Chamber and committees

Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be here with the committee.

The First Minister’s programme for government sets out the key priorities for the Government and makes clear that our number one priority is eradicating child poverty. It is clear that, across Scotland, families continue to face pressures. That is why our approach is guided by two clear objectives: helping people with the cost of living today, and taking the longer-term action needed to tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality.

We are building on strong foundations, with rates of relative child poverty in Scotland standing at 6 percentage points below the United Kingdom average as a result of the action we have taken. The programme for government sets out how we are going further by delivering on whole family support, driving delivery of more warm and affordable homes, investing in new employment and skills opportunities, and transforming our childcare offer. We will also expand the £2 bus fare cap across Scotland by the end of this parliamentary session and will begin consulting on legislation to establish legal price ceilings on some essential food items.

Social security is, and will remain, integral to our approach. Scotland’s system is founded on dignity, fairness and respect, principles enshrined in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 that was passed unanimously by Parliament. Social Security Scotland now provides support to almost two million people and offers help that is not available elsewhere in the UK. That investment is helping to keep 50,000 children out of relative poverty through the Scottish child payment, supporting disabled people with the additional costs they face, and supporting carers and helping pensioners to heat their homes this winter.

The level of investment required to fund our social security system in Scotland, beyond UK Government funding, is forecast to remain stable at around 1.7 per cent of the Scottish Government resource budget through to 2029-30. Across Government, we are investing more than £3.5 billion in measures to tackle the cost of living for households, including free prescriptions, free bus travel for more than 2.4 million people and our package of family payments. We are also progressing the work needed to increase the Scottish Child Payment to £40 for families with a child under one. Alongside our financial investment, we are strengthening prevention, supporting families before they reach crisis and bringing services together to better meet people’s needs.

Everyone should have access to a safe, warm and affordable home, and we are committed to increasing housing supply while focusing on the needs of those experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness. During this parliamentary session, we will invest up to £4.9 billion, including a record £4.1 billion of public sector funding, to support the delivery of 36,000 affordable homes and our wider all-tenure housing ambitions. That forms part of our commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. We are also taking forward the work to establish more homes Scotland. From April next year, that new national delivery vehicle will begin bringing together funding, expertise and tools to accelerate housing delivery across all tenures.

Alongside increasing the housing supply, we are strengthening our focus on homelessness prevention. Our vision is for a Scotland where homelessness is ended for good and our new homelessness prevention legislation, which comes into force late in 2028, will make that everyone’s business.

Public services will work together to prevent homelessness through early intervention, with local authorities and other relevant bodies identifying housing risk and acting when there is a risk that a household could lose their home. Our £50 million homelessness prevention fund will support the shift from crisis to prevention, with the first £5 million already providing help to families in the private rented sector to afford their rent and to strengthen tenancy sustainability through registered social landlords in Glasgow. We will support local authorities to deliver a further 1,500 housing first tenancies over this parliamentary session for people with a history of rough sleeping or other complex needs.

The actions that we are taking on whole family support and homelessness are clear examples of public service reform in action, focusing on prevention, efficiency and the designing of services around people’s needs.

Although we have already made progress and will go further, the policy choices of the United Kingdom Government, including the freeze to the local housing allowance rates and the retention of the cruel benefit cap, are holding us back. Next month’s UK Government budget offers the opportunity to right those wrongs, and I hope that the chancellor will use that opportunity.

Through action on social security, child poverty, housing and homelessness prevention, as well as public service reform, we are improving outcomes across Scotland. I look forward to taking the committee’s questions on my portfolio.

I am happy to provide to the committee, in writing, the Government’s direction of travel on the Harris review in its entirety. We will get that to the committee.

We have been asking stakeholders in a number of ways what they want the agency to do for them. It is important to recognise that it will have an all-tenure focus, so it will not look only at social rented housing.

We are also keen to ensure that it will look at all the different parts of Scotland. People have been concerned that it could be a kind of central belt agency, but it will have a specific workstream on rural and island housing and how we can work together to assist with some of the challenges around that.

We are looking at aggregation and procurement efficiencies around standardisation, modern building techniques and efficiencies through scale, and another factor that the agency could assist with is the skills that we need. We have had some discussions about the agency helping our small and medium-sized enterprise builders, which are facing particular challenges, and they are often the construction firms that undertake work in rural and island areas. What can we do to support our smaller building and construction firms?

