Meeting of the Parliament 13 January 2016
I wrote to the Minister for Housing and Welfare, who is in the chamber, back in December and welcomed the First Minister’s announcement at that point that the Scottish National Party was committing to 50,000 houses. I thought that that was 50,000 social rented houses, but it was 50,000 affordable houses. The minister has written back to me in the past week and confirmed the 50,000 figure; she also confirmed that 35,000 of those houses will be for social rent. I welcome that. That is not enough, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
I have a nice photo from back in 2011 of Alex Neil and John Swinney standing with their commitment to 30,000 houses for social rent. Once the SNP was back in power, it changed that to affordable houses. Progress is to be made, but I absolutely want to be committed to building consensus in the chamber, whether it is on 35,000 or 45,000 houses for council housing or housing associations, and to building them so that we do not just make a promise now and revert to not doing that after the election, because we have a shortage of housing right across the country.
As I said, we need a national house-building strategy for Scotland and new council houses for rent sitting alongside a drive for new build to buy. That will not happen by itself; political leadership and drive nationally are needed alongside strategies, planning, a strategic approach and leadership at a regional level across Scotland.