Chamber and committees

The cabinet secretary will be aware of the report that was published by Homes for Scotland on 17 June. In it, Homes for Scotland recommended an overhaul of Government regulations to reduce the cost and complexity for SMEs that are trying to build more homes across the country.

However, I will ask the cabinet secretary about planning hold-ups, specifically. I was appreciative of the cabinet secretary’s previous commentary in response to Michelle Thomson’s question, but 96 per cent of SME house builders still believe that the planning process is slow. Is the cabinet secretary working cross-Government, with different portfolios, to ensure that we speed up the planning process and that SMEs are not disadvantaged when they try to build more homes?

Thank you, convener, and good morning, committee. Before I make my opening remarks, I declare an interest as I sit on the advisory board for Pregnant Then Screwed. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am here to support the petition in the name of Carole Erskine and the fantastic work that Pregnant Then Screwed does to highlight the challenges that many families right across Scotland face with childcare.

The challenges are very evident from the petition that has been submitted and the 2,600 submissions from parents who are struggling to grapple with the current 1,140 hours offering. If I may, I will use my personal experience of applying for childcare for my daughter, who is three. I have just embarked on the application process for the 1,140 hours of childcare, and even filling out the forms is not an easy process.

The process is usually quite lengthy. You have to number the nursery or childcare provision that you wish your child to undertake 1, 2, 3 and so on, and then you are beholden to local government as to whether you obtain one of those nursery slots or are directed to other nursery provision elsewhere. When the latter ends up being the case, parents have to travel considerable distances just to drop their child off at their childcare provision.

We have not even begun to look at the costs associated with the 1,140 hours provision. The hours will cover roughly two full days and another half-day; if you are a full-time working parent, you will have to cough up the costs for another two full days of provision. That shows the significant financial challenges of not only trying to access a nursery close to home, but the additional costs associated with the current funding model that we have in Scotland.

In the Pregnant Then Screwed survey of 2,600 parents whose submissions I have just mentioned, 83.7 per cent of parents said that their childcare costs were the same as or more than their income. Moreover, anyone listening to the radio this morning will have heard a parent explaining that their childcare costs could amount to £1,600 a month. That shows the stark costs of childcare in Scotland.

You have received useful responses from the SPNA and the NDNA about the petition’s request, setting out their concerns about local government, which has overall control of the budgets, and the requirement to provide funded hours. The fact is that nurseries in local authority areas cannot normally accommodate working parents who, for example, have 9-to-5 jobs. They might have to drop their child off at about 8 o’clock in the morning and might not be able to pick them up until 6 o’clock, and not all local authorities are able to provide that offering. As a result, those parents have to rely on the private sector, which is usually the poor man in the relationship with local authorities when it comes to the 1,140 hours provision.

I believe that it is time for an independent review, because we need to fully understand the costs facing parents and what they are having to front up in addition to the 1,140 hours. In other areas of the United Kingdom, the free funded childcare offering has been expanded from nine months to three years old, and I believe that that should be considered, too. We should be putting childcare back at the top of the Government’s agenda.

My request to the committee, therefore, is not to close the petition, but to look at referring it to another committee. I understand that we have roughly 20 weeks left before the end of the parliamentary session, but I would suggest that there are legacy reports. Even if the committee in question could not find time to consider the petition between now and the end of the parliamentary session, the matter could be covered in a legacy report, and it would show that the Parliament is taking seriously the issues that parents across the country are experiencing daily when it comes to providing their children with the best possible start in life.

I will not give way, as I am in my last couple of seconds.

Housing is central to the debate. Scotland’s housing emergency was not created overnight; it is the product of decades of failure to build enough homes. We see that through the homelessness applications and through the thousands of Scots who are trapped on social housing waiting lists. Yet, asylum seekers are being placed in hotels while local families wait.

