Chamber and committees

I appreciate what the minister has said and Scottish Labour will support amendment 2, which will be debated in group 2. However, he has not given a commitment that the finances of registered social landlords, or the impact on the affordable housing supply programme, will be taken into account in the bill.

Amendment 1 is supported by Shelter Scotland and by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. This morning, Shelter sent an email to all members, in which it said:

“The measures in this bill should not impact on the delivery of new social homes, given that this is a structural solution to the housing emergency, to address the need for secure and affordable housing. Specifically, the social housing rent freeze or cap measures must be fully funded. Any reduction in rent revenues which are required to deliver the new social homes to reduce housing need must be provided by the Scottish Government to ensure that homes can still be delivered.”

Shelter is absolutely right about that. Amendment 1 would enable the Government to show that it was carrying out such a financial assessment. I will therefore press amendment 1.

I will start with amendment 1, which is in the name of Jeremy Balfour. I agree with him that the Government changed its mind on the issue, and we welcome that change of mind. We called for a rent freeze in the summer, so I am absolutely delighted to see the Government following where Labour has led. Therefore, I oppose amendment 1.

The amendments in my name in this group—all the amendments in the group apart from 1 and 32—are my attempt to be helpful to the Government, in particular to the First Minister. In her programme for government statement in early September, the First Minister said that rents would be frozen from that day. However, the bill does not propose to freeze rents from that day—for tenants who live in the private rented sector, rents can increase today, tomorrow, the day after that and for weeks and weeks up until 5 December.

My amendments are an attempt to be helpful to the First Minister to ensure that the statement that she made in Parliament remains accurate. My amendments would change the date in the bill from 6 September to 6 June, which would mean that any notice that is issued by a private landlord, which has three months to take effect, after 6 June would be ruled ineligible. That would mean that the First Minister’s statement that all rents were frozen from the day on which she made her statement on the programme for government would remain valid. On that basis, I ask members to support amendments 2, 3, 7, 14, 15, 17, 22 and 27.

Jeremy Balfour makes the point that a landlord should not face hardship because of costs that are outwith their control and that they should be allowed to sell the property to recover those costs. Why should a tenant be made homeless by a landlord selling the property because of costs and things that happen that are outwith their control?

I was not planning to speak to this group of amendments until you called me, much to my surprise, convener. However, given how the debate has gone, I feel that I must speak to amendment 72 in the name of Jamie Greene. I cannot believe that a Conservative MSP would lodge an amendment that would give public subsidy to a private landlord struggling with their mortgage, which is the direct fault of his UK Government’s actions in pushing up interest rates. [Interruption.] I will not give way at the moment. I cannot believe that the Conservative Party’s priority is to protect landlords from rising interest rates, but that it has no plans whatsoever—it has put forward no proposals—to support the hundreds of thousands of households who are paying the price for his Government’s ineptitude as a result of skyrocketing interest and mortgage rates.

This group of amendments continues the theme of trying to strike a balance between landlords and tenants so that the Government does not go a bit too far in balancing rights towards the landlord rather than the tenant.

The amendments in my name set out that a tenant should not lose their home because a landlord intends to sell or live in the property if that tenant has not caused the financial hardship of the landlord. It does not seem fair to me that a tenant should be forced out of a home through no fault of their own. My amendments would mean that the exception could be used only when the significant financial hardship is caused by keeping a tenant who continues to build up arrears until the end of the eviction ban. It is only fair that the exception can be applied if the hardship is caused directly by the tenant.

My amendments set out that, as an additional burden on landlords, they must provide the tribunal with an affidavit of their intention to sell or live in the property, as well as evidence of their undertakings to sell and confirmation from a financial or money adviser or a chartered accountant. As I said, I feel that we have perhaps gone too far in the balance between landlord and tenant, and my amendments try to pull that back more in favour of the tenant.

This is the third group in which I have lodged amendments that attempt to rebalance rights so that they are more in favour of the tenant than the landlord. The first example of that is amendment 53, which would provide that a landlord must show that they have taken steps

“to ensure the tenant is informed about all support available, including that the tenant has exhausted applications for any local authority financial support to which the tenant is entitled.”

I feel that it is a sensible measure to ensure that, before the substantial rent arrears eviction ground is deemed to apply, the landlord has done all that they can to point their tenant towards the support packages that are available to alleviate the burden of those arrears on the tenant’s debt and on the landlord.

I think that the hardship test should be linked to the arrears from the property in question. I do not think that it is fair for a tenant to be evicted as a result of financial forces elsewhere. I believe that the landlord should have to prove that the hardship that they are experiencing is a direct result of the arrears that have been built up through that tenancy.

I ask members to support all my amendments in the group.

I move amendment 51.

I ask members to support amendment 73, which is in my name, and amendment 71, which is in my colleague Paul Sweeney’s name.

Amendment 73 would place a duty on the Scottish Government to write to tenants and landlords to give them advice and information on the rent freeze and eviction ban. I raised that during stage 1 yesterday and I was pleased to get support for the principle from across the chamber. As I indicated in the debate yesterday, communication about the cap, the moratorium and the rights to enforce protection is a key issue.

In May, RentBetter reported that there is a lack of confidence and, most would say, a fear among tenants about exercising their rights. That is due to a perceived risk of repercussions such as rent increases or, perhaps, even loss of their home.

The duty would come into force at the same time as part 1 of the bill. Registered landlords are defined as those in the landlord register. Because there is no register of tenants, ministers should write to the properties that are recorded in the register with letters addressed to “The Tenant”. I hope that that would give tenants the information that they would need to confidently challenge a landlord who decided to act illegally and hoped that their tenants were misinformed and would simply pay a higher rent.

I ask members to support amendments 71 and 73.

I appreciate the minister’s comments on the introduction of a winter moratorium on evictions, which would go beyond the period during which Government would be assessing whether the emergency legislation was appropriate. He could take comfort from the fact that more than 90 per cent of respondents to the consultation on a new deal for tenants said that they supported that measure. I would be happy to seek permission to withdraw amendment 74 if the minister assured me that the Government would seek to take forward that policy and proposal in the housing bill.

Amendment 80 was drafted and lodged on the recommendation of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. [Interruption.] It requires ministers, as part of their review processes, to assess the impact of an extension to part 1 on the on-going viability of the tenant grant fund and funding for the affordable housing supply programme. [Interruption.]

I have a series of probing amendments in groups 4, 5 and 6. I understand the minister’s ambition to make sure that this legislation balances the rights of landlords and tenants, but my amendments in these three groups probe as to whether the balance has gone slightly too far in favour of the landlords as opposed to the tenants.

In particular, in this group, amendments 37, 38, 41 and 42 ensure that exceptions relating to substantial arrears and financial hardship on the part of the landlord can apply only when a high test of financial hardship applies as a direct result of those substantial arrears: the hardship reported must be as a result of the arrears experienced.

A moratorium on evictions is what we are legislating for and I feel that the exceptions for substantial arrears provide too wide an exemption from that moratorium and hence these amendments remove that exception entirely. Regarding the social sector, Shelter advises that the average arrears for evicted tenants in 2019-20 were around £9,000. In that context, the bill sets the threshold far too low to be considered substantial, at a level of just over £2,000.

Due to time constraints, the substantial rent arrears definition has been removed from the list of exemptions, but the detail is still retained in the bill. It is my intention to come back at stage 3, but I ask members to support the amendments in my name in the group.