Duke of Buccleuch has done more for diversifying land ownership than Scottish Parliament, says former MSP

The Duke of Buccleuch has done more to tackle the concentration of land ownership in Scotland in the last five years than the Scottish Parliament has in the last 25.

Andy Wightman – a leading land reform campaigner and former MSP – said legislation delivering community right-to-buy had failed to deliver the “rapid change” that was promised during the passage of the Land Reform Act over 20 years ago.

Writing in Holyrood, Wightman said just 18,700 hectares of land have changed time in the last two decade – roughly 0.0125 per cent of rural Scotland each year.

In comparison, Buccleuch Estates had significantly reduced its landholdings to 66,345ha in 2024.

Wightman said: “Over the past five years the Duke of Buccleuch has been downsizing and selling off around 40 per cent of his sizeable landholdings to a wide variety of community and environmental organisations as well as businesses and local individuals and tenants.

“For all the rhetoric and grand claims made by Scottish politicians about the division of land in Scotland, it is instructive to note that in fact the Duke of Buccleuch has been responsible for redistributing more land in five years than Scottish ministers and parliament have managed in 25.”

The Who Owns Scotland 2024 report, a project run by Wightman to track land ownership, found Buccleuch Estates had reduced its landholdings by nearly a third since 2012.

The Duke of Buccleuch continues to be the second largest private landholder in Scotland, behind Anders Povlsen.

Wightman was also critical of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill currently undergoing scrutiny in the parliament.

Dubbing it the “least ambitious land reform bill ever introduced to the Scottish Parliament”, he said it would do little to address the concentration of ownership.

When the bill was brought forward in March this year, rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon said it contained “ambitious proposals to allow the benefits and opportunities of Scotland’s land to be more widely shared”.

The parliament’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee is currently considering the bill at stage one and will shortly publish a report ahead of a debate on its general principles.