Chamber and committees

The impact has been a subject of concern from the social rented sector, but we have been pleased with our ability to reach agreement with the sector. The average approach—the approach of not setting a cap and not even seeking a voluntary, uniform cap for the social rented sector, but of offering an average instead—allows for some flexibility.

Some social landlords will have an urgent need to invest in quality and maintenance as well as other aspects of their investment programme. Some will have managed more successfully than others to keep rents low and under control during the pandemic. They will not all have followed exactly the same path, because they are independent bodies. Given the different circumstances that different social landlords are in, it was appropriate that we allow some degree of flexibility.

Social landlords exist for a social purpose and they are not there to extract the maximum rent that they can extract from the properties that they have on offer; they take that social purpose very seriously. None of them would seek to impose unaffordable rent increases or ones that could reasonably be avoided. In fact, we are seeing early indications that the rents that are being set are significantly below average. I have seen figures from some local authorities that have set their rent increases for the coming year at 2, 3 or 4 per cent—significantly below the average that we have been seeking. We anticipate that that will continue to be the case, and the Scottish Housing Regulator will continue to give us information on that.

Obviously, we are in regular dialogue with them. I have to say, though, that I have seen some media reports that have not quite captured the full detail of this. If there is an announcement about what is going to happen to the cap, not every media report will properly capture the difference between the impact on the social rented sector and the impact on the private rented sector. That is why we need to continue to work directly with social landlords, for example, who have that on-going responsibility for consultation and tenant engagement, as well as with private landlord representative bodies and organisations that speak directly to and advocate on behalf of tenants.

It also worth reflecting on the fact that there is a role for organisations that engage with tenants in the social rented sector but which are not social housing providers, such as the Tenants Information Service, and the work of local authorities such as Glasgow’s tenant-led housing panel—is it a panel? [Interruption.] I have been told that it is a commission—I will actually be seeing some of them later this week. They, too, continue to have a role not just in letting us know about additional channels of communication that we should be using but in speaking directly to tenants. Indeed, they have been very active in doing so.

Previously, when we have debated not so much this legislation but the new deal for tenants, it has been clear that ideology comes into the debate a little bit. There are some who are of the view that a more deregulated, more free-market approach to housing will increase supply and that any impact on prices will be detrimental to that. Actually, if we look at some European countries that have had systems of rent controls in place for a long time, we see a larger private rented sector as a proportion of the housing stock than we see in Scotland.

That is not the universal experience, and it is well understood that rent controls can achieve their objectives well or poorly. We continue to engage with all stakeholders to ensure that we design a system that is right for Scotland and that will be able to achieve protection in terms of affordability but which will also be consistent with what Scotland needs in terms of good-quality housing supply and investment in all the hugely important priorities around the transition to net zero.

There is a connection between rental income and investment in either sector. That relationship between rental income and investment is not the same in the social rented sector—which, as I said earlier, is a non-profit-making sector—as it is in the private rented sector. There are examples of build to rent, but a great deal of private rented accommodation is not actually provided by landlords—it is not necessarily built by them but is acquired by them as existing property.

Therefore, there are huge differences between the sectors, and we are keen to continue to do the work that we have been taking forward since the publication of the new deal for tenants and which will continue to be in development until the bill is introduced later this year. I look forward to further extensive dialogue with the committee at that point.

In order to ensure safety for everyone who travels actively, we need to reduce the barriers to active travel. We also need to continue to invest in safe infrastructure. The Government is doing that on a scale beyond anything that Scotland has ever seen.

However, as Pam Duncan-Glancy rightly says, we also need to ensure that there is a wider package of support. All the pilots issue safety equipment to the children who have been provided with a bicycle, and the range of models used in the pilots also needs to inform the design of the national scheme. That is why the evaluation of those pilots will be important in providing useful information to make sure that our national scheme is as successful as possible.

Our commitment to encourage our youngest citizens to make active travel choices by providing free bikes for all children of school age who cannot afford them was initially met through nine pilots that have operated since summer 2021. An independent evaluation of the pilots was published on 27 January 2023, and the total number of bikes issued is 3,650, including 52 adapted bikes.

The free bikes activity has taken place in 20 local authority areas, including Glasgow, although we do not record data at a local authority level.

Unlike some other members, Mr Smyth is serious about wanting to see such a transition happen—and happen fairly. I mentioned the innovation that is happening in having more affordable, lower-cost heat pumps coming on to the market from providers such as British Gas and Octopus. We will see more of that happening, and it fits well with the Scottish Government’s more generous and more flexible grant and loan package of £7,500 for both energy efficiency and zero-emission heating systems, with additional uplifts for rural and remote areas. That means that the installations that we need to see in both of those sectors will gradually and continually become more affordable.

We also need to put pressure on the current United Kingdom Government if there is to be any hope of that happening. Mr Smyth might have colleagues in that Government before too long anyway, and he will need to put pressure on them to do what the UK Government has not done so far by rebalancing energy prices so that electricity and zero-emission heating systems are more affordable for people to run. I am sure that he shares the Scottish Government’s ambition on that point.

As I said in my first answer, we have continued to develop an ambitious programme of work, including on the supply chain delivery plan, and to work with stakeholders, including businesses right across the sector. Incredible innovation is happening in the area of heat decarbonisation, as well as there being strong enthusiasm in the sector to retrain and reskill people so that we will have the capacity that we need. In recent years, we have been reaching the level of a few thousand installations per year, but we need to reach significantly more than that—perhaps 100,000 installations or more by the end of the decade. An extraordinary scale of expansion is therefore required. We are clear that the ambition is matched by the actions that we are taking.

I would also question whether the Conservatives are being entirely consistent on some of these issues. As the net zero spokesperson for his party, Mr Kerr told the Daily Mail—that notable champion of climate action—that the Government’s

“stated intention to ban the replacement of fossil fuel boilers from 2025 is unrealistic and will alarm”

people—

The WWF Scotland report is both welcome and challenging. It supports the main policies in our “Heat in Buildings Strategy”, which are designed to meet our objective for emissions reduction by 2045. Since that strategy was published, we have been developing more detailed proposals on supply chain capacity, delivery programmes, advice and funding.

On the key issue of regulation that the report identifies, we will consult very soon on proposals for a heat in buildings bill that is designed to give a very clear signal on how and when climate-friendly heating systems and improved energy efficiency measures will need to be installed.

—and that it is

“irresponsible to impose huge demands”.

The Conservatives therefore need to make up their minds: are we doing too much or too little here?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. In my answer to question 1, I intended to refer to a figure of 200,000 installations per year by the end of the decade. I believe that I may have used the wrong figure, and I want to very quickly draw attention to what was an inadvertent slip of the tongue.