Chamber and committees

I am grateful for that. Thank you to you and your colleagues.

Item 3 is consideration of continued petitions.

To all the many people whose petitions are still before the committee, I say that we have now arrived at that point in the parliamentary session when time is pressing, and the committee will be looking at a number of those petitions carefully to determine what more we think we can do in the course of this session, irrespective of the merits of the petitions. We have something like 120 open petitions and little time left in this parliamentary session in which to do justice to them. It may well be, therefore, that, notwithstanding the critical issues that are addressed by a petition, we will reluctantly come to the view that the issues that it deals with will potentially require to be addressed through a fresh petition in the next session of Parliament.

Some of these petitions have been continued because we thought the substance of the petition worth exploring, and I would not want anyone who is joining us online or is present in the room to think that we regard the issues that the petitions deal with to be no longer relevant. If we close such a petition, it is simply because we are not going to have the time in the current session of Parliament to pursue it in the way that we would wish.

The first continued petition for us to consider today—which we will discuss after what I am afraid will be a lengthy preamble from me—is PE2113, which was lodged by Wilson and Hannah Chowdhry. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide support to communities affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—commonly referred to as RAAC—by setting up a national fund to assist struggling home owners and tenants affected by RAAC; initiating a public inquiry to investigate the practices of councils and housing associations concerning RAAC, including investigation of how business related to RAAC was conducted, the handling of safety reports and property sales, disclosure of RAAC and responses to home owners’ concerns; and introducing or updating legislation similar to the general product safety regulations to ensure that developers, councils and housing associations are held accountable for the use of substandard property materials. Such legislation should mandate risk disclosure and make surveyors and solicitors liable for untraced defects, and it should also include provision for a comprehensive register of high-risk buildings in Scotland.

We last considered the petition on 13 November 2024, when we agreed to write to the Built Environment Forum Scotland, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Institute of Building, the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and the then Minister for Housing.

The RICS suggests that a national fund of the kind that the petitioner suggests could be useful, but it has questions about the applicability and, indeed, the necessity of such a fund, as existing surveys do not point to RAAC being prevalent.

The Scottish Government reiterates that the local scheme of assistance can in fact provide financial help. It also underlines local authority powers to decide spending priorities, as well as continued challenges to public finances. Although the UK Government has shown reluctance to set up a UK-wide financial support scheme, the Scottish Government continues to insist on one. In a recent response to a written parliamentary question, the new Cabinet Secretary for Housing said that she would engage with the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the issue, following the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner.

The RICS, the RIAS and the BEFS—the organisations to which I referred a moment ago—were not supportive of a public inquiry, arguing that it would be both time and resource intensive, that it would divert from an immediate response and that it may simply confirm what is already widely known. Their submissions suggested that it would be more appropriate to identify and remediate affected properties that are also in poor condition.

The RICS does not see the third ask of the petition as representing a proportionate approach. It points to existing avenues that can be explored if RAAC has not been properly identified by a regulated surveyor.

The BEFS highlights that the existing buildings at risk register has been paused following a review and suggests that any successor model should be more aligned with activity that renovates and reuses buildings at risk, rather than lists them.

We have also received additional submissions from the petitioners—some of whom, I think, are with us in the gallery today—who continue to highlight the predicament of RAAC-impacted home owners and the urgent need for action, particularly on the financial front.

I acknowledge that most of the submissions recognise the challenges for home owners and are generally in agreement that significant action will require to be taken to address the matter.

As I said earlier, we do not have a lot of time left in this parliamentary session. Obviously, in so far as we might want to take further action, we would have to make sure that it was quite targeted.

I say gently to those who have joined us in the gallery today that it is the Parliament’s position that nothing that is overtly of a campaigning nature should be displayed in committee rooms. I will not bring the heavy hand of bureaucracy to bear in that regard today; I simply mention it in passing for future reference.

Do colleagues have anything to contribute to our thinking on how we might proceed?

I will say that the suggestion was made by our agony uncle.

I have a dreadful feeling that my sympathy for this matter is drawing me deeper into an abyss. Is Mr Mountain trying to catch my eye?

Sometimes, the committee is alerted to conditions that we had not heard of before. It can be easy to follow the pathway when you are talking about high-level services, but that does not apply to some conditions, such as hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and hypermobility spectrum disorders. The committee will hear about the particular circumstances of a petitioner who will explain what their condition leads to, the difficulties that they have and the fact that they would get a more sympathetic response and level of treatment in another health board. These conditions are slightly below the radar, for want of a better term, in that they are not part of day-to-day household conversations, which can be quite difficult. The responses that the committee gets from health boards do not always advance matters, and it can be difficult for us to understand the justification for the different levels of treatment in different areas.

We thank the petitioner and hope that we have achieved some progress on the petition. If that progress fails to materialise or satisfy, we very much encourage the petitioner to come back to Parliament during the next session and tell us that that is so.

Item 4 is consideration of new petitions. Unusually, we are running 40 minutes later than planned.

The new petitions that we will consider today are some of the final new petitions that we will be able to introduce in the current parliamentary session. I say to those who have joined us for the consideration of new petitions that we undertake work in advance of our preliminarily consideration of a petition. We ask the Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre, for its view, and we also ask the Scottish Government for its preliminary view. We do that because, previously, those were often the first actions that the committee agreed to take, which simply delayed more substantive consideration of petitions.

I did not know that we were talking about just closing the petition, Mr Mountain, but thank you.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

Is that what you were going to suggest, Mr Golden? I see that you are nodding.

The only point that I will add is that I would not want the date on which we will be able to see the cabinet secretary to be conditional on her having responded in advance. We can seek to get that response, or perhaps the cabinet secretary will be in a position to speak to the response that might be made at the point when we have a meeting with her. Do members agree that we should do what has been suggested?

Members indicated agreement.