Chamber and committees

I will come back to that point, because I want to address it in relation to another amendment. It is a fair point, and I will deal with it.

As for amendments 1024 to 1030, I will not be moving them this morning, but I am interested in hearing more about where the Scottish Government is on the matters in question. The first of those amendments would put the duty that will exist for social landlords on to private landlords, too. I have had helpful conversations with the minister about this, and to pick up on Mr Doris’s point, I think that such a duty would probably be overly burdensome for someone who owned one or two flats, so it should not be followed.

However, as Mr Doris also pointed out, the duty should perhaps apply to someone who owns multiple flats, and I think that that should perhaps be the case for not just amendment 1023 but amendment 1024. I am interested to know whether the Government would look at those amendments in a different light if they were to set out the number of flats that the duty would apply to, so that they did not pick up landlords with just one or two individual flats.

The rest of my amendments are in some ways similar to Katy Clark’s, in that they would put a duty on social landlords to think about whether they should evict someone simply for being in arrears. Arrears are an important issue, because every social landlord has to keep revenue coming in to make their cash flow work, but I would be interested in hearing from the minister whether there could be a longer grace period for social landlords and whether we could explore that at stage 3.

We all want those who have experienced domestic abuse to be protected from eviction, and it makes little sense for someone to be evicted from a property, become homeless and then have to start the journey all over again. We are aware that such situations often affect children, who have to move school and lose friends and their support network. As a result, we all want greater protection for people to allow them to stay in tenancies if at all possible, while at the same time recognising that social and private landlords need to have rent coming through so that they can continue to exist. I would be interested to hear what the minister has to say about the rest of my amendments.

This is an important part of the bill, and one which, I am sure, all members will want to see work in practice.

I appreciate that Katy Clark will not be pressing amendment 1061 or moving her other amendments in the group, but I should say that we would have supported them, because the intention behind them is right. However, going back to the meaning of the phrase “including consideration”, which I raised in my intervention, I do not want to teach my granny to suck eggs, as Katy Clark is a better lawyer than I ever was, but I do think that there needs to be a better legal test. My fear is that this will simply become a box-ticking exercise.

We will support Maggie Chapman’s amendments 1022 and 1069, if she decides to move them. We also support the amendments that will be discussed later by Meghan Gallacher and Rachael Hamilton.

Amendment 1023, in my name, creates a duty on social landlords to point those who have experienced domestic abuse to appropriate legal advice and opportunities. I claim no expertise on what it must be like to experience domestic abuse, but I am sure that people need legal help and advice at an appropriate point. Often, though, it is not clear where to get such advice, nor is it clear which legal firms still do that type of work, wherever you are. There is, particularly in rural areas of Scotland, a lack of criminal or civil lawyers who do legal aid work on domestic abuse. The amendment, therefore, would make the social landlord not do the work themselves but point the individual towards it. That would be really helpful.

Will the member take an intervention?

With regard to the wording of amendment 1089, what do you understand by the phrase “including consideration”? That could mean someone thinking about it, then simply moving on. What would you expect “including consideration” to actually mean in practice to a local authority housing officer sitting there on a Tuesday afternoon?

I want to explore further the point that Mr Griffin made in his intervention about the Government’s proposed ability to redefine homelessness through regulation. We are making legislation not just for the current Government in this session of Parliament but for future Governments in future sessions of Parliament.

I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which spends a great deal of time looking at regulations. It is obvious from our work that regulations do not get the same scrutiny as primary legislation does. We do not know what a future Government might look like in five, 10 or 15 years’ time.

Will the minister tell me why there might be a need to introduce a new definition of homelessness via regulations? Why can we not simply include a definition in the bill? If a future Parliament or a future Government wants to change that, it should do so through primary legislation rather than through regulations.

I want to explore further the point that Mr Griffin made in his intervention about the Government’s proposed ability to redefine homelessness through regulation. We are making legislation not just for the current Government in this session of Parliament but for future Governments in future sessions of Parliament.

I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which spends a great deal of time looking at regulations. It is obvious from our work that regulations do not get the same scrutiny as primary legislation does. We do not know what a future Government might look like in five, 10 or 15 years’ time.

Will the minister tell me why there might be a need to introduce a new definition of homelessness via regulations? Why can we not simply include a definition in the bill? If a future Parliament or a future Government wants to change that, it should do so through primary legislation rather than through regulations.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the minister and his team of colleagues.

I will go through the amendments in the group. As I said in my earlier intervention, I am sympathetic to what Mr O’Kane is trying to do with amendment 1078. However, one of the issues with it, with those of Mr Griffin, and with a lot of the bill is that there are lots of carrots but not too many sticks. If we were to amend the legislation in this way, we would need to look at how it could be better enforced, because the only way open at the moment is full judicial review of a decision, or the lack of a decision by whoever was making it. I wonder whether amendment 1078 could be looked at again to see whether it might have other consequences, and I would make the same comment about Mark Griffin’s amendment 1053.

As for the rest of Mr Griffin’s amendments, I am sympathetic to what he is trying to achieve, but again I have some concerns, particularly about the lack of clarity in the wording with regard to age and how this would work, particularly for 17 and 18-year-olds. It depends on what the member wants to do, but I might be looking for him to bring the amendments back at stage 3 with slightly different wording. If that does not happen and he moves them today, I and my colleague will abstain, simply because the wording needs to be looked at and tightened up.

My intervention is similar to that of my colleague Meghan Gallacher. I am not sure that I heard you address the issue. Would the amendments mean that, in practice, for a local authority, we would go down to one list? How would local authorities then work with that list in practice?

Depending on where we go this morning, I am unclear on what that actually means. What does that test mean? How would it be applied? One reason why we do not support the amendment is the lack of information around that. What does that mean for the average housing officer in how they deal with people? For that reason, we will not support amendment 1052.

I am very sympathetic, in some ways, to Mr Stewart’s amendments, which I know he has worked on with Crisis and the Scottish Government. However, I am still concerned about some of the wording in some of them. We still need to work a wee bit harder on getting definitions correct and getting things correct.

On this occasion, we will therefore abstain on all Mr Stewart’s amendments in this particular area, in the hope that, whether they are agreed to or not this morning, a wee bit more work can be done between stages 2 and 3, between all parties and with the third sector, to ensure that we end up with something that is not only good for those who are being threatened with homelessness, but workable for those who have to work with the system. I am not sure that we have quite got that balance right within those amendments.

I will follow up on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s point. The powers that we are talking about have been in legislation for, in some cases, decades, but given that we are still facing problems day to day with young folk not getting appropriate accommodation, how will the duties be enforced? We can pass the best legislation in the world, but if it does not affect a child in Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow, why are we doing so? What will the Government actually do to ensure that children live in appropriate accommodation?