—and failed to deliver—[Interruption.] I am referring to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee meeting this week.

They are desperate to get action on short-term lets. The key issue is the loss of 13,500 properties, in respect of which the short-term let control area and the planning powers are critical.

On the other side is the fact that long-established—[Interruption.] If the minister would be courteous enough to listen to me, I will continue. Long-established bed and breakfast operators that have been in the city for decades and which have not contributed to any loss in housing are also going to be regulated and will have to be licensed. I do not see the point of that. It is not an either/or. There is an issue about the balance of the regulations, which the previous minister—

No, thanks—I have already taken one.

That brings us back to the point that Ben Macpherson rightly made about people sharing their accommodation during the summer, when they are still there, or renting it out when they are on holiday for a couple of weeks during the festival.

Fundamentally, we need investment in new housing and effective short-term let controls. We need appropriate legislation to make sure that we are not indulging in over-legislation, which is the situation that is being experienced by traditional bed and breakfasts just now and which is leading to more expensive housing, either to rent or to buy. It is also increasing homelessness rates.

We have a major problem that needs to be addressed. All of my constituents are being let down. I have had something like 70 or 80 emails in the past few days against removing the powers to tackle short-term lets, but that is not what we are arguing for today; we are arguing about the impact on tourism, because of the way in which the regulations are being implemented. They are being nationally mandated and locally implemented, regardless of whether implementation is necessary and without the flexibility that different local authorities clearly want.

The minister said that he would make changes. I would like to hear in his closing remarks what those would be. We know that, if the minister’s plans go ahead, people who are not registered under the current regulations after 1 October might be fined £2,500. That has been made clear. However, there is a conflict between a licensing scheme that includes traditional bed and breakfasts and the pressure on councils that want to get going on their short-term let control areas in order to tackle the short-term let problem.

I draw attention to my entry in the members’ register of interests as a former employee of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

Since I returned to the Parliament, I have been engaging with the issue of short-term lets in great detail; I was on the committee that looked at the principle of the issue, and I was also involved in looking at the detail. Edinburgh has a long-standing housing crisis, which has been getting worse. It does not have enough homes; it has the lowest percentage of social housing in Scotland; and both private rented homes and homes to buy are increasingly getting much more expensive than the rest of Scotland. There is a huge lack of affordable accommodation for students, who make up 20 per cent of the city’s population. At the same time, we have a successful, growing city, in which tourism and culture are key parts of our identity and our economy.

However, the challenge is partly the lack of new housing being built in order to meet demand, as well as a massive shortage of accommodation during the summer when the festivals are on. Another key issue is that we have lost so many properties to short-term lets. In research published in 2019, it was estimated that around 13,500 homes had been lost to totally unregulated short-term lets; although there had been planning policies in the city since 2011, the planning guidance had not worked. That was why we urgently needed the new short-term let control area to be introduced—it allowed our council to have powers with regard to planning capacity.

Members can see the impact that unregulated and uncontrolled short-term lets have had, particularly in the city centre, where communities have been hollowed out and residents have suffered from the expansion of party flats. That has created pressures particularly in many of our tenements, where the residents do not know who owns those flats.

When the Scottish Government agreed to act to enable those local authorities that wanted to address local challenges to do so, I welcomed the move. I thought that a combined approach that would tackle our housing shortage and regulate for the use of planning powers in relation to short-term lets, while enabling members of the local community to rent out their flats during the summer when they were on holiday or still in their flats, was a win-win. However, as several colleagues have said, the problem was that the SNP’s proposals did not strike the right balance.

First, the party did not listen to the arguments about the difference between—

No—I brought up my views to the previous minister on many occasions, and they were not listened to.

We have a problem, in that unregulated short-term lets need to be acted on, but we also have the problem that the Government has reached out far more than people wanted it to. The fact that the SNP decided to roll out the requirement to register across the entire country was completely against the arguments that people in the key communities were making. We wanted our councils in places such as Edinburgh and the Highlands to have the powers to act, as those are the places where Airbnbs and short-term lets have had a major impact on our housing, causing shortages. Indeed, I say to the minister, who is interested in workers, that people are now having to leave Edinburgh, because there are no longer homes for them to live in. That is the impact of the misguided approach that has been taken.

We need a different approach in Edinburgh. Our housing crisis is not being addressed, and the council has been put in the position of trying to make progress on its short-term let control area across the city without the flexibility that was part of the ambition for that legislation in the first place.

We have responsible owners who rent out all or part of their property and help their neighbours with repairs and waste management, but not all of them do that. That is the target. We need to act now. We are in the worst of all worlds, with more centralisation and bureaucracy but without the action to tackle the housing crisis that is getting worse for my constituents.

The cabinet secretary is criticising us, yet in our speeches we called on the Government to actually implement its climate policies. We are not rolling back from them, whether in relation to heating our homes, our transport, our buildings or how we use our energy. This is just criticism—and it is not good enough.

I declare an interest, which is my former work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

There has been a series of cross-party meetings this year on the urgent issue of Edinburgh’s housing crisis. It needs leadership and funding. The gap is £418 million. What will the Scottish Government do now to tackle the scale of homelessness, the lack of affordable housing and—critically, this month—the lack of affordable housing for students?

What lessons have been learned from the £133 million underspend last year on retrofitting homes to make them energy efficient and affordable to heat? My understanding is that a lack of trained staff was a key blockage across the country. Given the fact that fuel poverty is now hitting 39 per cent of our households, what is the Scottish Government doing to address this massive problem and to create jobs and training opportunities across Scotland?

The First Minister will be aware that the new eye pavilion in Edinburgh has suffered delay after delay. Over the past few weeks, fresh doubts about its 2027 opening have arisen after NHS Lothian told patients and campaigners that timescales would be confirmed once the Scottish Government had completed a review of funding and sequencing on a number of capital projects.

Will the First Minister confirm today to Parliament that the new eye pavilion will open in 2027? Will he meet me and eye pavilion patients to reassure them that the Scottish Government will fund that vital project, given that it was not mentioned in the programme for government?