Yes, I would, and thank you very much, convener, for the opportunity to address the committee this morning.

I am increasingly receiving casework from constituents on a range of issues arising with property factors. The main issue is that factors are seen as unaccountable, with high and rising costs, high quotes for repairs, insufficient information to assess value for money, poor communication, lack of engagement or interest in engaging with residents, historic debts being passed to current owners and people finding it very difficult to challenge costs or standards of work, to suggest improvements or to remove factors altogether.

Constituents feel powerless against factors that have been appointed by developers. There is a lack of a clear tendering process for the initial appointment, as referenced by the petitioner in highlighting the appointment of the factor by the developer. There is a lack of transparent information about services and costs before people commit to buying a new build, which means that they buy a property without knowing exactly what they are committing to financially. Reliance on title deeds is problematic, too, because they are not clear with regard to voting rights, processes and procedures.

Constituents have reported to me poor communication when responding to queries, unwillingness to engage on improving services or processes, errors in invoices and staff unclear about what they should be doing. There is also a big worry about future costs, including the costs of repairing unadopted roads, and people are worried about costs rising while their income is reducing and there being no help available if their income falls.

Using the code of practice to challenge factors is seen as incredibly cumbersome and as working against individual owners, who face a huge amount of organisation if they have to reach out to their neighbours. The First-tier Tribunal is also incredibly daunting to owners, as they might well be up against the factors and their legal teams.

I have asked written and oral questions on the steps that the Scottish Government will take to ensure that the system works for property owners. Moreover, in a working paper that was published last November, the Competition and Markets Authority referenced the imbalance of power between factors and home owners. The issues that constituents are raising with me come down to the power that factors have and the power that home owners have.

During the committee’s previous consideration of the petition, Mr Ewing made points in defence of the role of factors, and I want to make it clear that it is always better to have a factor in place than not. If there is no factor in place, buildings can fail or fall into a state of repair and basic health and safety approaches can end up not being followed. That is in no one’s interest, but there has to be more transparency in the system from factors being appointed to having the capacity to change them.

A constituent of mine has calculated how much their factor earns. They pay £45 a quarter in factor management fees in a development with more than 250 properties. In other words, in a development not that far from this Parliament, a factor is receiving over £11,000 a quarter, or nearly £50,000 a year for managing the property—and that does not include the cost of any works that need to be done, which owners themselves pay for.

To conclude, convener, I think that the Parliament has a duty to ensure that our constituents are protected through legislation. The Scottish Government has been slow to act on this matter, and I encourage the committee to use this petition in order to think of ways of ensuring a fair power balance between factors and home owners.

Thank you again for the opportunity to address the committee.

The minister did not mention our railway network. Given its increasing electrification, what work is being done to have a cross-UK discussion to ensure that the electricity supply to our railway network is reliable and resilient?

The cabinet secretary should be aware that those closures might mean that communities such as Leith and Portobello in my region would be left without a local police station. Police stations are vital to our communities and ensure good relationships between the police and residents. It is not a surprise that Unison has said that the closures

“might deliver balanced books, but ... won’t deliver better policing”.

What assurances can the cabinet secretary give members that as many police stations as possible will be saved from closure? How is Police Scotland ensuring that it develops strong relationships with communities and residents to tackle crime and keep people safe? The cabinet secretary has spoken about hubs. Will she say where those will be in Leith and Portobello, so that people do not miss out on our police?

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the justice secretary has had with Police Scotland regarding potential station closures in Edinburgh. (S6O-03019)

I am a bit unnerved, because I have agreed with most of what the member has said so far. However, will he reflect on the issue about consenting, particularly for offshore wind? I know that, for a lot of companies, some of which are based in our constituency, it takes two years to get consent in Canada but about eight years in Scotland. That is something that we could work together to change.

I wanted to be constructive when crafting my amendment, but then I saw a news article this morning that summarised the attacks on Labour that the cabinet secretary was planning to make today, which he did, indeed, make.

I agree that we urgently need to see green jobs that benefit Scotland. Huge investment in renewables offers us the chance to shift to a circular economy, with manufacturing and recycling sectors being given more support from the Scottish Government. However, we have simply not seen such support in the time that the SNP has been in power. There has been too much in the way of warm words and not enough leadership and investment.

Sadly, the Scottish Government is not, as it says, deploying all the tools and levers that are available. We need to ramp up procurement, and best practice needs to be shared across our councils and public sector organisations. That is one of the reasons why I have been pushing so hard for the creation of a future generations commissioner as part of my proposed wellbeing and sustainable development member’s bill.

The Scottish Government needs to move faster and deliver more joined-up thinking. Publication of the green industrial strategy was delayed, and we urgently need leadership so that our private and public sectors are able to provide and support investment right across the UK.

I regularly speak to innovative renewable energy companies and companies involved in retrofitting people’s homes that cannot access the training courses for their staff that would be needed to deliver potential low-carbon projects across Scotland. We need the Government to be proactive in working with industry. It should not step back from its responsibility to deliver the building blocks for a just transition.

