Chamber and committees

I welcome the pilot, but I have a couple of questions about it. The first is on timescales. First, when do you hope that the pilot could be under way? Secondly, before Katy Clark’s intervention, you mentioned the importance of advocacy; however, in this context, we are talking not about advocacy but about advice. It is important that we retain the distinction between advocacy and advice, because they are two distinct and important services.

Thanks. Oonagh, you wanted to come in.

That is really helpful and powerful.

Good morning to the witnesses and thank you for joining us. I echo the apology that Jan Savage gave at the start—none of us wants to be in this situation, and it is right that we acknowledge that the people who are most directly affected should not be in such a situation.

To follow on from the responses to Paul O’Kane’s questions, there was that case last year that made it clear that detention that was based on learning disability alone was not lawful. Obviously, that was without the legal mechanisms. Cathy Asante, you said that no such case has been brought into domestic law along the same lines. Are you aware of conversations between ministers and local authorities or local authorities and care providers about the legal risk that Paul O’Kane spoke about? It should not take the threat of legal action to change the situation.

It seems as though there is something lacking in the care or support that would enable people to become de-institutionalised: we know that what is happening is technically legal, but it should not be, and we know that we should be able to provide the support in communities. Is it a question of resourcing or the lack of availability of care workers, or is it due to something more fundamental than that?

That is really helpful. In some ways, that leads me nicely on to my next couple of questions, which are also about some of the key findings of your report.

Your report said that you

“found little meaningful engagement with human rights standards.”

Do people know that those standards are in place? Is it a question of awareness and understanding, or is that awareness and understanding there and what we are lacking is oversight? Or is it, as you suggested in answer to another question, all of the above? We sitting around this table might think that we have an understanding of those human rights standards, but are you convinced that there is awareness and understanding among the people who are out there providing the support and the institutionalisation, before we even get to oversight?

That was helpful. Jan, you said that there has not been more focus on that issue—deadlines come and go, et cetera—and there is a lack of outrage about it. Is there underlying cultural prejudice in society and all of the institutions that are supposed to support the transition away from institutionalisation? Are people with learning disabilities not taken seriously or considered to be of as much importance as they should be?

Thanks, Cathy. In different ways, you have all alluded to the idea that, although we talk about having a human rights-based approach or a human rights-centred approach to service provision, that is just talk. I think that that is the case, from what we are hearing this morning. Would you agree?

Oonagh, you talked earlier about the failure to include that in conversation. I am thinking about how we solve this knotty problem. Maybe we do overcomplicate things. I also think that, if we want to get to over there, we probably should not be starting from here. Is there something fundamentally wrong with the structures that we have in Government, in local authorities, and in the relationships between national and local government and governance, even before we start bringing in integration joint boards?

Are there structural barriers here that, with the best will in the world—I think that you have all acknowledged that there is will here—are preventing us from tackling the problem?

I am grateful to Katy Clark for raising the issues that her amendments deal with. There are opportunities for us to make much clearer what is and is not covered in the bill, as well as what should and should not be covered.

Scottish Women’s Aid has drawn attention to the importance of widening the definition of domestic violence in the bill, and amendment 1022, which I have worked on with that organisation, seeks to expand the definition to cover coercive control and other aspects of violence. It would ensure that we recognise that domestic violence can cover a very broad range of actions and that abusers can be anyone in the household, not just a partner or ex-partner. For example, young trans people are at a disproportionately high risk of homelessness and can be at risk from controlling or coercive family members, not necessarily a partner. We also know that people might be at risk of homelessness because of honour-based violence, which, again, does not have to be perpetrated by someone’s partner or ex-partner.

Neither of those specific examples, or other examples of abuse and violence that are perpetrated by someone who is not a partner or ex-partner, would be covered under the bill’s current definition, but they would be covered if my amendment 1022 were to be agreed to. The wider the definition, the more we can identify domestic abuse and other forms of violence in our homelessness systems, and the better we can help victims and survivors.

