SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT plans to end business rate exemptions for rural estates engaged in deer stalking and shooting will have an immediate impact on jobs, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association has warned.

According to 'soundings' from the SGA's 5300 members - around 1500 of which are employed as full-time gamekeepers, ghillies, wildlife managers and rangers - the rates change will force 'marginal' sporting estates to shed staff, with at least 100 rural worker jobs sacrificed immediately.

Arguing that normal working people were being caught in the crossfire of land reform politics, the SGA has launched the 'Year of the Rural Worker' initiative, to highlight the contribution land labourers and their families make to community life.

Speaking at the body's AGM in Perth, chairman Alex Hogg urged politicians from all parties not to make these families the scapegoats for land ownership patterns that they had no role in creating.

"As an organisation, we are aware there are situations in which land reform can work. We oppose bad management of all kinds, whether the ownership is public or private," said Mr Hogg. "However, removing business rate exemptions for shooting and stalking won't help achieve a million acres of land in community hands by 2020 - it will simply cost the job of a working person on every marginal estate or shoot across Scotland.

"Businesses adapt to financial change. The overwhelming view of our members is that, on estates where sporting profits are tight, that adjustment will be a wage," he warned. "That is likely to be a worker on a modest salary who receives a house to bring up a family in the local community.

"These individuals give a great deal back to Scotland, for which they take little in return, but they keep the heartbeat in small places. They have had nothing to do with the way land ownership patterns have emerged, yet it is them who will be made to suffer. That's not social justice," said Mr Hogg.

"If land reform is such a priority for Scottish Government, they must find a better way to finance The Land Fund than by placing working people on the dole."

The SGA will work over the next nine months to highlight the 'unseen' hours given freely by rural workers to the lifeline services underpinning their communities. The association is in talks to formalise existing ties with Mountain Rescue, with many of its members already volunteers in both Rescue and Fire Services.

"The human face of working people in the countryside is too rarely seen and their contribution undervalued," he stressed. "They deal with low wages, the highest fuel and heating costs and patchy or non-existent broadband. It is time their contribution was seen as under-pinning the countryside rather than having job threats hanging over them."

- For in-depth news and views on Scottish agriculture, see this Friday's issue of The Scottish Farmer or visit www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk