Chamber and committees

I start by thanking all the organisations that have provided useful briefings during the passage of the emergency bill, and I thank the Parliament’s bill team for the work that it has done.

As I said during the stage 1 debate, the Scottish housing market is complex, especially here in the capital. We rely on the mixed-housing model to provide the homes that Scotland needs now and in the future.

The Scottish Conservatives continue to be concerned about the impact that the bill will have. I will use my time to speak about those whom the bill will not impact on and whom it will not support, who are already being failed by this Scottish National Party and Scottish Green Party Government. They are the 26,000 homeless households in Scotland.

The cabinet secretary said that everyone should have a safe and warm place to live. I agree. However, under the SNP Government, homelessness applications have increased by 3 per cent. There has been a 4 per cent increase in households in temporary accommodation. In Scotland today, 32,592 adults and 14,372 children are registered as homeless. The number of homeless adults has increased by 6 per cent, and the number of homeless children has increased by 17 per cent.

Households with children spend more time in temporary accommodation. Households with children are 4 per cent more likely to spend seven to 12 months in temporary accommodation than households without children are, and they are 6 per cent more likely to spend more than a year in temporary accommodation.

Homelessness applications are taking longer, on average, to process. It now takes an average of 19 days for a homelessness application to be assessed. That is up by three days on the previous year.

Those are shocking statistics. The people whom they concern are those who are furthest from the housing market—and who are now likely to be even further away, thanks to the impact of the bill.

As Crisis said to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on Tuesday,

“the homelessness system is bursting at the seams. It has, as I am sure that members see in their constituencies all the time, been pushed to breaking point.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 4 October 2022; c 9.]

Crisis also expressed concern about the knock-on impacts that there might be on the market. It stated:

“From our perspective, when there is a reduction in the supply of private rented housing, those who are most likely to be squeezed out of the market are those at the lowest end of the income distribution and those at the highest risk of homelessness ... There is a worry that it will become more difficult to support people who are experiencing homelessness into tenancies.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 4 October 2022; c 15.]

The loss of significant numbers of private rented properties is likely to be a consequence of the legislation, if it is not lifted as soon as possible. That impact will be even greater in rural communities. There is international evidence that demonstrates the impact of the sort of intervention that we are seeing SNP and Green ministers make in the housing market.

As I said to the cabinet secretary just the other day, this is happening across western Europe—indeed, across the world—at this moment in time. It is not a Scotland-specific problem. What seems to be a Scotland-specific problem, though, is that for 15 years, this SNP and Green Government has not built enough affordable homes. That is a clear problem that we are seeing in Scotland today. Why is that?

Does the cabinet secretary recognise that people in the sector are now rewriting 10-year business plans and cancelling affordable homes projects, which we all want to be delivered?

So there will be no loss.

Amendment 93 aims to provide additional resources for tribunals. We are concerned that the bill’s impact could be significant. We already know that the First-tier Tribunal faces an eight to nine-month waiting time and backlog of work, so we call on ministers to provide financial resources and assistance to the tribunals, including grants, loans, guarantees and indemnities, over and above the current financial year settlement, should there be a significant increase in cases coming forward. I hope that ministers will consider that as an important part of making sure that the system works for landlords and tenants.

I move amendment 93.

This might represent the most important part of my work this week, convener.

Amendment 39 moved—[Miles Briggs]—and agreed to.

It is my intention to press amendment 4 and to ask members to support Willie Rennie’s amendment 5. This is our one opportunity to remove the social rented sector from the bill, and members across the Parliament need to take it, because the damage that including that sector and its not seeing the future investment that is vitally needed for all our communities would cause is unacceptable. I hope that it will be removed.

I will also move amendment 23. However, given what the minister said about amendment 26, I am happy not to move that amendment and to have discussions before stage 3, tomorrow.

My amendment 77 looks to put in place a point at which the bill would expire. The First Minister has stated that such interventions in the housing market must be time limited. The bill is emergency legislation and it must have an end date. Therefore, we note that ministers are already signalling two potential extensions, which would mean that the bill would sit on the statute book for at least 18 months.

Examples from other countries, such as Sweden and Ireland, indicate that prolonged controls on rents can lead to significant housing shortages, which, in turn, hurt potential tenants and homeless people who are trying to access tenancies, especially private tenancies. Therefore, I hope that members will support amendment 77 to put in place an expiry date for the bill.

Amendment 4, in my name, would remove the social rented sector from the bill and exempt it from regulations. The social housing sector is already highly regulated and has taken important steps in keeping rent increases as low as possible. Furthermore, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has warned of unintended consequences from the bill for social housing and the development of affordable housing, as well as potential consequences for construction costs, which have increased, and for meeting net zero targets. We therefore ask members to support my amendment 4 and Willie Rennie’s amendment 5.

Amendment 23, in my name, looks towards mid-market rent properties, which are an affordable housing tenure that housing associations offer. They are homes that are for rent to households that are on low to middle incomes.

Rents for MMR homes are generally set lower than private rents but higher than housing association rents for social housing. The tenure is an important part of the housing mix to support those who may not be eligible for or who cannot access social rented homes but who struggle to afford higher rents in the private rented sector. The issue is that the tenancy type is a private residency, so it is the same as homes that are rented from private landlords. We therefore hope that members will support my amendment 23.

My amendment 26 relates to rent increase notices that are sent to tenants before the legislation expires. The bill states that any rent increase notice that is served while the rent cap is in force will have no effect. That means in effect that no rent increase notice can be served on any tenant prior to 1 April 2023, if we assume that the rent freeze expires the day before that, so the rent freeze would remain in place until the end of April—not the end of March, as ministers have outlined—given the requirement to give 28 days’ notice of any rent change in the social sector. We therefore believe that landlords should be able to provide such notices before 1 April.

I move amendment 4.

Convener, I think that that is maybe the wrong group.