Chamber and committees

As I said, our forthcoming rented sector strategy will set out our ambitious proposals to deliver a new deal for tenants. That is a commitment in the Scottish Government and Scottish Greens co-operation agreement, which was published in August. The strategy will include plans for a new housing regulator for the private rented sector. It will include enhanced new rights for tenants, such as rights that give people the ability to decorate their homes and keep pets—things that speak to the dignity of people living in their homes. In addition, it will include restrictions on winter evictions and a range of other measures.

I look forward to publishing the strategy. I hope to have constructive engagement on the detail with members of all parties.

All new homes that are delivered through the affordable housing supply programme meet Scottish building regulations, which set high levels of energy efficiency. We are currently consulting on improvements to those energy standards, for introduction next year, and we are strongly focused on reducing the overall energy demand in new homes.

We also aim to ensure that all new homes that are delivered by registered social landlords and local authorities will be zero-emissions homes by 2026, which, among other things, will mean greater use of off-site construction in the social rented sector to deliver high-quality and energy-efficient homes.

The Scottish Government recognises the impact of fuel costs on tenants and the need for new homes to be designed to be as energy efficient as possible. For social landlords, the affordable housing supply programme supports the delivery of high-quality, energy-efficient homes and provides additional funding where homes are built to higher levels of energy efficiency than those that are set out in the current building regulations, which makes homes even more affordable to heat.

As I said in my first answer, through the building regulations, we are also reviewing the energy standards to deliver further improvements in energy efficiency and emissions reduction for all new homes. Following the recent review of investment benchmarks, additional funding is also now available to social landlords, through the affordable housing supply programme, to install heating systems with zero emissions at point of use.

It is still a relatively new experience for me to end such a debate with all my notes about members’ speeches that I would like to respond to as well as a speech that has been written for me. I will not have time for both—I will have to let someone down. I give my apologies to members whom I do not mention and to the officials if I do not use all the words that they have provided for me.

Obviously, it is always important at any time, and more so as we face recovery from a historic pandemic, that Opposition MSPs—in fact, all MSPs—urge the Government to go further and faster and to be bolder. That is absolutely as it should be. I was really heartened by the number of speeches that showed that, although we may have our differences, many members do not want us to be distracted by those differences and do not want them to prevent us from working together where we can, being bold and taking a transformational approach to the agenda.

On Mr Rowley’s closing speech for Labour in particular, I hope and believe that every member, regardless of their political party, wants us to go further and faster on the issues that he mentioned, including properly valuing the historically undervalued care work in our society that is so critical to us. He welcomes the work that has been done on that and I welcome the passion that he and other colleagues bring to the topic. That work is best advanced by making credible, workable and costed proposals for achieving it, and I hope that the Labour Party will do that rather than making an uncosted £1.8 billion proposal in an amendment in a debate. However, we will be able to do work on the matter if we choose to work together.

Mr Johnson knows that when we say “costed” we mean where the money is coming from, not just where it is going. We will aim to work together. We have a budget and a national care service bill ahead of us and those are places where we will continue to make progress.

I emphasise the scale of opportunity that there is to make change, whether on financial security for low-income households or through the actions that the Government is taking on public transport costs, which several members mentioned, school meals, school uniforms, rent and housing affordability. Christine Grahame mentioned some of the work that has been done throughout the Parliament’s existence on taking a universalist approach on issues such as social care and higher education. Those are all measures that will help to address affordability and financial security, but there is much more that we need to do.

Christine Grahame went on to challenge us all. In questioning what we mean by wellbeing, she challenged us all to be ambitious, take the approach that the post-war generation took and take the opportunity to move beyond what she described as today’s unsustainable, consumerist, growth-for-growth’s-sake economy. That is the scale of ambition that we should have and should capture as we seek to build a wellbeing economy.

Pam Duncan-Glancy, in an excellent speech, talked about harnessing the innovation that has been necessary due to Covid and described us as having an unprecedented moment of opportunity. I agree and hope that we can all seek to capture that spirit while acknowledging our other differences on many issues.

Pam Duncan-Glancy’s description of marginalisation and inequality as a form of lockdown was important. It recognises the reality that the freedoms that were restricted as a result of Covid were not equally shared in the first place. If we want to overcome that, we need to do what the Government wants to do as its second core objective of Covid recovery, which is to make the wellbeing of children and young people the priority.

A number of members mentioned fair work and good green jobs. There will be a great deal more work to do on that. As members know, the Covid recovery strategy is not a stand-alone document. It will connect with many others, including the national strategy for economic transformation.

