Chamber and committees

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.

In the financial year 2022-23, we will invest £336 million in our heat, energy efficiency and fuel poverty programmes.

Since 2013, we have allocated £61 million through our area-based schemes to tackle fuel poverty in North East Scotland. Those projects have benefited more than 18,000 fuel-poor households. Vulnerable families in the north-east will also benefit from the home insulation delivered through our warmer homes Scotland service, and we continue to provide free and impartial advice through our Home Energy Scotland service, which includes advice about relevant grant and loan schemes to help to meet the costs of improved home insulation.

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.]

I will in a moment.

It is perfectly legitimate to be against the policy and to think that it is a bad idea, either in general or in specific local circumstances, but I hear no argument, as a point of principle, for forbidding councils to make their own decisions on the issue.

I suppose that it is normal at this stage in a debate to say that it has been of high quality, worth while and enlightening. I fear that that is not true today and that we have wasted our afternoon listening to some hyperbolic but also, bizarrely, quite shallow and contorted arguments against legislation that the Parliament has already passed and regulations that have already been passed by committee, about the principle of local decision making, which has already been agreed. From the debate on the original amendment that brought the power into being to the discussions on the development of the policy through to today, I have yet to hear an argument on a point of principle as to why councils should not be allowed to make this decision.

I welcome increased scrutiny. We had scrutiny at committee yesterday, and consistent scrutiny has taken place throughout this process. I hope that Liz Smith is not suggesting that Opposition parties should never be able to bring ideas to the table during the legislative process, pass amendments and introduce changes to the law. I hope that the Conservative Party will seek to use that influence constructively—more constructively than Graham Simpson today, who not only made no serious argument on the point of principle but, like so many Conservatives these days, was reduced to childish name calling. If he is trying to suggest that the Greens are a political party unworthy to be in government, he maybe needs to raise his own game a little.

It might be legitimate to oppose the policy, but it is not necessarily consistent to do so. It is certainly not consistent for the Labour Party to do so, because it was, after all, a Labour-run UK Government that introduced this power south of the border and it was a Labour council in Nottingham that introduced the measure and showed it to be such a practical success—Mark Ruskell set out clearly the degree of success that it has had. That is why Labour councillors in Glasgow and Edinburgh introduced a proposal for the scheme in their manifesto and why Labour councillors in Leicester and Oxford are also looking to develop it—they see its success.

As for the Conservative show of consistency, the Conservatives have—regrettably—been in government in the UK for the past decade or so and they could have scrapped the power at any time they wished, but they chose not to.

There should, of course, be consultation about the levy, including with the unions. That point has been well made. Of course, there was a 12-week consultation during the summer last year. If councils bring forward proposals to implement the scheme, they will also be required to consult at that point. I note that the STUC, quite understandably, chose not to engage in consultation on the technical regulations. I also remind members that some organisations have not been cited at all; their arguments have barely been acknowledged. Friends of the Earth, Edinburgh Napier University, the Confederation of Passenger Transport, Living Streets, WWF Scotland, Sustrans and more have all offered their support to the scheme.