Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2016
The pressure is on me, then.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the closing stages of the debate on an important bill. I am particularly pleased by Alex Neil’s announcement that the Queen is happy with the bill and the way in which it will impact on her interests. I know that the Scottish ministers own the Palace of Holyroodhouse, across the road, but I do not know whether the Queen pays rent. If she does, I hope that we are not gouging her—I know how difficult things can be for big families in these difficult times.
When I was elected in 2003, I found myself, somewhat unexpectedly, a member of the Communities Committee, which dealt with housing, among a number of other responsibilities. One of the first pieces of legislation that we had to deal with was subject to an amendment—lodged by Cathie Craigie, I think—that introduced the landlord registration scheme. It was clear that we were in a process of incremental change in how we deal with housing—in particular, private rented housing. Under two sessions of Labour-Liberal Democrat Administrations and two sessions of SNP Administrations we have seen continuation of that incremental approach.
There has never been one big bang to transform everything, but we have seen the system of landlord registration established, although it has perhaps been underresourced at local level and has perhaps not delivered everything that we hoped it would deliver. There have been improvements in physical standards and the service that we expect private rented sector landlords to provide. There has, more recently, been the abolition of the right to buy, which often led to housing shifting generationally from being social rented housing to being privately rented properties—gradual creeping privatisation of that housing. There has been the establishment of a regulation system for letting agents, which we look forward to having some effect—although, like landlord registration, it might do much but perhaps not everything that we hope that it will, and we might need to continue to revise and strengthen it. Now, we have the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Bill, with a reformed private tenancy and the beginnings of a system of rent control.
Despite that incremental change, and despite the general policy intent of the Labour-Liberal Dem and SNP Administrations, we have seen another change that I do not think was the policy intention of either: the private rented sector has not just grown, but has replaced a great deal of other previously more-available forms of housing tenure. It is legitimate to regard housing simply as a financial transaction and something to be privatised, just like so much else that we have privatised in our economy. I do not support that point of view and I think that most members would not support that ideological point of view, either, but that is what has happened. We have allowed it to happen on our watch, collectively.
There are countries in Europe that take a very different approach—that say that the distinction between social rented housing and private rented housing should not be as sharp as it is in this country. There are countries in Europe that require equal standards of regulation and affordability and physical standards of quality in housing, regardless of the provider. Whether the provider is private, third sector or municipal, the level of housing subsidy may be the same, and that subsidy benefits the tenant, rather than the private provider, in the case of the PRS.
If we are to get to that point, it will require full-scale reform and a conscious decision to say that the private rented sector exists and the social rented sector exists, but we will not have that hard and fast division between the two because, fundamentally, all housing is social. I repeat—all housing is social. It is intimately bound up with our quality of life, with whether our community is coherent and cohesive—or fails to be—and with the health of our society.