Will the minister take an intervention?

No, thank you.

The concerns heard by the committee from Unite, the PCS union and UNISON that their members are being left in the dark about the ramifications of the bill are another damning indictment. We still have no clear answers about which workers, or even how many, would transfer between Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.

I acknowledge the difficulties that have been presented by Skills Development Scotland’s unwillingness to produce figures. How can we honestly be expected to back a bill that fails to provide those basic and fundamental facts? Without answering simple questions such as how many workers the bill will affect, the Scottish Government cannot seriously expect us to support the bill. Without those questions being answered, we cannot ask the bigger, better questions such as how the bill will enable our young people to thrive or support Scotland’s long-suffering further and higher education workforce.

A more responsive and coherent funding system for post-school education and training is an aim that we share across the chamber, and it is one that the sector has long called for, but the bill does not convincingly deliver that aim, and it potentially risks making matters worse for learners and providers.

If we are to have successful apprenticeships, it is vital that the expertise of trade unions and businesses is drawn on in delivering those apprenticeships. A bill that has such an important aim must be backed up with strong stakeholder support. If stakeholder support is heavily caveated, as was shown throughout the consultation on the bill, it will not truly meet the aims for students and learners, now or in the future. Those are the questions that the Parliament should be asking, and the bill does not come anywhere close to allowing us to do that. That is why Scottish Labour cannot support the bill.

I welcome Ben Macpherson to his new post and thank the committee and all those involved in the scrutiny of the bill for their hard work. The bill is critical, because Scotland urgently needs an adequately funded and responsive system for post-school education and training.

Our further education sector is at crisis point and, in some cases, far beyond it. Although the aims of the bill are laudable, it is unfortunately yet another example of the Government failing to do the heavy lifting to create a bill that answers the big questions about our further education system. We—and, most importantly, our young people—need those questions answered.

The Government has yet again proposed legislation—as it has with the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill—that fails to address the systemic issues that children and young people face in this country. It is absolutely shocking that one in 10 of our 16 to 24-year-olds are currently not in employment, education or training, according to the Government’s figures.

This bill was decried by unions as “fraught with risk” for apprenticeships, and running those risks does nothing for the young people who are being failed by a system that does not work for them. Creating a much larger Scottish Funding Council without adequate assurances about its ability to continue functioning properly does nothing for those young people.

Not only does the bill fail to deliver for young people but, at a time when further and higher education institutions are under so much pressure, the bill entirely fails to deliver the sustainability supports that the sector is crying out for.

No, thank you.

The concerns heard by the committee from Unite, the PCS union and UNISON that their members are being left in the dark about the ramifications of the bill are another damning indictment. We still have no clear answers about which workers, or even how many, would transfer between Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.

I acknowledge the difficulties that have been presented by Skills Development Scotland’s unwillingness to produce figures. How can we honestly be expected to back a bill that fails to provide those basic and fundamental facts? Without answering simple questions such as how many workers the bill will affect, the Scottish Government cannot seriously expect us to support the bill. Without those questions being answered, we cannot ask the bigger, better questions such as how the bill will enable our young people to thrive or support Scotland’s long-suffering further and higher education workforce.

A more responsive and coherent funding system for post-school education and training is an aim that we share across the chamber, and it is one that the sector has long called for, but the bill does not convincingly deliver that aim, and it potentially risks making matters worse for learners and providers.

If we are to have successful apprenticeships, it is vital that the expertise of trade unions and businesses is drawn on in delivering those apprenticeships. A bill that has such an important aim must be backed up with strong stakeholder support. If stakeholder support is heavily caveated, as was shown throughout the consultation on the bill, it will not truly meet the aims for students and learners, now or in the future. Those are the questions that the Parliament should be asking, and the bill does not come anywhere close to allowing us to do that. That is why Scottish Labour cannot support the bill.

In Sweden, over half of homes are now heated by district heat networks, which are expected to use energy that comes almost entirely from renewable or waste sources. In the Netherlands and Denmark, municipalities have had statutory heat planning in place for decades.

Will the cabinet secretary outline what additional investment the Scottish Government will now allocate to our councils, given the huge financial and staff pressures that they face? That would make it possible for us not only to meet the Scottish Government’s targets by 2030, but to have municipally owned heat networks, which would have accountability and could reinvest profits back into their communities.

Absolutely. In my portfolio of climate and net zero, there are missed opportunities in retrofitting homes, which young people from every single community in Scotland could be leading on. That is not being addressed.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its progress on the development and expansion of heat networks across Scotland, including any plans it has to accelerate deployment to meet heat network decarbonisation targets. (S6O-04992)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted no.

