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Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee 28 May 2014

28 May 2014 · S4 · Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Item of business

Housing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Boyack, Sarah Lab Lothian Watch on SPTV

I am very disappointed by the minister’s overall response, because the amendments address issues that have been raised through the consultation processes for two bills—the Housing (Scotland) Bill and Dave Stewart’s Dangerous and Defective Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill—and they relate to how we remedy the problems of existing legislation. If we adopted the general principle that the minister has set out, that would lead us to the crazy situation in which if something was not in a minister’s original set of proposals for a bill, we would not amend the bill in that regard. That would defeat the whole purpose of having stage 2 and stage 3, without which we would just approve bills en bloc. If that is the minister’s reason for not accepting the amendments, I find it incredibly weak. There is no intention to weaken the tenement management scheme. Amendment 149 tries to address a problem that has been identified by the City of Edinburgh Council. We have the bill in front of us and this is the opportunity to get it right, rather than waiting for an unspecified further piece of legislation. That is one of the problems that we have in housing legislation. This bill amends and corrects a variety of pieces of housing legislation in order to make them effective and useful. As the minister said, Jim Eadie and I lodged amendments on the basis of practical experience and representations from a variety of stakeholders. The principle of just kicking everything into the long grass does not fix the problem. The interrelationship between different pieces of housing legislation that have been developed at different times is in itself a problem. For that reason, I will not necessarily press all my amendments to a vote, but I will have discussions with colleagues about all this and bring the amendments back at stage 3. I do not think that it is acceptable to reject the amendments simply on the basis that they were not consulted on. That is a poor approach to addressing legislation. I do not think that the bill as currently formulated does the job that it needs to do. We know what does not work in existing housing legislation and some of the provisions in the bill will not help to overcome those problems—hence the representations that we have had from the SFHA and the City of Edinburgh Council, which have concerns that the way in which the bill is worded means that it will not address the challenges that exist. If the minister was prepared to have a meeting with Jim Eadie and me between stage 2 and stage 3, I would be prepared not to press my amendments. I am not convinced that the detail of what the minister has told us today is correct in every respect. I think that there are gaps in her response to the detail of what we have suggested. On amendment 150, I am particularly concerned about the point about discretionary power not currently being used. Amendment 150 tries to address a current problem, not a future problem. This bill is the place to address the issue of social landlords walking away from mixed tenement buildings because they cannot be sure that they have properties that are capable of being let. That is a current problem; it is not something to be addressed in the future. I do not know what the procedure is for this. If the minister was prepared to have discussions between now and stage 3, I would be prepared not to press my amendments. As I said, some of the amendments are probing amendments. If the minister is prepared to at least have the discussion—I am not saying that I have to agree with her in every respect—I would seek to do so before stage 3. If she has taken the view that we should just dismiss all my amendments because my proposals were not in the bill as drafted, I will press my amendments today and come back with them at stage 3, because I do not think that that is a credible response to amendments that were lodged to address existing problems, which we perceive that the bill does not address correctly. 10:30

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Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee 28 May 2014

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