Chamber and committees

I want to touch on communication with people on waiting lists and what local authorities can do to identify duplications on waiting lists. Ian Welsh, you touched on data protection issues, but there are ways around everything. For example, if allotment associations asked people for permission to share the data, could local authorities play a bigger role by having a comprehensive, local authority-level waiting list? In that way, with applicants’ permission, councils could co-ordinate waiting lists and encourage incorporation, perhaps looking at particular sites where authorities own land. That does not seem to be beyond possibility, provided that people give their permission to share the data.

It is excellent news for families that children are being offered 1,140 hours of early education and childcare. How many children who were offered that 1,140 hours have actually received it over the course of this year?

I know of a number of nurseries that have had to move to reduced hours to cope with staff absences because of a lack of resilience and staff shortages in the system.

I am the owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

Amendments 109 and 110 seek to improve the information, evaluation and reporting of the operation and effect of the provisions in part 4 and their precursors, which is substantially lacking at the moment.

It is clear to anyone with an interest in the private rented sector that there is a lack of hard and fast data to give an understanding of that sector, particularly when it comes to the length of tenancies, rent levels and the make-up of the sector. Amendments 109 and 110 seek to address that in a small way through the collection of more data, which would put us in a much more informed position ahead of the forthcoming housing bill and in assessing how the provisions have worked and continue to work.

Amendment 109 would require an evaluation of the operation and effect of part 4 and that tenants, landlords and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service be consulted. It would also require that the impact on those groups be assessed one year after royal assent and in time for the housing bill.

Members will know that the provisions in part 4 maintain the pre-action protocols and the requirement for all eviction grounds to be discretionary. Those measures are already active in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Act 2020, so amendment 109 would require the evaluation to cover three years of continued operation.

Amendment 110 would require the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to publish quarterly statistics relating to the operation of the provisions in part 4. Anyone who has tried to retrieve statistical information from the service will know that that is difficult. It is a transparent body and publishes its individual judgments clearly, but it has been difficult to find overall aggregated statistical information on the work of the First-tier Tribunal.

We want tenants’ rights to be protected so that people are not evicted from their homes as a result of hardship faced during the pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis. However, we recognise concerns that the measures in the existing coronavirus legislation are not supported by information or evidenced reporting on their effectiveness.

At the moment, the extent of the debate has essentially been two sides—the tenant side and the landlord side—saying that they do or do not agree with the measures, but without there being any underlying evidence for their positions. The reporting requirement would fill that gap.

The Scottish Association of Landlords has questioned the effectiveness of the move to discretionary grounds, having published its analysis of tribunal cases. That fairly lengthy piece of work showed that only one eviction had been prevented on the grounds of reasonableness.

I am pleased that Shelter Scotland supports my amendments. At stage 1, it recommended evaluation and monitoring of the pre-action protocols so

“that they are working in practice, with the Tribunal ensuring that they are upheld.”

Legislation without robust evidence of the impact of the policies was far from best practice, albeit that it was done with the best motivations in mind. It would be entirely unacceptable to remove tenants’ rights in the absence of any compelling information to do so. I believe that the amendments strike a balance in setting a requirement for post-legislative evaluation to assess the effects of the decision to legislate two years ago.

I move amendment 109.

In relation to amendment 111, we were sympathetic to the idea of a sunset clause, but one that was linked to the introduction of the housing bill. However, I understand that there are difficulties with that in legislative terms. I do not support amendment 111. It seeks to introduce a hard date for the relevant provisions to expire, which could result in the protections that the bill introduces for tenants simply expiring if the housing bill was not introduced by the specified date.

Amendment 109 is unique in the sense that representatives of landlords and of the tenants lobby are equally supportive of using the proposed provisions to fill a particular data gap and to fill a gap in assessing the Government’s performance against the measures in that part of the bill. However, I take on board what the cabinet secretary has said and the offer that he has made for Mr Harvie to meet me to discuss the matter. Therefore, I seek permission to withdraw amendment 109.

Amendment 109, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 110 not moved.

Amendment 111 moved—[Edward Mountain].

In March, when I asked the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government whether she had considered a council tax surcharge on second homes, she said—as the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands has suggested—that the additional dwelling supplement was sufficient to tackle the issue. Have both cabinet secretaries discussed the issue? In Argyll and Bute, 6 per cent of homes are second homes; in Highland, the figure is 3 per cent; and, in the Western Isles, it is 5.7 per cent. Those areas have rates of fuel poverty of around 50 per cent. By the coming winter, second home owners in those areas will have shared in a £4 million windfall from the Scottish and UK Governments related to their council tax and energy rebates, while permanent residents in those areas are really struggling.

Will the cabinet secretary commit to engaging in cross-Government working to claw back that windfall and make sure that it is distributed to people in permanent homes who need it most?

I am happy to take another intervention if I have time, Presiding Officer.

As I was saying, although this piece of legislation establishes the rights of people to stand, it does not set the conditions to maximise the breadth of candidates that we would perhaps like to see representing our local communities. Just a month ago, a new generation of enthusiastic councillors was elected to office to improve their communities and help their neighbours, addressing issues from social care to children’s education, housing and economic development, but also the bread and butter of local roads, cleanliness and bin collections.

Those councillors will now do everything they can to make changes and decisions on services that affect people’s daily lives. That is not without its challenges, as Stephen Kerr said in his opening speech. The people who were elected a month ago will have faced abuse and harassment; will take on more than a full-time job, with long hours and very little pay; and will have to work with a local government workforce that is very demoralised at the moment. Those challenges look set to grow, which puts at risk our opportunity to have the best pool of candidates in future elections.

I said at stage 1 in March that the candidates who go on to be elected will be forced into taking decisions that mean scaling back and cutting services while they struggle to keep up with local demand. Millions have been ring fenced beyond those locally elected candidates’ control, and since 2013, £918 million in real terms has been slashed from council budgets.

When budget after budget cuts local services, taking those decisions is a constant task that grinds down local candidates and local democracy. Do we think that that job would be attractive to people from Spain, Poland, Portugal and Luxembourg who have made Scotland their home? I am not so sure, because that is not what people go into local government to do.

I am pleased that we can widen the candidacy rights today, and we support the bill. However, Parliament has a wider job of considering the best conditions that we can have for the best pool of candidates in 2027.

Absolutely—we agree with that. I was simply responding to the bill and the treaties that we have in front of us today. The principle that Bob Doris elaborated—