Chamber and committees

I have less than a minute left.

Over the coming year, we will engage in a transformation project in relation to the delivery model. There are substantive issues that we all need to grapple with, particularly on the role of local leadership.

Some members used the debate to unleash their inner Nigel Farage and call for cycle lanes to be ripped up or to condemn particular councils for not ripping them up or for building them in the first place. If we wanted to, the Scottish Government could simply allocate that £320 million by 2024-25 purely according to where we think the maximum benefit would be for transforming modal shift. That would not give a fair crack at the whip to every part of Scotland. We could simply split that funding up by local authority and we would not foster the kind of local leadership that we see from some local authorities but not others.

We need to respond to some of the constructive challenges that have been put by the Transform Scotland briefing. It is clear that Transform Scotland welcomes what we are doing and is constructively challenging us to go further. Rather than simply complaining that there are specific examples that people do not like in their own neighbourhood, that is the kind of engagement that will make the Scottish Government’s programme on delivering active travel better.

If we want to get it right and be a nation in which everybody, inclusively, can choose to travel actively and sees that as a first natural choice, we need to change a great deal about how we deliver active travel, and not just spend money. Every political party across the chamber has a responsibility to foster local leadership and ensure that we are advocating for making it better rather than railing against projects, as, I am afraid, too many have done in this debate.

I was very much hoping for a wholly positive debate, which was perhaps setting my expectations just a fraction too high. However, many members made very positive contributions. There were speeches that focused on the public health and climate imperative—our combined imperative to achieve a sustainable transport system, and the role of active travel within it. Paul McLennan and Carol Mochan placed great emphasis on that.

A number of members, including Stephanie Callaghan and Beatrice Wishart, commented on partnership with the third sector. In response to Beatrice Wishart’s comments, I would say that more than a third of a million children have been trained via bikeability since 2010, and we are committed to continuing to build on that positive track record.

The role of local leadership—not just by local authorities but at community level—was touched on by a number of members, including Brian Whittle, Paul McLennan and Jackie Dunbar. Fiona Hyslop set herself the aspiration of covering everything from the global to the hyper local in her speech. It was clear in everything that she said that her intention was to ask, “How can we make this better?” I wish that everybody had taken the same constructive approach to the issue.

I would contrast, as Liam Kerr did a moment ago, two speeches in particular. Those speeches focused on the issue of inclusion and trying to ensure that our approach to active travel is inclusive, and respectful of the diversity of our society. Maggie Chapman’s speech and Jeremy Balfour’s speech both focused very clearly and, I am sure, equally sincerely on inclusion, but the contrast in tone between them was really clear to me. Maggie Chapman’s speech celebrated examples where inclusion is done well and constructively challenged us to do better, whereas Jeremy Balfour seemed to want policies, and indeed projects, to be scrapped. That was very much the tone that came across.

I am afraid that I need to make some progress.

I was pleased to announce a further £825,000 to support 36 innovative e-bike projects across Scotland through the eBike grant fund, which includes support for non-standard and adapted bikes.

The third delivery arm that I want to pick out today is the work that we are doing with children and young people. The impact of the under-22 free bus travel policy that has been implemented this year will be even greater alongside the work that we are doing to make it easier for young people to walk, wheel and cycle. In the past year we have invested £1.3 million in bikeability training for schools in 31 local authorities, thus supporting 47 per cent of schools to deliver on-road training. Next year we will more than double our grant funding to Living Streets Scotland to more than £500,000 for programmes including walk once a week, involving more than 100,000 primary school children and their families in 26 local authority areas to encourage them to walk to school.

I know just how passionately young people care about the climate emergency and the future of our world. They challenge us to respond to that passion. Our job is to give them the choices over sustainable travel to rise to that challenge, and it is the full package that will make the difference.

Supporting active travel choices and delivering projects also come down to leadership, at every level. I do not doubt that over the next hour and a half we will hear sincere and powerful arguments in favour of active travel. All political parties in this chamber went into the last election with significant commitments on active travel in their manifestos. I hope that we will have a debate that echoes that sincerity and significance.

Sadly, however, too often that support, at both national and local levels, can disappear when it comes to projects on the ground. It is not enough to support active travel in principle and then to stand in the way of project after project happening. Too often, what we see is delay, dilution and disruption, and even sometimes the opportunism of those who complain about an imaginary war on motorists.

Clear and consistent leadership is so important. In order to ensure that people can choose to walk, wheel and cycle more often, we also have to choose. We make the choices on who gets priority for finite road space, choices on speed versus safety, choices about changing our car culture and achieving a sustained reduction in traffic levels, and choices about what we want our future places to look and feel like.

The requirement to comply with the pre-action protocol rests with the landlord, who is required to take reasonable steps. If they do so and are then met with a tenant who will not engage, they have clearly still met the test of taking reasonable steps and making the effort to, for example, make information available, explore repayment schedules and so on. If they have made such efforts, they will have met the test, which will be taken into account at the tribunal’s discretion.

We will continue to listen to the sector and to recognise the very different circumstances—or heterogeneity, as I think one of the witnesses on the previous panel described it—of landlords in the private rented sector. I have met the Scottish Association of Landlords and other organisations that represent the sector on the landlords’ side, as well as those who represent the interests of tenants.

