Chamber and committees

To be honest, I am not entirely sure whether Miles Briggs thinks that giving 10 years’ notice of the measures coming in is in some way bad for home owners. It is important that we give people clarity to plan and that we give businesses clarity and the timescale in which they can invest. That long-term time horizon will drive up investment in skills, capacity and innovation.

The member should also be aware that the green heat finance task force’s first report, which was published last week, begins to set out some of the innovation that is happening in, for example, financial products, green mortgages and other forms of driving more investment.

The assessment of the overall costs will vary significantly throughout the country and in different building types. Part of the consultation is considering the issues of abeyances and exemptions, to look at different circumstances.

I hope that Miles Briggs and his party colleagues will come to recognise not only that heat transition is necessary, but that investing in it and giving people a long-term time horizon to plan for it will maximise the economic benefits to Scotland and the cost-saving benefits to households in the long run.

We certainly do not discourage people from installing solar—far from it. In fact, no funding for solar was scrapped; the same funding is available. We need to maximise the heat decarbonisation potential of that funding, which is why we changed some of the rules on how people access it.

Just recently, the Scottish Government published a tenfold ambition for expanding the deployment of solar in Scotland. It has huge potential, not just to add renewable energy on to our grid but to ensure that householders, businesses and communities generate some income for themselves to reinvest in the built environment.

I have just seen the first response from the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee. He has responded to our proposals, saying:

“These are bold proposals to decarbonise Scotland’s buildings ... They recognise the importance of a long-term plan ... with a very welcome focus on upgrading properties at the point of sale.”

I very much hope that that spirit of co-operation and constructive engagement will characterise our political debate on the issue over the coming months.

We have engaged actively with colleagues from Denmark, who advised the Government on the shaping and framing of the heat networks legislation in the previous session of Parliament. I have also had the opportunity to visit Denmark to see the continued expansion of heat networks.

It is important to recognise that Denmark has had 50 years of experience in building modern heat networks, which now cover something like two thirds of households there. We do not have 50 years to wait to decarbonise our homes—we need to act more quickly. Heat networks will play an important role, as will individual systems such as heat pumps.

We will continue to be informed by our European partners, including those who are already installing clean heating systems at a significantly faster rate than they did in previous years. We need to learn those lessons and show that Scotland will gain the greatest possible economic benefit from joining that rapid heat transition.

Absolutely. We have also been working with the tenements short-life working group. I had a meeting with the chair only last week to talk about its recommendations.

I have said before and I say again that, as we frame some of the exemptions and abeyances as a result of some of the views that we will hear in the consultation, no one will be at all surprised that traditional tenements might take significantly longer than the rest of the housing stock to adapt. Many of those properties will need to benefit from heat networks rather than individual flat-by-flat heating systems. We will work with the grain of the technology development that is taking place and the recommendations of the short-life working group. As a tenement dweller myself, I understand the challenges, but I know that people—including my constituents and, I imagine, Mr Simpson’s—want the solutions, and that is what the Government is determined to give them.

Marie McNair is absolutely right to draw attention to that scheme, which is an excellent example, not just at the technical level of how heat networks can provide affordable and reliable decarbonised heat, but at an economic level, where leadership by the local authority is making sure that we get the maximum social benefit in developing it.

We have worked with our colleagues in Denmark and, in the previous session of Parliament, we passed heat network legislation. Just last week, I brought to Parliament a target for the amount of heat that we expect to be delivered through heat networks by 2035. Almost all political parties managed to bring themselves to support that target. That is the kind of signal that we need to give to ensure that local authorities, social landlords and other organisations see the delivery of new heat networks and the decarbonising and expansion of existing ones as a huge opportunity for them to achieve the heat transition in a way that works for their local communities.

I encourage Mr Lumsden and all members to read the detail of what we have published today, as well as the “Green Heat Finance Taskforce Report: Part 1”. Some in the media have picked up on individual lines in that report relating to things such as council tax. The vast bulk of what the task force has written in its report and of what we have written in the documents that we are consulting on is about support and incentives and making the system work for people.

We have looked at the option of civil penalties in relation to landlords who fail their tenants by not investing in bringing properties up to standard. We have not suggested that there would be, at least in the foreseeable future, a role for civil penalties in relation to home owners. I repeat that the balance of the benefit of the heat transition will be achieved if we place far more emphasis on support and incentives than on amplifying people’s fears by using words such as “punishment”.

