Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2016
It is good to reach the stage in a bill where the arguments have all been made and the amendments have been won or lost. Whether or not the bill will do everything that we would wish it to do, we agree that it will improve the lot of private tenants in Scotland. I am pleased that most of us in the Parliament—with, unfortunately, the exception of the Conservatives yet again—will vote in favour of the bill at decision time.
Although I support the bill as it stands, I hope that the minister will not mind if I point out that we could have done more and we could have done it sooner. My on-going worry is that the bill does not go far enough in addressing affordability, quality and standards in the way that we would have wished.
That said, my Labour colleagues and I want everyone who chooses to live in the private rented sector to have the opportunity to make their property their home—not just a transition, not an expensive limbo in which they feel trapped and not a poor second or third choice to council or housing association accommodation, but a safe, secure, warm and affordable home.
It may take a long time to change attitudes and behaviour in this country. We may never get to the stage where private renting is regarded in the way that it is in Germany and continental Europe. However, we have today offered additional protection to private tenants and begun to address the changes that have taken place in housing tenure in Scotland over the past 10 years or so.
Before I go any further, I offer my thanks to the bill team and the committee clerks, and most of all to the two campaigns whose efforts have done most to get private renting to the top of the parliamentary and political agenda. First, I thank Shelter Scotland—that tireless campaigner for the homeless and for decent housing, which managed to sign most of us up to the make renting right campaign. Shelter is our trusted and reliable source of information, and its input to the bill has been invaluable.