Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had regarding how its international development programme can support the sharing of vaccines and help to tackle the reported vaccine apartheid in the global south. (S6O-00742)

Will the cabinet secretary say why the homelessness prevention and strategy group, which she chairs, has met only once since the election, given the rate of homelessness? Does she feel that the group is getting the Government support that it needs to implement the next phase of the ending homelessness together action plan?

Good morning. Quite a few witnesses have touched on the ambitious nature of the draft NPF4. Does it need to be accompanied by a capital investment plan for those ambitions to be realised? I ask Pam Ewen to answer first.

It is good to have that reassurance, and I am sure that Shelter will be reassured, too. I look forward to debating the detail of the proposed legislation when it is introduced.

In its briefing, Crisis points out that we need to be diligent with the legislation, ensure that it is rights based and that prevention is not perceived as gatekeeping by clarifying the place of homelessness prevention in the current system.

The motion calls for a person-centred approach. Crisis offers the detail of what that would mean: asking people about their situation, their housing needs and the outcomes that they want, so that a personalised housing plan for what will happen next can be agreed. I think that the Government is unsure of the benefits in providing effective rights to review and challenge decisions, but such rights would aid the desire for the system to be person centred.

We also believe that the rhetoric around preventing homelessness must be matched by the provision of resources to local authorities. With councils now being forced to consider further cuts of £250 million, it would be remiss of us to ignore the impact on ending homelessness. Preventing homelessness and ensuring that rapid rehousing transition plans are a success becomes more difficult in the context of housing policy funding being part of the Government’s general revenue gap in relation to local authorities and its having cut council budgets by almost £1 billion since 2013-14. We know that prevention will undoubtedly save money in the long run, but we cannot afford to starve homelessness services of the funds that they desperately need to do that prevention work.

The Crisis homelessness monitor found that the

“primary barrier seen to risk inhibiting future progress”

on the vision in the “Ending Homelessness Together: High Level Action Plan”

“relates to resources.”

It cites that stakeholders were, in general, positive about RRTPs and that they are part of “a radical transformative agenda”, but that

“there was a common view that RRTPs were underresourced”.

A report from the Salvation Army found that overall funding for homelessness and housing support services fell by 18 per cent from 2013-14 to 2019-20. It asks whether there is

“the necessary investment to achieve this transformational change”

that we want to see.

The Salvation Army also found significant differences between the amounts requested and received in RRTPs. The amounts were substantial—almost all local authorities received less than they had requested. One local authority received 2.5 per cent of what it had requested.

If we are to truly end homelessness and prevent it in the future, we need to make sure that our public services are funded to deliver on their new duties.

I move amendment S6M-03018.1, to insert at end:

“; notes that homelessness in Scotland is rising again, that in 2020-21 over half of the approaches to Housing Options Scotland resulted in a homelessness application, and that 14,161 households were assessed as homeless in the six months to September 2021; believes that the nation’s homelessness crisis is severe and persistent, with one in 12 people in Scotland being forced to experience the trauma of homelessness; notes the findings of the report, Homelessness in Scotland, prepared by The Salvation Army, which found that the overall level of funding for homelessness and housing support services had decreased by 18% between 2013-14 and 2019-20 and asked if ‘the necessary investment to achieve this transformational change’ was being delivered, and the Crisis publication, Homelessness Monitor: Scotland 2021, which found that ‘the primary barrier seen to risk inhibiting future progress on the [Ending Homelessness Together] Action Plan’s vision relates to resources’, and calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that funding to Scottish local authorities is adequate to ensure that the implementation of the prevention of homelessness objectives and other landmark projects, like Housing First, are not at risk.”

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am the owner of a rental property in North Lanarkshire.

We welcome the debate and are pleased to see that the consultation is under way. We support measures to intervene at an earlier stage, and encourage services to work together to respond to people’s needs to ensure that fewer people and families face having to rebuild their lives.

Yesterday’s homelessness statistics for the six months to September demonstrate that the nation’s continuing homelessness crisis is severe and persistent. Each case represents a household of real people, including whole families, children and people with mental health or other problems. They simply want the right to safe, secure, affordable housing, but, instead, they are going without.

As our amendment says, one in 12 people have been

“forced to experience the trauma of homelessness”,

which shows that the opportunity to go much further to end homelessness, and prevent it from happening in the first place, cannot be missed. In May, we pledged that there should be collective responsibility across public services to prevent homelessness. When it comes before Parliament, we will therefore support legislation that applies such a duty to public services.

Similar to the issue that was highlighted by Miles Briggs, Shelter has drawn to my attention the proposal that would remove the right to permanent accommodation and replace it with the right to stable accommodation. I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on that and confirm that there will be no regression of hard-won housing and homelessness rights in forthcoming legislation. I ask the Government and Parliament to reaffirm existing expectations that homelessness ends only in a secure, permanent setting.

The draft national planning framework states:

“We want an infrastructure-first approach to be embedded in Scotland’s planning system.”

What do the witnesses think an infrastructure-first approach should look like? Will NPF4 deliver that? If not, what changes would they suggest? That question goes first to Nicola Barclay.

Thank you for those answers. Will national or local government structures and funding deliver some of the outcomes that we are talking about? Do you feel that the Government should produce a capital investment infrastructure plan to deliver on some of the issues that we talked about in relation to the first question? On local government, we have heard concerns regarding planning departments’ resources and whether they are sufficient to deliver the outcomes that we would like to see in the draft NPF4.

Thanks, convener. We are talking about investment and implementation of the strategy, policies and housing targets. NPF4 will be in place for 10 years; a five-year national planning framework has been the normal practice. In that context, how can implementation and delivery best be monitored and reviewed in that decade-long plan?

Thank you.

I move from funding to implementation and monitoring. As we move from a five-year planning framework to a 10-year planning framework, how important is it to monitor and review the implementation of the strategy, policy and housing targets, and how best do we do that?