I urge committee members to recognise that violence happens in a range of ways and is perpetrated by a range of people. People can be at risk of violence not only from their partner but from a parent or a child, too. The bill does not currently cover those examples, and I therefore ask the committee to support amendment 1022.

On amendment 1069, on which I have also worked with Scottish Women’s Aid, the working group report that it refers to made a wide range of recommendations, which were accepted by the Scottish Government. I am pleased to see some of them in the bill introduced by my Green colleague Patrick Harvie, and in Scottish Government amendments and those from other colleagues, too.

However, the report was very wide ranging, with some 27 recommendations, and we still have a way to go to ensure that all of them are implemented. For instance, there is more work to be done on housing first strategies for victims and survivors; more on ensuring that homelessness policies are designed and implemented with a gendered lens; and more on improving how homelessness that is due to domestic abuse appears in statistics.

I therefore recommend inserting a simple monitoring process into the bill, whereby we check annually on progress on those recommendations—as has been agreed by the Scottish Government but which is not implemented anywhere in the bill as it currently stands.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Like Mark Griffin, I support all the amendments in this group. I have worked with Crisis on my amendments to improve the bill’s homelessness prevention provisions. Amendment 1092 and the consequential amendment 1093 would create a requirement for the local authority to provide an applicant with information on the advice and assistance that it is providing to assist them and on the outcome that is being sought. That is so that the applicant and anyone who is supporting them know what should be done. That is absolutely central to ensuring that the process is person centred and to ensuring transparency.

It has been clear from both the stage 1 evidence gathering and the general working of the system that applicants are not always aware of what actions are being taken or that they think that things are happening when they are not. Amendment 1092 would create an explicit duty to ensure that applicants are aware of what is going on.

The Scottish Government’s own homelessness prevention review group was clear that it envisaged a transparent, person-centred process, with the applicant’s voice at the heart of discussions around support. My amendments 1092 and 1093, along with other amendments in the group in the name of other MSPs, would move us towards that. I note that the Welsh Government is moving towards a similar system.

Amendment 1094 seeks to ensure that there will be a right to review the effectiveness and appropriateness of the assistance that is provided to someone who is threatened with homelessness and, specifically, whether it has fulfilled the intention of removing or minimising the threat of homelessness. Crisis believes that the existing statutory right to review must be expanded to address the support that people are offered to prevent their homelessness. An expanded right to review is an essential accountability tool for individuals who are at risk of homelessness. As well as being supported by Crisis, the proposal in amendment 1094 closely mirrors recommendations from the homelessness prevention review group.

Amendment 1095 seeks to provide for further definition of what relevant bodies are required to do in order to ensure that all relevant bodies and local authorities are subject to duties of equal legal strength in addressing the threat of homelessness. It seeks to ensure that act duties do not simply result in referrals to the local authority or to some other body. A duty to act cannot simply become a duty to refer. Such definition may include what the specified actions are and how they assess responsibilities. Regulations should specify actions for each relevant body. Those details, which have not yet been developed, could be tested through piloting and consultation with relevant bodies before being set out in regulations. There have been on-going discussions with stakeholders about what such pilots could look like and what they could achieve.

Amendment 1095 also seeks to create a means for relevant bodies to be held individually accountable, subject to the act duties in proposed new section 36C of the 1987 act, when they do not fulfil their duties or there is a dispute over the facts or decisions made.

I note again that all the amendments that I have spoken about have been worked up in consultation with Crisis, which has been a close partner of the Scottish Government in tackling homelessness and has exceptional knowledge of the extent to which our homelessness system is working. I acknowledge the minister’s comments about the fact that some of the powers in question already exist, but given that Crisis has been trying to get more clarity and more definition, it is important for us to have such conversations and to at least consider how we can improve the assessments and reviews that are covered in section 41, because we know that not everything is working as it should.