I have a brief question to follow up on that. I seek clarity on the comment about host accommodation and how people will not open their homes for a infinite time. I have heard from quite a few people who volunteered but were not picked at the time. Are there still people who volunteered to be hosts whose accommodation is not being used, and is that a potential route, given the other huge challenges that you face with providing temporary accommodation?

I go back to the issues of homelessness and housing. I direct members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I take the point that it is a long-term issue, but we have been raising the issue of a long-term solution for about six months now.

I want to go back to the evidence that we have just heard from Gavin Sharp, Pat Togher and Lorraine Cook from COSLA and focus on access to housing. Given that we have a housing crisis, what opportunity is there to accelerate bringing homes into use? Homes can be empty for multiple reasons. There are 43,000 empty homes in Scotland, including 9,000 in Edinburgh and nearly 2,500 in Glasgow.

I know that there is a £50 million fund, some of which is being used to repurpose housing, and that our cities tend not to have lots of available housing lying empty and waiting, but is there an opportunity to get homes back into use as well as accelerating new homes, particularly to address the crisis that we have around supporting Ukrainians, but also to address the longer-term housing shortage? I know people and families from Afghanistan who have been in temporary accommodation for years after they arrived in Edinburgh.

Can something be done to sharpen that and get things moving that we as a committee should be looking at? I invite Pat Togher to answer that first and I will then bring in Gavin Sharp, as we have talked about the issue before.

Lorraine, do you want to comment from a COSLA perspective on ensuring that that money is spent and that it delivers as soon as possible?

That is useful feedback. The Ukrainians whom I have met are so grateful to be here, and they do not like to raise difficult issues when they arrive—those issues only arise months afterwards.

A particular issue that people have mentioned is post-traumatic stress disorder, not just for adults but for children, because of what they have gone through. That gets parked because it is a fresh start, but there are families back home. It is useful to have that flagged for mental health and national health service support.

Is there anything more that could be done to link with general practitioners? We know that they are under pressure.

On one level, that is nuanced, but that is fundamental if someone has an allergy. Those things cannot be ignored.

In a way, that is why I was keen to raise the issue. I take on board the convener’s comments about not straying into other committees’ remits. Nonetheless, thinking about people who might move to Scotland for whatever reason, we might potentially have Hong Kongers coming here in the future. It is both an issue for now and something that has been there for quite a while, so we need to keep that on the agenda.

The COSLA submission refers to potential cuts in support for people in local authorities; I think that you said that there is a cut of nearly 50 per cent from the UK Government. Will you say a bit more about how that will have an impact? I know that £10,000 sounds like a lot, but, even considering only the education and housing aspects, it is nothing in comparison with the crisis that you face.

That is really useful feedback, because the message that we get from NHS Lothian and GPs is that they are at capacity, so even marginal increases can be challenging. The point about needing additional funding is well made.

Will the member take an intervention?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I have to say to the member that, if more of his members and supporters had voted to stay in the EU, we would not be in this position. Look at the figures: 36 per cent of SNP voters voted to leave, and a significant number of Labour supporters did so, too. We have a challenge in ensuring that we devolve power to our communities. There is a challenge for all of us.

Ironically, the SNP changes its tactics daily. First, the next UK elections were to be a de facto indyref; then there was to be a de facto referendum at the next Scottish elections; and then one SNP MP said that there could be a snap Scottish Parliament election, with the vote brought forward from 2026. Angus Robertson has said that the de facto referendum will be on leaving the UK and joining Europe at the same time. However, as ever, there are no details and the difficult questions have been left to one side. We have the same old Tories at Westminster, but we also have the same old SNP in Scotland. There is no clear plan for the people who need support now.

There are elements in the SNP motion with which we strongly agree so, to be constructive, our amendment would keep those bits. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is massively damaging and could result in around 4,000 pieces of legislation being wiped off the statute book. That is a massive job for civil servants, and we could lose key protections by accident. The response from businesses, including in the food sector, as well as from trade unions and those campaigning for safety and environmental standards, is absolutely clear. Those bits of legislation were not invented overnight; they are the result of years of consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.

