Chamber and committees

A ridiculous number.

The new approach is clearly going to fail. This was one of the few areas of climate policy that the independent Climate Change Committee had praised, and it is being gutted. If there is one thing that we have learned about climate policy in recent years, it is that setting targets without decisive action to meet them is meaningless. The loss of the property purchase trigger will clearly result in a dramatically slower uptake of clean heating in Scotland. Given that the Government has chosen the slower path to heat decarbonisation, will the Acting Minister for Climate Action tell us which other sectors will work faster to cut emissions in order to make the new climate plan remotely plausible?

On Monday this week, the Scottish Government withdrew critical protection against rent rises. For the first time in years, landlords will now have the power to instantly set rents back to uncontrolled free-market levels. Tenants will not be able to stop that, and they will not be able to afford it.

Let us be clear about the scale of the Scottish National Party’s rent hikes. Data from Generation Rent and Living Rent shows that, even when the recent protections were in place, some landlords still tried to break the rules. In Glasgow, one landlord tried to double the rent from £700 to £1,400 per month. However, until this week, thanks to the temporary rent protections that I was proud to introduce, people such as that could be stopped. That unbelievable increase was capped by the regulator, with the rent at £784 instead of £1,400. Does the First Minister now understand why tenants across Scotland are so fearful about what he has done?

I am very grateful for the First Minister’s kind personal remarks, but I fear that his comments on the policy issue are complacent. He talks about the protections that I just described, but the point is that those protections ended this week—they are no longer there to protect people. Such complacency is similar to what we heard recently from the Minister for Housing. When those figures were put to him, all that he could say was that he was asking landlords to be sensible with these new, utterly uncontrolled powers.

In truth, there is now nothing to hold back a tide of unaffordable rent rises. The Scottish Government has not even published an assessment of the number of people who will lose their homes as a result. The protection that the Greens introduced succeeded in preventing eye-watering rent increases. Rents in Scotland are already too high—

—and with energy bills going up and social security under attack, people need a Government here that will be on their side. Will the First Minister think again, stop watering down the new bill and ensure that it can cut rents instead of locking in ever more rent rises for the future?

I am grateful not only for having known Christina McKelvie but for the opportunity to offer the Scottish Greens’ deep condolences to Christina’s family and friends for their very personal loss. It is a loss that will also be felt very deeply by everyone who worked with Christina—most acutely by SNP colleagues.

As we have already heard, Christina was held in great affection right across the political spectrum. I hope that the whole family and, of course, our colleague Keith Brown, know that they have been in our thoughts and will remain so.

Over the past week, there have been some common themes in the conversations that I have had with colleagues from different political parties about Christina. I have heard people reflecting on her friendship, her warmth and the way in which her passionate belief in her values and, at times, her very real anger at injustice never took away from her sense of fun and her positivity.

I have heard from so many members who recall Christina’s kind words when they were first elected. That is something that means a lot to new members. Coming here for the first time can be a daunting experience, and I know that many in the chamber today who arrived here in recent elections will value those memories of Christina’s friendship and warmth. In offering our condolences to those who knew and loved Christina, I hope that all of us in the Parliament can return some of that friendship and warmth.

As has been said, Christina’s work in the Parliament and her first ministerial role covered equalities, and there could hardly have been a better fit. I express my gratitude particularly for her strong track record on LGBT+ rights, equality and human rights, as she often faced down some of the divisive and nasty forms of prejudice—both old and new. I lost count of the number of times that I heard her speak with passion about the need to treat asylum seekers in our society as human beings and about the pride that Scotland should take in offering safety and a welcome to those who need it.

I will mention a final theme that has come up in the conversations that I have had over the past week. It is something that has been on my mind, but I have heard many others make the same observation. We all know that politics is not always a nice business. It does not always bring out the best in us. People sometimes worry that the job will change us for the worse, and sometimes that happens. In my experience, Christina McKelvie defied that fear. She never gave in to cynicism, entitlement or cruelty. She remained a person who instinctively expressed compassion and kindness, so I hope that her life will be celebrated, of course, just as a lovely human being, but also as an example that politics and politicians can stay human and humane. [Applause.]

The minister seems to acknowledge that, fundamentally, the crisis is driven by volatile fossil fuel prices, yet his statement comes just two days before the Government is widely expected to dilute, downgrade, delay or ditch the only serious policy measure that it had among its proposals—to get Scotland off the gas grid and, instead, to use cheap, clean, renewable electricity for our heating. There seems to be no chance of reaching the £1.8 billion investment target that the Government previously committed to. With fuel poverty rising and climate targets being missed, most rational people would say, “Let’s speed up.” Why is the SNP slowing down?

It will always be the case that governments and populations can make democratic decisions that create uncertainty. Brexit is the supreme example of that. In the run-up to that decision, nobody knew which way it would go and the result fell on a knife edge. There were then several years of profound chaos and uncertainty as a result, and we are still living with a lot of the damage of that. However, that does not take away from the fact that there was a democratic process and that decisions can be made. There will always be scope for some uncertainty and unintended consequences. The critical thing is that, when such decisions are being made, you listen to those who warn about the consequences and you make an informed decision about whether those consequences are acceptable.

That was easy. Anyone else?

Yes.

David, do you want to add anything on the types of concrete, practical changes that could be made regarding exemption criteria, burden of proof or anything else that you want to throw into the mix about specific changes that we ought to advocate in our report on this inquiry?