Hansard

Good morning, convener, and thank you. I am happy to be here today to present the draft Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 (Incidental Provision) Regulations 2023. As we have discussed with the committee previously, you will be aware that the emergency Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, which was passed last year, had three key aims: first, to protect tenants, stabilising their housing costs by freezing rents; secondly, to reduce the impact of eviction and homelessness, through a moratorium on evictions; and thirdly, to reduce unlawful evictions and avoid tenants being evicted from the rented sector by landlords who want to raise rents between tenancies during the operation of the temporary measures. Last month, the committee considered and voted for regulations to extend some of those provisions beyond 31 March to the end of September this year. I was pleased that the Parliament also voted to approve the regulations, thereby ensuring that important protections for tenants continue, given the challenging and uncertain economic times. Although it is crucial that some emergency provisions continue for the time being, the emergency 2022 act is, of course, temporary, and it is equally important that we plan for the time when the protections come to an end. During the passage of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill, we acknowledged that termination of the rent cap might lead to a large number of private landlords seeking to increase their rent all at once, which could cause significant and unmanageable rent increases for tenants. In those circumstances, the existing rent adjudication process will need to be temporarily modified, to provide a suitable adjudication mechanism that is fit for purpose. For that reason, the emergency 2022 act contains a regulation-making power to temporarily reform the existing rent adjudication process, which was brought in by the Private Housing Tenancies (Scotland) Act 2016. The proposed approach would support our transition out of the emergency measures and help to mitigate unintended consequences that might arise from our bringing the temporary rent cap to an end. Schedule 3 to the emergency 2022 act provides ministers with the power in that regard. The short affirmative instrument that the committee is considering today makes a minor technical amendment to schedule 3, to put it beyond doubt that the powers that are conferred on the Scottish ministers function as intended. It does that by renaming a title and heading, renumbering a section and correcting a reference. That will ensure clarity if and when the Scottish ministers choose to exercise the powers conferred on them in schedule 3. Instruments that are made under that power will be subject to the affirmative procedure and subject to scrutiny and approval by this committee and the Parliament. The severity of the costs crisis and the urgent need to respond quickly meant that the 2022 act had to be drafted and delivered at pace, to ensure that tenants could be offered additional protection as quickly as possible. The short technical instrument that the committee is considering today clarifies a small part of the drafting, to ensure that the important rent adjudication provisions will work as they are intended to do when the time is right to bring the emergency provisions to an end. I thank the committee for its scrutiny of the draft regulations. I am happy to answer any questions that you have.