I ATTENDED the seminar on land reform which you organised in Edinburgh. One of the speakers, a commercial lawyer, made a plea for freedom of contract without legislative interference. A few minutes earlier he had complained about having to pay several hundred pounds in order to obtain superiors' consent for alterations to his house.
He overlooked the fact that whoever built his house had freedom of contract and had contracted not to alter it without consent. The problem with freedom of contract is that usually one party is in a stronger bargaining position than the other.
I believe that the feudal system has had a bad press recently. Any system is capable of being abused and instead of abolition I suggest that one small refinement is necessary. The ultimate superiors should be the people of Scotland, whose will is now capable of expression in the new Parliament, and there should be an implied feuing condition in all titles that any interest in land must be exercised in a way which is acceptable to the people of Scotland.
We already have a Lands Tribunal for Scotland which is empowered to overturn unreasonable title conditions. It would be quite easy to legislate that instead of the owner of property having to apply to the Lands Tribunal it should be the other party seeking to uphold a restriction, after receiving due notice, who has to obtain a declarator that the restriction is reasonable or an award of compensation if appropriate.
R D Williams,
7 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh.
May 7.
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