Despite all the warm words from Alexander Stewart, it is important that we reject the Tory Government’s proposed anti-trade union laws, which are regressive. They are stepping back in time and do not respect people’s hard-earned rights at work. The Tories are not on the side of working people. They have failed to end fire-and-rehire contracts and to ban precarious zero-hours contracts. We have heard all the talk about the minimum wage, but someone who is on a zero-hours contract does not know when they will get that £10 an hour, and people are terrified of losing their employment. Those are all things that we need to change now.

When we campaigned to remain in the EU, we highlighted the dangers of leaving a union that we had been in for decades and losing the certainty and the co-operation that we had built with our European neighbours. Our SNP Government now needs to do much more. We need political leadership rather than a culture of blame that is an excuse for failure.

Let us think about it. The Erasmus scheme could have been replaced by now, to ensure that our young people do not miss out on opportunities to gain skills and experiences that would help them to develop their careers and contribute to our economy. To see the truth of that, we need only look at the Welsh Labour Government’s Erasmus replacement—the Taith scheme—under which young people in Wales are now getting those much-missed opportunities.

We want the SNP-Green Government to be more ambitious. I want to focus on the use of procurement powers to deal with some of the issues that Richard Lochhead raised. The SNP-Green Government could be doing things now, right across the public sector, to raise standards, secure decent salaries for workers, invest in skills and secure decent terms and conditions. That is not a far-off promise; it could be done now.

It is no wonder that Unite has pulled out of the national care service process, as that process will not deliver national terms and conditions and career opportunities. We need a fair deal for vital staff. It is no wonder that it is hard to recruit carers, given how they are treated. We still do not have a commitment to pay them £15 an hour; instead, we have £1.3 billion wasted on bureaucracy and centralisation.

We want action now. We will support elements of the SNP motion, but our amendment ends by demanding not only that the Tory Government stops undermining devolution, whether deliberately or inadvertently, but that our Governments work together even when they do not agree.

There has been talk today about working with our European neighbours. We agree with that. However, we do not agree with all the European Governments that have been elected. Democracy means that different countries have different Governments, but that does not mean that we should not work together. We need co-operation with our EU neighbours and with the UK Government.

We want our Governments to sit together and to work co-operatively, whether that is about stronger action on developing the new green revolution and affordable heat and power networks, developing trade relations that support our communities or investing in innovation and research in our universities and businesses. That is what our businesses, workers and communities need now. They do not need more constitutional stand-offs.

We have one Government that excuses its own failures by going into “if only” mode, forgetting its lack of leadership for 15 years. In the other Government, the Tories are clinging on to power for as long as they can get away with it. However, people want change, and that change will come only with a Labour Government that is elected to rebuild the relations that were damaged after Brexit, to rebuild our economy and to rebuild the infrastructure that has been impacted by Covid and the cost of living crisis.

Instead of introducing regressive and unfair trade union laws that would push back our country by decades, a Labour Government would modernise workers’ rights for the 21st century. We would respect and empower workers, giving them democratic and economic rights.

People do not go on strike without thinking about it carefully. It is a big decision. It means a loss of salary. They do it because they are fighting for a better deal and for respect, not just for them but for the future generation of workers. They are fighting to support their families, to pay their mortgages, to pay their rent, to feed themselves and to turn on their heating.

The sooner we get rid of the Tories and replace them with a progressive Labour Government, the better.

I move amendment S6M-07710.2, to leave out from “anti-trade” to end and insert:

“the UK Conservative administration’s anti-trade union legislation, such as the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022, and the new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill; agrees that a progressive approach to industrial relations along with greater, not fewer, protections for workers is at the heart of a fairer and stronger economy; recognises trade unions as key social partners in delivering economic and social aspiration, and as vital for ensuring that the voices of workers are heard; calls on the UK Government not to erode the hard-won rights of workers; further calls on the UK and Scottish Governments to work together to solve the problems of the post-Brexit settlement over workers’ rights in a way that respects devolution and does not sideline the devolved legislatures, and notes that the next UK General Election is the best opportunity for replacing the current UK Conservative administration, repealing its anti-union legislation and reinforcing workers’ rights with a better deal for workers, including ending fire-and-rehire practices, banning zero hour contracts, and delivering government-backed pay negotiations between unions and employers on a sector by sector basis.”