Chamber and committees

I had hoped that amendments 1053 and 1053A, in combination, clarified what would happen to 17 and 18-year-olds. The amendment to amendment 1053 changes the age to anyone under the age of 18. As I have said, I hoped that that would give clarity.

If you are a mum or dad, or if you have no kids at all, Shelter Scotland’s publication, “In Their Own Words: Children’s Experiences in Temporary Accommodation”, on the stories of children in temporary accommodation, is stark and a really hard, difficult read. You cannot help but imagine your own children, or kids from other families who you spoil, comfort, laugh or play with, faced with some of the intolerable conditions and situations that are described in the report.

Towards the end of the report, there is a story that a mum tells about her little boy, who is six. She says that at Christmas and on his birthday, people ask him what he would like to put on his list for Santa or to have as a birthday present. He has to say, “Nothing,” because he knows, as his mum knows, that the next time that they have to move house, when they are forced to move to the next temporary accommodation placement, they will have to leave his toys behind.

The feelings of isolation and unsettlement permeate absolutely every line of Shelter’s report. We are told that unsuitable accommodation orders are in place to stop children living in hostels or bed and breakfasts for more than seven days. However, councils are having to move families from one place to another every seven days so that they do not breach the order. Last year, the number of children who are living in such places increased by more than 200 per cent.

Can you imagine being six and packing up your whole world every single week? What would you leave behind? What would you not manage to fit in your bag that week? What of yourself would you leave behind every week? Where would you move to? What does “unsuitable” really mean?

In the report, a mum says that her home is “wet” and “very, very cold”. She says that both her boys have asthma and that they are both in and out of hospital all winter. Another describes her child throwing up blood and being in hospital for six weeks because the temporary accommodation in which they live is not clean.

In unsuitable accommodation, a child is having to brush her teeth at a bedroom sink because the area that she is supposed to use, which is around the toilet, is covered in absolute filth. Kids describe rats, bugs, mould and—every single time, again and again—the cold. They are learning resilience out of necessity, but they are lonely, insecure, cold and sad. Some of them act out at school and take their feelings out on others, which is understandable but is—again—disrupting their own education.

I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be a parent who is trying their best, and trying to make things okay, but who is, every single day, seeing their child getting sadder and sadder, right in front of them, because of what their home is doing to them. Throughout the report, there is a feeling of children and their parents being forgotten about that will stay with me for ever. Those families, and more than 10,000 other children, have somehow disappeared into dirty, damp places that suck their childhood away.

I cannot accept—I cannot believe—that that is acceptable in Scotland in 2025. We are nearly a year into the Government reluctantly declaring a housing emergency—the same Government that promised, long ago, to reduce the number of children in temporary accommodation. We are still reading about kids witnessing stabbings and not being able to sleep at night because they are feeling scared and alone.

When I asked about the report at topical question time, the Government—as it often does—talked about empty homes, cutting voids, acquisitions and working groups. It takes a fair amount of front to respond to the details in the report—to respond to hearing about children watching someone else being stabbed—with plans for working groups. At that topical question time the other week, Willie Rennie voiced the absolute disbelief of members in the chamber when he asked the Minister for Housing whether he had actually “read the report”, because any sense of empathy or urgency in the face of the absolutely bleak reality of what the report describes seemed completely absent.

I accept that local authority housing departments are having to make impossible decisions. I do not believe that a single housing officer would ever willingly place a child in a house that they knew would cause a child harm. I do not envy them in their jobs, and I do not really know how they turn up for work. Because of the Government’s complete failure to tackle the shortage in the supply of homes and because of its abject failure to take urgent action on the housing emergency, those are the choices that we are asking housing officers to make.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill is progressing through the Parliament, but it hardly addresses the housing emergency and the conditions that are ravaging a generation of Scotland’s children. It does not build any new homes for them, nor does it stop them waking up in cold, unsafe and unhealthy rooms. They want something different, and they want that now.

Some of my amendments to the bill try to get to the heart of the issue. The Scottish Government’s failure to reduce the number of children in temporary accommodation as a matter of urgency is a breach of their rights. If agreed to, my amendments will require relevant bodies to take account of children’s rights in deciding where their homes should be. It is blindingly obvious to me that a system that places children in such situations is not putting their best interests at the heart of decision making. If it did, it would be impossible for any child in the 21st century in Scotland to have to be in hospital because of where they lived and what the conditions did to them.

I beg the Government, on behalf of the children, families and parents who are represented in Shelter Scotland’s report, as well as the thousands of others who are not quoted in it and who are in temporary accommodation, to replace the lethargy with absolute urgency. The situation that the report describes should never have happened. I ask the Parliament to collectively agree and pledge that this is the last generation of children who will have to face that situation.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the publication of In Their Own Words: Children’s Experiences in Temporary Accommodation, a research publication commissioned by Shelter Scotland from De Montfort University and University College London; accepts the findings of the publication, which concludes that children in Scotland are adversely affected by the shocking conditions found in some forms of temporary accommodation; recognises that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) provides children with rights to have their best interests considered when decisions about them are being taken, including the right to life and the ability to develop, the right to school, the right to protection from violence in all forms, and the right to play and rest; notes with concern that the report highlights a number of examples of these rights being breached; accepts that the use of hotel-like accommodation for children in temporary accommodation carries a high risk of breaching children’s rights under the UNCRC; notes that amendments to the Housing (Scotland) Bill have been laid that would require relevant bodies to have regard to the rights of the child in dealing with cases of homelessness, and calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that children in Scotland are placed in safe and secure homes which take account of their rights under the UNCRC.

Will the minister take an intervention?

What is the point of declaring a national housing emergency if the Government will not take national responsibility? We would be as well just to leave the 32 councils to get on with it and not bother with declaring a national housing emergency in the Parliament.

Peter, your organisation has called for a remediation programme for RAAC, similar to what exists for cladding. Can you expand on why that is necessary and how you think it could operate?

Some of the points that I wanted to ask about have been covered. Beyond the actions that the Government has said that it is taking, such as issuing guidance about not blaming tenants, the actions of the regulator on statistics, and the potential inclusion of a form of Awaab’s law in the Housing (Scotland) Bill, what else do the Government, landlords and the regulator need to do on damp and mould?

We have heard about skills and the accreditation of assessors, the potential for recourse to tribunals for tenants, and the withholding of rent. Are there any points that have not been covered so far on what powers we should give to tenants or action that the Government or landlords should take?

Another area that I want to cover is the guidance that is out there, which is more focused on non-domestic buildings. What is the Government’s role in producing guidance when it comes to RAAC in domestic properties? I am talking about guidance on surveying, remediation and potentially demolition that applies to both owner-occupiers and tenants. Is that a space that the Scottish Government should be entering?

My last question is about an issue that I touched on with the previous panel. There are flats or terraced rows or semi-detached properties where one person is an owner-occupier and one is the tenant of a social landlord. The RAAC panels cross the ownership boundary. It is impossible to remediate one side without impacting the other. How can the Government give guidance to local authorities or social landlords to get around that legal minefield, so that we are not in a position where nothing happens because we cannot agree on how to manage the difference in and the legal complexities of ownership?

Yvette, are owner-occupiers being given any support at all if they have to decant from a property that has been certified as unsafe?

They are just being told that their property is unsafe and they need to find alternative accommodation themselves.