Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Scotland is renowned for its natural beauty; breathtaking scenery, vast lochs and glens, and islands that line thousands of miles of shores. For centuries, entitlement and privilege have underpinned the country's rural landscape. And now, some claim the way Scotland's land is distributed has become the most unequal in the developed world. Amidst this, a new group of owners have emerged, along with attempts by the Scottish government to modernise the rules and in turn, encourage a more diverse ownership pattern. So how does land ownership impact Scotland's economy, environment and its people, and does it actually matter who the land belongs to? My name is Malcolm Combe and I'm a senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. There has been some literature to the effect that Scotland does have the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in Europe, possibly even the developed world. This is best reflected in the 432:50 figure that's most associated with Andy Wightman, the Green Party MSP. He did some research which suggests that 432 people or entities own 50% of Scotland's privately-owned rural land. So that's excluding, for example, publicly-owned land, say Ministry of Defence properties and also excluding land in urban areas. Traditional aristocratic landowners like the Duke of Buccleuch, still own large swathes of the country. But in recent decades, prospective owners from abroad have been purchasing slices of land across Scotland. Take the Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen for example. In 2018, the ASOS majority shareholder became Scotland's largest private land owner, after snapping up a whopping 220,000 acres -that's roughly twice the size of Barbados. His wealth has allowed him to purchase 12 Highland estates as part of his conservation project called Wildland. And he's not the only Scandinavian keen on Scotland either. The former CEO of the LEGO group, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, owns several estates, including Ledgowan in Wester Ross. Foreign royalty has been quick to join in on the action also. The billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum owns the 63,000-acre Inverinate estate, which includes three helipads and a 14-bedroom holiday home. But despite the publicity given to the likes of Sheikh Mohammed and Povlsen, the number of overseas Scottish landowners is not as big as you might think. Registers of Scotland figures show that 6% of the titles belong to owners outside Scotland. The majority of these belong to people living in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while just over 1%, or roughly 24,000 titles, are registered to addresses out with the UK. So overseas ownership is not illegal, provided the entity that owns the land is able to trade, that's absolutely fine. Is it a problem? A lot of people would say no. Inward investment is a good thing. But in terms of local accountability, in terms of owners perhaps having a different set of interests and perceptions to the local community, then perhaps it is seen as a problem in that regard. With the release of the Panama Papers in 2016, it has been suggested that 750,000 acres of Scotland is owned in tax havens, potentially causing challenges for tax authorities and law enforcement. The actual four recurring derestriction that Registers of Scotland have identified in terms of offshore ownership are the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. Perhaps that's tax treatment, perhaps that transparency related, perhaps that's entirely arbitrary, but that's just the way it is. So who takes the crown as the biggest owner in Scotland? The land is split mainly between public bodies, individuals, communities and other owners like the Royal Family. But the largest single owner is Forestry and Land Scotland. They hold 640,000 hectares, the equivalent of thirty-five-times the area of Glasgow. This land helps boost the economy through logging and tourism. The Ministry of Defence owns swathes of land across Scotland, some of which is used for military training exercises. Scotland's 32 councils own a sizable chunk too, as do the RSPB and the National Trust. Perhaps more surprising is that the Church of England makes the list of biggest landowners after buying thousands of hectares of forestry as part of its investment portfolio. But the overwhelming majority of rural land is in the hands of private owners - around 57% according to the Scottish government. Land ownership is a hot potato. Like many other legal systems, Scotland says the right of ownership is the apex right, it is the right that gives you a really important agenda setting role. The risk would be that you get a land owner who essentially throws their weight around a little bit. Land can have such a big impact on other people. If you have a land owner who is particularly thrawn and stubborn and doesn't want to do something, then that can have a big impact. This was the case on the Isle of Eigg in the 90s. Islanders previously faced years of issues with absentee landlords, including the removal of waste from the island. So, they decided to purchase the land for themselves. £1.5 million pounds was raised and over 20 years since the buyout, the island's population has almost doubled. Several pieces of land reform legislation have been passed by the Scottish government. In 2013, the then-first minister Alex Salmond also set a target of one million acres of Scotland being owned by local communities by the end of the decade. There was a law passed called the Land Reform Act 2003 which gave communities in rural Scotland the right to have first dibs on an asset when the land was put up for sale. Then the second wave of land reform legislation came with the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and that brought in a way for communities to take on a land asset that had been neglected, abandoned or environmentally mismanaged. The third wave is the most recent Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, which has a right for communities to acquire land when the land owner has somehow been blocking sustainable development locally. Although the one million acres target is unlikely to be achieved by 2020, the Scottish government continues to stress that land reform is on a "radical journey". What is certain is that the debate over who should own Scotland won't disappear anytime soon. So land reform is a bit of a recurring issue and this is probably because it's a bit of a goldilocks issue. To some, what's happening at the moment is too hot, to others it's too cold, to others it's just right. So we could imagine returning to these issues again in the future.
B1 scotland land ownership reform scottish owner Dukes, aristocrats and tycoons: Who owns Scotland? - BBC News 6 1 林宜悉 posted on 2019/06/23 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary