Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, 27 Oct 1999

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 27, 1999

Official Report 267KB pdf

---

Housing

We now move, appropriately enough, to the housing paper prepared by John McAllion, as reporter. I ask John to take us through it. If members have suggestions arising from the recent discussion with the representatives from Scottish Homes, they should mention them once John has spoken.

As the paper states, two discussions have already been held—one was held on Monday in Glasgow to discuss housing finance and the other has just taken place with Scottish Homes. I propose that there should be a further eight discussion sessions in the coming period.

The main topic, as has become clear this morning, is stock transfers. That is the housing issue of the moment. I therefore suggest that we spend a minimum of four sessions discussing that. I would like to spend longer than that, but the pressure on the committee is such that we must be realistic about the amount of time available to us.

As far as the structure of those four sessions is concerned, Fiona Hyslop and I thought that we could spend two sessions focusing on urban stock transfer and two focusing on rural stock transfer. I discussed that suggestion with Shelter and with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, and they suggested that we should have a separate session with landlords. That is a loose term that includes the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the SFHA and the Chartered Institute for Housing, all of which are deeply involved in the stock transfer programme and have a lot to tell the committee about it. Representatives from those bodies are on the advisory panel that is advising the Executive on stock transfers.

It was also suggested that there should be a separate session with tenants. It would be up to us to decide which tenants to invite. If we do that, there are two groups of tenants whom we would have to invite to the committee. The first group would represent tenants who are opposed to stock transfers—such as representatives from the Glasgow campaign against stock transfers—and the second group would represent those who are in favour of stock transfers, such as the West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, which represents a group of tenants who have been through the stock transfer process and who support it.

We could have sessions with those two groups, or we could have sessions with representatives of urban and rural interests. We could not, however, meet all four groups. It is important that we have a meeting with Shelter because serious implications for homeless people arise from stock transfer. Shelter and the Scottish Council for Single Homeless should have a session with us. Wendy Alexander will also have to come to meet us.

Those sessions would have to happen consecutively, but they could be spread out. The minister would not have to come before us until towards the end of the process, when we have taken written submissions and so on.

I have mentioned the other sessions that will—as we have agreed—need to be fitted in at some point. Those are briefings on the responses to consultation on the green paper and on the housing benefit reform proposals of Westminster. There will also be a session with the homelessness task force. Ethnic minority housing is an issue that has not been focused on a great deal in the past, but it deserves to be examined.

That programme would take us a couple of months to complete, but we need to sort out the role of the reporter so that we get regular reports. We should also, perhaps, start to allocate sessions for housing, sessions for social inclusion and sessions for the voluntary sector, because I am working in a vacuum—I do not know how many sessions we will have on housing and I need to know that.

I appreciate the difficulties. Thank you very much.

We should discuss the general principles and deal later with the specifics.

John has done a great deal of work, which has helped us to move the housing agenda forward—that must continue.

We must examine stock transfer. We might be able to move that forward if we take on board some of the briefings on those issues that we have had from the Scottish Parliament information centre. Some of the issues, such as the stock transfer process, are contemporary. We must not, however, talk only to the national agencies—we must talk to the councils and to the tenants.

I spoke to the Scottish Council for Single Homeless yesterday—it suggested that we should wait until the spring of next year to examine homelessness. Scottish Homes has just commissioned it to examine the consequences of the new housing partnerships on homelessness. As a committee, we will have to examine that when we consider the housing bill.

As we will have to examine that issue anyway, some of the pressure might be relieved if we have a session with council landlords, a session with tenants—in which we must include rural tenants—and a session with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Chartered Institute for Housing in Scotland, but leave having a session on homelessness and stock transfer until later in the spring. At that point, there will be a report from the Scottish Council for Single Homeless and Scottish Homes. There will also be a session with Shelter at that time.

I have no problem with that, but Shelter suggested that we have a session with it, and I would like to clear that with it. It might feel differently about that, and it is the main organisation tackling the problem of homelessness.

We must assure Shelter that we are taking the issue seriously.

I caution the committee that many councils have not made decisions on stock transfer, and if we invite them to the committee early, they might not be able to tell us much. They might be able to say only that option appraisals are taking place, on which they cannot comment. No council has taken a decision to transfer stock—councils are still going through their own processes.

I agree with John that it would be difficult to invite individual councils. COSLA will give us the views of local government, and the councils will feed into that. We must watch our position—we must not step on the democratic toes of the local authorities. The councils are democratically elected by the people, including their tenants, and they will make decisions for their own areas. It would be better for us to deal with this through COSLA.

