SCOTLAND’S Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater used misleading evidence to defend Scotland’s biggest single PFI deal, Scottish Labour has charged.

In March, the Scottish Green MSP signed a 30-year private finance deal worth £2 billion between Nature Scotland, private bank Hampden & Co, Lombard Odier Investment Managers and “global impact” firm Palladium.

The deal aims to provide loans to landowners to plant woodland while polluters pay into the scheme to engage in the much-criticised practice of offsetting their emissions.

Announcing the PFI on Nature Scotland’s website, Ms Slater said: “The finance gap for nature in Scotland for the next decade has been estimated to be £20bn.

“Leveraging responsible private investment, through valuable partnerships like this, will be absolutely vital to meeting our climate targets and restoring our natural environment.”

However, an independent study by researcher Jon Hollingdale on behalf of the Forest Policy Group and Community Land Scotland now puts that figure closer to £9bn.

Labour’s Highlands & Islands MSP Rhoda Grant said: “These findings leave the £20 billion required spending gap figures in tatters: a gap of this scale simply doesn’t exist.

“Yet Lorna Slater went to Parliament and quoted these figures in support of her policy to privatise Scotland’s natural heritage using private finance to pay for tree-planting and a range of nature and climate-related matters. 

“Now it is clear the figure of £20bn on which the privatisation policy is based doesn’t stack up. Lorna Slater needs to get back to Parliament and withdraw her misleading evidence.

“For a Green-SNP government that likes to present itself as progressive to be actively facilitating private banks extracting wealth from Scotland and its environment beggars belief.”

A spokesperson for This Is Rigged, an activist group against oil and gas, told the Star: “This whole bloody mess has been caused by selling off our resources to the highest bidder.

“Private energy companies are using our oil to boil the planet, private housing associations are blowing up what remains of our social housing stock.

“To put our natural heritage up for sale is yet another land grab, another type of highland clearance, with the consent of the Scottish government.

“Scottish communities are much better placed to judge how to repair and benefit from our natural heritage than faceless corporations.

“The Scottish government would do well to place more trust in its people and less in the businesses that have only one motivation: short-term profit —  It’s oors, Lorna: it’s no’ fer sale.”

The Scottish government was contacted for comment.