Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has carried out of the impact on farmers in Scotland of the United Kingdom Government’s energy price cap. (S6O-01412)

I welcome you and your officials to the meeting, minister. I will start with the question that I asked the first panel. As the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, I have always been keenly aware of the fact that we do not always have a gendered analysis and disaggregated data, specifically on issues around poverty, inequality and the housing sector in its totality.

We know that those in the most extreme poverty are disproportionately women, lone parents, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and those who are disabled, and the intention of this policy is to act swiftly to assist people in that situation. How do we monitor both the policy intention and the policy outcome? That is not always captured, and we see that as a gap.

As for the measures that are in place to support the policy—the extension to the tenant grant fund, the extension to how discretionary housing payments can be used and the Scottish welfare fund, which councils administer—how can we ensure that we collect the data on who is accessing those measures, how the decisions are made and what impact they have?

My next question arises from an ask from Shelter and other organisations and relates to provisions in the bill to allow for the sale of a property when landlords are in specific financial difficulties. How can the Scottish Government support landlords and, indeed, registered social landlords to buy back homes, so that we can protect tenants in situ? That would give everyone involved a level of comfort.

I will just follow up on that, then I will ask another question.

We have a task and finish working group, but sometimes there is the task of the policy intention and then there is how something is finished and what impact it has. I am keen to look at the impact assessment that has been published, but I am concerned about the other end of the process and about double-checking in, say, six months’ time that we have understood the consequences as they apply to those groups who often experience the sharpest impact of poverty and inequality. I would like to get an assurance that the Scottish Government will seek to report back on that.

Good morning. We have discussed already the fact that we have a lot of data gaps. I hope that a housing bill will help us to sort that out.

With regard to social justice in particular, we know that the individuals who are bearing the worst of the cost crisis tend to be women, people with disabilities and people from black and minority ethnic communities. How do we ensure that we collect the data that we need in order to understand the impact of the intervention? I hear people calling it a sticking plaster, but in emergency situations a sticking plaster is often all that we can apply. How do we ensure that those who need it most will benefit from the policy, given that we do not generally collect disaggregated gender data and that we do not always understand intersectionality with regard to how policies are applied?

The tenant grant fund and discretionary housing payments have been mentioned. How do we ensure that the Scottish welfare fund is applied effectively? Who collects data, and how do we ensure that we get the intended outcome? That question is for Rhiannon Sims, Emma Saunders and Caroline Crawley. I am interested in the perspective of tenants in your organisations.

With regard to best practice, many local authorities and RSLs across the country engage actively in buy-back, specifically of properties that were formerly social lets, to bolster the number of affordable homes. An agreement that that already happens and that such an approach should be supported over this six-month period would be helpful.

Today, we see clear evidence that our Parliament can act quickly during a time when the cost of living is spiralling to bring about protections for those who rent their homes. Inaction in another place should not be replicated here, and good ideas across political lines can and should be embraced where possible, as we should collectively aim to make the lives of those who live in Scotland better.

I spent years working in and around the housing and homelessness sectors. Among the jargon, the spreadsheets, the housing revenue accounts and the bureaucracy, the people—the tenants—can often be forgotten. The pandemic and now the cost crisis have brought people back into sharp focus.

During the height of the pandemic, I was still a councillor and COSLA’s housing spokesperson. We saw a surge in action to get people into accommodation, to prevent evictions and to mobilise the entire sector to work collectively to ensure that people and communities were safe from the clear and present danger. We need to see the cost of living crisis in the same light as the pandemic: it is a clear and present danger to wellbeing.

Yes, I will. I am having a menopausal moment, but I will try to deal with that as best I can.

I thank Jeremy Balfour for that intervention, as it allows me to turn the focus back on to why we have spiralling inflation, with mortgage costs hitting a point at which it might not be sustainable for some landlords to continue. There is provision in the bill for landlords who face being unable to afford such increases. We can see from those protections that the Government has listened to the private landlord sector.

People are experiencing a contraction in their income the likes of which most have never experienced before. Many of us came through the financial crash of 2008, but at that point our food and energy bills did not skyrocket to the alarming extent that we see now, and our incomes had yet to suffer a decade of austerity at that point.

We know that those who rent their property spend a disproportionately large part of their income on rent and have lower incomes overall. Those who are in the private rented sector spend a significantly higher percentage of their income on rent. The cost can be much higher if the local housing allowance does not cover all their housing costs due to local pressures, meaning that they will be required to use some of their universal credit towards rent. If we add that to the disproportionately large increase to the living costs of those with limited incomes, we can see an impending crisis over the winter months.

I will take one more intervention.