Chamber and committees

Hello, minister. I want to ask about your request for an individual who has knowledge of Scotland. You are not necessarily asking for a Scottish Government representative; it just needs to be someone who knows about Scotland. Could that be a UK Government person with knowledge of Scotland?

Is Wales looking for something similar?

We are here to talk about Scotland, of course. Is it your understanding that we will get a memorandum of understanding?

The convener asked about the timescale. Am I correct to say that this Parliament will not be asked to take a view until later in the year or early next year?

The member is right to say that he has raised those concerns before. Does he accept that housing associations’ genuine concerns could see the investment that he has talked about being choked off by the measures in the bill?

The bill is a disgrace. This is not the way to do legislation. Emergency legislation should be an exception that is reserved for wartime or a pandemic, or to make quick updates to law when needed. The bill does not qualify. This is a complex policy area; we cannot rush this sort of thing.

I convene the cross-party group on housing, which has produced a report on rent controls. The report took months to produce and was meant to help the discussion around the issue. I will come on to its recommendations, but the report shows that we cannot and should not pass this sort of legislation in three days, with MSPs given less than a day to scrutinise it beforehand. If the bill is passed, it will wreak untold damage on the very people that this Government and its Green partners purport to stand up for.

The legislation is an attack on the entire rental sector, fuelled by the Greens’ hatred of anything private.

Will the minister give way?

The bill applies to councils as well as to the social rented sector, which Bob Doris spoke about in his speech.

The Greens see private rental sector landlords as being inherently bad, up to no good and generally out to make a killing off the backs of tenants, as does, apparently, my good friend Richard Leonard. How wrong can they be? The Government has produced rushed and flawed legislation that attacks the social rented sector, which has been up in arms about it.

Others have already spelled out the sector’s concerns, but they are worth repeating. As the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations said:

“This policy will do little to increase the incomes of most social housing tenants. Instead, it will threaten both the Scottish Government’s ambitions on affordable housebuilding and climate change, and our members’ ability to provide their tenants with exactly the kind of targeted support that is required in these times.”

There is no problem with high rents in that sector, but there will be a problem with investment if the bill goes through. Any ambitions for targets on the building of affordable homes can be thrown out of the window.

The SFHA warns of “dire consequences”. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations fears that the bill could be a precursor to something permanent. It said:

“State intervention in our sector’s rents after March 31 2023 would set a very worrying precedent and would savage plans to invest in existing and new homes”.

We know that such intervention could indeed continue beyond March next year because that is provided for in the bill.

He did say that, and I will come on to that point.

Andy Young of East Kilbride Housing Association told me that the bill has united the sector like never before and will make the delivery of net zero impossible. It is quite something that a Green minister is taking a wrecking ball to a policy that helps the environment.

Today, we have had stark comments from people in the sector who know what they are talking about. David Melhuish, the director of the Scottish Property Federation, warned that the bill could lead to £3.5 billion of planned investment in new private rented accommodation being withdrawn. That would be quite an achievement.

John Blackwood, from the Scottish Association of Landlords, is a mild-mannered man who, until now, has never been party political in all the time that I have known him. He says:

“With this Bill, the SNP and Greens have put political rhetoric ahead of measures that would achieve real results in solving Scotland’s housing crisis ... They have neglected the housing sector in Scotland, leaving it to crumble.”

He calls the bill “irresponsible”, and he is right.

The rent control report that I mentioned was balanced in a way that the bill is not. It looked at evidence from across the world, and we discovered that there is a lack of robust data on rents in Scotland. What data there is shows a mixed picture across property types and different parts of the country. A one-size-fits-all approach is simply wrong in my view. Our report did not ask whether rent control is desirable; it was a discussion paper that assumed that it was coming. The minister has been sent a copy. If he has read it, he will know that, if the provisions in the bill are extended, there could be severe consequences. There are different ways to control rents, and they all have pluses and minuses. As I said, the situation is complicated.

I will come back to the point that Mr Mason made. The fear in the sector is that the rent freeze will continue beyond March 2023. That is the real concern, and the bill contains such provision.

Patrick Harvie has not taken a considered approach. He has taken a mallet to the sector. Such a haphazard and blunt approach to law making must be resisted.

Earlier, I mentioned a report by the cross-party group on housing. One thing that we found was that there is a lack of robust data on rents in Scotland. Does the member agree with that?