RICHARD Leonard has pledged that a future Labour government would introduce radical land reform to end the dominance of “feudal” private landlords.
The Scottish Labour leader in his keynote conference speech also made clear his party in power would give more state aid to Scottish businesses instead of foreign-owned companies.
The self-styled Corbynista insisted that society should “stop dividing people on the basis of nationality and start uniting them on the basis of class”.
He insisted the “real division” in Britain was not between Scotland and England but between the wealth owners and the wealth creators.
Deriding the Tories’ “fervent devotion to inequality” and the Nationalists’ “timidity and mediocrity,” the Central Scotland MSP said it was time for "moral courage and audacity" from Labour and proposed a wealth tax on Scotland’s wealthiest 10 per cent, which, he calculated, would raised £3.7 billion for public services.
On land reform, he said Labour had unfinished business and that after abolishing feudalism in the first term of the Scottish Parliament the nation was still living with “feudal ownership” with 432 private landowners owning half of privately-owned land in Scotland.
Describing the earth as a “common treasure,” he insisted what was needed was land ownership in Scotland for the many and not the few.
A Scottish Labour government would introduce a new Land Reform Act to break up the dominance of private landowners and will look at the possibility of introducing a tax on land value, capping the amount on landowners’ beneficial interest and a residential requirement on absentee landowners.
Mr Leonard also pledged to overhaul state aid for business, Regional Selective Assistance[RSA], to provide more support for local industries and home-grown businesses after the crisis with marine energy company BiFab, which left communities facing ruin as hundreds of workers were threatened with redundancy earlier this year.
He party leader stressed how reform of RSA would prevent foreign-owned companies continuing to benefit from nearly twice as much RSA than Scottish companies.
In his speech, he also promised that the next Labour manifesto would oppose another independence referendum and called for a “federal Britain” with more powers for the Scottish Parliament.
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