The Land Reform Bill being debated in Parliament on Wednesday is the third attempt since 2003 to address one of the most fundamental inequalities in Scottish society: the concentration of our land in the hands of a privileged few.

Scotland's land is the foundation of our communities, economy, environment, and prosperity, yet just 421 people and companies own half of all private rural land. The Stage 1 report by the Parliament’s committee, published last week, confirms that Scotland "remains an outlier" internationally as a result. We live in a country where land has been inherited by a privileged few families for generations, used too frequently for country ‘sports’ or, more recently, acquired as speculative and untaxed investments.

If you own the land, you hold the power. The Scottish Government acknowledges that the power imbalance caused by Scotland's concentrated land ownership can negatively affect communities. The committee's findings confirm this, "in much of rural Scotland, a lack of available land is a serious impediment to economic development, local services, affordable housing and other quality-of-life issues."

The stark reality is, as the committee confirms, "the scarcity of useful land stops some communities flourishing." This needs to change.

The Land Reform Bill, as it currently stands, is broken. It doesn’t go far enough to deliver meaningful change. Landowners have too many rights and too few responsibilities. A shortcoming of the Bill is that it fails to disincentivise a few people from owning most of our country, and it fails to obligate large landowners to act in the public interest. Without land taxes large landowners can sit on their assets and watch its........

© Herald Scotland