Chamber and committees

I begin by welcoming the emergency legislation. I, too, welcome the work by the legislation team and the clerks to make it happen. Mark Griffin, our spokesperson on housing, was quite right when he said that the law generally does not balance the rights and interests of landlords and tenants. I am pleased that the Government is now committed to doing that.

I also want to put on record—I can say this quite openly because of the work that I did during the previous session of Parliament—that the legislation is not an attack on landlords. The vast majority of landlords are good and decent landlords, and many of them have a few properties, so let us recognise that profile.

The backdrop to today, as Paul Sweeney eloquently talked about, is an acute cost of living crisis. There has been an acute economic shock, there is severe risk to people’s mortgages and pensions and there is uncertainty about the future. However, no one has mentioned the impact of that on young people.

Young people today are largely found in the private rented sector, because they have no chance of getting on to the social housing ladder. Most MSPs will know that from their constituency case work. I agree with the Tories that we have not done enough to increase housing supply—we all know that. However, we must recognise that the private rented sector in particular is where most poverty is found; it is where more poor families are found; and it is where there are severe inequalities. Therefore, it is right that this Government puts at the heart of its programme the need to address all that and to reform housing law.

Students in the private rented sector have no rights even to challenge their high rents in the university sector, because it contracted with parties that wrote into the contract that students had no rights and had to endure high rent.

I welcome the bill and the constructive nature of the debate. Let me put on record that I recognise the consistency of the housing minister Patrick Harvie in his dealings on this bill, but I cannot miss the opportunity to say to the SNP that, for all the speeches that I have heard today, not one SNP member supported my member’s bill on fair rents in the previous session of Parliament. They have to recognise that we could have been in a different place today, and I want to talk through why I think that.

I do not know what they were frightened of, and I think that they have to put their hands up to that. I am deeply concerned that the length of time that it will take to make the further housing reforms in this session of Parliament could mean that it will happen at the end of the session. However, let us hope that that does not happen.

In my Fair Rents (Scotland) Bill, there was a requirement to register data, as we talked about in an earlier exchange. However, importantly, there was also a provision in my bill that, although it capped rent increases at the consumer prices index plus 1 per cent, would have given ministers the power to set the cap at any level. If members look at the schedule to the current emergency legislation, they will see that its provision is pretty much the same as mine was.

I hope that SNP members will forgive my frustration around that; I just felt that I could have had a wee bit of support in the previous session of Parliament. Of course, I fully realise that member’s bills do not always make it. However, I hope that that is recognised and that we can get back on track in terms of working together to ensure that, in the wider framework on housing reform, we get it right. We need to recognise that tenants should have the right to challenge their rents and that those rents should not be increased when tenants do so, and there should be data so that landlords and tenants across the country can see what rents look like.

I recognise the emergency nature of the legislation. We need to do something now in relation to evictions and rents. I hope that, going forward, there is a bigger commitment from the Government to ensure that its housing bill does not come at the tail end of 2025. I would like the minister, in his closing speech, to commit to working harder to ensure that we see the housing reforms sooner than that.

I will be supporting the emergency legislation at decision time tonight, and I thank everyone for their hard work on it.

I seek to probe the issue and, as amendment 19 is the only amendment in the group, I realise that I will have to seek consent to withdraw it, but I want to address the amendment’s primary purpose.

The amendment would add to the Scottish landlord register data on the rents charged in residential tenancies. There is a lack of data on that, as I think the previous housing minister acknowledged. Rent pressure zones failed for many reasons and the legislation was totally inadequate. One of the reasons that rent pressure zones failed so badly was that the detail was too difficult to pull together, so any authorities who wanted to use the legislation found it difficult to do so.

The fact that the process that rent officers and the First-tier Tribunal use to make decisions on the fairness of rents is often not clear is down to the lack of data. The University of Glasgow’s Urban Big Data Centre notes that

“the PRS is widely acknowledged to be a part of the housing system for which the quality and quantity of data is unsatisfactory”.

Currently, official statistics about private rents are drawn from the rent service Scotland rental market database but, in 2016, 97 per cent of that data came from landlord advertisements, and it does not seem possible to find out whether those rents were actually achieved. In addition, the sample size is too small to permit private rental statistics to be produced at local authority level or, in the case of Scotland’s four main cities, below local authority level.

