Meeting of the Parliament 25 January 2023
We do not debate housing often enough in this place—I do not know why; it is perhaps not seen as exciting enough—so to get two debates in one day is really good. A debate on housing targets will probably not grab any headlines—even very worthy things such as Alex Rowley’s attempt to have all new homes built to Passivhaus standards do not really cut through. However, housing affects us all. We all need somewhere to live and there are wildly varying standards of accommodation in this country.
Solve the cold-homes problem with top-notch insulation and you help to solve the fuel poverty crisis. If our old folk can live in warm homes that cost very little to heat, they will have a better life—we all would. Solve the tenement maintenance problem—as some of us in Parliament are trying to do—and you solve the issue of people living in poor conditions in many of our towns and cities.
Housing matters to our mental and physical health and wellbeing, so delivering the homes that we need is one of the most important things that we can do. However, when you have 47,000 homeless people and 21,000 households in temporary accommodation but 67,000 unoccupied properties in Scotland, something is wrong. When that number of households in temporary accommodation has gone up since Nicola Sturgeon came to power, you have to question her priorities.
I have to give the SNP some praise. It is consistent: it has repeatedly missed its house-building targets. It told us that 50,000 affordable homes would be built in the previous session, which were built, but a year late; it has missed its target to build homes in the social rented sector; and there was scant reference to housing targets in the recent national planning framework 4.
Homes for Scotland has said that we need 100,000 new homes after years of undersupply. It always says that we need more—it is its business to do that—but I do not hear anyone contesting the figures. We know this—we have known it for years—but we do not do anything about it.
We need a homes delivery agency tasked with the job of helping and cajoling councils to hit targets, with the right homes in the right places.
Right now, we are just tinkering around the edges. Not only that, we have a Government that actively damages the housing sector. Patrick Harvie’s rent controls will lead to fewer homes being available for rent, less investment in those that remain and ultimately higher rents. You could not make it up. I just wish that I had, but it is true. We will see students struggling to find somewhere to live—we already are.
We should be encouraging firms—yes, private firms—to build more homes for rent, not putting barriers in their way. We should be dealing with the problem of empty homes through compulsory sales orders. That used to be SNP policy, but it has obviously ended up in that mountainous too-difficult pile.
I go back to where I started: housing matters. It affects us all, and it is too important to let ideologues loose on it. Sometime soon, reality is going to have to kick in. I support the motion in the name of Miles Briggs.
16:40