Meeting of the Parliament 08 January 2026
I challenge the assertion that the Scottish Government is taking forward a levy in the same way as the UK Government is. It is not the same policy. I was going to come on to this later in my speech, but I will say now that I support the principle of a levy. However, how this particular levy has been designed and applied, the vagueness, the uncertainty and the risk of exacerbating the housing emergency means that we cannot support it in the form in which the Government has presented it.
Everyone in the chamber agrees on the importance of removing potentially life-threatening cladding from our homes. Nearly a decade after Grenfell, families still live in fear of the next devastating fire that could cost lives and destroy homes. For many residents, that is a daily reality that affects their safety, mental wellbeing and financial security. We are united in our determination to prevent another tragedy.
However, although remediation has progressed elsewhere in the UK, Scotland continues to lag far behind, with a tiny number of homes having had dangerous cladding removed. It has taken the Government almost a decade to begin addressing the problem, while thousands of buildings in England and Wales have had dangerous cladding removed. That is an absolutely shocking dereliction of duty that has left too many people living in unacceptable conditions for far too long.
The problem is not only the pace of the Scottish Government’s response but the quality of the proposals that are before the Parliament. The bill seeks to ensure that those who contributed to unsafe cladding also contribute to its removal. We support that aim. However, during committee scrutiny, the Government failed to provide the detail that was needed to support the evidence base for that approach or to demonstrate that it would operate fairly and effectively in practice. We still do not have clarity about how many buildings are affected, which organisations might be required to contribute, what the levy will fund or how long it will be in place. Instead, we have been given little more than a blind assurance that it probably will not harm house building. That is not good enough when we are talking about a bill that will introduce a levy that could fundamentally impact the housing sector in Scotland.
We accept that organisations profited from the installation of dangerous cladding and that they should bear the cost of putting matters right.