Meeting of the Parliament 15 May 2024
When I read the Government’s amendment this morning, I thought that we might be getting somewhere. However, I am sorry that the minister’s speech was almost exactly the same as the speech that was made last November. Except for the addition of words to accept the housing emergency, nothing else has changed. The minister’s contribution was one defence after another, and he then blamed Westminster, which is exactly what he did last year.
When John Swinney and Kate Forbes contributed to last year’s debate, they were very clear. John Swinney said:
“I respectfully say to Parliament that it is not enough just to”
declare a housing emergency.
“Substantial actions must be set out on how we will address the issue.”
Kate Forbes said that
“Real leadership is not just about accepting the scale of a challenge or explaining what is taking place; it is about stepping back and figuring out how to best solve the challenge and then getting stuck into delivering some of the solutions.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; c 54, 57.]
Those two people are now in charge, so I would have thought that we would hear from the minister about what the housing emergency actually means and that we would have a list of new measures—in addition to other measures that he is perfectly entitled to defend—to set out what is different from last November. Why has the Government accepted that there is a housing emergency?
I accept that there are post-recession financial restrictions, which have had an impact for some time; that the Liz Truss budget had a disastrous effect on inflation; and that, of course, Brexit has had an impact, too. However, the Government has a large, multibillion-pound budget and tax-raising powers, so it has choices. Its budget is not limited; it could do something different. However, those are its choices, which it will have to defend today.
One of those choices has been a dramatic cut in the more homes budget. The issue is not just the direct impact of that cut but the fact that housing associations lever extra private finance as a result of that funding, which will go down, too.
The problem has been building for years and will not be turned around overnight, but we need to start to reverse the damage. The acceptance of a housing emergency must mean something, but I am afraid that, from the minister, it means absolutely nothing.
Some of the rhetoric about and proposed measures for the private rented sector are deterring investment in that sector. We need the Government to change tack on two important measures. First, we need to accept that private landlords are partners, not the problem. They have come to believe that they are the problem and that the Government is out to get them. That needs to change, whatever the reality of the measures.