Chamber and committees

I understand that the fleet of the enforcement arm of Marine Scotland—Marine Scotland compliance—is composed of just three vessels. I am also aware of stakeholders’ concerns that Marine Scotland’s enforcement of marine regulations is underfunded, of the many instances of illegal fishing that are going on unchecked due to a lack of enforcement capacity, and that enforcement officers undertook industrial action earlier this year.

Given that work is being taken forward on inshore fisheries through the Bute house agreement, is increasing enforcement capacity a priority for the Scottish Government? Do you expect there to be increased funding in the budget for the coming year? If not, how will enforcement be improved?

Is any consideration being given to increasing the size of the vessels, given that we have such a vast amount of water to cover and that stakeholders are raising concerns?

Thanks. I will now move on and bring in other members. I will go way over my allocated time if I try to get round everybody with my questions, so I ask members to bring in witnesses who have not yet spoken.

I call Willie Coffey.

Elena Whitham is next.

Great. Thank you for making that point.

For our second session on the emergency legislation on a rent freeze and a moratorium on evictions, we are joined by the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights; I welcome Mr Harvie to the meeting. He is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Amanda Callaghan, head of private housing services; James Hamilton, lawyer, Scottish Government legal directorate; Adam Krawczyk, head of housing, homelessness and regeneration analysis; and Shazia Razzaq, strategic lead, university policy, governance and equalities.

Before I open up the session to questions from members, I invite Mr Harvie to make a short opening statement.

Thank you for your opening statement and for outlining at a high level what the bill is intended to do.

We had a very constructive evidence session earlier. The publication of the bill made it even more constructive because the people who participated were able to see what it contains, which I appreciate.

Quite a range of things was covered. One thing that came through early in the meeting from the social housing sector is the tension between the need for housing supply, the retrofitting piece and the need to keep tenancies affordable—we have that conversation quite often in the committee. One of the concerns that Aaron Hill raised was that the social rented sector in Scotland has always enjoyed a good relationship with lenders but that lenders have been spooked by the announcement of the bill. He talked about the need for certainty and stability in the future. He also talked about the fact that you have already been working with him. I would be interested to hear what you think about that concern and about how we can ensure that the social housing sector has stability in order to meet the demand for housing supply. We also heard from Crisis that the homelessness issue is escalating and that supply is part of the problem.

I am talking in general.

I thank everyone for their great questions. It was very helpful to get the bigger picture of the work that you have been doing, minister. Government and Parliament are here together to collaborate on shaping a fairer Scotland. Therefore, as I said at the beginning, I appreciate the fact that the bill came out with slightly earlier notice so that we could have a constructive conversation. I am impressed by the work that has been undertaken, the fact that you are working at pace and the fact that you have pulled all of this together in a matter of four weeks, with a priority on and a high concern about getting it right. This morning’s conversation has been very useful, and it was good to hear from stakeholders in the earlier evidence session. Thank you, Patrick, for being here along with your officials this morning.

I suspend the meeting to allow our witnesses to leave the room.

Thank you for that.