Chamber and committees

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that, until July last year, I was the owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

This budget has been entirely chaotic. It will send the housing emergency spiralling and it has surely put the final nail in the coffin of the Verity house agreement. Working people will pay more and get less; the 10,000 children who are trapped in temporary accommodation will continue to be stuck there; and the Government has finally admitted what we all knew—that the council tax freeze is underfunded. The Government has used Barnett consequentials, which arise from money that is allocated to local government in England, to restore the previous cut to councils’ budgets. That is particularly galling—in essence, it uses councils’ own money to plug Government cuts.

The finance secretary said that the budget was built on

“Our values of equality, opportunity and community”.—[Official Report,19 December 2023; c 9.]

There is an overused quote when it comes to budget times:

“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

Shelter has come to an assessment of the Government’s budget. In its intervention—which is possibly the most devastating response to a budget in all my time in the Parliament—it has made clear what it thinks of the Government’s values. It said:

“The Finance Secretary called this a ‘values-led budget’. Those values now include increasing homelessness.”

How any Government could receive such a damning critique from experts who deal with homelessness and just carry on without making any changes is astounding. To cut £200 million and pretend that 110,000 affordable homes will still be built has been described this morning by Shelter as an attempt by the Government to “gaslight” homeless people.

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

It is wasteful spending. There has been an absolute failure to grow the economy. That is something that has come not just this year but has been arrived at over a number of years.

Again, I make the point that I made to Mr Greer a number of weeks ago. We do not come to the chamber asking the Government to fund new commitments—we are simply asking the Government to meet its own commitments. It promised the people of Scotland that it would build 110,000 affordable homes, but it is cutting £200 million from the budget for that. That is the Government’s failure, not this Parliament’s failure.

We have to realise that the reason why the Government is in this mess in the first place is because the First Minister felt the need to stand up in front of the SNP conference and make £500 million of unfunded promises to get him through his first conference speech. When it comes to the budget, it is clear to everyone outside the chamber, as well as those inside it, where the fault lies.

On the eve of this debate, on the front page of the Daily Record, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Homes for Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Shelter Scotland, Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation all spoke openly to set out the incredible damage that this values-led budget will do.

Independent research shows that 693,000 households have some form of unmet housing need. YouGov polling shows that 80 per cent of the country think that we are in a housing crisis. There are 250,000 people on social housing waiting lists, 30,000 people are homeless and 10,000 children are in temporary accommodation. In that context, to take a 4 per cent cut to the capital budget and end up with a figure for housing cuts that is six times higher is simply malicious. That is a hammer blow to the housing sector that will boost homelessness and push the housing emergency in the wrong direction.

It is no wonder that those in the housing sector think that the Government’s promise to deliver 110,000 affordable homes is gone and that bringing forward a review of the scheme is a tacit admission of failure.

I am talking about the children in temporary accommodation; the first-time buyers; the workers who are building the homes; the sons, daughters, friends and families who are living in overcrowded homes, unable to buy somewhere of their own or stuck in unfit homes or on waiting lists; and the working people who are paying more but getting less. They have all been abandoned by this budget, which Parliament should reject.

Ross Greer made that intervention a number of weeks ago. He makes the mistake of thinking that this is somehow a day 1, year 1 SNP Government budget. It has been 17 years in the making. The Government is reaping what it has sown in its wasteful spending.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations released YouGov polling that showed that 80 per cent of people believe that we are in the grip of a housing emergency. Indeed, a number of authorities have declared an emergency, with more to follow. Why is the Government so reluctant to acknowledge what everyone else seems to see, which is that we are in a housing emergency? I fully accept that, as the minister said in his response to Annie Wells, some factors are outwith his control, but why not declare that emergency and get everyone around the table to start addressing it?

In an attempt to repair the damaged relationship with local government, it has been reported, as Mr Kerr has said, that the cabinet secretary has offered to restore the £63 million that was previously cut from council budgets. Is that restoration of funding dependent on councils agreeing the council tax freeze?

I will wrap two questions into one. The regulations continue only the rent control element and not the evictions element. Will that have an impact on the levels of evictions and homelessness? What are your expectations and ambitions for the housing bill on rent controls? What do you hope to see the Government propose as a long-term approach to those?

I am an MSP for Central Scotland and a member of the committee.

Before I ask my questions, I remind everyone of my interest as a former owner of a private rented property, which I owned up to July last year.

Lots of people have talked about budgets. I would like to hear witnesses’ views on the impact on the “Housing to 2040” vision of this year’s housing supply programme budget cuts. How will they affect supply overall, and affordable supply in particular? Is the ambition to deliver 110,000 affordable homes still realistic?

If we assume that the draft budget will be passed in its current form and that there will be a cut, the million-dollar question becomes: how will we build the homes—which, as we have all said, are desperately needed—with less money? Are there any innovative finance models? Could the Government provide guarantees for loan funding? Is there anything else that the Government could do, in the absence of hard cash, to stimulate the house building that we know is required?

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I was an owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area until July last year.

This has been a chaotic budget from a Government that is now devoid of any economic strategy and is actively planning to send the housing emergency spiralling. Not only will working people pay more and get less but the 10,000 children who are trapped in temporary accommodation will continue to suffer that misery. It is a budget that started with a raid on people in council tax bands E to H and ended up with an unfunded council tax freeze.

The £200 million cut to affordable house building has united all corners of the housing sector—private, public and voluntary—in anger and complete disbelief. Shelter Scotland says that it has lost confidence that the Government can deliver its plans, and Homes for Scotland says that the cut “threatens Scotland’s social wellbeing”. The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation simply describe it as “brutal”. The budget will make poverty worse and intensify Scotland’s spiralling housing emergency.