Chamber and committees

In short, I do not think that that is okay, but it connects directly with the issue of the private rented sector having no regulator or equivalent to the charter. The new deal for tenants consultation does not go into specific questions about whether there should be a charter like this for the PRS, whether the charter should be expanded to cover it or precisely what the regulator should be. Instead, it opens up a range of options in that respect. At the moment, however, the private landlord in the situation that you have described is not regulated in the same way in relation to prevention of homelessness.

Ideally, if things are working well, social landlords hear the tenant voice directly. The regulator has the responsibility, which it is given by Parliament, to monitor the work of social landlords against the outcomes, including on tenant participation and tenant voice.

As I said earlier, since the creation of the charter, in 2012, and the review of it in 2017, there has been pretty good evidence to suggest that it has been an effective tool in raising standards. Nevertheless, if there was a major turn in the other direction, that would be picked up by the regulator in its reports to Parliament and there would be an opportunity for either Government or the regulator itself to take action.

Sure, I can say a wee bit about it, but I might not be able to say much more than that because, as I say, the consultation is live. It is an important question, though, about the extent to which a regulator for the private rented sector would either align with and share some functions with or diverge from the current Scottish Housing Regulator for the social sector.

There are significant differences at the moment. We are committed to reducing the gap in outcomes between the tenures, but there will probably always be some degree of difference in relation to the legislative framework, for example. Towards the end of the charter, in the section on rents and service charges, we have a very wide difference between the legislative arrangements relating to rent in the social rented sector and the broadly free-market approach in the private rented sector.

We are proposing major changes there; we have the experience of rent pressure zones, which have not been used at all in Scotland. We now have a commitment to introduce a single, national system of rent controls with some degree of local flexibility. We are not yet at the point of having a detailed proposition on that in legislation to put to Parliament, but that work will continue. Whatever we were to say about rents and charges within the private rented sector would need to take account of the legislation that is still to be developed, introduced and debated in Parliament.

Other elements of the charter would fairly reflect an expectation that somebody should have of their housing, regardless of which tenure they are living in. Something like the charter, if that is the way we go in relation to the PRS, would have some common points but probably also some divergence. The same thing will be true of the PRS regulator that we are proposing. There will be a very live debate about the extent to which it should align with or diverge from the approach of the existing social sector regulator.

Clearly, the social rented sector should be taking that role, and very many social landlords do take a wider role in relation to environmental factors and the community at an economic and social level. As I mentioned earlier in relation to energy issues, social landlords could have a critical role in investing in the heat networks that need to be developed and implemented extensively throughout this decade. Those heat networks will have an impact not just on social landlords’ own tenants; they can be catalysts for the wider community way beyond the social landlord itself. There are already examples of that, but not enough.

The question is: to what extent should the charter seek to capture that wider role? As I said earlier to Mr Briggs, in the consultation that we undertook, we wanted to ensure that the changes to the charter that we have proposed address the issues that tenants want to be addressed in the charter in a way that they feel is effective for them. That is not to say that other issues are not important, too—to social landlords and to the Scottish Government, for our net zero targets and for our homelessness and child poverty targets. Not every important issue is necessarily best captured in the charter itself.

The wider approach that Willie Coffey talks about is hugely important, but that is slightly outside the scope of what we should be putting in the charter. The revisions that are being put forward today are pretty much in line with the strong view that what is currently in the charter was working well and needed only modest changes.

I am turning to my colleagues. I am fairly sure that there is a requirement to make tenants aware of the charter.

The charter relates more to the responsibilities of social landlords than to those of the local authorities, unless we are talking about council housing. The separate function with regard to the provision of, for example, welfare rights advice or housing advice is separate and does not necessarily come within the charter’s ambit. That said, the approach that we are taking in trying to achieve tenure-neutral outcomes and to introduce regulation in the PRS that, although perhaps not identical to that for the social rented sector, integrates with it to get a more coherent approach to achieving the human right to adequate housing for everybody, regardless of tenure, will go a long way towards addressing situations such as you are describing.

Some of the responses from individuals might have been about the service that they were getting from their social landlord, rather than about the contents of the charter. That is probably the main reason for that statistical difference between organisations and individuals in their overall level of positivity .

In that context, it is always legitimate for people to raise whatever issues they have. If they have an issue with a social landlord, it is perfectly fine for that to be heard. That individual difficult case or circumstance needs to be dealt with by their social landlord or, in extremis, by the regulator, rather than necessarily being reflected in the charter itself.

However, the overall view from organisations and from individuals was pretty supportive on the contents of the charter. There were really not many major proposals for change. That is why the changes that we are proposing are relatively modest.

The heat in buildings strategy, which we published recently, goes into those issues in great depth. The strategy has to be seen in the new context of the cost-of-living crisis. The Scottish Government is doing what it can to support people through the current cost-of-living crisis in a broader sense, including through our winter support fund and other aspects of our social security spending, which go beyond the resources allocated by the United Kingdom Government.

On the longer-term development of the supply chain, we believe that there are some 16,400 good-quality jobs for Scotland that can be created through the zero-emissions heating agenda. That will go hand in hand with the regulatory approach that we are taking to make sure that all housing, in all tenures, achieves a good band of energy performance, as well as conversion to zero-emissions heating.

I am afraid that I do not have that precise data with me at the moment, but I will write to the member and see whether we can answer the question in detail.

On behalf of the Scottish Green Party, I offer our solidarity with the people of Ukraine in this moment of crisis.

Ukraine is a sovereign democratic nation whose people have the inalienable right to self-determination. It is a European nation, as its people have made clear by majority, time after time in recent years. Today’s escalation of a Russian invasion that started in 2014 is a flagrant and grievous breach of international law, which must be responded to in the most comprehensive terms. No form of sanction should be off the table. Action against Russian state-backed corporations and other entities must be swift, and here in the UK it is essential that we tackle the money-laundering networks that are used extensively by Russian elites.

It now seems inevitable that there will be a significant flow of refugees from Ukraine in the coming days, weeks and months. I trust that Scotland stands ready to play our part to support them in any way that we can. Let us all hope, even at this hour, that a prolonged war can be prevented, as the devastation that that would bring does not bear thinking about.

We are proud to stand with the people and the Government of Ukraine, and I am very pleased that that message is coming from the entire chamber. [Applause.]