Meeting of the Parliament 25 June 2014
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate on the Housing (Scotland) Bill, and I confirm that Scottish Labour members support the aims of the bill and welcome many of the measures that it brings to the housing sector.
There can be no denying that housing in Scotland faces some significant and complex challenges, and I am sure that everyone in the chamber will agree that we want a strong and growing housing sector. Although we support the principles of the bill, we feel that it is a missed opportunity, and I will expand on that as I progress.
This is the eighth year in which the current Administration has been in control of Scotland’s housing sector, and we are now about to pass its second housing bill. In the past eight years, the Scottish Government has failed to make housing a priority. More than 150,000 people are on waiting lists in Scotland, many of them in houses that are unsuitably small or in poor condition, and many in the private rented sector are paying far more than they can afford.
House building is at its lowest level since the end of world war two, with fewer than 15,000 homes completed in the past few years. However, we can hardly be shocked at that figure, as the capital housing budget was cut by 29 per cent between 2008-09 and 2011-12. Audit Scotland has estimated that Scotland will need 500,000 new homes over the next 25 years to meet demand. In the period from 2001 to 2006, there were 144,749 home completions under Labour, with a further 112,319 home completions between 2007 and 2012 under the Scottish National Party. It can be easy for both sides to assign blame, but it does not change the fact that not enough houses have been built.