Meeting of the Parliament 22 November 2023
My colleagues at Westminster have been highlighting that economic illiteracy and will sweep that Government out of office and make changes for the better for this country. I want to talk about the Scottish Government’s responsibility and the action—or inaction—that has led to the housing emergency that it seems the entire country, apart from the Scottish Government, accepts we are in the grip of.
We cannot accept an amendment that denies the emergency, and we cannot accept an amendment that deflects and offers nothing new, because the facts set out that we are in the grip of a housing crisis on a national scale. There are 9,500 children in temporary accommodation—many of them for up to one year—and the number of people who are homeless is the highest on record, with another household made homeless every 16 minutes. By the time that I and the minister have spoken, two more households in this country will have been made homeless. There are 60,000 households at risk of repossession and 200,000 households languishing on waiting lists, and, despite an emergency rent freeze, rents have rocketed by 12 per cent in the past year and are increasing faster in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK.
Earlier today, Anas Sarwar and I met Shelter’s helpline team, who are on the front line in supporting people who are being made homeless. Day in and day out they support people with nowhere else to turn, who have been failed by councils that are, ultimately, running out of cash as they deal with the housing emergency. We heard about a person who had been sleeping in an out-of-use caravan in a mechanic’s yard. It had no electricity, water or heating, and, when the council found out, the person was told that there was no accommodation available, until a solicitor got involved. A woman with three children was moved from hotel to hotel for months and was forced to share a bedroom with her teenage children, and no adaptations were made for one of the children, who was using a wheelchair.
Most shockingly, we heard of a woman who has been in temporary accommodation for 10 years—she has spent 10 years in temporary accommodation. What is worse is that her six-year-old child has spent their entire life in temporary accommodation. That six-year-old has no concept of what a safe, secure place to call home is. That is an appalling indictment, and the fact that the Government cannot accept that there is a housing emergency when we have people in such circumstances is beyond belief.
My inbox, like those of many others in the chamber, is stuffed full of examples of families, children, and younger and older people who are stuck without somewhere that they can call home. Such stories are repeated across every part of the country, every day of the week. In recent weeks, I have heard from a woman with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease whose home is making her ill, a young family who have cut spending to the bone but are still a matter of weeks away from losing the roof over their heads, and a teenager who was kicked out of home and who is now couch surfing. Those are all devastating and miserable examples of how desperately people in need of a home in Scotland are living today.
However, rather than dealing with the scale of the problem, the Government is systematically underestimating the country’s needs. Councils have been set the task of finding land for a minimum of 200,000 homes over the next decade. Members might think that that number of homes would make a dent in the housing emergency—but only if it was the right number. Last week, Homes for Scotland revealed new data at its conference, which the minister attended, that would terrify any responsible Government into action—but not, it seems, this Government. Homes for Scotland is concerned that local development planning guidance will drastically underestimate real housing need, so it has commissioned a primary research-led report into the true housing need in Scotland in order to support planners. Measuring the number of people in the most extreme circumstances and counting only people who are in overcrowded and concealed households, as well as those who are homeless and in temporary accommodation, ignores the full picture. The Homes for Scotland survey of 14,000 Scottish households found that 28 per cent of Scottish households—700,000—have some form of housing need, which is far higher than the Government’s official estimate of 200,000.