Scotland has immense potential in the production of green hydrogen, and its application could decarbonise many aspects of our economy. There is an emerging consensus that hydrogen will play a significant role in some parts of our transport system, in industry and in a number of other sectors, but there is an expectation that it will not play a central role in home heating.

The process of generating renewable electricity, converting it into hydrogen, transporting it and converting it back into power that can be applied in heating will always involve efficiency losses at every stage. There will be far greater benefit from using renewable electricity directly, especially through devices such as heat pumps that achieve more than 100 per cent efficiency by drawing energy from the ambient environment. The UK Government is moving to the position, which we took some time ago, of recognising that, although hydrogen might have some role to play in heating, it is not expected to be a central one.

We, of course, continue to engage with all stakeholders that are interested in the green hydrogen economy in a wider sense. We in no way play down or seek to ignore the immense opportunities that hydrogen will present for our economy, the rest of our energy system and industrial uses.

Absolutely: there will be places where individual household-by-household or building-by-building solutions will be right, but there will be many parts of Scotland where district heat networks and communal systems across large multiple-occupancy buildings will be the right way to go.

As I said earlier, we have learned a great deal from the experience of our colleagues in Denmark. Last week, we brought the secondary legislation to set the 2035 heat target of 7 terawatt hours of heat through heat networks to Parliament, and it was agreed. We have a range of support from the Heat Network Support Unit, which shares skills and expertise to bring projects forward. The heat network fund is there to invest in pre-capital and capital support, which is needed to bring networks to fruition. We are also working with a wide range of institutional investors, who view this sector as a great place to put their money. I would far rather that all of our collective pension funds were invested in the kind of technology that we need in Scotland, such as heat networks, than in some of the industries that are making the problem worse.

The actions that need to be taken are the only things that will make a difference.

Last October, we took emergency action to support people who rent their homes. The Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 introduced restrictions on rent rises while a tenant remains in the same tenancy and strengthened protection against evictions. It is perfectly clear that the Conservatives would still rather that we ignored the needs of tenants, but the act has continued to provide important additional protection for tenants across the rented sector. Anywhere else in the UK, private tenants have faced the double impact of unfettered rent rises during and between tenancies. Therefore, I was very pleased when the Parliament voted to approve the regulations that extend the provisions for a further and final six months until March.

I need to make a bit of progress to set out the action that we are taking.

The new housing rights bill will incorporate the right to adequate housing into Scots law within the limits of devolved competence.

For a considerable time, we have been pressing the UK Government to end the freeze on local housing allowance. I am relieved that the chancellor has finally given in to that pressure and has scrapped the freeze on LHA. It is an important source of support for low-income households and should never have been frozen in the first place. The damage done by three years of that freeze is an estimated £819 million cut to the allowance across Great Britain, coupled with cuts of £181 million to Scotland’s capital budget. It has also hampered efforts to increase available housing. I sincerely hope that a freeze like that is never considered again, because no one should have to make the choice between paying their rent, feeding their family and heating their home.

I want to be clear that the scale of homelessness and inadequate housing is one of the big challenges that Scotland faces, but it is by no means unique in that respect. For example, statistics show that there has been a 74 per cent rise in temporary accommodation in England over the past 10 years. Acknowledging the wider situation does not by any means absolve us of the need to take action, but we should be clear about that wider context.

In 2023, we are not where we should be, but from listening to some members—some from the Conservative Party and some from the Labour Party—one could be forgiven for thinking that such housing issues exist only in Scotland. Brexit continues to cast a dark shadow over our construction industry and our workforce capacity. [Interruption.] I know that some members do not want to hear that.

The pandemic was followed by a cost of living crisis, which was topped by a disastrous experiment with far-right economics in the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget. That has put a huge strain on our resources. All too often, it is the people with least to fall back on who are hit the hardest. They are the same people who have already been hit by a decade of austerity and brutal welfare cuts—the people who are in temporary housing accommodation or in the poorest housing. That is why we, in Scotland, are determined to do all that we can to turn that tide.

If we offered our package of action to tackle the issues that we are debating—a programme that has included providing 120,000 affordable homes over the past 15 years, getting rid of the right to buy, ending no-fault evictions in the private sector, introducing an emergency rent cap, bringing empty homes back into use and enhancing homelessness rights—to colleagues in England, whether Labour campaigners or housing organisations, or to people elsewhere in the UK, I think that they would bite our hand off.

We will continue to be open to positive, constructive ideas, whether from Labour members or anyone else in the chamber, about how we can continue to make greater progress. People in the most difficult housing situations in Scotland need action and commitment, and that is what this Government is determined to continue to deliver.