Chamber and committees

This morning, the minister and I received a copy of a letter from a house builder who eloquently described the current state of our planning system and the decisions taken by the Government that have made it incredibly challenging for small and medium-sized house builders.

The last time that the Scottish Government undertook a review of the planning system, it resulted in the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 and national planning framework 4. Since both of those have been in place, there has been a decline in house-building delivery, a loss of house builders, a decline in the number of construction companies and the declaration of a housing emergency. Scotland is now a hostile environment for anyone in the housing industry.

What role will the planning hub have in looking at those particular issues, which are really important to our housing sector? How much will the Government invest overall in the hub to prevent such issues from recurring and the hub itself from becoming a talking shop?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its progress towards creating a planning hub. (S6O-04099)

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?

I have a question about rent controls. The Scottish Government has decided to maintain rent controls between tenancies. How will that help developers and people in the private rented sector who are trying to navigate the Scottish Government’s proposals?

I will indeed.

I will try my best, Presiding Officer.

I begin my remarks on a point of consensus. Recently, my colleague Graham Simpson and I met the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and the minister to discuss the Housing (Scotland) Bill. I found the meeting useful and, although there were clear dividing lines over some areas of the bill, I believe that there are areas on which we can work constructively together, should the bill pass stage 1 today.

One such area is homelessness prevention. As we speak, more than 15,000 children in Scotland are homeless. That figure should shame each and every one of us. Last night, I received a huge volume of emails in my inbox about homelessness services, which are a priority for my constituents and for my party. There is scope for the bill to make vast improvements for anyone who finds themselves without a home or who finds themselves sleeping rough. Scotland is in the grip of a devastating housing emergency, which is destroying lives. My party will commit to working across the parties, where possible, to make much-needed changes to the bill, because we believe that everyone in Scotland deserves the right to a safe home.

However, the bill that is in front of us—the bill that we are being asked to scrutinise—is not a housing bill. What we have been presented with will not, in itself, tackle the housing emergency. The minister has the nerve to say that the bill will ensure that Scots can access an affordable rented home. He refuses to say that the Scottish National Party’s botched rent control policy has driven up rents and priced thousands of Scots out of their homes. That is typical of the SNP—what it says and what it does never match up.

The last time that the SNP introduced rent controls, it was a disaster. More than 21,000 flats and houses disappeared from Scotland’s private rental sector in a single year.

No—I have been kind enough to give the minister one intervention.

Between September 2022 and March 2024, when rent controls were active, private rents increased by 16.5 per cent. That shows that rent controls do not work. It is a failed experiment.

The rent control proposal is causing concern not just in my party but among private home providers in the housing sector. Although some have welcomed the link to inflation for rent caps, that is insufficient on its own and could be a major barrier to investment. The housing industry has repeatedly warned that restrictions amount to price fixing and would limit rental income flexibility, distort the market and reduce the scope to improve and upgrade tired homes. The consequences of that will impact value, viability and delivery and make Scotland an unattractive destination for the substantial capital that is needed to build new high-quality rental housing.

The bill will stifle the ambition to deliver more homes for Scotland. There is also a lack of clarity on build-to-rent exemptions. Investors are in limbo because they do not have certainty from the Government in order to push ahead with multimillion pound investment decisions. Although there have been commitments to holding further consultation processes and engagement sessions with stakeholders, the critical detail of the legislation might not be clear until at least the summer of 2025, which will prolong the uncertainty.

The SNP has not listened to stakeholders. Despite a year of consultations with the industry, including that of the housing investment task force, the SNP has dismissed numerous common-sense suggestions, such as removing rent controls between tenancies. Controls between tenancies will reduce overall rental stock from existing private housing providers, which continue to exit the sector, and that makes tenants more vulnerable in an increasingly constrained market. If the SNP was minded to change its position on that matter, that would provide greater predictability and certainty for investors while protecting tenants, which, in turn, would stimulate housing supply instead of suffocating it, which is what the bill does at present.

For the reasons that I have outlined, the Scottish Conservatives cannot vote for a bill that is a direct attack on the prosperity of our nation. At a time when the SNP should be encouraging economic growth, we have a bill that will harm the industry. A range of large-scale, credible and capable construction companies are folding, and when we lose them, we will lose critical skills that will not be replaced.

The bill was an opportunity to open the door to discussions in order to tackle the big problems in our housing sector, but the SNP has failed in its mission. It has failed to take the housing emergency seriously, and it is dismantling the housing sector brick by brick. My party will not sit back and allow the SNP to take a wrecking ball to an already fragile sector.