I first draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests and my previous work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

This aspect of the bill is critical, because it is about tackling homelessness and, crucially, preventing homelessness. That is not a current priority and the current measures are not working at the moment, as thousands of families and people are becoming homeless and are getting stuck in temporary accommodation for too long. That is a huge cost to them as individuals, and it is a huge cost to our local authorities.

Prioritising the prevention of homelessness is the purpose of my amendments in this group. I will shortly move amendment 306, which will establish a national register of homeless households. We cannot plan for what we do not measure, and data is currently fragmented across our councils. If we had more effective planning and a register, it would help us to understand the scale of the national housing emergency. We currently do not have sufficiently detailed data on those who are threatened with homelessness or those who are currently experiencing it.

We had a long debate about the matter several months ago with the then Minister for Housing, and we discussed the issue of data protection. I think that amendment 306 addresses both data protection and cost concerns. The detail sits in affirmative regulations after consultation by the Scottish Government. The information would constitute a minimal data set, and it would be subject to role-based access and audit. The Parliament would set the framework through the legislation, and ministers would be able to provide detailed safeguards for scrutiny and to design the detail, learning from discussions that I know will have been held over a number of months with our new Cabinet Secretary for Housing.

If we were to accept amendment 306, we would ensure that organisations were able to work together to allocate suitable housing, which would streamline the resources that are required for a household that has applied to be homeless in multiple local authority areas. The amendment also gives more detailed information about the depth and breadth of the housing issues that Scotland faces.

It is critical to understand the scale of the issue in order to identify how many new homes are needed, and exactly where. Amendment 306 gives us the opportunity to get exact information on the scale of the housing need through a deliberative and preventative framework, and that has to be seen as an opportunity. Having a high degree of accuracy on the number of homeless households and on where they are will help us to prioritise and to determine where we need to focus in building and planning for the exact types of homes that are needed urgently to address homelessness.

Amendment 313 would create a clear statutory gateway for proportionate information sharing when a relevant body believes that someone is homeless or is threatened with homelessness. Prevention fails when our health systems, justice systems and education systems know that there is a risk, but people do not ask for the help that they need and then slip through the net. The provisions in amendment 313 would give clear, early legal information sharing with an opt-out, so that people do not have to tell their story again and again before they get help.

At the cross-party group on housing, we published a report on student homelessness, and it was incredibly moving to speak to students, given the huge pressures that they are facing. We should think about how that impacts on their lives and about the situation of young people who are stuck in temporary accommodation. Amendment 313 would give us the opportunity to provide a legal basis for action.

I know that ministers might say that guidance could deliver that, but we have a bill in front of us that would give a legal basis and enable us to get into the detail, which ministers could consult on in detail with the Information Commissioner’s Office and stakeholders, and then come back to Parliament on. We need to share only what is necessary, no more, and only to stop a crisis before it happens. That is what amendment 316 aims to do.

I have included a raft of organisations in my next set of amendments, because an ask-and-act duty must exist whereby people who are aware of those risks then do something about it, because that is not happening at the moment. Naming bodies would also avoid buck passing and give consistency. The duty is proportionate: it is to ask, signpost, and make a referral as appropriate. It is absolutely not about taking over the roles of our councils; it is about helping them.

I have a series of seven amendments that name key organisations. Amendment 318 names the colleges of further education, the British Waterways Board and the Crofting Commission, which are bodies that potentially see risk early. Colleges support students who face family or financial shocks. The British Waterways Board and the Crofting Commission have access to rural households, whose housing security can be fragile. Therefore, a simple duty to ask and act would help to prevent crises before they reach the council.

Amendment 319 relates to community planning partnerships under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and would enable co-ordinated and place-based prevention. CPPs are potentially the natural forum to spot systemic risks—for example, local employment changes, transport disruption, service design—and would close the loop so that we have practical referrals, not plans. I know that Elena Whitham has also lodged an amendment that aims to add community planning partnerships, so I hope that there is a degree of support for that key issue across the chamber.

My last four amendments relate to a range of public sector organisations, including Highlands and Islands Enterprise, national park authorities, and regional transport partnerships. I also highlight Social Security Scotland in particular. Those organisations are important because they could save the public sector a huge amount of money at local authority level—and because they could keep people well and safe and prevent them from becoming homeless.

I move amendment 306.