Chamber and committees

Thank you for setting that out clearly for us.

Thank you very much for that powerful evidence. I certainly recognise from having worked in the homelessness support industry for a long time that that issue has always existed and that it is not new at all.

Theme 2 is rent arrears. My colleague Natalie Don, who is joining us remotely, will ask the first questions. After that, my colleague Emma Roddick, who is also joining us remotely, will come in.

We move to questions from Emma Roddick. I remind everybody that broadcasting will operate your microphone, so you do not have to worry about that.

Thanks very much for that. It is important to remind us about the change to universal credit and about people being given their housing payments in their hands. We have Scottish choices, so people can choose to pay their rent directly to their landlord, but people need to have knowledge of that process. That goes back to the point about people being armed with all the information to make the right decisions that work for them.

Welcome back and thank you, everybody, for making sure that you were back on time and thanks to those online for being back at your keyboards. Theme three is on council tax arrears but we have already touched on that a lot, so members’ questions may have changed.

Foysol, before we stop for a wee break, it is your turn.

There is some evidence of good practice across the country, with some housing officers becoming neighbourhood coaches—that coaching model is a different way of operating. Also universal credit teams are being set up that are proactively going out into communities and in some areas, as Karen Carrick said before, financial inclusion officers are based within school clusters. That is making a massive difference. A lot of good work is being done that needs to be passported across the country, and we need to think about the role that this committee could play in that.

Paul Ferguson has indicated that he wants to come in.

That is all right; do not worry about it. Paul McLennan, do you have further questions?

That segues nicely on to questions about school meal debts. To kick us off, we will take a question from Foysol Choudhury.