The Scottish Government has been accused of pursuing an "ideologically-driven class war" on the countryside with its radical agenda for land reform.

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said the SNP administration at Holyrood was "in pursuit of a leftist utopia of community land ownership across the entire country".

He went on to claim some of the measures in the Land Reform Bill would put thousands of jobs in rural Scotland under threat.

Mr Fraser criticised the Government on the issue as he addressed the Scottish Conservative conference in Edinburgh.

He said gamekeepers and others working in the countryside were concerned about SNP policies in which the nationalists have been "aided and abetted by the Labour Party in Scotland pushing them to be more radical still".

The MSP said: "This is an agenda which threatens the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of gamekeepers and other employees across Scotland.

"And not just them, it potentially has a knock-on effect on the much wider rural community."

The Scottish Government is "pursuing an ideologically-driven class war in our countryside, driven by the politics of envy", Mr Fraser added.

He told how the Government is proposing a range of reforms, including including allowing Scottish ministers to force owners to sell land, a new Land Reform Commission and the reintroduction of business rates for sporting estates.

The SNP also wants to see one million acres of land in Scotland in community ownership by 2020.

But Mr Fraser responded: "Far too much of what is being proposed will simply be damaging to the rural economy and it will cost jobs.

"Granting Scottish ministers the power to compulsorily require an owner to sell goes against a basic principle of the right to own property, a right which in liberal democracies across the world is one which is jealously defended, yet here in Scotland under the SNP it is that right that is under threat.

"A new Land Reform Commission is yet another quango to add to a long list of those which interfere in the lives of those living in rural Scotland and making doing business more difficult."

Meanwhile, he said requiring sporting estates to pay business rates "simply takes money out of the countryside".

He added: "It was a Conservative government that eliminated this burden on rural businesses, to end the disadvantage that they had with England and Wales.

"Now the SNP, in a government which claims to be pro-business, wants to bring it back and put Scotland at a competitive disadvantage, and we say no to that."

The Conservative continued: "The irony is it won't be the mythical rich landowners who are harmed by these proposals, it will be the low-paid workers who find themselves out of a job, all in pursuit of a leftist utopia of community land ownership across the entire country."

He insisted that the Conservatives could not support "rural Scotland being used as a test ground for socialist ideas" as he pledged his party would be "loud and vigorous in opposing the dogma-driven measures which can only do harm".

Mr Fraser said: "If no-one else will speak up for rural Scotland, then the Scottish Conservatives will."