Chamber and committees

This is my first committee meeting since my entry in the register of members’ interests changed. I have ceased being the owner of a private rented property and a landlord. I was advised by a Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee clerk that I must make that declaration for a year following the cessation of that declaration.

Recently, the First Minister said that any issues relating to pay negotiations are for COSLA, councils and their employees. However, I have sat here long enough to have heard previous First Ministers, finance secretaries and local government ministers say the same thing, only to get involved in negotiations when strikes cause school closures and the rubbish starts mounting.

Given that councils rely overwhelmingly on the Scottish Government for the vast majority of their funding and the majority of that funding is spent on wages, what should be the Government’s position in supporting pay negotiations? Does it mean just getting around the table or does it mean putting more money on the table to ensure that local services remain sustainable?

In the previous parliamentary session, the Local Government and Communities Committee flagged up the issue of the lack of an appeals process for participation requests, so it is good to hear that the Scottish Government is considering that. That committee also raised concerns about the asset transfer process sometimes being overly bureaucratic, cumbersome and difficult for local organisations to navigate. We heard particular examples around the opportunities for community groups to take over areas of ground for use as allotments. Has the Government done any work on how to make the asset transfer process easier and more accessible for community groups that have that aspiration to take on a piece of land or asset that is held by a public authority?

Councillor Heddle, do you have any points to make regarding the effectiveness of the participation request or asset transfer powers in the legislation?

Good morning. I have a few questions about the powers in the act relating to participation requests and asset transfers. I will kick off by asking whether you think that the two instruments around asset transfers and participation requests have helped to empower communities.

There are three key strands to the Verity house agreement, one of which is sustainable public services. Who has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that those services remain sustainable? What is a sustainable service, if pay inflation reaches the point where public services stop being provided? Are we talking about services reaching a level at which Government and councils say, “We can provide X, Y and Z sustainably, but A, B and C will have to go,” or are we talking about sustaining the existing level of service? How is pay inflation impacting on that?

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I ceased to be the owner of a private rented property this summer.

This was not an energetic and fresh start from a First Minister delivering his first programme for government. This was the Government saying loud and clear that it has run out of steam, has run out of ideas and has given up—a delayed housing bill, a cladding bill that the deputy first minister wasted two years on and plans to tinker with the unfair and broken council tax. Where were the plans to empower communities? Where was the urgency to protect tenants and a commitment to get on with building the homes that Scotland needs by driving up supply in order to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis?

What we are left with is Scotland being let down by two failing Governments. The Governments in Westminster and Holyrood are bad for business, bad for jobs and bad for growth. They are delivering low growth, low productivity and high levels of poverty. While the SNP and Tories are distracted by their internal problems, they have lost touch with people’s reality—families are cutting back on basics, are unable to work because they cannot get the healthcare that they need and are struggling to pay spiralling bills, and people are losing their homes in record numbers.

Rent arrears are already up 75 per cent, with an eviction ban in place. Homelessness applications due to people defaulting on their mortgages are up 65 per cent. The number of children in temporary accommodation is up yet again—to record levels—and households with children are now waiting 502 days, on average, in temporary accommodation. That is a full-blown humanitarian disaster that has been created on this Government’s watch, but it still refuses to accept that the housing emergency is happening right now, right out there. Is it any wonder, then, that the Government’s research shows that only one in four people think that it is doing enough to help people? More than half think that it does not provide enough support.

The year-long mortgage bombshell is every bit of the Tories’ making, but people absolutely need help from this Government, too. The Citizens Advice report says that the number of people looking up advice on its site on facing eviction because their home has been repossessed has soared by a massive 462 per cent this year. Those are the real fears that families face.

A year ago, Labour offered the Government a plan for a mortgage rescue scheme, and still this Government has nothing to say to the 60,000 families who are at higher risk of repossession and the 7,000 who could already be in arrears. This Government is not interested in using the powers that the Scottish Parliament has to keep people in their homes. The First Minister said that he wanted today to be about reducing poverty and delivering growth—so do we, but the news from the housing regulator that affordable housing deliveries will fall by 15 per cent this year will do the very opposite.

Next week, I will meet Salmon Scotland, but not to talk about salmon; it will be to hear about how badly wrong the basics in the housing market are. The lack of affordable housing is stopping the Highlands and Islands from becoming a northern powerhouse, with workers able to live near their work and families, and it is causing island depopulation. If we ever needed an example of how bad for business, jobs, growth and the economy this Government is, it is the housing crisis that we are experiencing.

Closing libraries and swimming pools, ending essential music programmes, slashing care packages and seeing workers go out on strike is not why any councillor went into local government. Councillors want to improve the communities that we love, not manage decline and continually cut services while charging people more for what remains.

If the First Minister wants to work in partnership and co-operation with councils to protect what is left, grow our economy and tackle poverty, he should give a commitment that the funding cuts will stop.

Mr Stewart was a housing minister, so he surely appreciates the fact that social housing comes not just from councils but from housing associations and that the previous Labour Administration built tens and tens of thousands of social houses. That intervention is absolutely symptomatic of the spin and hypocrisy that we get from this Government. Rather than focusing on delivery and addressing the problems that Scots face today, Mr Stewart harks back to false figures from more than a decade ago.

That is clearly a false representation of the situation and of the previous Labour Government, which delivered tens and tens of thousands of social houses.

The legacy of falling approvals will hit the economy and mean fewer houses for people who are desperate for them right now.

The Government’s latest idea—another woeful scrap of a policy offered to desperate councils that tinkers with the unfair, broken council tax—absolutely epitomises the Government’s dearth of ambition. During a cost of living crisis, it will simultaneously hammer 80,000 low-income households, penalise pensioners on fixed incomes and hit families, which face mortgages increasing by hundreds of pounds every month. It is a policy that is the result of the Government’s failure to abolish the council tax, made worse by its failure to properly fund vital public services. Those services are the engines that run our local communities. However, like council staff, they are at breaking point, which is hurting Scotland’s economy and making communities and the country poorer.

There was no personal commitment from the First Minister today that the savage decade of cuts that has cost local services over £6 billion since 2013-14 has come to an end.