Meeting of the Parliament 02 October 2024
I have taken three or four interventions already.
Accepting that the housing emergency exists is only the first step in ending the crisis. We need new ideas and new leadership. We need an approach that promotes investment and makes Scotland an attractive place to invest in housing. We need to ensure that legislation that is designed to protect renters and home owners does not inadvertently chase away new investment. We need a new partnership and an understanding between the Scottish Government, local authorities, housing associations, the private sector and the third sector. We need joined-up working to deliver the new affordable and social homes that Scotland so desperately needs.
We need action to retrofit existing homes to make them fit for the future and to fix up derelict homes so that they can be safe for families to thrive in. We need an end to the idea that a housing policy that works for Edinburgh will automatically work for the Highlands, the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway or the Western Isles. Local communities know best about how to tackle the housing crisis in their own areas and they should not be overlooked.
We need an end to the politics of the press release and the meaningless target. Instead, it is time for politics that is about outcomes, not empty promises; a politics of delivery, not delusion, as we see from members on the SNP benches; and a politics that puts the needs of the country before the needs of the ruling party.
Everyone in the chamber has a solemn duty to work day and night to look after the most vulnerable in our society. On this vital issue, we cannot let issues of personal or party loyalty cloud our judgment. That is why this is not a debate about the constitution, and it should not even be a debate about party politics: the debate should be about the young man who will walk the dark streets of Glasgow tonight in search of a warm doorway in which to try to sleep, hoping that the mere and meagre possessions that he still has will be there when he wakes up. It is about the young mother living with her children in temporary accommodation who has to tell her children every night that they will have their own home one day. It is about the child who will do their homework tonight not in a home of their own but on a small desk in a hostel bedroom. We can, and we must, do better than that.
The right to housing is a fundamental human right, as recognised by the United Nations. In 2024 in Scotland, that fundamental human right is unavailable to thousands of our most vulnerable people. The crisis is not inevitable: it is the direct result of Government action and its inaction. To allow the situation to persist would be to bury our heads in the sand and allow some of our most vulnerable to weather the storm alone. It does not have to be that way. Scots should not have to wait a single day more for the Government to wake up to the housing crisis, change course and act to help those in need.
In closing, we have a chance to put the needs of the people of Scotland front and centre; to stand up for all those who find themselves without a home to call their own; and to stand up for all those for whom the dream of home ownership is currently just that—a dream. The Government has failed to act to tackle the housing emergency. That is not good enough. The failure must end. Scotland deserves better.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that the Scottish Government has failed to respond adequately to the housing emergency that the Parliament declared in May 2024.
15:08