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Community Land Scotland

Land Reform in Scotland – its history and why more is needed

3 January 2025

Notes based on comments from Peter Peacock at Land Reform Bill oral evidence session on 3rd December 2024.

To answer the question why further land reform is needed, it is helpful to see this in the context of what might be described as the ‘devolution years’, the period between the first referendum for the Scottish Assembly (1979) to the present.

Two years prior to that referendum and during the period of political debate about it, in 1977 John McEwen published his lifelong and remarkable work cataloging in a systematic and accessible way and for the first time who it was that owned Scotland. Who Owns Scotland revealing the extent of ownership concentration.

The publication of this work gave rise to new awareness of the major social and economic inequality and the power imbalance sitting at the heart and functioning of Scotland. It promoted debate and a better understanding of the issues and became a new force in stimulating discussion on the need for land reform to address this over-concentration of ownership, with so much land being held in so few hands. The publication also allowed growing recognition of just how out of line Scotland’s land ownership patterns were with the rest of Europe and much of the world where land is commonly held in much more diverse ownership patterns, less land ownership scale thus held in many more hands.

The McEwen Lectures started in 1993 the year after John McEwen’s death, to pay tribute to his work and a means of keeping alive debate about the need for land reform to tackle the negative consequences flowing from concentrated land ownership. The 6 debates were given by a range of distinguished speakers including Donald Dewar the then Secretary of State for Scotland in the immediate lead up to the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Donald Dewar spoke of land reform not being a single event but how it was probable that the new parliament would engage with the subject many times down the succeeding years and having the time to legislate and the inclination to do so. He said, “There is undoubtedly a powerful symbolism – which attracts me greatly – of land reform being amongst the first actions of our new Scottish Parliament.” I know Donald was aware that with the powers of the House of Lords no longer extending to the legislation of the new parliament, the force that had done perhaps most to protect the interests of the landed classes down the generations could no longer do so.

During the 1990’s other forces were at work on the land question. The Assynt crofters manged to engineer the purchase of their estate. It was national and headline news which many ordinary Scots helped finance, and they took inspiration from the evidence that there was an alternative to the status quo in land ownership in the modern era. This buy-out was quickly followed by the purchase of the island of Eigg, releasing the community from the significant damage done to it by a succession of absentee owners. This purchase again was headline news and supported by many ordinary Scots and non-Scots through donations. It again inspired belief that more of this was possible. These actions were attracting the interest of politicians asking how more of this could be encouraged and enabled.

Even the last Conservative government of the 20th century, governments traditionally hostile to land reform measures, had got into the spirit of seeking to support this popular rising of interest for communities to own land and take the responsibility that comes with that. This happened in response to representations from and discussions with the Scottish Crofters Union. The Transfer of Crofting Estates (Scotland) Act of 1997 gave powers to Scottish Ministers to transfer estates held on the public account to crofting communities on those estates.

Perhaps more modestly, in that 1997 to 1999 period, the community in Laggan secured an agreement from the Forestry Commission for a local forest they would manage. The then Minister for rural affairs in the Scottish Office announced the Laggan success at a time when he was also chairing the Land Reform Policy Group, established by the new Labour government to draw together policy thinking and proposals for the new Scottish Parliament to be able to pick-up upon its election in 1999.

The third sentence of the introduction to the report of the Land Reform Policy Group got right to the point; “We need to put in place new and innovative means to properly securing the public interest in land use and land ownership.” This made clear that land ownership was not considered simply a private market matter but there was a public interest in land, how it was used and owned.

The report in its first group of recommendations then made clear that to achieve this there needed to be “…increased diversity in the way land is owned and used…. which will lead to less concentration of ownership and management in a limited number of hands.” So, it was established as a matter of government policy for the first time and within a comprehensive set of policy proposals that more diversity of ownership and use was required to meet the public interest.

Of course, much land use is first determined by the preferences of those who own land, so it is land ownership that is the dominant force at work and needing change.

There followed the 2003 Land Reform (Scotland) Act, giving rights of access across Scotland and for communities to buy land and follow the example of the crofters of Assynt and the islanders of Eigg whose inspiration helped inform the legislation but this time with the formal help of the law and with a Land Fund established to support more purchases. This legislation was but the first step in the reform journey Donald Dewar had predicted would need to be addressed over time.

A decade later and in the interests of further pushing land reform as a legitimate cause the then Scottish government appointed the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) to take stock a decade after the 2003 Act and make further recommendations. Their report – The Land of Scotland and the Common Good – of 2014 continues the theme of the importance of the public interest in land and recognised how land use was largely a consequence of ownership, pointed to the negative consequences of concentrated ownership.

“Ownership is the key determinant of how land is used, and the concentration of private ownership in rural Scotland can often stifle entrepreneurial ambition, local aspirations and the ability to address identified community need. The concentrated ownership of private land in rural communities places considerable power in the hands of relatively few individuals, which can have a huge impact on the lives of local people and jars with the idea of Scotland being a modern democracy.”

Overall, the theme of the LRRG was that land required to be owned and used in the public interest and for the common good.

Although many of their recommendations remain unimplemented a decade later, the innovation of the requirement for a Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement (LRRS) owes its origin to the work of the LRRG. BY creating in statute, the need for a national LRRS underscored that with ownership of land comes responsibilities to wider society. In a Scottish context this has particular meaning given the scale of the ownerships in so few hands, placing particular responsibility on those few owners.

The LRRS was legislated for as one part of the two Acts that passed in 2015 and 2016, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act. Each in their way sought to extend the rights of communities to own land, even when owners of the land did not want to sell, provided that was in the public interest. The 2016 Act establishing the Scottish land Commission to keep the issue of land policy and law under continuous review.

A further force at work on the land question during the period has been the research and writing by Andy Wightman. His work has significantly deepened the understanding of who owns Scotland and, importantly, how they came to own it. His work has served as a persistent reminder of Scotland’s land question, the question of land ownership concentration and its effects.

Fast forward to the land reform Bill currently before parliament in 2024 where the Policy Memorandum for the Bill states that the Scottish government defines land reform as ‘the ongoing process by which the ownership of land, its distribution and the law which governs it, is modified, reformed and modernised.”

So, 25 years after the Land Policy Reform Group and reflecting the policy of successive administrations of differing political hues, throughout that 25 year period there has been a consistency of policy that has sought to impact the question of the distribution of land ownership. Many innovative powers have been created in law to seek to help achieve that outcome.

Yet, despite this there has been no material change in Scotland’s land ownership patterns.

The Scottish land question remains unanswered, the power imbalance, the social and economic inequality, the injustice, continues and that is why more land reform is necessary.