Meeting of the Parliament 19 March 2025
It is really interesting that, in trying to amend Labour’s motion, the Government has lodged an add-on amendment. In effect, it is accepting that there has been a breach of the UNCRC. This is quite a moment. The Government is readily accepting that there has been not just one breach but, we assume, numerous breaches.
However, on the back of that, there is no urgent action of the type that I would expect. The minister has just repeated what he is already doing. It is quite an admission for the Government to acknowledge that the UNCRC—the United Nations international convention on children’s rights—has been breached on numerous occasions. I hope that, when the minister sums up the debate, we will hear a little more about the urgent action that is needed, because we have heard about the real consequences.
The report reveals that the issue is about not just numbers, but human lives and the impact on children’s security, health—including mental health—and education. It is about schools and transport. It is not just one child whose life is in limbo; thousands of children are in limbo.
The quote that struck me the most shows that the effect is as much mental as it is physical:
“I’m coming back to a home that no matter how I clean it, it feels dirty”.
You cannot get that out of your head. That feeling must be there 24/7—you must never escape it. Therefore, I hope that the minister responds in a much more significant way than he has done so far.
The minister talked about the standards framework, but Meghan Gallacher is right—the work began two years ago and we are still at the starting line. We do not even know what the baseline is. I have asked the minister about that previously, but he was unable to give me an answer. The Government has not even asked whether we are anywhere near meeting the standards framework. Are we? In relation to temporary accommodation, do we understand what is really going on with social landlords and private landlords across the country? It does not seem that the minister is in a hurry to try to understand that, because work on the framework started two years ago.
We should not forget that half of the children in temporary accommodation in Glasgow are from refugee families. That has not been mentioned in the debate so far. They have to live in limbo for a very long time. We need to consider how we respond to and treat refugees, because, as I have witnessed, they have to live in hotels and other types of accommodation for very long periods.
The root of the problem is the lack of investment. I disagree with Meghan Gallacher on one point. She says that the bill is not driving any kind of investment, but I think that the bill and Government policy probably are driving investment simply by removing many of the damaging policies that the Government introduced in previous years—it has neutered those—and because the Government is considering bringing in exemptions around build-to-rent housing and mid-market rents that were not there before. Therefore, the bill represents progress, but only through the removal of the barriers that the Government had put up in the first place. To some degree—[Interruption.] I am trying to be generous. To some degree there is progress. I am hunting for some credit to give to the minister.
We need to take the opportunity through the bill to ensure that those changes incentivise investment in housing, because we have seen significant detriment in recent years. There has been a 12 per cent decrease in starts for housing in all sectors and a 10 per cent decrease in completions. That is a terrible record, and we need to fix it.