Chamber and committees

So, with things such as coffee cups, we would be looking at not charging for them but banning them altogether.

What punishment will there be for home owners who fail to carry out the required work after the purchase of a property from 2033? The consultation seems to suggest civil penalties or building societies and banks getting involved. Can the minister guarantee that home owners will never be punished or even evicted by their building society for non-compliance?

You only published them two minutes ago.

The news from Grangemouth is a hammer blow to the industry and the local economy. The devolved Government has set out to demonize the oil and gas industry at every opportunity. Along with Labour, it is against new production in the North Sea and would prefer that we rely on imports.

The SNP has accepted the Greens into Government. The Greens want to shut down the oil and gas industry, and the First Minister said two months ago that he wanted to end Scotland’s role as the oil and gas capital of Europe. Does the cabinet secretary now accept that the message that the Government is sending out is putting thousands of jobs at risk—including those at Grangemouth?

The Scottish National Investment Bank has been in operation for three years now and, recently, serious allegations have been made against it. One is that the bank lent £7.5 million to a company that is run by the brother of a bank employee—a company that was loss making and whose accounts were overdue. It has also been reported that there was political pressure to invest £9 million in Circularity Scotland, most of which has now been lost.

I do not know whether those accusations are true, but I know that, if the advisory board was in place, as is required in law, we would have the assurance that things were in order. Does the cabinet secretary accept that it is vital that the advisory board is put in place as soon as possible?

What does that have to do with my question?

Will the minister give way?

I thank the minister for his pre-scripted intervention. There was no word of national insurance being cut by 2 per cent, and what about the UK Government paying a large proportion of everyone’s energy bills last year?

We have seen a catalogue of failures in some of the statistics surrounding the issue. The number of homelessness applications has gone up by 9 per cent during the past year; 16,263 children have been assessed for, or threatened with, homelessness during the past year; there are 6,000 families in temporary accommodation; the number of affordable homes approved is at its lowest level for 10 years; and the Government’s own target of affordable homes has been missed.

Unfortunately, we cannot say that all of that is caused simply by incompetence on behalf of the Green-SNP Government; it is actually wilful policy making that is stifling growth and causing massive rent rises in our rented sector. The crazy rent cap policy—brought in by the Greens in coalition with the SNP—has brought massive rent rises in our cities, in particular, with rent growth in Edinburgh outstripping that in London. Zoopla has said that landlords are left with no choice but to increase rents between tenancies to ensure that they are covering their costs.

The number of homes that were in the rented sector and that are now being sold by landlords is also at its highest level since 2009, with many landlords simply leaving the sector as it is no longer viable for them to continue. That is resulting in a loss of rental accommodation throughout Scotland.

The social rented sector has also been badly affected by the short-sightedness and wilful neglect of the Government, as councils are struggling to balance their budgets in the face of SNP austerity.

When I was co-leader of Aberdeen City Council, I was proud that I worked with Labour to announce the largest social house-building programme in the city for a generation. It consisted of not only 2,000 homes, but 2,000 gold-standard quality homes. I did not want poor-quality homes thrown up quickly; I wanted social homes that matched the standard of the private sector and exceeded it.

We have to be honest: many of our social rented homes are not up to the standard that they should be at. We must build more homes in order to cope with the need and we must replace much of the stock that we have. The Conservatives would give local authorities the ability to build more homes for the people of Scotland. We have pledged to introduce a Scottish housing delivery agency that would be entirely focused on the supply of new homes for our residents.

We would relax planning laws so that more properties in our town centres could be brought into residential use for hard-working families. We would reverse the crazy rent freeze that has had such a detrimental impact on cities such as Edinburgh. It is clear that, although the policy may have been introduced with good intentions, it has made the issue worse.

We need to do more to create homes and communities in our cities, towns and villages across Scotland. We need to invest in housing so that families can find the security that they need to build their lives in a safe and secure setting. We need certainty for house builders that we are a country that is committed to economic growth, and we need funding for local councils to build more affordable homes in our communities. We need a planning system that has the flexibility to bring disused properties into commercial use, and we need a Government that is focused on the people of Scotland and not on independence. The Government has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to housing in Scotland and it needs to do better for all our communities.

Will the minister take an intervention?

To ask the Scottish Government what assurances it has received that the Scottish National Investment Bank is supporting its ambition to create a wellbeing economy, in light of there not being an advisory board in place. (S6O-02752)