Chamber and committees

That is good. That would be useful.

You are right about the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill. I had a quick look at it. It is quite daunting, but we will get stuck in and do a proper job on it.

My area of questioning is on something that you mentioned earlier: the frustration that you and your officials feel about having very little time to scrutinise UK bills. We have found the same thing with Scottish bills. We had a case of that last week, with the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill. The day before the stage 3 debate, the committee received a letter telling us about possible new powers relating to the establishment of a food commissioner. We had no time to consider that.

As you said earlier, today the committee will look at the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill following stage 2. Stage 3 amendments have to be laid by noon today, but we are discussing the bill only at this meeting. If the committee decided that there should be an amendment, we would, by the end of the meeting, have less than an hour in which to produce one. That is not acceptable, is it?

We do not set the timescale—you do. Things need to improve; we should not be in this position.

My question is not about policy but about giving the committee enough time to deal with whatever is in front of it. I have not mentioned the policy behind the bill.

Lovely, thank you.

The cabinet secretary says that she will be in discussions with COSLA, which is entirely right, because most of the recommendations in the report relate to councils. However, some of them are aimed at the Government, one of which is that the Scottish Government should

“establish a common and consistent definition of accessible housing.”

Will the cabinet secretary say which of the recommendations she will be able to take forward?

I congratulate Bob Doris on securing this important debate and on his speech, which was very considered. I know that he feels strongly about the issues.

I thank MND Scotland for giving a presentation to the cross-party group on housing, which I am lucky to convene, about the report “No time to lose”. It was a powerful presentation indeed. I welcome representatives of MND Scotland and their guests to the public gallery.

As Bob Doris said, today is global MND awareness day. Actually, every day should be MND awareness day, because we should be alert to the issues all the time—full stop—and be doing something about them. We should not need to give the issue a special badge to do that.

The report raises a number of issues, and there are some stark statistics in it. There is a one-in-300 risk of a person getting MND in their lifetime. That sounds quite high to me. As Bob Doris said, the average life expectancy after diagnosis is just 18 months. That is a really short period of time. That tells us that, when someone is diagnosed, they need fast action. In too many parts of Scotland, we do not get that.

The research was carried out in 2021 and the report makes a number of points. There are extensive waiting times for adaptations. Waiting times for ramps are particularly lengthy. Across local authorities, the wait for getting something done to a person’s property was, on average, 149 days. One council reported an average wait of 256 days to fit a wet room, which is a vital facility, and 11 per cent of people with MND waited a year for a wet room.

People with MND face barriers to accessing adaptations. I will mention some figures from my own patch of North and South Lanarkshire. Bob Doris mentioned Marie Cartwright, who featured on the BBC news talking about her situation with her husband Ian. She stood outside her house and demonstrated how she had to throw buckets of water over Ian to wash him outside. It is heartbreaking that someone had to do that.

North Lanarkshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council were asked for their definitions of accessible housing. North Lanarkshire Council did not reference external documentation. South Lanarkshire Council referred to “Housing for Varying Needs: a design guide”. They were asked what percentage of their local authority or social housing stock is accessible or wheelchair accessible. North Lanarkshire Council said that wheelchair-accessible properties were only 0.45 per cent of council stock and 0.34 per cent of all social housing stock. That is not good enough. In South Lanarkshire Council, only 0.8 per cent of housing, including sheltered housing, is wheelchair accessible.

Those are really poor figures. I could go on, but I am aware that I am over my time. The figures across both councils on my patch are not good enough. The postcode lottery must end. Government and councils must work together to address the problem so that we do not have to put up with it any longer.

First, I take the opportunity to congratulate the minister on her recent marriage. [Applause.]

The minister mentioned funding. The network support grant plus has been keeping bus operators afloat, in particular in rural areas, but it is due to end next month. Industry experts have said that that could lead to a cut of 20 per cent on some routes, as well as rising fares and depot closures.

Bus operators are calling for the fund to be extended at its current rate by three months, as that would allow passenger levels to recover. Will the minister agree to that?

In saying that you are happy to have further dialogue, you have probably answered the question that I was going to ask. We can probably reach an accommodation between your desire to be able to act quickly and my desire to have more parliamentary scrutiny—we can meet somewhere in that regard. I am happy to take you up on your offer.

Before the meeting, Mr Rowley and I made a pact that, if he was brief, I would be brief. I knew that he could not stick to his end of the bargain—but rightly so, because he had some really important points to make, which I agree with.

I sit on the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I am not representing it here, but, as this committee knows, the DPLR Committee produced a report, which this committee has seen, into the delegated powers in the bill, and we made some recommendations. I will take members through them before I speak briefly about my amendments in the group.

The first recommendation was

“that the Scottish Government”

should bring

“forward amendments on each power which can be exercised subject to the made affirmative provision”.

Our main area of concern was the use of the made affirmative procedure, so we recommended

“that Scottish Ministers provide a written statement prior to the instrument coming into force providing an explanation and evidence as to why the Scottish Ministers consider the regulations need to be made urgently when using the made affirmative procedure”.

We also recommended

“that Scottish Ministers include an assessment of the impact of the instrument on those affected by it”

and

“that statutory instruments made under the powers are subject to a sunset provision.”

I lodged some amendments for yesterday’s Criminal Justice Committee meeting that reflected those recommendations, and I have done the same for this meeting.

If members read amendment 10, which is the first of my three amendments in the group, I am afraid that they will struggle to work out what it does. I have a long and technical explanation, which I will spare you. In essence, amendment 10 removes the ability of ministers to use the made affirmative procedure—it is quite blunt. If you agree with that, that is all well and good and the other amendments fall; if you do not agree with that, we have some alternatives.

The alternatives are amendments 11 and 12. Amendment 11 says that, if ministers think that the regulations should be made “urgently”, they should explain to the Parliament why that is so—with evidence—and there should be a vote on the regulations. As the committee is well aware, using the made affirmative procedure does not allow for a vote—stuff just goes through without scrutiny. The amendment reflects the recommendations of the DPLR Committee.

Amendment 12 says that there should be a statement with evidence, an assessment of the impact of the regulations and a sunset clause period of a maximum of one year. Given that I am a very reflective sort and that I listen to arguments—I listened to those of Mr Swinney’s colleague Keith Brown yesterday and to those of Mr Swinney today—I think that amendment 12 probably goes a bit too far in that it would impose the sunset clause for one year across the board. Having reflected on that point, I think that Mr Swinney’s amendment 28 is probably better than amendment 12, so I will not press it. However, I will move amendments 10 and 11.

I will end there—I promised to be brief.

In listening to what you have said about Mr Whittle’s amendment 4, I wonder whether there is room to work with Mr Whittle to improve the amendment for stage 3. You have commented that you feel that it is too restrictive at the moment, but maybe it could be improved.