“Laird bashing...run for the hills and glens..."

Scotland's patchwork of vast estates was created on the misery of crofters and clansmen by an elite, created out of the Clearances. Today half of the privately owned Scottish countryside still belongs to 432 landowners. For the people here, the little slivers where they live are cramped and narrow. You can't build here, that's an estate. You can't build there, that belongs to the laird. It is hard to live here. Wages are a third below the Scottish average, but prices come out a third higher. One landowner in Jura, who happens to be the Prime Minister's stepfather-in-law, has warned the SNP may bring about a “Mugabe-style” land grab.

Rob Gibson MSP, who chairs the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment committee which is scrutinising the Land Reform Bill, explained “The landowners and their organisations have been hyperactive. I have never heard from so many lords, earls and dukes in my life.”

Scotland’s lairds have retaliated to threats to their fiefdoms by warning they may stop letting out land long term to tenant farmers and substantially reduce the amount of land they would be willing to let out on anything other than a short-term basis. Their warnings were echoed by small landowners, who said the proposal represented a “fundamental breach” of their property rights and may stop them letting out their farms. The proposed law is that it permits tenant farmers with no successors to sell on their secure tenancies. Landowners could only regain control over the land by paying a tenant farmer a sum equivalent of up to 25 per cent of the land’s capital value, whereas any other buyer would only have to pay the market value of the lease.

Buccleuch Estates, owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest landowner, was one of many landowners to argue that the represented “the confiscation of a property owner’s interest.”

Moray Estates, which is owned by the Earl of Moray and his family, declared that “you cannot bully or force owners to let property.”

Seafield and Strathspey Estates, which covers 35,000 hectares owned by the Earl of Seafield, said: “It will destroy confidence to let agricultural land in Scotland to the detriment of new entrants, existing tenants and the farming sector generally.

Dunecht Estates, which is owned by Charles Pearson, the younger son of the late Third Viscount Cowdray, said: “It will deliver a crushing blow to confidence to let land going forward and therefore sabotage other proposals in the Bill that are aimed at encouraging letting.”

Kindcardine Estates said: “This measure will be disastrous for the supply of rented land. No landlord will ever trust that a future Scottish Government will not change the rules with retrospective legislation on other types of agricultural tenancy.”

 Removing non-domestic rates exemption from shooting and deer forests should mean the laird of Inverinate, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is liable for the same rates the caravan site at Morvich has paid for years.