There is probably a need to recognise that there is a shared interest here in achieving the two goals that I set out earlier: closing the gap in outcomes between the social rented sector and the private rented sector; and raising standards across the board. Good-quality, responsible, professional landlords will see that as being in their interests, too. They do not want to have low-quality landlords—those who are sometimes called “rogue landlords”—operating in the sector. The professional and high-quality parts of the private rented sector want there to be good standards across the board and want an end to unscrupulous or unacceptable behaviour.

Beyond the specific measures that we are talking about today, we need to recognise that there are concerns around a wide range of other issues. For example, as the committee heard from the previous panel, there are concerns around energy efficiency and the move to net zero. All political parties support the move to net zero, and I think that the private rented sector recognises that there is work to do. On average, its stock has a lower level of energy efficiency than the rest of the housing stock, which impacts on the affordability of housing for tenants. We need to make sure that we support the whole sector to move forward with that agenda, as we do with the rest of society.

The Government continues to commit to working with the sector in all its diversity, listening to it and understanding its concerns, and we will do that, in particular, with landlords who want to work with us to raise standards, while taking on board the perspective of tenants.

That is hugely important. There have been periods when evictions in the private rented sector were the largest route into homelessness. That has perhaps declined proportionately but there is a real concern and a desire to make sure that that does not become a problem of the scale that Mark Griffin is are rightly concerned about.

The pre-action protocol and the tribunal discretion provisions are both safeguards that can help to prevent eviction into homelessness. The protocol, in particular, encourages and supports the dialogue that I referred to earlier between landlords and tenants so that they can work towards the establishment of repayment plans to help clear rent arrears and sustain a tenancy and to make sure that tenants have access to the financial support that can also help them.

The organisations that you have heard from have made similar points. Shelter in particular says:

“The pre-action requirements (PARs) for eviction proceedings on the grounds of rent arrears introduced another important preventative measure for eviction and homelessness ... this extra protection for renters”

against evictions

“should be made permanent. The PARs encourage landlords to help their tenants access support and advice on rent arrears management before any eviction action is taken, thus helping them to manage their debt and remain in their home.”

There is a pretty clear sense from the organisations that work most closely on homelessness and that rightly challenge the Government to continue to do more on homelessness prevention that the measures will be a positive step in that direction. I by no means suggest that they are the only steps that we need to take, but they will certainly be positive in helping to achieve that.

There is a great deal that we are actively looking at in the development of the housing bill and the consultation on the new deal for tenants. I welcome any constructive proposals for the ideas that we should be considering for inclusion in that bill.

I am not sure whether Miles Briggs is referring to correspondence that he has had with me; it does not immediately ring a bell. It might be that other ministers have dealt with it, and I am not going to try to answer on their behalf correspondence that I have not seen. If Miles Briggs wants to write to me about it, I will certainly explore that matter and discuss it with other colleagues who might have already considered his correspondence.

The fundamental point about the Coronavirus (Reform and Recovery) (Scotland) Bill is that is gives us the opportunity to make permanent some provisions that were introduced on a temporary basis during the pandemic. That is the fundamental opportunity that it presents. Of the four provisions that I mentioned earlier in discussion with Mark Griffin, the two that the bill deals with have clearly demonstrated themselves to be positive in terms of the impact that they have on people’s lives by resolving some disputes between landlords and tenants. They are also proportionate measures that can help the Government to achieve its policy objectives beyond the pandemic. The bill is the opportunity to take the relatively modest step of making permanent those successful temporary provisions.

On the wider question of other considerations that we need to address, the Government will, of course, be open to constructive suggestions from all sides as we develop the next piece of housing legislation.

In the European context, there is always a mix, but the mix is different in different places. Germany has a much bigger private rented sector, but it has had in place for quite some time some of the rights and protections that we will explore and develop in the year 2 housing bill.

In some European countries, there is little difference in the rights and protections for tenants between what we call the social rented sector and the private rented sector. In other places, the distinction that is made over who the housing provider is—whether that is a private or a social organisation—does not have the significant impact in producing a different experience for tenants that it has in this country. The consultation on the new deal for tenants and the development of the year 2 housing bill will be informed by consideration of all the examples and experiences from other contexts.

That is where what I said earlier about striking a balance between the interests and rights of landlords and tenants comes in. The tribunal will take into account the circumstances that pertain to landlords and tenants. Having some grounds where a tribunal is required or mandated to produce an eviction order shifts things heavily in one direction—it overbalances things in terms of not taking account of the tenants’ circumstances. However, giving the tribunal discretion does not take things to the other extreme; rather, it sets things in balance and ensures that the circumstances that apply to the tenant and the landlord are taken into account fairly.

I heard the discussion during the first evidence session. If I remember rightly, John Blackwood from the Scottish Association of Landlords said that a landlord would be poorly advised to pursue a request for eviction with the tribunal if they had not gone through the pre-action protocol, because there is an expectation that the tribunal would consider whether the landlord had complied with it.

We are looking to make permanent the temporary provisions that were put in place during the pandemic, because that will be the simplest and cleanest way to achieve continuation. At some point in the future, perhaps in the housing bill in year 2 of the session, we might be able to consider whether there are wider views. If the evidence that we gather between now and then shows that the protocol should be amended to create a stronger legal duty to ensure compliance, we could consider that. At the moment, making the current temporary provisions permanent is the cleanest and simplest way to ensure that we retain the additional level of protection.

It is pretty clear that we can have confidence that any landlord who feels the need to pursue an eviction, and who genuinely believes that they are acting reasonably in the circumstances, will have gone through the pre-action protocol steps in the first place, in order to demonstrate to the tribunal that their actions have been reasonable.