Chamber and committees

The frustration comes with the delay, and I know that that frustration is felt by SNP members who have voted for rent control policy for many years without action happening. There was never any need for the many years of delay, and we could have done far more good for people by acting sooner.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill must make rent more affordable, and it will need to be strengthened if it is going to do that. It must also provide more protection for people who rent their homes. People deserve the right to withhold rent payments when issues such as mould, damp and serious repairs are being left by landlords for months—sometimes years—on end. Will the First Minister back the Green proposal to give people the right to withhold rent payment until repairs are completed to stop landlords profiting while they ignore their responsibilities, or is that another issue that will take 10 years of pressure before the Government acts?

I first raised the need for rent controls well over a decade ago, to the complete disinterest of the Scottish National Party housing minister of the day. By then, private rented housing had already been growing dramatically for years, and rents had continued to spiral. The situation now is far more severe. Even if rent controls had been in place just for the past five years, people renting their homes in places such as Glasgow and Edinburgh would be thousands of pounds a year better off.

I am glad that the Greens’ efforts and the work of tenants unions have resulted in a housing bill with rent controls for Scotland, even if it is weaker because of SNP amendments. I am also glad that our plans for energy efficiency rules for private landlords are finally going to happen. Will the First Minister explain why it took so many years of pressure from the Greens to make the SNP accept that rents are too high, that standards are too low and that urgent action is needed?

Today’s motion reminds us of the hundreds of thousands of members of the UK forces and the tens of thousands of civilians whose lives were lost in world war two. Beyond those deaths, the war caused up to 85 million deaths worldwide—about 3 per cent of the global population at the time. That number includes the 6 million Jews and the millions of others who were exterminated by the Nazis. An estimated 40 million to 60 million people were displaced.

However, mere statistics are not enough to truly comprehend the scale of what had to be done to defeat Nazism and fascism, the sacrifice of those who fought and the scale of the impact on the millions of lives affected. I honestly do not think that I can begin to imagine the emotional release that must have come—including in households that were, as the First Minister described, still suffering their own personal grief while the celebrations began—when the announcement of VE day was made.

In the wake of such suffering, VE day led to new beginnings. In recognising that they had fought together and survived together, people decided to rebuild their society together, with a welfare state and a national health service—an astonishing legacy for that generation to leave us—the creation of international institutions of peace, a framework of international law, human rights and what eventually became the European Union.

However, it is important to remember that VE day was not the end of the story for those who were still enduring war in other parts of the world, or for East Germany, which went from Nazi to communist control. It would be decades before that country would achieve freedom and join a peaceful and democratic family of European nations. It was not the end of the story for the gay men who were liberated from Nazi concentration camps but re-imprisoned by the allies.

We must also remember that the struggle to defeat fascism remains our responsibility today. We see an expansionist war against Ukraine being rewarded on the world stage and the horrific images of genocide from Gaza. We see the brutality of immigration detention camps and imprisonment without trial in countries that claim to be democracies. We see far-right ideology growing around the world and the arrest of Nazis in the UK only yesterday. We hear prominent voices in major political parties seeking to abolish our fundamental human rights and tear up the astonishing endowment that the post-war generation left us. As we see the UK Government celebrating VE day on the same day that it announces an agreement with a US President whose ideology is indistinguishable from fascism, we need to remember that appeasement never works.

I will end with the words of Ken Turner, 98 years old, as he sat in a Sherman tank. Mr Turner served in world war two, as did the tank. In a video that was posted on social media yesterday, he said:

“I’m old enough to have seen fascism the first time round, and now it’s coming back.”

After driving that tank over a Tesla and crushing it, he gave this message to Elon Musk:

“We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again.”

Ken gets it—he knows what had to be done and the cost of what had to be done—but Ken also knows why it had to be done, and he knows that it must still be done. Let us never forget what Ken has reminded us of.

