Scotland has both a long history of inequality in land ownership and of a failure to correct this inequality.
"...we view land reform not as a tool to redress old injustices (though there are old injustices that deserve to be redressed), but as a key foundation of revitalised rural communities and economies, and a stepping stone to meeting some of the key challenges of the 21st century, namely rising economic inequality and climate change.
The proposals by the Scottish Government so far are significantly lacking in many respects – in particular their focus on fully regulating only a few of Scotland’s largest estates and thus extended only to around 20% of Scotland’s land area. We believe that land reform should be enacted everywhere that it is required, not merely where the Scottish Government believes that it can afford to spend resources.
We are also concerned about the lack of local democratic reform in this proposal. Without it and without the voices of local communities that that democracy will bring to the process, we cannot see that the Act will provide meaningful change of land ownership and land use patterns.
The answers on land reform have been provided by campaigners for decades and the current devolution framework already provides sufficient power to enact the required reforms. We do not need to “wait” for independence to occur before we can think about land reform. We merely require there to be a Scottish Government able and willing to carry out the plan. We believe that the membership of both parties of Government are in favour of land reform to be much more radical than the Government’s current proposals and we believe that there would be a natural majority in the Scottish Parliament for such a plan. We also believe that what we’re calling “radical” in Scotland is simply called “normal” in virtually all other countries in North-Western Europe. The sooner that Scotland recognises its own aberrant inequity on our land and rises to the level expected of our neighbours and peers, the better."