Meeting of the Parliament 30 September 2025
There are—absolutely—positive things in the bill, but let us be clear that it is a housing bill that will not build a single house. It will not bring a single new home into circulation, it will not bring immediate reductions in rent and it will not give local authorities the resources that they need to prevent homelessness. I support the bill because it will result in important improvements, but we all know that it could and should have gone so much further in the context of a housing emergency and a severe shortage of housing supply.
I am pleased that the Government accepted several of our amendments, including one that finally recognises, in law, that Scotland is in a housing emergency. We also secured improvements to factoring legislation and strengthened the bill’s provisions on damp and mould through what is now being called Awaab’s law. We also welcome the commitment to review the current grounds for eviction, which is long overdue. However, let us be clear that, despite the rhetoric, no-one will wake up tomorrow and find themselves in a rent control area. No-one’s rent will go down because the bill has passed.
When the bill was introduced, there was no detail on what rent controls would actually look like, which caused more harm than good to efforts to build the homes that we so desperately need. After pressure, we now have a step forward. However, although the bill no longer threatens to harm supply, make no mistake: this is just a beefed-up version of rent pressure zones, and we all remember how effective those were.
We support mid-market rent and build-to-rent housing as part of a diverse housing mix, but the way in which those exemptions were introduced—late in the process, after a chaotic stage 2 and a change of minister two times over—raises serious questions across Government about how that policy was made and drafted in the first place. Initially including those sectors seriously risked housing supply, and I am not sure why it took so long for the Government to clarify its position on exemptions when it knew about the concerns about mid-market rent. It knew that it was an issue as much as three years ago, when we debated the emergency cost of living legislation.
As we finish our third day of consideration of this bill, 10,180 children are living in temporary accommodation, more than 40,000 families are homeless and rough sleeping is on the rise. We might grumble about the policy process of the bill, and we have valid complaints, but we cannot forget why, fundamentally, we are considering and voting for this law.
There are families, children and individuals out there who are being failed in horrendous ways by a system that is stretched to breaking point. That is why we welcome, in particular, the bill’s focus on homelessness prevention, and particularly the new ask and act duty on public bodies. However, I have to say that those duties will work only if local authorities are properly resourced, and I feel that the Government’s financial assessment of what it will take to implement specifically the ask and act and prevention duties is wildly optimistic. I hope that I am wrong and that the money that goes to local authorities will be enough to cover the costs of a proper and adequately resourced prevention system that stems the flow of people into the homelessness services, which are at breaking point.
We will support the bill because it contains improvements to the current system. However, it is not the transformative legislation that Scotland’s housing crisis demands. We want to build houses and end homelessness, and we want rent controls that work not just in theory but in practice, and without harming supply. The bill is a step forward, but it is a very small step forward. We wish that we could vote for a more radical bill, but, in any case, we will vote for this one at decision time.
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