However, all of these depended on willing sellers and were therefore the low-hanging fruit of land reform. Everything since then has been frustrated by the absence of an enforceable right to buy.

At present, less than three per cent of Scottish land is community-owned and without fresh legislation that is not going to change. A Land Reform Bill is promised but the umbrella body, Community Land Scotland, predicts that, on current indications, it will have “no meaningful impact”. Who in the Scottish Government has the reforming zeal to confound that prediction? I won’t be holding my breath.

Nor is this just a Highland issue, as it is sometimes quite wrongly presented. Josh Dobie, policy director of Community Land Scotland, wrote: “Scottish land prices are soaring, driven by speculative investor interest in commercial forestry, carbon credits and land banking. In areas of the south of Scotland, land prices have increased by over 450 per cent in just four years. Scotland’s lack of regulation over the land market fuels investor speculation. The public interest in the potential use of land doesn’t figure.”

Existing community buy-outs were largely opportunistic, dependent on outstanding local leadership and took place mainly in crofting areas where land was cheap. If land reform in Scotland is ever going to expand beyond places where these rare criteria existed, then it will need legislation based on the will to make a difference, rather than deference to the status quo.

Andy Wightman, one of very few MSPs who understood land issues, has rightly warned against equating land reform with “community ownership” alone. One of the triumphs of Scottish landowning history is that there are very few people living on much of the land which is of potential public value. You can’t have community ownership without communities!

There needs to be a far more fundamental understanding of how important land is to any society as a source of wealth and economic potential. Just imagine how the demographic map of Scotland might look if, over the decades, rational choices could have been made about where to build houses and grow businesses.

How different could the land use picture of rural Scotland be if huge areas were not ring-fenced as private reservations, closed to the outside world? Without these fundamentally different perspectives, the kind of land reform measures which are being discussed will never extend beyond fiddling around the edges.

The next few months will test whether there is any appetite for radical reform or if the landowning lobby, as powerful as it always was, will head off any threat to its vested interests. But be in no doubt about the current reality.

Yet again, a public opportunity – to link environmental imperatives with economic benefit – has been privatised and is working against land reform rather in its favour. Did nobody see that coming? Does no one now think it might be worth reconsidering what our £127 million is being spent on?