We also want to ensure that we have the skills that are required to support local authorities and developers to find their way through the process. What can we do to make the process easier in the first place? Developments will still have to go through planning, and local authorities and developers will still have to do everything that they need to do on that, but what can we do to ensure that we support people through that process? When a barrier is found, either by a local authority or by a developer, what can we do to unblock it?

What skills and convening powers should the agency have to drive investment? I have heard directly from private investors that they see it as a real opportunity to increase investment, and not only in affordable homes, and show again that Scotland is serious about housing investment coming to Scotland.

It is a responsibility for us all, at every stage of the system, to ask why a development is not happening and whether, if it is not happening because of a policy, we are comfortable with that. If the answer to that is yes, at a local and a national level, that is the right thing for us to do, because there cannot be development at all costs and anywhere. However, we need to give ourselves those challenges in different parts of the system, to make sure that we are getting the most from the opportunities that we have. I hope that that will allow us to have a much better, more open and honest relationship with developers about the opportunities and that it will provide encouragement for investment to come to Scotland, in the private sector and to support the affordable housing sector.

Given the scope of my portfolio, there are different outcomes for different parts. In the housing portfolio, we have ongoing work in our action plans, which we are determined to move forward on. I have been working closely with homelessness organisations on a statement of intent and an outcome-based way to ensure that the Government delivers on that. We will be happy to provide further information to the committee as we move forward. Again, we have our targets on the delivery of 110,000 affordable homes, which the committee will be aware of.

On child poverty, our targets are clear and set in statute. We are undertaking a review of the type of targets that we have, but we are absolutely determined to meet them.

In social security, our intention is obviously to continue to develop our services to be more efficient and effective, and to ensure that we are using public service reform to deliver better services for people at the first opportunity.

On cladding, the committee will be aware of the management information that came out in the past few days to provide update on the issue.

I am guessing that that was more than three outcomes, but, given the breadth of my portfolio, I hope that the convener will forgive me.

There is no shortfall in the budget. The budget is fully costed, and it moves forward based on the decisions that the Government has taken. The investment that we make in social security is affordable and sustainable. I made it clear in my opening remarks that a limited amount has to come from the Scottish Government budget that is not covered by the block grant adjustment or funding from the UK.

You are right, convener, that we have taken policy decisions. Students are currently returning to colleges and universities, and one example of that type of policy decision is the fact that student carers in Scotland can apply for support that they cannot find in the rest of the UK. That is a conscious decision that we have taken and, therefore, it is one of the items that we need to cost. Another example of a decision that the Government has taken is the Scottish child payment, and I mentioned in my opening remarks that the Scottish Government makes that investment because of its impact on families. We recognise that the investment that we make in social security has an impact in supporting people. We continue to ensure that we deliver an effective and efficient service and that its costs are closely monitored.

Aspects around people who are in the asylum process and where they go as part of the process are for the Home Office. I have asked to meet Home Office ministers to discuss the issues, but I have not had an agreement to have a meeting. However, it is important that we work together, which is why I reached out to Home Office ministers recently on the issue. If there is a further update on a meeting between the Governments on the issue, I will of course provide the committee with that in due course.

I have a close working relationship with the planning minister, as I do with the chief planner and economy officials, and we recognise the importance of planning in the Government’s desire for barriers to be removed from the system. Some of that is about planning and some of it is not, but it is important that we continue to work together on those issues.

The targets are exceptionally challenging for us to achieve, but even the Fraser of Allander Institute report said that it is still possible for the Scottish Government to achieve them both. We are working to improve the situation, and not just through planning policy. For example, we are working directly with private investors to encourage further investment in Scotland. Although much of that can be undertaken in the affordable housing supply, it is also about improving investment in housing in general. Investors are being attracted to Scotland to invest in housing here. That will have an impact not just on the housing supply but, given our planning policies, on affordable homes.

Different parts of Scotland have different challenges in housing. We have mentioned some of our larger cities. There are other aspects that I discussed when I visited the south of Scotland during the summer. Through more homes Scotland—but not only through that agency—we will ensure that we are an activist Government that is looking at the challenges throughout Scotland. We will look at infrastructure, planning, skills and affordable housing supply, and we will do everything we can to assist with the challenges that are being felt, which vary in different parts of the country.

We are currently consulting on the draft guidance that will help to inform and support the rent control assessments that are due to be submitted to Scottish ministers by May 2027, as was set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025. Before formal consultation took place, there was close work with local authorities on the practical delivery of their responsibilities. The consultation is being undertaken, and, as part of it, we will continue that work with local authorities as we move forward with the measures in the 2025 act.