The UK Government has failed to effectively deliver major infrastructure projects such as high speed 2, which has been appallingly mismanaged. We also urgently need a grid that will work now and in the future.

Governments need to be strategic in providing confidence, certainty, clarity and support for supply chains, so that our renewables and industrial sectors get the major investment that is needed.

I felt that it might not be appropriate to ask members to vote Labour, so I thought that it would be better to ask them to note our policy, then I would go through its benefits. My colleague Jonathan Reynolds has been talking about Joe Biden’s fantastic Inflation Reduction Act 2022, and about the competition that means that we have to deliver in Scotland and the UK. That is the point of my speech today.

Our local authorities are vital in supporting low-carbon infrastructure, but we are, disappointingly, not seeing the levels of investment in community renewables that the SNP Government promised. We have huge opportunities to create heat and power with our land and buildings, which would deliver lower bills to our communities and deliver investment. That is an unacceptable missed opportunity.

We need Government leadership at the UK and Scottish levels. To be honest, the Scottish Trades Union Congress was absolutely right in its briefing, in which it said:

“The Scottish Government has been too quick to set ambition for jobs and economic benefit from green industries without setting up the necessary policies and funding to realise them.”

The cabinet secretary is muttering, but the SNP has been in power for more than 16 years and it has failed to deliver the transformative change that we urgently need. We have come together on two climate change acts—in 2009 and 2019—but, as the UK Climate Change Committee reported in 2022, the Scottish Government has failed to deliver on lowering our carbon emissions, on homes and buildings and on transport and land. Scotland and the UK urgently need change, and Labour’s green prosperity plan would deliver that. [Interruption.]

To be honest, a lot of the comments that I can hear the cabinet secretary muttering are deflection from SNP failures. We have had no publicly owned energy company, as promised; delays to the green industrial strategy, energy strategy and just transition plan; and massive cuts to budgets. It is not just this year—

In the context of that process, will the minister reference Grangemouth, given the new opportunities for existing staff that the green transition, and the opportunity to use that site for that transition, will provide?

No, I will not.

There has been a 48.5 per cent cut to the climate change budget; a 75 per cent cut to the just transition fund; a nearly 40 per cent cut to the investment in the energy industries net zero budget, which last year’s budget promised would

“maximise the economic and social outcomes of the transition to a Net Zero Scotland”;

a 28 per cent cut to the carers budget; and a 100 per cent cut to the green jobs fund—which is a bit of an irony for this debate. That fund was announced to much fanfare three years ago, with £100 million committed over five years, but an answer to a parliamentary question that I got this morning shows that only a mere £28 million is expected to be spent by the end of this financial year. Then there was the underspend of £133 million last year on energy efficiency schemes.

I totally agree that the Tory Government has been completely chaotic on the economy, but we are talking about long-standing failings of the SNP. It is utterly hypocritical to attack the Labour Government that we are campaigning for.

We would establish GB energy, which would be based in Scotland. It would be a home-grown, publicly owned energy champion for clean energy generation and would build the jobs and supply chains that we urgently need. If we were elected, we would act fast to lead the world on clean and cheap power across the UK, with Scotland at the forefront, and make sure that we get the cheap, clean power that we need. We would set up a national wealth fund and, crucially, work with local authorities and communities to deliver renewable heat and power that people can afford. All those aims would directly benefit Scottish households and businesses.

Our ambitions would be funded by gearing up to the £28 billion throughout the term of the Labour Government. We would be inheriting the wreck of a Tory economy, but we would be committed to gearing up to that massive investment, which is crucial.

I want to ask the cabinet secretary what progress he is making in the discussions about the critical future of Grangemouth. What support will the Scottish Government offer through investment to support the just transition and protect the opportunities that the site offers in terms of its connectivity, its location and the skills in the local communities surrounding it? We urgently need a just transition to a low-carbon economy so that those who are already working in the energy sector get the skills, training and decent, well-paid jobs that will make our economy successful. We need a Government that is prepared to do the heavy lifting.

That is why we are committed to Labour’s green prosperity plan. We know that the oil and gas sector will be with us for decades, but we need Government action and support now to put in place the investment to ensure that the private sector and Government can work together to deliver the just transition and the green jobs that our country urgently needs.

I move amendment S6M-11945.1, to insert at end:

“; recognises the economic damage and challenges created by the fiscal policy choices of the UK Government, and the impact that this could have on investment in the green economy; notes the Labour Party’s Green Prosperity Plan; agrees that a cross-government mission is needed to deliver clean energy by 2030, and acknowledges the economic opportunities that this could create for Scotland.”

I welcome the minister’s engagement, which is much appreciated, but it is not just the City of Edinburgh Council that has declared a housing emergency—other councils are doing it now. Last week, 781 people applied for a single council house in Dreghorn. The housing emergency is a “now” issue. What action will the Scottish Government take imminently to tackle our housing emergency, whether by bringing empty homes back into use or by getting moving on building both housing to meet general needs and social rented accommodation?