Scottish ministers have already lost two court cases on this matter, in July 2023 and April 2024. It is nearly two years since that first case, and my understanding is that the Open Seas Trust has alleged that Scottish ministers have continued to issue licences unlawfully and did not consider the national marine plan when they made those authorisations. Indeed, that has happened as recently as January. Will the minister commit to publishing in detail the new arrangements that he refers to—the detail of which, I understand, has not been made public—and to ensuring that the Government starts following the legal duties of the 2010 act and that authorisations do not allow significant harm to happen to priority marine habitats?

To ask the Scottish Government, when authorising fishing licences, what process it follows to comply with any legal duty under section 15 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, and the judgment in the Open Seas Trust v the Scottish Ministers case, to act in accordance with the national marine plan. (S6O-04609)

If there is time in hand, Presiding Officer, I will do so.

The member is very keen that people’s bills should be brought down and that they should not pay more but get less. Does she accept that private rented sector tenants in Scotland are paying more for their homes than they would if they had a mortgage? They are paying more but getting less, so will she support the proposal for rent controls?

I like to begin my contributions to these debates with one positive point, so I welcome the fact that peak rail fares are gone for good. The Greens abolished them, and the SNP brought them back. We criticised that decision and the SNP derided our criticism, not just on financial grounds but by pretending that the policy had not worked. Now, peak fares are finally gone for good. I am glad that the SNP has finally accepted that the Greens were right on that issue, but people need consistent low fares if they are going to change their behaviour, not that kind of chopping and changing.

As for the rest of climate policy, the proposed heat in buildings bill has been gutted; the target to reduce car traffic has been dropped, with no alternative put in its place; rail decarbonisation has been delayed; and there has been no serious progress on emissions from agriculture.

We have seen years of inaction on anything other than green electricity production, and that is what left the 2030 target out of reach. Now, the Scottish Government seems determined to abandon any serious policy ambition on the actions that are necessary to make this year’s climate plan remotely credible.

On child poverty, we should all recognise that the Scottish child payment is one of the most important and successful policies of the devolution era, but it was possible only because the money was raised. Those of us who had, for years, made the case for progressive tax won that argument and forced the SNP to drop its no-change tax policy. That link remains—we can invest only if we raise the funds. In a profoundly unequal society, the funds are there to be found.

However, the First Minister now says that the Scottish child payment is at its limit and, worse, he is echoing right-wing rhetoric about not giving people too much in case they lose the incentive to work. That is an age-old story. For wealthy people to have an incentive to work or do anything, they have to be given vast salaries, bonuses and tax havens, but for people in poverty to have an incentive to work, they must be kept poor.

The comments that I read in the First Minister’s interview were that he was worried that, if the child payment were higher, it would “reduce the incentive” to work.

Just like the goal to end child poverty, the Scottish Government’s wider goal of investing in public services links directly to a new challenge—how to tackle the rise of the far right—which the First Minister has chosen to accept personally by hosting a summit on it. Too many centrist politicians around the world think that, to defeat the far right, we have to copy it. That has failed time and time again, and we cannot afford to repeat it.

I like to hope—and I do hope—that the Scottish Government would not go down that route if immigration were under its control. However, on social policy, I fear that it is beginning to follow that playbook. By abandoning progressive policies that once had the support of every single party in this Parliament, the SNP is now showing itself to be as much of a threat to the LGBTQ communities as the Conservatives and Labour are. As Helena Kennedy said, about the scrapping of the misogyny bill,

“We are seeing a retreat from some of these areas that are being characterised as ‘woke’”.

That is not the way to tackle the issue. We need to change the conditions of our society that give the far right its opportunity to manipulate people and spread its message.

Many participants in the First Minister’s summit challenged us all to invest in public services, housing and conditions in local communities that need to change if we are to address the real and justified alienation that dangerous forces are exploiting. Repeated comments were made at that meeting that made very clear that we can build a fairer society that will recover from 15 years of austerity only if we continue to raise the resources that are needed fairly, whether that is through local tax reform or a wealth tax. However, I am sorry to say that today’s managerial SNP Government seems to be terrified of anything that looks like the bold, ambitious change that our country needs.

Will the member give way?