Chamber and committees

Will the minister take an intervention?

The money that the tenant grant fund issues is a loan. Do ministers intend to provide that as a grant that would not be paid back?

The key point is that the bill will make the situation worse. The cabinet secretary and her Government have presided over 15 years of this housing crisis, and the bill will supercharge it. In the years to come, the situation can only get worse for students if fewer rented properties are available, which will clearly be the impact of the bill.

What we have already seen from this SNP-Green Government is that it is likely to use its majority in Parliament to push the legislation through without listening to genuine concerns or accepting amendments.

Scottish Conservatives will look to bring common sense and safeguards to the bill. We will ask that the concerns of key sectors, such as social and charitable housing associations, are reflected in the bill—that is vitally important. We also want to see additional resources for tribunals, which will now be tasked with extra work.

It is critical that there is incorporation of robust planning and monitoring of the potential negative impacts of the bill—the minister did not really outline that in any detail.

It is unclear for how long ministers intend to freeze rents or keep rent controls in place, beyond what the First Minister described in relation to 31 March. We need to see a time limit put in place. What mitigation measures will be provided for social and private landlords?

The process through which the bill has been introduced has been unacceptable, flawed and designed to bypass any independent scrutiny that the Parliament could bring to bear. The very organisations that the bill will impact have also not been part of the conversation. SNP, Green and Labour MSPs are about to use Scotland as a guinea pig. They are about to undermine the foundations of Scotland’s housing market.

International rent control schemes demonstrate the negative impact that rent controls can have and suggest the long-term negative consequences for our Scottish mixed housing market. We know how this will end: fewer private lets, a slump in building affordable homes, increased rents for future tenants and students unable to secure vital accommodation in order to study at university.

SNP, Green and Labour MSPs will be directly to blame for the significant damage done to our housing sector. The greater housing crisis that will come from this will be at their desks. I hope that they will make sure that the people of Scotland hold them accountable for their actions.

I am not sure that, when Scottish Labour envisaged rent control, it envisaged that the social rental sector would be such an integral part of the policy. Would Labour members therefore vote to remove it from the legislation, given the unintended consequences of the bill, which the sector’s representatives are raising with elected members?

Just a few months ago, Scottish National Party and Green ministers—including the minister and cabinet secretary who are sitting on the front bench—described Scottish Labour’s proposals around rent freeze schemes as “unworkable” and said that those schemes would

“heighten the risk of eviction”

for tenants. The bill will introduce opportunities that could lead to that situation, so that is where ministers need to be clear. Let us consider Ireland, where a similar policy has resulted in a 30 per cent increase in homelessness.

We have already seen, and continue to see, a record number of people living in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh and across Scotland. The bill has the potential to supercharge the housing crisis, with fewer private tenancies being made available, fewer new affordable homes being built and the ripping up of the very tenants rights framework that we are told ministers want to see protect tenants. For example, the circumventing of local authority rent-setting processes will override not only the statutory responsibilities of elected members but the local processes that are currently in place to allow tenants to have a constructive opportunity to have their say in rent setting and negotiations.

There is growing concern in the housing sector around the unintended consequences of the bill, and I hope that the minister heard it during this morning’s committee meeting. We have already seen the impacts on students, as members have outlined, with both the University of Glasgow and the University of Stirling telling students not to matriculate unless they have secured accommodation. One of the key aspects of the bill is its unintended consequences.

From the outset of the debate and during the passage of the bill through the Parliament, I recognise that the Scottish Government’s intention is to look at how best we can support tenants during the cost of living crisis. After the unprecedented help for energy bills that is being provided by the UK Government, people across Scotland are, rightly, looking to both of Scotland’s Governments for support to assist individuals and families through a difficult period. However, the bill will do little to increase the incomes of most social housing and private tenants; instead, it will threaten the Scottish Government’s ambitions on affordable house building and climate change, as well as the ability of housing associations and private landlords to provide their tenants with the targeted support that is required during difficult times.

Members on the Conservative benches would have welcomed the opportunity to discuss workable policies with the Scottish Government; however, a 15-minute meeting with the minister after the bill was published and the use of the emergency legislation process to railroad the bill through Parliament have not presented that opportunity. Most people in the sector will find that that will have a negative impact going forward. Private and social landlords should have been brought around the table to discuss policies on, for example, rent stabilisation and the further use and development of the tenants charter. Instead, they have been left in the dark and now face an uncertain future, given the significant unintended consequences that the bill presents.

I am not sure that the minister understands his own bill, because it is backdated to September and the extensions that he has outlined mean that there is the potential for the provisions to last up to 18 months. The minister probably needs to rethink that.

The Scottish housing market is complex, especially in the capital. We all rely on the mixed housing market to provide the homes that Scotland needs now and in the future. The decision by SNP-Green ministers has been made without any consultation with the sector, and it will have consequences.

In Scotland, we have never had Government rent controls in the social housing sector. Rightly, housing associations are independent organisations that have been able to set rents each year, taking into account tenant feedback, affordability and the resources that are required to invest in maintaining properties and buildings, as well as building much-needed homes, which the Government has also failed to achieve.

The bill’s impact is, therefore, worrying, as the bill goes against the historical position and brings in the possibility of wider rent controls for the sector, the shattering of confidence to invest in new affordable homebuilding programmes and the real prospect of private landlords removing private rented properties from the market in the coming years.

For housing associations and private landlords, the bill presents a risk of hundreds of millions of pounds of lost income. It might require them to rewrite their future business plans and scrap investment in new affordable home builds, and it will undermine budget simulations for energy efficiency and decarbonisation for net zero—both key Government targets and the minister’s specific responsibility—which will be impacted.

The bill has already significantly impacted the potential delivery of new homes in Scotland; it will be much harder for housing associations to plan, if they are able to do so. Lenders might be nervous about lending, or they might lend at higher margins as confidence over future rental income decreases.

The bill introduces a risk that has not previously existed in Scotland—historically, we have had lower rents. It will undoubtedly trigger a slowing down of the building and construction of affordable homes and it could trigger a wider downturn in the construction industry at the worst possible time for our economy.

The cabinet secretary needs to look at inflation across the eurozone.

More specifically, just a few months ago, both the minister and the cabinet secretary—[Interruption.]

Will the member take an intervention?

Can the minister outline why the figure of 3 per cent was arrived at as the maximum increase for rents agreed by the adjudicator?