Hansard

Housing remains central to many of the challenges that our communities face. Our homes are the bricks and mortar that bind local cohesion. Access to good-quality housing should be the driving factor for us all. Sadly, the reality is that homelessness figures are at a record high, thousands of children are in temporary accommodation, there are unsustainable waiting lists, and local authorities are buckling under the pressure. There is a skills shortage and a declining housing sector.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill was born out of a pact that the Scottish National Party Government made with the Scottish Greens. At that time, the Government did not understand that the consequence of far-left policies would be a bill that could devastate the housing market. I will admit that there has been some movement in that space in a last-minute attempt to offer an olive branch to investors and the private rented sector. At its core, however, this is a housing bill that proposes permanent rent controls and does not include a single line about building homes. It is a housing bill that is too broad in scope, and it should have been named the tenants’ rights and homelessness prevention bill.

Rent control is a misguided policy. It is reckless and ideologically driven, and it could worsen the housing crisis. It could punish tenants, discourage investment and make Scotland a less attractive place to build the homes that we so desperately need.

We need to look at the facts. There were 19,288 homes built in 2024-25, which was down 4 per cent on the previous year. In the social sector, completions were at their lowest since 2016-17, with 4,490 completions, which was down 15 per cent. To reach the 110,000 affordable homes target by 2032, the Scottish Government needs to build around 10,000 homes a year, but it has achieved that only once since 2021, and it only built 7,444 affordable homes in 2024-25. Those figures are far below the figures that experts say Scotland needs each year to meet demand.

We know that developers and housing providers operate in a market that requires certainty. If rents are capped permanently and revenue streams are constrained, the incentive to build disappears. It is a simple economic fact that rent controls do not create homes—they prevent them. To compound the issue, damaging rent controls have already cost Scotland £3.2 billion in lost investment. That is the scale of the damage that is being wrought on the industry.

When fewer homes are built, tenants suffer the consequences. Competition for available properties intensifies, prices rise in uncontrollable sectors and homelessness continues to grow. That is not an abstract argument. In 2024-25, 17,240 households in Scotland were in temporary accommodation and, shockingly, that included 10,360 children. In 2024-25, there was a record number of 31,695 open homelessness applications. Behind every person who makes up that number is a heartbreaking story. All those numbers represent families who cannot find a safe roof over their heads, children who are moved from place to place, and vulnerable adults who live in uncertainty.

We ought to remind ourselves that the policies that we make and create in the Scottish Parliament have consequences. As I have said, people desperately need homes. People on long waiting lists need hope and need politicians to understand the gravity of the crisis. They do not need policies that will potentially worsen the housing emergency, agreed to for ideological reasons.

The housing crisis is further compounded by a significant skills shortage in the construction sector. Scotland faces a gap of thousands of skilled tradespeople, bricklayers, joiners, plumbers and electricians. Industry reports show that more than 20 per cent of construction firms struggle to recruit the skilled workers that they need. That is not merely an inconvenience; it is a barrier to delivering new homes. These are the issues that should have been in the housing bill and that we should have been debating tonight. However, I will touch on the economic consequences of rent controls, because those consequences are equally stark to what is being experienced in our skills sector.

Research from multiple jurisdictions, including studies in London and parts of the United States, consistently shows that strict rent caps reduce investment in new housing. Developers delay projects, projects are cancelled, and fewer homes come on to the market. We cannot afford that: Scotland needs investment, not deterrence. We need ambition, not artificial constraints.

Furthermore, we must recognise the immense pressure that is on our local authorities. In an environment of year-on-year decline in budgets, councils are struggling to maintain existing housing stock, fund homelessness services and invest in new builds. Rising inflation, which, once again, is on the move, increases the cost of materials, wages and borrowing. That combination of pressures will inevitably reduce the number of homes that can be delivered. We need to look at affordable housing. We have spoken in the chamber many times about the affordable housing budget and the consequences that it has on local government.

We cannot in good conscience vote for a bill that will harm the possibility of building more homes that people desperately need and at the rate at which they need to be built. I thank cabinet secretaries Shirley-Anne Somerville and Màiri McAllan for the productive conversations that we have had during stages 2 and 3, although we clearly differ on what we believe will tackle the housing emergency. I hope that they will reflect on the bill. It has been too broad, and it does not address the housing emergency that is a priority for Scotland.