As the minister will be aware from our consideration of the bill, I am keen for the City of Edinburgh Council to be able to get on and implement a levy as quickly as possible. As Daniel Johnson mentioned, I lodged probing amendments at stage 2—they were very similar to a couple of those that Ross Greer referenced—in relation to delivering the potential benefits of a visitor levy in a timely manner.

I listened carefully to and have reflected on the discussion at stage 2, as well as the views that we received from the industry. At the end of the day, I want the levy to work. A key part of that involves ensuring that accommodation providers have the time that they need to be ready to introduce the levy from day 1. At the same time, it is key that the benefits of the visitor levy are not delayed for too long.

The City of Edinburgh Council can move more quickly than other local authorities, because it has been working with local stakeholders on a transient visitor levy for years. Some of us have been involved in discussions about the need for a tourist or visitor levy for almost a decade. I know that the local authority has been following the legislative process in the Parliament very closely and that it has already carried out a number of consultations in Edinburgh to get the discussion going on the implementation side of our ambition.

Will the minister commit to working closely with the City of Edinburgh Council to ensure that the work that it needs to do to meet the consultation requirements that are set out in section 12 of the bill is kept to a minimum, as is reasonable, so that lessons can be learned from our experience in Edinburgh and that we can get on with joining cities and localities across Europe in introducing a levy? I would be delighted to take an intervention from the minister.

I will definitely take up that offer. The meetings with the minister and representatives from the council have already been useful.

I will sum up. In some ways, Edinburgh is almost a pilot area, because the work has been going on for so long. It is crucial for our cultural sector and the key services that a tourist visitor levy would enable us to deliver that we are able to get on with it.

I welcome the minister’s constructive comments. I hope that we can get the bill through and get it implemented in a timely manner, and that we do not have to wait for too long. As others have said, there are local authorities that are champing at the bit, and an awful lot of hard work has already been done in preparation. I hope that we can be constructive and get moving on the matter.

I will kick off by drawing members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests with regard to my former work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

I thank Shelter Scotland for its tireless campaign on this issue, and I thank all the homeless charities that work on preventing homelessness and on supporting people to recover from what is a horrific experience that no one should have to go through. I also thank the many constituents who have been in touch to share their experiences of the housing emergency that we are facing in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

Like many others around the room, I am getting a sense of déjà vu, because we are back in the chamber arguing that Scotland is in a housing emergency. What has changed in the past few months is that there is a little pot of money from the Scottish Government but also that there are more local authorities declaring a housing emergency and more worries about systemic failure happening—or at risk of happening—in our councils, so we need to act now.

If we can agree unanimously that we face a housing crisis and that there is an emergency, that will be a start, but we then need to look at the policies that we can work on across the whole of Scotland.

A Labour Government could not come soon enough. After the economic crisis that we have seen, which was mentioned by Kevin Stewart and others, the Liz Truss budget is not funny. It felt funny in terms of the lettuce, but it has damaged our economy and led to people’s mortgages rocketing. Yes, we need a Labour Government, and we need it urgently. We need action.

Several people mentioned the fact that—

We need new houses being built. We need practical solutions. We need new homes across Scotland. Our constituents deserve nothing less. Emergencies demand responses. We are in an emergency and it is time to respond. It is time to build the new homes, bring back homes into use and tackle poor-quality housing. People deserve that, and they need those homes now.

Let me get started.

Let us think about those 10,000 children who do not have a safe and permanent home and how that impacts on their lives. It will look different in every local authority. There are key issues that need to be addressed. Several members—Rhoda Grant, Colin Smyth and Emma Roddick—talked about the rural challenge in relation to short-term accommodation and the lack of affordable housing, which means that people cannot afford to stay in their rural communities. There is the heartbreaking experience that Colin Smyth mentioned, and I think that we could all quote problems. I have a constituent who wrote to me to say:

“I simply don’t have an extra £200 a month in my already tight budget. I’m a single mother already cutting back on everything to provide for bills and food for my seven-year-old son and myself. If I don’t pay such a high rent, we will be evicted and end up homeless.”

It is a real problem. We do not have enough affordable social rented housing and the overall shortage of housing is pushing up the cost of private rented properties. We need more new housing and we need it right across the country—

Briefly, yes.

I am down to my last 30 seconds, I think.

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the culture secretary has had with the finance secretary regarding future funding for culture, in light of its commitment to invest an additional £100 million in the sector. (S6O-03423)

No, I will not. This is a debate. We are each allowed to speak.