I reassure my colleague Ross Greer that we do not seek a return to the old normal. He is right to question whether recovery is always the right word. Perhaps it is not. The national strategy for economic transformation will be focused on just that: transformation. He is right that the review of the national performance framework is another opportunity to address that.

Aspects of that work will, I hope, cut across the political spectrum. For example, Liz Smith was right to raise issues in relation to the retail and hospitality sectors. A retail strategy is coming and is due quite soon, and I hope that members across the spectrum will engage with that. However, we must recognise that retail and hospitality have suffered from deep, long-standing problems of poverty wages, insecure incomes and low rates of unionisation. Those are the conditions that lead people to have precarious lives, just as precarious housing does. The actions that the Government wants to take on tenants’ rights, and the rented sector strategy that will be coming soon, will aim to address precarious living.

I thank members who have engaged with the debate in an attempt to capture the shared moment of opportunity, challenging the Government to go further and faster and be bolder. Members should keep doing that. I do not have to urge them; I know that all members will. However, the Covid recovery strategy sets out a clear, ambitious vision for Scotland’s recovery from the pandemic. We will focus on the people who have been affected most over the past 18 or so months, increasing financial security for low-income households, enhancing the wellbeing of children and young people and creating good, green jobs and fair work.

I hope that all members across the spectrum share those three goals and want to help the Government to go further and faster. Central to the recovery from the pandemic is our Government’s focus on achieving those three goals. That is the future that Scotland needs and deserves, and I believe that, together, we can and will ensure that Scotland can achieve it.

Patrick Harvie has identified an error in his contribution and provided the following correction.

At col 5, paragraph 4—

Original text—

The tenant hardship loan fund has only recently been replaced with a grant fund, and I hope that the member will be willing to let that system be operational before she judges whether it is a success.

Corrected text—

The tenant hardship loan fund has only recently been supplemented with a grant fund, and I hope that the member will be willing to let that system be operational before she judges whether it is a success.

I thank Brian Whittle for that question, which is an excellent question to put to the UK Government. As he will know, it is the UK Government that regulates the energy economy, including decisions on the gas network.

Mr Whittle is shaking his head. I am sorry, but I am speaking about the reality. This Government cannot currently control the gas network and cannot make those decisions.

The UK Government’s heat and buildings strategy has been delayed for so long. I was really hoping that it would make a big splash announcement at the Conservative Party conference about how it will take some of these issues forward, but what did we hear on this agenda? The UK Government wants to make it easier to arrest the people who are campaigning and protesting for insulation and other energy efficiency measures.

That response—blaming the messenger—is not the response that we need. This Government hears the message and is cracking on with doing the work that it can with the powers that it has.

I am pleased that Joe FitzPatrick sees that the cultural sector is enthusiastic. It not only has a direct role to play in terms of its buildings; its buildings can also be showcases, because many of them are publicly accessible and can lead on the public awareness of the transformation that we need.

Cultural venues will be eligible for support, but that will depend on their ownership. Public sector support schemes can help to decarbonise those buildings that are in public ownership, whereas our small to medium-sized enterprise loan scheme can provide support to independent cultural venues. There is also support available to community organisations and national or regional non-profit organisations with charitable aims and objectives.

I would encourage all such organisations to contact the energy efficiency business support service, Local Energy Scotland or the Scottish Government directly to find out what may be available. If the member has in mind specific issues in his own area, he is very welcome to write to me.

I hope that Sarah Boyack knows that I would be very enthusiastic about working with her on that issue.

I see a really important role for the public energy agency in supporting the development of skills in this area. I know that there has been a little bit of political back-and-forth about whether we need an agency or whether we should crack on and create a single national energy company in the first instance, but the national public energy agency that is being created will be able to do a great deal to skill up local communities and make sure that we are sharing best practice and facilitating our ambition for communities to take control of the agenda.

There is a great deal about the agenda to be enthusiastic about and, again, I very much hope that we can work on a cross-party basis to achieve that.

As I said in my statement, we see the strategy as really critical to a green economic recovery for Scotland. We estimate that an additional 16,400 jobs will be supported across the economy by 2030 as a result of the investment that will be deployed in zero-emissions heat. In the immediate term, as outlined in the strategy, an investment of at least £1.8 billion over the course of this parliamentary session aims to strengthen demand and to support an increase in jobs and skilled workers through investment in the supply chain. The pace of the transition will require substantial growth in supply chains, particularly in the availability of skilled heating and energy efficiency installers. We will be working with Scottish Renewables to undertake a heat in buildings workforce assessment project and, towards summer next year, we will co-produce with industry a heat in buildings supply chain delivery plan. I hope that we will be able to maximise the opportunities that Rona Mackay has identified.