I RECENTLY enjoyed a few days exploring Glen Affric in blustery but sunny conditions and is a place I have always loved visiting. It contains some of the most significant remnants of Caledonian pinewood and over the past 60 years the native forests in the glen have been regenerating and expanding thanks to the enlightened leadership the late FC forester Finlay Macrae and, since the 1990’s, the efforts of the Trees for Life charity. In 2002, the glen was designated as a National Nature Reserve.

The week before my visit, the Scottish Government launched a consultation on measures to be included in the next land reform bill to be introduced to Parliament by the end of 2023. As I made my way along airy ridges and through vigorous pine and birchwood, I thought about the changes needed to restore Scotland’s degraded environments, tackle the climate crisis and democratise the ownership and use of land.

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These are big questions of course but they boil down to one simple one – who has power over our land? Historically, the answer was straightforward. Those who owned the land not only made such decisions, but they also sat in Parliament and made the laws that governed their ownership of that land. Land laws historically have been made by the male landed aristocracy.

That changed significantly after the Second World War with the introduction of the 1947 Planning Act (though it still excluded rural land uses) and, more recently, with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.

The Government’s current proposals focus on how to make the owners of large-scale landholdings more accountable. What constitutes a large-scale holding is of course a question that needs answered. The proposals suggest a threshold of 3000 hectares, where a holding comprises the majority of an inhabited island or the majority of, for example, a council ward.

Ministers are proposing that all such holdings should have a management plan, comply with a list of land management principles and be subject to a public interest test when they are sold. According to the Government, these three key proposals are “aimed at tackling the issues associated with scale and concentration of land ownership in Scotland” and follow recommendations from the Government’s official adviser on such matters, the Scottish Land Commission.

But tackling the issues associated with the scale and concentration of landownership is not the same as tackling the scale and concentration itself.

The Commission made these recommendations because it was concerned with the disproportionate power that can be exercised by those who own large holdings. The choice is thus whether to accept this division of land and seek to mitigate the impacts, or whether to systematically dismantle this landed hegemony for good. The Government’s proposals are for the former.

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In 1999, in a book challenging the then proposals for land reform, I wrote that: “Land reform is not simply about tactical interventions in the status quo. It involves reform in the way power is derived, distributed, transferred and exercised. It involves meaningful reform of the tenure system, the ownership of land, the market in land, the division of land, the use of land, the fiscal status of land and the occupation of land. And it involves eliminating those characteristics of the current system which serve to perpetuate the status quo, which frustrate the public interest, and which are antithetical to a just, fair and open society in a new Scotland. It is thus a highly political venture because in order to promote social, economic and environmental advancement, it needs to challenge and reorganise existing power structures.”

The National: Tony Benn

As Tony Benn (above) famously asked five questions of those who have power: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?

The Scottish Parliament is in control of the power associated with the ownership of land and could, if it so wished, dramatically curtail such power instead of merely trying to make it more accountable. The proven tools to achieve this are reforms to taxation, giving children the legal right to inherit land, and limits on landholdings. These mechanisms are well understood internationally and are capable of being implemented.

Land reform should benefit everyone. For example, one of the most pressing land-related issues right now is the proliferation of holiday homes across rural Scotland pushing up prices and depriving local people of a possible home. A simple reform to planning law to make this conversion a change of use and thus subject to democratic control would fix this, but there are no such proposals in this paper.

A thriving rural population and the restoration of degraded ecosystems and habitats is the policy goal. Land is key to both, but it remains to be seen whether these proposals will have any influence on such outcomes.