In their report for Shelter on rent regulation measures in Scotland, Professor Douglas Robertson and Gillian Young note that

“The single biggest barrier to the effective operation of both ‘rent regulation’ provisions is the lack of robust data on the stock of private rented dwellings and the rents being charged. In particular, the ability of existing tenants to challenge a rent rise is compromised by a lack of robust evidence on actual rental market rates.”

Amendment 19 would also mean that a tenant would be better informed as to whether the rent that they were being charged was unfair, and it would give a landlord an idea of whether the rent that they were charging was comparable with other rents. In the case of a tenant, that would allow them to make a better judgment about whether they wanted to appeal their rent.

I hope that the minister will appreciate that the issue that I have chosen to probe today is an important one, given that there is widespread support across the parties for wider reform on housing, and that he will agree that the question of data is crucial to that.

I move amendment 19.

In winding up and seeking Parliament’s consent to withdraw amendment 19, I simply add that I think that the issue is about more than simply improving the data; the availability of data is essential in enabling landlords and tenants to make decisions. I am content to leave the issue to Mark Griffin, as the Labour Party’s spokesperson, although it is one that I am interested in, as I dealt with it in my proposed fair rents bill.

I will continue to press the Government to recognise the importance of data. The lack of data is one of the reasons for the failure of rent pressure zones, although there were other failings in that legislation.

Let us not make the same mistake again. Let us recognise how important it is to see what rents look like in every region and area of Scotland, so that everyone can make a judgment and so that, when we come to the question of whether rent controls are right, we do that within a framework that clearly shows rent levels across Scotland. To do that, we need high quality data.

On that basis, I seek to withdraw amendment 19.

Amendment 19, by agreement, withdrawn.

Research from the University of Glasgow has shown that in more than nine out of 10 fatal accident inquiries sheriffs made no recommendations to improve practice. It also shows that, when families are involved, sheriffs are three times more likely to make findings based on lessons learned from the deaths; however, only 31 per cent of families are represented at FAIs.

My colleague Katy Clark has raised the issue with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans, but I ask the First Minister to consider whether all families and the next of kin of family members who have died in custody should have access to non-means-tested legal aid funding throughout the investigation. I am sure that the First Minister will appreciate that many families who have lost someone in custody feel helpless and intimidated by the process and it is important to ensure that they get representation where it is needed.

Okay, I will wait to see what the Wise Group says.

The letter contains very little information for us to go on. I take the view that there is a wider issue about access to criminal and civil justice and that people should have affordable access to what happens in their court cases. I do not know what the charge is—I do not know anything about that—but I assume that it is quite expensive, because a scheme would not otherwise be being created. I cannot comment further on that.

For me, there is a wider issue. Constituents have told me that they found it really difficult to get the transcripts of their court cases. There is probably not enough time in this committee’s agenda to deal with the wider issue but, if a commitment has been made and the Lord President is commenting on the matter, we probably need to pursue it, to make sure that that element of the system is in place.

I am not really content with the response because, to me, it is an admission—I do not need the Wise Group to tell me that. The response suggests that the situation is okay. Other people know more about the issue than me—I am just a layperson reading about it—but, surely, if people are prescribed a week’s worth of treatment until the community addiction team can pick up the patient, there could be a gap. That is an admission, is it not? I am just—

Yes, I am.

Are members satisfied with the response? It took one half-hour meeting with the Wise Group for the matter to be raised with us, and I presume that it was not a one-off issue, or the Wise Group would not have raised it. I find it hard to believe that the issue is not being picked up, because it is quite a problem. The letter tells us that, on a Friday,

“the prison healthcare team would write a prescription for the patient to cover a week or so of opioid substitute treatment until the CAT team can pick the patient up.”

That is so lax.

I want to ask about internal waiting times. Last week, an NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde oncologist raised with my office concerns that cancer-related scans now take up to eight weeks to be returned, when they should normally be returned within one week. The fact that oncologists are waiting for the results of important scans will clearly have a knock-on effect on patients in a priority area of treatment.

Is the cabinet secretary aware of that situation and is he acting on it? What assurances can he give oncologists in Glasgow and the health board area that the scans of worried patients will be returned in a much-reduced timescale?