Chamber and committees

I begin on a note of consensus regarding some aspects of the programme for government that I welcome, and which I have indeed campaigned for. The children’s care and justice bill is a welcome development, and I hope that it will finally deliver on the promises that have been made to care-experienced young people. I also hope—as I have discussed and hope to discuss again with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills—that it represents a move to end restraint of children in care settings. The First Minister has made a number of key promises to care-experienced young people, and this must be the time when they are delivered on.

I also welcome the announcement of the establishment of a Scottish patient safety commissioner. The devil will be in the detail on the proposal, but it can and must help improve patient advocacy.

In the limited time that I have today, I wish to concentrate my comments on housing, as the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights did. It is clear that storm clouds are starting to gather on the horizon of the Scottish housing market. Over the past year, the cost of building a home has increased by an average of 17 per cent. Over the past two years, the cost of building a new home in Scotland has increased to over £200,000. The decision by SNP ministers to remove the first home fund and help to buy for first-time buyers has pulled the ladder up for many aspirational Scots, and it has negatively impacted on the housing sector.

The national planning framework, as it stands, is not fit for purpose, and it needs to be redrafted to help facilitate the delivery of housing and renewables targets. We need a housing revolution in Scotland. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government has not included housing as a key infrastructure priority through its national planning framework. That needs to change. If there is going to be a slowdown in the construction sector in the months ahead, it is vital that both the Scottish Government and local government work to retain construction jobs, so I hope that ministers will actively consider reintroducing help-to-buy schemes and moving forward on shovel-ready projects.

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. One word was missing from the statement, which was “sorry”—sorry to the people of Edinburgh and those in the rest of Scotland for the impact that the strikes have had on their lives, especially here in our capital city, where waste piled up on the streets for 12 days during our showcase Edinburgh festivals.

Scottish Conservatives warned Scottish National Party ministers during the passage of the SNP-Green budget that councils across Scotland would be put in a position in which they were unable to meet pay demands. Ministers did not listen and, after year-on-year cuts to council budgets, councils were limited in their ability to address local issues. Just this year, local councils have faced a cut of £251 million in real terms.

The cabinet secretary stated today that the Scottish Government is providing £3 billion. However, a report by the independent Scottish Parliament information centre shows that only £490 million of support has been put in place since October 2021. I am sure that the cabinet secretary does not want to mislead Parliament, so I hope that he will correct the record today.

I will ask two specific questions. It is clear that local government needs a new funding settlement, which the Government has failed to deliver for 15 years. Will the cabinet secretary look again at the idea of a new cross-party discussion about local government funding settlements in the future?

The cabinet secretary has announced £53 million of cuts from employability fund schemes. If we are going to face a recession, such schemes will be such an important part of getting people into work and saving jobs in Scotland. At the same time, the SNP Government is keeping £20 million aside for a referendum. Will he rethink that decision and invest in jobs, not a referendum?

Good morning. I thank the witnesses for joining us.

The conversation about the state of the market has been quite negative up to this point. When it comes to solutions and ways of ensuring that we achieve the targets to which we signed up, do the witnesses think that there are new opportunities for financing and leveraging more money into the sector? Are there opportunities for longer-term investments such as pension funds to invest in housing schemes? Are different models available to enable us to realise the potential that we want to realise for housing construction? Perhaps Fionna Kell will go first.

That was helpful. As no one else wants to come in on that, I will move on.

Homes for Scotland has made suggestions about Government support schemes. Help to buy has been scrapped in Scotland. If we are heading into a period in which it will be more difficult for people to find a deposit to enable them to buy a home, what should the Scottish Government do? Should it put that scheme back in place, to help people to get deposits, or is there a different model to support private buyers and to enable private homes to go on being built? Fionna Kell, we heard you express concerns about a 30 per cent reduction in the number of affordable and social rented homes that will be delivered by a strong private build. What is your view on the future of help to buy and other models of support?

That was interesting. Thank you.

As no one else wants to come in on that point, I will move on, in the interests of time. What are the witnesses’ views on the UK Government’s Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and specifically on the missions in it that relate to housing? For example, the UK Government wants renters to have a secure pathway to ownership by 2030. What do the witnesses think about the bill and the impact that it will have on devolved areas?

If no one wants to comment, I will hand back to the convener.

Like others, I thank Michael Marra for bringing this debate to the chamber and for hosting the round-table discussion. I certainly found it very useful to meet some of the members of the Dundee drugs commission. I also thank Michael Marra for his thoughtful speech.