I appreciate the points that Cathie is making, but our role is to examine the process. If we are examining that, we can reasonably ask councils what their process has been to ensure tenant involvement and what role they are taking in examining the different financial arrangements that Hugh Hall mentioned. We will not necessarily examine their decisions, but we can examine the process that they are going through, because that is contemporary and what we can usefully comment on as a committee.

We could take that through COSLA rather than individual councils.

Would COSLA know the processes that individual councils have in place? We should do a case study.

This is a major issue. Like it or not, the Glasgow stock transfers are central to it. I do not think that we can examine those matters in general terms, without a focus on what is happening in Glasgow, which is the biggest city in Scotland and has the biggest stock transfer. Aspects of the situation are unique to Glasgow. I take Fiona's point that we will not find out about that through COSLA—we must take a direct approach.

I ask John to liaise with Fiona and Robert, to ensure that you achieve your aims. We all appreciate that there might be difficulties, as local authorities will feel that they must report to us. That might be difficult for them. If we are reasonably sensitive, we should be able to find out about some of the issues that Fiona wants to explore. Glasgow is obviously a key area.

From our previous discussions, I assume that members are thinking about Glasgow City Council and Dumfries and Galloway Council. We could contact both and ask them whether they are prepared to come to a meeting of this committee. If Shelter and the Scottish Council for Single Homeless are happy to postpone their attendance until next year, that creates a space for those councils to come in.

Yes, we could liaise with them.

It might be useful for the councils to come in after the tenants, so we will have heard the tenants' views.

Are we generally in favour of this approach?

Yes.

We will move on to discuss the details now. We can look back at a decision we made earlier and try to keep to it this time. We decided that we would try to run turnabout sessions. Given that we have the warrant sales programme to deal with, I will suggest a model of parallel strategies. We have more or less agreed this already. We would have the drugs inquiry work on the Mondays and Fridays model and examine housing and warrant sales on alternate Wednesdays. That would help John to programme events.

Do we intend to take evidence on Mondays and Fridays?

I thought that our feeling was that as the evidence that we will hear in the drugs inquiry will not be like this—it will be much more conversational and informal—we should do that outwith the formal committee. Given the other difficulties that we have with time—as the Parliament meets on Wednesday—I thought that the feeling of the committee was that we could do the drugs inquiry on Mondays and Fridays. That would free up the three Wednesdays of the month for other business.

Is that the Monday and Friday of the last week of the month or every Monday and Friday?

I propose that there is flexibility, but it depends on members' views.

I think that we may run into problems with this. I am happy to do it provided we are given notice. I had a problem on Monday: I wanted to come to the briefing in Glasgow but had a long-arranged familiarisation visit with St Andrews university for the regional MSPs in my region, which had been postponed once already because it clashed with committee meetings.

As Bill Aitken knows, this issue has been raised in the Parliamentary Bureau. We do not work only a three-day week and everybody knows that. The consultative steering group report proposed meetings of the Parliament and committee meetings should take place during three days. We are now moving into Mondays and Fridays. That is fine as far as I am concerned, but the problem arises when members have long-standing constituency engagements. Members get a reaction if they cancel constituency engagements once and a pretty nasty one if they do it twice. We must sort this out, so that we know what we are doing. Otherwise, I will certainly run into trouble. As I have a particular interest in the drugs inquiry, I want to attend those sessions.

I agree that the visits are crucial—I have done a few during the two-week recess and they are valuable. We must organise visits so that as many members as possible can attend. That is where we run into problems if we meet on Mondays and Fridays.

I have tried to get my head round this issue. As John McAllion's recent article in The Herald showed, we will have real difficulty getting through the work load. It is especially difficult for members who sit on two committees. I do not think that there is a watertight solution to this. We must, perhaps, accept that there will be some problems.

I want to make a suggestion, as this is a problem that will increase, rather than diminish, with time. Sometimes visits could be carried out by an ad hoc group of two, three or four members—perhaps with a special interest in the matter in question—who could report back to the rest of us. We are already experiencing problems and, inevitably, people will have to miss meetings. Nobody likes doing that, if it can be avoided.

I was going to suggest something along those lines in relation to the drugs inquiry programme that SPICe is preparing.

Timetabling is also very important. With an advance timetable, people can plan more effectively.

If we agree today, we can begin to produce one. I could simply present members a timetable for the next three months, but I do not want to do that. We may want to pursue John's idea of alternate meetings on housing and warrant sales, and we may have to put a bit more effort into the drugs inquiry, but if members would like me to organise a timetable I will do so.

