Chamber and committees

Good morning, minister and officials. Scottish ministers will have the power to set the commencement date for the proposed changes in the Renters’ Rights Bill. Briefly, can you give the committee an update on the timescale that the Scottish Government is considering?

Good morning. There has been commentary on the long waiting times for some complaints to be considered. Professor Gill noted that that has

“the potential to ... reduce trust and satisfaction among members of the public”.

Do you think that delays could impact public trust in the complaints system overall? What is your response to that suggestion?

It could be both. There could be several reasons for a delay—it could be to do with the vast volumes that we have spoken about or the need for further submissions from public bodies in order for an investigation to continue.

Good morning. Minister, a number of weeks ago, I submitted a written question to the Government to ask whether the Government would provide an update on how many buildings have been identified as having flammable cladding. The response that I received from you states:

“We have previously estimated that around 350 high-rise and up to 500 medium-rise buildings across Scotland may require assessment and some level of remediation, across all tenure and building ownership types.

We continue to use this data as an outline planning assumption. However, we are working through a number of routes to enhance both the quality and efficacy of our estimate of potentially affected buildings in Scotland.”—[Written Answers, 25 November 2024; S6W-31234.]

That suggests to me that you still do not know how many buildings are impacted with cladding across Scotland. That is really concerning. How can we accelerate the programme of cladding remediation when we still do not know how many buildings have cladding?

I take your point, but this goes back to the speeding up of processes. You could achieve the work on the 500 buildings and the 350 buildings that are identified in the budget that you have allocated, but then more people could come forward with concerns about cladding on their buildings. How long do you expect this to go on for? Will funding be available until all the identified buildings have been remediated? It will not be a quick fix if you are relying on people to come forward with information for assessments to be carried out. I am trying to get an idea of the scope and the scale of the work, because it will not be a quick fix or a speedy process, as you highlighted earlier.

To go back to the annual report, it states that only 4 per cent of all complaints that were closed last year went through the SPSO’s full investigation stage, which is a much lower level than was the case seven or eight years ago. Why are so few full investigations taking place? Does that undermine the ombudsman’s job of identifying the systemic improvements that need to be made?

We all read in the paper this morning about the Scottish Government’s proposals for affordable housing. That was a key ask of stakeholders, but we cannot ignore the fact that cutting and then reinstating budgets creates instability in the market, as developers simply cannot trust whether that budget will still be in place next year.

We also have to acknowledge that cutting the budget last year caused a huge amount of damage and lost investment in our housing sector. If the cabinet secretary is serious about listening to housing stakeholders, what will she do to encourage developers and developments, and to deliver what developers are calling for, which is to scrap the disastrous rent proposals that will have devastating impacts on our housing sector? Is she confident that the Scottish Government will finally achieve its housing target of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance. Given the Scottish Government’s shoddy behaviour last week on the winter fuel payment announcement, it should have learned a lesson. Therefore, I suspect that I was not the only MSP who was angered to read in the Daily Record that the Scottish Government is set to make an embarrassing U-turn on the cuts to affordable housing in the budget statement today.

The article was published at 4.30 this morning. It appears to me that the news was leaked to the media before MSPs had the opportunity to listen to and scrutinise the Scottish Government’s proposals. The Daily Record must be the Scottish National Party’s favourite choice of paper this season; I find it almost suspicious that both leaks have been handed to the same paper. The SNP Government should not be using the press to try to claw back any shred of credibility that it lost when it brutally cut the vital winter fuel payment fund. If it believes that that is clever politics, it is clearly mistaken. It is disrespectful to the Presiding Officer, backbench SNP MSPs and Opposition members in the Parliament.

It is becoming commonplace for the SNP to believe that it is above any convention and the processes of the Parliament. Will the Presiding Officer therefore seek to investigate the matter, to ascertain how the information managed to find its way into the mainstream press before the ministerial statement on the Scottish budget this afternoon? What will the repercussions for the disrespectful behaviour be? Should the statement be rewritten to reflect what we already know and what has been available in the public domain for nearly nine hours?

It is a simple question. Does Mark Griffin believe that rent controls should be linked to the tenancy or the property?

Will Paul McLennan give way?