A LOWLANDS laird has redistributed more land than the Scottish Government since its creation and current efforts on land reform are doomed to failure, according to a leading campaigner.
Former Green MSP Andy Wightman, one of Scotland’s top authorities on land reform, said that Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch has played more of a role in diversifying ownership than Scottish ministers over the past 25 years.
It comes after a significant update to his book The Poor Had No Lawyers, with Wightman calculating that land ownership was now more concentrated, despite official efforts to diversify ownership.
He told the Sunday National: “I did a calculation and the Duke of Buccleuch has redistributed more land than all the legislation of the Scottish Parliament has in the last 25 years.”
Wightman said that Scott, who can trace his lineage back to the Norman Conquest, had sold land off to his tenants, community groups and businesses – though remains the second-largest owner in Scotland after Anders Povlsen.
Land is currently seen as a strong investment and Wightman said that London investment firms were cashing in.
According to him, Gresham House – one of Britain’s oldest companies – has gone from “nothing” in the Scottish landownership market to the third largest in the space of just 15 years.
He said: “The reason that landownership is getting more concentrated is twofold. One is that existing owners are increasing the size of their holdings, so they’re buying other bits of land contiguous with them and that’s both estates and farms.
“And the second reason is that you’ve got kind of investment portfolios being built up, so people like Gresham House, who are a big London investment firm, they’re now the third-largest landowner in Scotland.
READ MORE: Land ownership in Scotland more concentrated despite reforms, according to new data
“Now, they barely featured 15 years ago, I’m not sure if they owned anything. In 15 years, they’ve come from nothing to the third-largest landowner in Scotland.”
The company is investing in forests all across Scotland creating a large but “disaggregated” portfolio for their wealthy clients.
He said that forestry is currently seen as an “attractive investment”, adding: “Forestry’s now giving about 6-8% return on investment, that’s more than you’ll get anywhere else. It goes in cycles, these cycles are quite long, though, there won’t suddenly be a crash it just sort of slowly builds up.”
Among its attractions are its tax efficiency, access to a globally traded commodity and the “underlying value of the land” which “broadly speaking retains its value”.
Coupled together with diverse holdings of forests of varying levels of maturity leads to a “constant stream of income” for investors, Wightman said.
Elsewhere, he predicted that the Scottish Government’s current Land Reform Bill will fail.
The bill will put restrictions on the sale of holdings above 1000 hectares, with ministers to consider the impact of a sale on local communities. This could result in holdings being broken up “if that may help local communities”.
But Wightman said that the methods of diversifying land ownership he believed were most effective were not included in the bill.
These are reforms to inheritance tax – for which he praised Labour’s controversial reforms on family farms – and changes to inheritance law, which in other countries see larger holdings broken up as they are passed down the generations.
While inheritance tax is the preserve of the UK Government, inheritance law is under the control of the Scottish Government.
Gresham House and the Scottish Government were approached for comment.
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