Meeting of the Parliament 30 September 2025
I start by agreeing with Willie Rennie that we should give a big thank you to all the clerks who have worked so hard on the bill and helped us with it. I also thank third sector organisations, particularly Crisis, for their positive engagement over the past years.
For me, this is a disappointing night—a night of missed opportunities. The bill was an opportunity for us to do something really quite radical and different around housing and homelessness. I fear that after we have passed the bill—as we will do in a few minutes’ time—people will look back and see it as a missed opportunity.
I cannot vote for the bill for two reasons. First, as a representative of Edinburgh and Lothian, I say that rent controls will have a devastating effect on the Edinburgh property market. If we look at the evidence around the world, we know that that will be the case. There will be more homelessness and more people struggling to find accommodation because of that measure.
Secondly, I believe that the work on preventing homelessness represents another missed opportunity. Like Mark Griffin, I hope that history will prove me wrong. I think that the ask and act provisions could have been so much better; we are being asked to jump into darkness. We will not have the benefit of a pilot programme to know whether that will or will not work. Having no data sharing, a lack of money and pressure on local authorities, on the third sector and on the national health service will all work against us.
The bill is a missed opportunity. The Government should go back and rethink it. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that I am not.
21:00