Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

Good choice. Mr Sarwar will understand that part of what constitutes affordability—as well as rent and mortgage costs—is energy costs, which increased by 10 per cent as a result of Labour’s decision yesterday. However, Labour also has figures that say that around 400 people will die in the UK from the decision to withdraw winter fuel allowance. How many of those deaths will happen in Scotland as a result of Labour’s decision?

I thank Martin Whitfield for taking an intervention. If he does not want to acknowledge the Truss budget, the cost of living, the cuts to the capital budget and the cuts to financial transactions, will he at least admit the backlog that was caused by the fact that the Labour Administration—along with the Liberal Democrats—built only six council houses in eight years? You started this problem.

No I will not take it. He never takes interventions from me, unfortunately.

They spent eight years building six council houses at the same time as the right to buy was going around.

Those are the fundamentals of the crisis that we have, but that is not even being recognised by the other parties. This is a completely false debate. It kind of takes this Parliament’s name in vain if they cannot even properly discuss the foundations of why we have a housing crisis. If this is all about attacking one party, they are not going to get to the bottom of the crisis, which shows that they have no serious intention of dealing with the crisis.

Jackie Baillie just cannot escape from the fact that the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats built six council houses in the course of eight years and accepted the right to buy, which diminished the stock of housing available at affordable prices.

There have been some constructive and positive elements to the debate. We heard some positive suggestions from Ben Macpherson, who asked for a partnership approach—albeit more in hope than expectation, I think, given some of the other contributions. We also had some good suggestions from Emma Roddick, Bob Doris and Christine Grahame. Although he is not here just now, I think that Edward Mountain also tried to make some positive suggestions.

It is important to try and think of positive suggestions. I myself have written to the Government on that. In my view, the devolution of housing benefit, which has long been talked about but never agreed, could present new opportunities, not least in relation to housing for homelessness, which is very expensive and unsatisfactory, if the budget was dealt with in the correct way.

An idea, which was perhaps mentioned by Christine Grahame, is local government pension funds. I declare an interest in relation to my own pension fund. The Falkirk pension fund has contributed towards new house building in that area. From an objective point of view, you would think that pension funds would find it attractive to build houses, as it provides a long-term investment. On that, if they build houses that are very energy efficient—I know that Willie Rennie was not too keen on the Passivhaus as an ideal—such houses can reduce to virtually nil the energy costs of living in a house, which means that they can charge more rent. Apart from being good for the environment, an emphasis on new build and energy efficiency is good for homelessness numbers as well.

In relation to the housing that we do have, a policy of having targeted affordable housing for people such as social care workers and other workers who are very important in areas would be a good idea, if it is possible.

I have to say, however, that the rest of the debate has been pretty dispiriting stuff. In fact, it has not really been a debate for many people; it has been a press release that has found words in this chamber, which is unfortunate. I think that it was Anas Sarwar who said that it was “pathetic, inept and shameful.” I think that that has been the contribution that we have had from the Labour Party.

The Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition that we have in the Parliament has refused to acknowledge even the existence of some of the most fundamental causes of the housing crisis. There has been no mention of the cost of living crisis, no mention of rocketing energy costs and no mention of Liz Truss—but there is no surprise there. Brexit has had a massive impact on construction costs and on labour availability—that was also not mentioned by any of the parties. The budget cuts that the minister mentioned in both capital funding and financial transactions are huge, but there has been no mention of that.

This is critical: no one in the coalition of others who want to be the Government in this place has mentioned, or spoken out against, £160 million being taken out of the Scottish Government’s budget at 90 minutes’ notice. They have all accepted that and they all support it, but if they accept that, they must accept the fact that the money is not available for us to do the things that we want to do. There was not a word from any party about that.

I think that Willie Rennie must have been joking when he said that we should go for volume. This is a guy who supports the Liberal Democrats, who built six houses in eight years between 1999 and in 2007. “Go for volume,” says Willie. He said that the Government should be embarrassed, but I think that Willie Rennie should be embarrassed by that shocking record.

Despite all the things that I have said about the budget crisis and Liz Truss, the Labour Party is currently telling us that the UK’s finances have been completely ruined by what the Tories did but that that apparently had no effect on Scotland. That is what Labour is asking us to believe.

Let us compare that with Labour’s track record in Wales, as Gordon MacDonald did. The Labour Party has an appalling record in Wales. We have seen what Labour does when it gets a chance of government: six houses, whether that was in eight years or the last four. I am happy to correct the record if I am wrong but, as I understand it, Labour created six houses in an eight-year period, or perhaps in the last four years. That is Labour’s record—that is what happened. When the Labour Party tries to put forward a prospectus for housing in Scotland at the next election, people should remember its record.

Of course we must look at how to increase housing. How can we increase housing for veterans, which is a very important area? We do not have the ability to meet the demands of all veterans. How do we combat the Brexit-fuelled inflation in labour costs? Those are some of the things that the other parties could have discussed in this debate, but they were not discussed. Instead, it has been the usual party-political nonsense.

I have one final question. Of course there are lots of questions to ask and of course the Government has to answer them. That is one of the responsibilities of government, the biggest of which is how to increase the pool of capital to build houses. The big question that I asked, and to which I never got an answer, although there is an answer that is known by the Labour Party, is how many people in Scotland are going to die because of the cut to the winter fuel allowance there has been imposed by the Labour Party?

How late on did you tell them?

So, essentially, 1 per cent would mean doubling the budget?

Just remind me again, because I lose track. What has been the pattern of national lottery funding? Will you outline whether there has been a reduction in the past few years? Has that been part of the issue?