Chamber and committees

This is perhaps for another day, but we should look in more detail at the rural uplift for landlords and how that will help.

We face two challenges in this country: climate change and the housing crisis. We heard earlier that Homes for Scotland estimates that there is a shortfall of around 114,000 houses and that the Scottish Government has a target of building 10 per cent of those in rural and island communities. The Government does not know how many SMEs currently operate in the sector, so how will that be tracked to ensure that they do not withdraw from it? The challenges that SMEs currently face are obvious, and we have discussed them previously. What work is being undertaken on supply chains, workforce and the potential impact of not bringing forward developments, which are often small-scale individual units?

As with the other extensions that have been proposed, we in the Conservative Party will oppose the motion in the vote.

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. It is clear that, for more than 40 years, the use of RAAC will have been widespread in construction projects not only in the school estate but, potentially, across all buildings that were constructed during that era. We need full transparency. I welcome the publication of the information, as was signalled by the First Minister during First Minister’s question time.

It is clear that the impact will stretch well beyond the school estate to include the NHS estate, general practitioner surgeries, colleges and, potentially, council housing that was built during that period. However, it is not clear from the statement what position the Scottish Government is taking and what policy and guidance will be issued to councils, health boards and the further education sector when buildings are assessed as red—in other words, at critical risk or high risk. The cabinet secretary touched on the Institution of Structural Engineers’ guidance. For public buildings that are assessed as being in the red category, is the expectation that those buildings will be closed to members of the public?

I agree with Ben Macpherson. In Edinburgh, the number of children who are currently living in temporary accommodation stands at 2,755, which is an increase of 13 per cent on last year. That is almost one third of the total number of children in Scotland who are currently living in temporary accommodation. The situation is escalating out of control. It is time for Scottish National Party and Green ministers to take responsibility and to declare a housing emergency. Will the minister agree urgently to chair a cross-Government temporary-accommodation task force to help to address the situation in the capital?

The cabinet secretary might not want to listen to me, but I hope that she will listen to Alison Watson of Shelter Scotland, who says that the programme for government offers nothing new to meet the challenge of ending Scotland’s housing emergency. She goes on to say:

“Anyone in Scotland currently experiencing homelessness who listened to the First Minister today would have taken no comfort from his words.”

The cabinet secretary should look in the mirror in relation to her record on the issue. In 2020, when 7,000 children were living in temporary accommodation, she said that she recognised that we must go further. In 2021, when 8,000 children were living in temporary accommodation, she was deeply concerned. In 2022, when 9,000 children were living in temporary accommodation, she said that the issue was a national priority. This year, we have a new housing minister who is very disappointed and deeply worried. That is a record of failure—

Is it still the case that the Scottish Government will stand by the First Minister’s commitment in March for a new national funding framework for hospices in Scotland?

I do not have the time.

I genuinely hope that ministers will use this debate and the new parliamentary term to do something different. Measures to prevent homelessness are already on the statute book. We do not need a housing bill to take those measures forward; they are just not being delivered by local government, because it does not have the resources to do it.

In conclusion, homeless charities across Scotland and cross-party voices are raising the alarm. There is growing concern about the housing emergency that Scotland faces today. We need an emergency response from the Government now and we need fresh leadership from the cabinet secretary. I hope that she will genuinely lead from the front on this, because it has not been mentioned in any debate so far, but it is the biggest issue that ministers should have been dealing with during the summer. If ministers genuinely want to take forward a progressive agenda to address the housing emergency, they will have our support, but they need to act, because this crisis is developing ever more and every day.

The cabinet secretary knows that I always welcome the conversations that we have. We do not have them enough, though. That is one of the points that I am making. Cabinet secretaries and ministers are just relying on Green votes now in this Parliament. That is fine, but they are making a mess of legislation as they do that. The legislation on short-term lets is a prime example of that, and the deposit return scheme is another.

I will start on a note of consensus, with aspects of the programme for government that are welcome and that we have been trying to progress with ministers. The bill to finally address unsafe cladding is welcome, and I look forward to seeing full details of that. I hope that, like in England, hotels and public buildings are included. The announcement to finally deliver a national allowance for foster and kinship carers is also a welcome step forward, but we need to see the detail of that.

As the former First Minister stated, the wider policy agenda around delivering the Promise still very much needs to be outlined and developed. I hope that care-experienced young people will hear more from ministers urgently in the coming weeks on how the commitments to expand holistic family support services will be delivered, as Barnardo’s Scotland requested in its briefing for today’s debate.

Paul O’Kane made a number of important contributions to the debate on cross-party consensus and the objectives and targets that we all agreed to set out in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, which was passed unanimously by Parliament. We all want to eliminate child poverty, and I believe that that is a priority for everyone across the chamber.

In the time that I have today, I will return to an issue that has not been raised by ministers at all today or yesterday, which is homelessness. Statistics show that the situation in Scotland over the summer has been unacceptable, with a record number of children and families now declared homeless and living in unsuitable temporary accommodation.

When the cabinet secretary was appointed in April, I said that we, in the Conservative Party, would work with ministers to help develop and deliver solutions. To date, we have seen very little from ministers, who seem to have failed to see the scale of the housing emergency that Scotland faces, especially here in the capital, and to work to deliver the emergency response that is needed. Cuts to housing budgets and council budgets are the wrong answer.

No, I will not. I want to make progress.

It is a record of failure that the new cabinet secretary needs to act on urgently to turn the situation around. Every day in Scotland, 45 children become homeless under this SNP Government.

Will the member take an intervention?