We seem to go over this at every meeting, but the key thing is to establish a pattern.

Absolutely.

I am quite happy for us to meet every other Wednesday to deal with housing and warrant sales. The problem concerns our visits. At the moment they are focused on the drugs issue, but in a year's time they may relate to something else.

We had already established that in the last week of each month we would set aside either a Monday or a Friday for a visit. We should stick to that, allowing for the possibility of an additional visit—perhaps by an ad hoc group—halfway through the month. The important thing is to establish a pattern. At the moment, that has been done only for the Wednesday meeting. We need to do the same for the visits, so that we know whether they will take place on Mondays and Fridays or on Tuesdays, and whether they will happen every two or three weeks or only in the last week of the month. It does not matter much to me either way, as long as I can plan my diary. We are now starting to plan our diaries for January and February.

We might not need all of Monday or Friday for visits, but the crucial thing is to block them out as soon as possible. Alex is absolutely right—if we do not do that, we will be in difficulties.

So we are agreed that we want to go through the warrant sales evidence and to hear the housing evidence, as proposed by John McAllion. We will do that on alternate Wednesdays and will set aside the last Monday and Friday of the month for the drugs inquiry.

Convener, setting aside two days of a week is not acceptable.

The proposal is to set aside either Monday or Friday.

Can we decide as soon as possible which day will be set aside? We need to know.

We can, although this has to be negotiated with the people whom we intend to visit. We have to be reasonable.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities would all be able to come to the meeting on 10 November. We could pencil that in.

Yes, we could.

I want to return to the drugs inquiry, as there is something that I must bring to the committee's attention. Unfortunately, at our previous meeting, a number of members left before the end of the briefing that SPICe was giving us. We agreed to arrange two seminar days. SPICe has liaised with a number of key organisations and has organised a programme of work for us. The dates that it suggests for the seminars are 15 and 22 November. If we agree today that we want to set aside the Monday or the Friday of the last week of the month for the drugs inquiry, we can ask the staff to come up with a forward programme for December and January.

I will sum up. For the next two months, we will spend alternate Wednesdays discussing housing and warrant sales. During the preliminary phase of the drugs inquiry, we will have seminar briefings from SPICe on Monday 15 November and Monday 22 November.

Do we know whether those will be in the morning or in the afternoon?

I think that they will be all day. I have a paper here and can go through the details of that with you.

At our next meeting, on 3 November, we will bring forward a paper detailing recommendations for the hearing of evidence in the drugs inquiry. That will probably take December, January and February to complete. We can take into account Bill's recommendation.

I appreciate people's commitments and the pressures on their diaries, but we are all in the same position and we really have to make an attempt to manage as best we can.

Convener, you and I keep on missing each other to discuss the details of the drugs inquiry and our visits. I would like to put into the machine, so to speak, a number of potential visits that I feel we should undertake. I have already been on one or two, and I feel that it would be valuable for other members of the committee to go on them. They cover different aspects of the problem, dealing not only with urban areas but with more dispersed deprived communities and some of the old mining villages of Fife. That gives a balance.

I will circulate the paper from SPICe that mentions the people it recommends we invite. I honestly do not think that there will be any objections to it. Keith and I will meet and, at the beginning of next week, recommend who to invite to the official evidence phase of the inquiry.

Will you be able to tell us on which Mondays and Fridays we will be meeting over the next couple of months?

I hope so.

Can I just have clarification that, next week, we will do two things—work on the social inclusion action teams and hear evidence to prepare us for the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales Bill?

Yes—and I will come back to the issue of having private or public meetings. I have not forgotten about that.

I appreciate our difficulties, but let us not be too downhearted. The committee has managed to get through its brief, which is very wide-ranging. It has been difficult to come to this new. We all have different agendas and different interests that we want to pursue—but there is a sense that things are beginning to take shape. By Christmas we will have covered a lot of ground. We are getting there, so let us not panic too much. I am sure that we can get a grip on our work.

I think that we have to be careful not to do too much at one time, because we will end up doing it thinly. That would not be to the credit of either the committee or the Parliament.

I am confident in the work that I have seen coming forward and in the recommendations of how to get through some of the issues on our agenda. I thought that today's discussion was good. It is not concluded, but we got into some of the meat. Remember, we have a long time. I do not think that anyone is pretending that the work that we do between now and Christmas will be the last word. We will return to many of the profound issues. However, we are beginning to move in the right direction, and we should acknowledge that.