The solution is straightforward. If we get a grip on the housing emergency and build more homes, we will be able to look at immigration in a new light. However, I fear that, until then, we will still have tensions in Scotland, because we are not addressing the big issues that matter in this country.

We are trying to have a grown-up debate in the Scottish Parliament. The public are not extremists—they are asking fair questions. We are trying to bring the debate to the chamber in order to talk about the wider issues surrounding asylum seeker hotels and the issues that could alleviate some of the tensions, such as housing, which I will come on to discuss.

One of the banners at the protest read “Migrants adored, pensioners ignored”. That sentiment is completely blunt, but it captures what I believe many people in Scotland are feeling. The pressures of both legal and illegal immigration expose the failures in housing, healthcare and public services. Too many hard-working people who live and work in Scotland are feeling ignored by Governments—I use that word in the plural—that have completely failed to get a grip on the issue.

We need to look at the demographics of the people who are arriving in Scotland. Across the UK, 62 per cent of asylum claims are from adult males, whereas just 21 per cent are from adult females. For small boat arrivals, the imbalance is even greater: around 75 per cent are adult men, while only 10 per cent are children. They are not families fleeing together—they are overwhelmingly single men of working age. People see those demographics and wonder why women and children are not being prioritised as part of the asylum system. Meanwhile, in Scotland, more than 1,500 asylum seekers are being housed in hotels—that is almost a quarter of the number that are in the system. Across the UK, the number of those in hotels still stands at more than 32,000, despite repeated promises to reduce it.

This afternoon, we have heard that local authorities are struggling to house the surging number of asylum seekers in Scotland. Communities, especially in my Central Scotland region, are feeling the consequences of that and tensions are rising. The debate is important because we have a duty to confront our constituents concerns, however difficult that is. We cannot simply dismiss them.

In October 2023, the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk by an asylum seeker who had entered the UK illegally left the community shaken. As part of the perpetrator’s defence, his lawyer cited cultural differences and language barriers as reasons why he did not understand his action but did not say that they were an excuse for the crime that was committed. Irrespective of the people I represent, the plain fact is that a young girl was attacked by someone who illegally entered the UK.

Protests have taken place outside migrant hotels in my region. The use of hotels has become a flashpoint and has fuelled anger and disgust, but we cannot brand everyone who raises concerns as racists. We, as politicians, must listen.

South Lanarkshire Council is one of the councils that has raised concerns about timescales, even though it might be quite proactive.

Going back to the commencement times, there is an election cycle and a budget cycle in 2027, and councils will have other priorities alongside the policy area that you want to legislate in. Would commencement at that time be bad timing? Will all councils be able to achieve it? If they do not achieve it, what will be the consequences?

I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. The issue of best-value audits comes up time and again in relation to transformation, reform and assessing the progress that councils have made. When I was the chair of the audit and scrutiny panel at the council that I was elected to, I was always informed that comparing the audits of different local authorities was like comparing apples and pears. How can the reports be best used by local authorities? Is it time for the Accounts Commission to try something new to assess transformation and change in local authority areas? Sorry, Malcolm Burr, but I am picking you to go first again.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. My question is on the same issue. Local authorities will need to be given the right amount of time to implement this plan. When local development plans were put in place, local authorities had up to 5 years to produce them. However, I am very concerned that they will be given substantially less time to produce these plans.

At the start of this meeting, you said that local authorities seemed to be at different stages. Will you advise the committee on where local authorities are—for example, what percentage of them have reached an advanced stage and what percentage have not done so? In effect, you are going to have 32 local authorities that are at 32 different stages. That is not very good when you are trying to bring forward legislation in the field; you would probably want local authorities to be at similar stages so that, when the act comes in and section 10 commences, they will all be at the same starting point.

The committee has heard evidence from some stakeholders that a reallocation of the agriculture budget to local authorities would help them to implement the good food nation plan. Is it the Scottish Government’s intention to go down that route? I am seeking reassurance from the cabinet secretary today that she will not take that approach.

Thank you.