WHO the heck is planning to sue veteran land reform campaigner and Green MSP Andy Wightman for £750,000?

The threatened defamation action has been the talk of the steamie since news broke in last week’s National. But since the litigant hasn’t been named it may seem the threat has gone away. It hasn’t.

Wightman, the list MSP for the Lothians says: “instructions have been given to issue a summons against me for alleged defamation in relation to material published on my blog. I have instructed my solicitor to reply saying I will defend this to the utmost.” But until the summons is actually served, Andy won’t be saying another word, and that’s left social media abuzz with speculation. The aggrieved party is apparently not a big feudal landowner and Andy is apparently not the only person or institution in the firing line. But the massive damages sought are three times larger than the Tommy Sheridan award and the court and legal fees facing Andy Wightman will doubtless exceed the amount required by the Orkney Four to take their collective case against Alistair Carmichael.There’s no doubt £750,000 damages would bankrupt Andy Wightman and thus debar him from continuing as an MSP – if he loses.

So will he? Until more detail is released, it’s hard to know. But in the meantime, Scots must face up to an inconvenient truth. If the author of Who Owns Scotland and The Poor Had No Lawyers was an MP not an MSP and legal action was threatened in England not Scotland, Wightman might be in a safer position.

The 2013 Defamation Act reformed the law governing freedom of expression in England so that London can no longer fairly be called the defamation capital of Europe. Instead, Dublin, Belfast and Edinburgh are contenders for that dubious title. Northern Ireland has plans for change with two bills ready for passage through Stormont, but while the Scottish Law Commission has been gathering evidence, Holyrood has no plans to change the law – yet. And we need change.

In England, the new “serious harm test”requires the claimant to show they have suffered or are likely to suffer serious reputational damage, or in the case of a company serious financial loss. In Scotland there is no need to establish serious harm before suing.

In England, the new “public interest” defence protects academics, politicians, activists and ordinary members of the public from defamation if their comments are deemed to be for the public good – in Scotland only journalists have such protection.

In England, a single publication rule has replaced the multiple publication rule – in Scotland every fresh hit on a website is regarded as a new “publication” of any offending material and therefore a new target for legal action. This creates particular difficulties in Scotland. In England, anyone who thinks they have been defamed must take legal action within one year. In Scotland, they have a whopping three years to act. So anyone simply re-tweeting a potentially defamatory statement sets the clock ticking all over again. And Andy Wightman has the threat of legal action hanging over him until the end of 2018.

It’s shocking to see how far Scots law lags behind England and indeed the rest of Europe on this subject. Perhaps the legal threat facing Andy Wightman will make the Scottish Parliament wake up. Andy Wightman may be a new MSP but he’s made a massive contribution to Scotland over recent decades, working in an unpaid, voluntary capacity to help communities. After graduating with a degree in forestry from Aberdeen University, his forensic knowledge of archaic systems and feudal law has guided many community buy-outs to success. Since his election as list member for the Lothians earlier this year, Andy jokes he finally has a proper job. In fact, his old job could hardly be more proper or important. He has single-handedly put land reform on the map in Scotland and graphically exposed the fact that a tiny but powerful clique owns vast swathes of Scotland, still causes land scarcity and therefore house price inflation and still dictates who can do what, where on land, lochs, rivers and in towns.

If you doubt things are still quite that bad, ask Andrew Stoddart – a skilled farmer unable to get any new tenancy since his eviction earlier this year. Andrew did a rare thing – he bravely stuck his head over the parapet and let the world know about the lawful but unfair behaviour of his landlord. As a result he may never farm in Scotland again – unless Brexit means EU subsidies dry up and landowners are less keen on holding marginal land.

In less than a month, the Paterson family on Arran face the same fate, and though their plight’s been the subject of reports on Channel Four News, Radio 4’s PM programme and the BBC’s One Show, there’s been no big investigation as far as I’m aware on BBC Scotland or STV.

Indeed our public service broadcaster has only produced one documentary on land ownership since 1991 – the Germans and Irish have a better track record.

The lack of interest shown by the mainstream media in Scotland and the low priority given to land reform by the SNP may give a false impression. They may think Scots don’t care about land reform. They are wrong. Of course, Andy is a personal friend, so I am biased.

Still though, the possibility of legal action against an MSP has done one good thing – it has exposed the fact Scotland’s defamation law is woefully outdated. We can put that right – and consider an additional proposal made by the writers’ and freedom of expression charity Scottish Pen which is campaigning to change Scotland’s defamation laws.

In addition to bringing Scotland up to speed with England, MSPs could also opt to restrict private firms and public bodies from suing for defamation on the grounds that corporate bodies do not have private lives, personal identities or any psychological integrity to impugn.

Meanwhile it’s not too late for those behind the current threat of legal action to think again.