The March 2022 report by the Dundee drugs commission is nothing short of damning, following the publication of the initial report and recommendations in 2019. It is clear—the debate has demonstrated this—that the pace of change has been too slow and progress has been limited. The Covid-19 pandemic has not helped, but the vast majority of stakeholders believe that the pandemic has not been a sufficient reason for the glacial pace of change.

Let us not forget that Scotland’s drug deaths crisis is a public health emergency and that it was so before the pandemic. As the commission’s report emphasises,

“it is ... fair to expect, pandemic or no pandemic, that significant focus and efforts should have been made in responding to this emergency.”

Last week, Angela Constance told the Scottish Parliament that alcohol and drug partnerships had fallen short of the target to embed medication-assisted treatment standards across all ADP areas by April 2022. The commission’s report says that they would be “a game-changer”. I think that we all agree on that, but the issue is ensuring that they are implemented. This debate has given us an opportunity to think about that.

In 2020, people from the most deprived areas were 18 times more likely to have a drug-related death than those in the least deprived areas. Scotland’s drug death rate is 3.5 times that of the United Kingdom, and it is higher than that of any European country.

Unfortunately, Dundee is at the very heart of this public health emergency. The statistics are bleak. Between 2016 and 2020, Dundee City averaged the highest rate of drug-related deaths of all council areas in Scotland, at 39 per 100,000 population.

Dundee drugs commission has pointed to the fact that there is plenty of work that must be done to implement the recommendations. I agree. As revealed last week and as highlighted by Claire Baker today, despite setting a target last year to ensure that the MAT standards would be fully embedded across the country, they have not been. Just 17 per cent of standards have been implemented. That is shameful. We need to see all of them delivered across all alcohol and drug partnership areas. Parliament needs to know why that has not happened. What has happened to the public emergency promise and response from the Government? The new recommendation is that only half the standards will be implemented by next April, with only partial implementation for the others. Across Scotland, there has been unwarranted variation. The minister needs to be incredibly mindful of that, and Parliament is concerned about it.

In the time that I have left, I want to highlight the limited progress that we have seen on supporting families. I welcome the work of organisations such as Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs, which is playing an incredibly positive role in supporting anyone who is concerned about someone else’s alcohol or drug use in Scotland. I also welcome the moneys that have been made available in the national development project fund to help to support families. However, we need to see more.

What I was really taken with during the round-table discussion was how families want to play a major part in taking forward public health solutions. They need to be part of those, because they are often the 24-hour support for people who are struggling with addictions and they often feel that their views and the support that they are trying to give are not taken into account. I hope that the minister will revisit that.

I want to put on record my concern about where we are now with alcohol deaths. In 2020, the number of people who tragically died directly because of alcohol increased by 17 per cent, to 1,190 of our fellow Scots. I welcome the fact that the Government has spoken about the “twin public health emergencies” of drug deaths and alcohol harms, but we are not seeing the focus on alcohol that we should be seeing. I raised that with the public health minister and was incredibly disappointed by the response that I received, which is that the MAT standards will not be in place for alcohol treatments until 2024. I do not think that that is acceptable and I hope that, in responding, the minister will consider a rethink from the Scottish Government on that issue. It is incredibly important that that happens.

This may be the last debate before our summer recess, but the issues that we know so many people are facing will be there when we return. Parliament must—and, I hope, will—continue to press the Government to act and to deliver on its promises.

Two key policy areas that the minister has completely neglected to mention are the development of green free ports and the very welcome development of the levelling up fund, which is designed to invest more than £4.8 billion to help our town centres, high streets, local transport projects and cultural and heritage assets. What does the minister intend to do over the recess to promote those welcome schemes and to ensure that communities that have been left behind by the Scottish National Party Government for 15 years will benefit from that investment?

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement.

One group of children and young people did not merit comment by the cabinet secretary today: children who live in temporary accommodation. I have raised the issue consistently with the cabinet secretary and make no apology for doing so again.

Today in Scotland, 7,500 children are living in temporary accommodation. Many of those children have been housed in temporary accommodation for months or years. The typical stay for a family has doubled to more than 58 weeks, which has rightly been described as a “national disgrace”. Does the cabinet secretary think that that is acceptable? Will ministers consider proposals to ban placement of children in temporary accommodation?

Thank you.

What consideration has the Scottish Government given to improving debt management through a public sector debt management strategy?

We heard from the cabinet secretary about the importance of link workers. However, linking people in should be looked at not just across local government but in the national health service and in education services. We have heard that people sometimes do not get early intervention, or that they do not look for that support, so there might be an opportunity to build that in across Government and public services.