Landowners ‘to be hammered with new tax under Labour’

Labour’s Brexit chaos

Deputy Scottish Political Editor SCOTS landowners would face a massive hike in taxes under radical hard-Left proposals unveiled by Scottish Labour.

Richard Leonard has revealed he will consider a new land value tax to encourage wealthy owners to sell off all or part of their holdings.

The scheme could also see a cap on the amount of land a single person can buy, and the introduction of a ‘residence qualification’ with a ban on absentee landowners.

The Scottish Labour leader unveiled the plans at the party conference in Liverpool yesterday.

He hit out at the lack of reform in the past two decades which has led to half of privately owned land in Scotland being owned by only 432 people.

Proposals to overhaul the Land Reform Act are part of a series of Left-wing plans put forward by Mr Leonard, including a new wealth tax which would hammer nearly half of Scottish pensioners.

He told the Scottish Daily Mail yesterday: ‘It is certainly expressed to me as I travel around Scotland that people are concerned [about] an increasing amount of absentee landowners; there is no relationship between the people who own the land and those living in the local community.’

He highlighted crofting legislation, which stipulates that owners must live within 20 miles of their holdings.

Mr Leonard added: ‘Internationally, there are things like caps on the amount of land people can own – quite a commonly held belief and that quite a lot of countries exercise. I just think that 20 years on from the establishment of the Scottish parliament and from the first piece of land reform legislation, nothing much has changed as far as the concentration of land ownership is concerned.’

He also proposed a cap on the amount that owners can earn on their land, including sporting estates.

Mr Leonard has used his first UK Labour Party conference as Scottish leader to unveil a series of policy ideas.

They include a wealth tax which would see 1 per cent added to the taxes of the top 10 per cent, which political opponents say would hit 49 per cent of Scots pensioners.

He also revealed that a Scottish Labour government would launch a scheme giving all first-year pupils a credit union account with an initial deposit of £20 – at a cost of £1.2million a year.

The plan is part of a bid to cut down on the use of payday loan firms which have plunged many people into debt.

Mr Leonard said: ‘Under Labour, the days of predatory companies profiting from the squeezed wages of working people will end.

‘Labour will take real action on the cost of living to ensure more money in the pockets of working people. But I also want to see generational change in attitudes towards how people access credit if they need it. That’s why [we] would expand support for credit unions and establish a credit union account for every first year pupil in Scotland.’

Tory MSP Maurice Golden called Mr Leonard’s proposals ‘ludicrous’. He said: ‘These policies are not only totally impractical but they totally undermine individual property rights.’

JEREMY Corbyn will today vow to launch a ‘green jobs revolution’. The Labour leader will pledge to tear up planning rules south of the Border to allow almost 20,000 extra wind turbines.

He will also use his keynote speech at Labour’s conference to reveal a target for the retrofitting of insulation to four million homes – a move that could cost middle-class families thousands.

‘Predatory companies’