Chamber and committees

In many ways, that suggestion is slightly akin to the idea that all landlords will take the most exploitative or opportunistic approach. I do not think that that is true. The majority of landlords will obey the law and will not try to get around it and the majority of tenants will meet their responsibilities.

There is a concern that a minority of tenants might be tempted to stop paying their rent altogether, even when they can afford it. That is one reason why we thought long and hard about the exemptions from the eviction moratorium and decided, on balance, that there was a requirement to include severe rent arrears as a ground for exemption from that moratorium.

In my view, which we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon, tenants with rent arrears need support that is different to the interventions in the rest of the system. As the witness from Crisis said, they need direct support. Through the discretionary housing payments and the tenant grant fund, we have increased not only the amount of support that is available directly for tenants who are facing rent arrears, but the flexibility in the way that it can be offered. We will continue to look at how that might be developed further.

However, I think that the inclusion of the exemption from the moratorium will give landlords some confidence that there will not be that incentive for people to simply stop paying rent altogether. As I said, only a minority of people would ever be tempted to do that, but there will be no incentive. I think that I remember hearing John Blackwood welcome that measure as well.

I recognise that point, which has been made by some people who responded to the consultation on the new deal for tenants. If we were to try to incorporate that into the emergency legislation, we would be here a lot longer and would not have the emergency legislation in time to protect people. Some of these arguments will have to be built into the review of the existing grounds for repossession, the permanent legislation and our consideration of how we might alter that. However, your point is well made and the issue is certainly on our radar.

We will certainly keep the committee informed on timescales. If the updated research has not yet been made available, we will ensure that it is.

I think that we should all be concerned about the impact of housing policy and legislation on the housing sector and the housing systems that exist in our society. We should be concerned about provision and quality, and about people’s rights and the experience that they have as tenants. One of the longer-term goals of the Government is to close the gap in outcomes between the social and private rented sectors, because we regard adequate housing as a human right. That is the goal that we have.

Over the long term, in the past, there has been an increase in regulation in the private rented sector, which has gone alongside a substantial increase in the size of the private rented sector. The member mentioned some countries, but perhaps we can all choose the comparisons that we make selectively. There are other European countries with a higher level of regulation and long-standing systems of rent controls that have an even bigger private rented sector than Scotland. Therefore, it can be done properly and responsibly, making sure that we raise standards and that there is protection for tenants and tenants’ rights at the same time as making sure that our housing systems have an adequate supply of good-quality stock.

We have based some of the reporting requirements, as well as the provisions on the expiry or extension of the provisions in the bill, on a model that will be fairly familiar to those who followed the emergency coronavirus legislation.

It is important to acknowledge—the committee discussed this with the previous panel as well—that we are doing that having not yet dealt with some of the longer-term work that needs to be done on data in the private rented sector in particular. Aaron Hill made the point that we have more data, some of which is collected by the regulator, for the social rented sector. That is extremely useful, but we do not have that data in relation to the private rented sector. That is one of the reasons why the Government has a long-term goal not just to collect more data and have the mechanisms and machinery in place to do that, but to create a regulator for the private rented sector.

We will continue to monitor and report on the operation of the emergency legislation. We are conscious that some of the data that is being collected in real time is only going to come in as we are having to make decisions, so we want to work very closely with stakeholders, including those in the private, social and student accommodation sectors, to ensure that our decisions are informed by their expertise.

What we have been most keen to avoid is rent increase notices being issued in response to the announcement of the rent freeze policy. That is what the First Minister committed to and what we have managed to achieve. Rent increase notices issued after that date will be covered by the rent cap.

I do not think that it is possible to be more retrospective than that and go back in time to prevent rent increase notices that were issued in good faith under the rules as they stood before the announcement was made. I recognise that there are some people who will feel that all these measures go far too far and are too interventionist and others who will think that they do not go far enough and that we should be able to do a lot more. I think that we have struck the right balance in protecting tenants from rent increases that might have been prompted in response to the announcement without doing what would have been legally questionable and, I think, unfair in preventing the notices that were issued in good faith before the announcement having effect.

As we have discussed at some length in the chamber, a proposed late amendment to the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill—the purpose of which was to look at the coronavirus emergency legislation and decide which elements of that should be made permanent—proposed that a completely new provision be included that would have amounted to a near blanket rent freeze for a period of two years. As we debated in the chamber, very little argument was brought forward by the member who was behind those amendments to suggest that they were legally competent and ECHR compliant. That approach would have been much more clearly subject to legal challenge.

I am confident that we have now brought forward a bill that responds to an emergency situation in an appropriate and balanced way that reflects the interesting circumstances of both landlords and tenants.

To give tenants confidence, the Government is already doing a huge amount of work—and more is to come—on communications with people about the cost of living crisis, the support that is available and the advice that they can follow to minimise their exposure.

As for the sector, I come back to exactly the same points that I made to Miles Briggs about working closely with the sector ahead of any decision about the cap’s future. The initial six-month period, to the end of March, does not directly impact on social landlords’ rental income, but it gives a clear focus to ensure that we can work with them and make a decision that is well informed by their perspective on the future operation of a cap and the future of how to support tenants, not just through investment in the quality of properties—in repairs and maintenance and in net zero measures—but through the wider services that social landlords provide. We are actively engaging with them and creativity is being brought to bear, as I have said.

Those are important and well-put questions. Information in the impact assessments that accompany the bill will give some indication of the differential impact and the intersectional aspects of inequality in relation to it. [Interruption.] I have just been told that those impact assessments have just been published, so they will be available to you.

It would be wrong not to reflect, as I did earlier, on the fact that data on the private rented sector is one of the areas where there is a lot more work to do. The social rented sector tends to be a better position, not only because of certain requirements, but because in many cases it is structurally easier to collect that data. The social rented sector has larger landlords, which operate mostly in a close geographic area and are well regulated. Because the private rented sector is much more fragmented, with many more individual landlords, it is much harder to collect that data under the current framework. That is something that we are looking to improve.

On the question of accessing the various support schemes and funds that the Government has put in place, I will certainly engage with my colleagues who are responsible for social security to make sure that we join the dots between the issues within their remit and the ways in which the bill and its reporting mechanisms will operate.

I have not expressed concerns about the unworkability of the bill. I am satisfied that it is compliant and consistent with devolved competence.