Chamber and committees

Thank you very much, Professor Maclennan, for joining us this morning. I have allowed the session to run a bit longer, because I felt that your answers were really useful to the committee and our work. I very much appreciate your coming and joining us this morning.

I am now going to suspend briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses—

Yes.

Look at that—it is 11:40 exactly. Well done, everyone, and thank you so much for answering the questions thoroughly and well. It has been a really good conversation and we managed to come in on time. Thanks a lot for joining us this morning. You have given us very good information for our inquiry.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow the witnesses to leave.

Eilidh Keay, from the perspective of Living Rent, how do you assess the local and national responses to the housing emergency?

I have a follow-up question. It is important to note that, under the Verity house agreement, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities asked for less ring fencing, so it is quite difficult for the Scottish Government to say that it is going to direct spending on specific things in relation to enforcement and so on. How should the Scottish Government tackle that issue? We want to see different outcomes in the housing sector, but we want to honour things such as the Verity house agreement and the fiscal framework.

We move to the theme of medium and longer-term issues, and I bring in Mark Griffin.

Thanks very much for that. You have touched on an area that I was going to ask you about. You talked about system failure and said that that is to do with the central banks and the Treasury. I want to understand better how our housing is funded. We have different sectors. There is the public sector and the private sector, and public money is going in. We also understand that the Government used to have access to financial transactions money from the UK Government. How do we bring forward supply in different sectors, if that is what we want to do? I know that that is a big question, but it would be helpful if you could give a bit of a headline answer.

Thanks very much. That cues up Fulton MacGregor and his questions about the UK Government.

I direct my next question to Callum Chomczuk. Callum, in your written submission, you note that the private rented sector is

“an essential part of our housing system”,

but that there is a need to make sure that it

“is a viable and attractive option”

for investors. We are interested in understanding how the role of the PRS could be maximised to provide housing options for those who are at risk of homelessness. Will you comment on that?

Thank you very much. I will bring in Willie Coffey.