Chamber and committees

Yes. As the member is aware, the Government needs to satisfy itself about the advice on that point of legal competence, as does the Parliament and the Presiding Officer, before a bill is introduced.

Absolutely. We will make every effort that we can to do that. It is something on which we can engage actively with the committee. For example, with the reporting provisions in the bill—assuming that Parliament approves it—the committee might want to write to us ahead of time to flag up the specific questions that you would want us to cover, either in the report that will be published or in the discussions that we have with the committee.

I come back again to the point that I made earlier: the intention of setting a zero per cent cap until the end of March would not have a direct impact on rental income in the social rented sector because that sector does not have constant in-year rent increases; those tend to happen at the start of the financial year. We are working closely with the sector to understand all the implications, the way that it works and the impact that any future decision on the rent cap would have on its business model. We are also working with it to give assurance and confidence to its lenders.

The need for investment in provision of affordable social housing, in repairs and maintenance and in net zero, as well as in the other services that Miles Briggs rightly highlighted in his earlier question, are all important points of common ground between the Government, political parties and the social rented sector.

We must recognise that net zero investment is absolutely in the interests of tenants, too. I have spoken to social rented sector tenants who are now paying peanuts in energy bills after investment has been made not just in energy efficiency but in zero emissions heating systems, communal heating systems and so on.

We want to see much more of that. The Scottish Government is already committing substantial investment to support such work in the social rented sector. We are working closely and collaboratively with social landlords, many of which have been leaders in the field. We want such work to continue, and I am certain that it will.

Indeed I can. It is important to acknowledge that landlords, particularly those in the private rented sector, are not all in the same financial circumstances. Some are very large and profitable. Others, as John Blackwood said, are people who have for whatever reason, perhaps unintentionally, found themselves letting out one or two properties. Some of them will be facing the cost of living crisis and will be worried about their circumstances.

We have included versions of the existing grounds for eviction that are to do with the intention to sell or to live in a property, but the adapted versions that we are including on a temporary basis in the emergency legislation concern the landlord’s intention to do that to address their own financial hardship. We will work with the tribunal on how that is implemented.

Obviously, we do not want a landlord who would face the risk of severe debt or even homelessness to be unable to take action, so those limited and prescribed forms of eviction grounds will be included, and you can see that in the text of the bill.

What we have set in the bill is, as I said earlier to Willie Coffey, six months of rent in relation to the private rented sector and a specific figure, which is roughly equivalent to six months of social rent, in the social rented sector.

What you mean by the rent freeze period is a matter of interpretation. Under the previous legislation, a rent increase notice is the mechanism by which a landlord increases the rent. That action cannot take place inconsistent with the cap from 6 September onwards until or unless the cap is removed or changed.

The legislation has been exactly as successful as I thought it would be. When it was introduced, I welcomed the fact that something was being tried, but I was sceptical whether rent pressure zones would be enough to solve the problem.

There is a lack of data available to local authorities. We know that none of them has taken forward such a zone; the reason is that local authorities do not have the data to justify it, and they could be exposed to the threat of legal challenge if somebody argued that a zone was a disproportionate interference in landlords’ rights. As we develop our longer-term proposals for reforming the rented sector, including a national system of rent controls, we need to fill in the data gaps that exist.

If rent pressure zones had been put into practice and we had seen them work, we might be in a very different position. In my view, the bill that provided for RPZs was unlikely to be successful. RPZs were unlikely to be put into practice and therefore unlikely to reduce anyone’s rent, and that is what has come to pass.

We are now in a situation where, as I have said, some landlords are being very responsible and have tried to protect tenants from rent increases, whether during the cost of living crisis or the years of the pandemic. However—and I am sure that members from across the country are aware of this—others are imposing eye-watering rent increases. I will be far from the only Glasgow MSP who has heard from tenants who are seeing 20, 30 or 40 per cent increases, which are simply unmanageable, unaffordable and unsustainable and will not take place under this legislation.

The rent freeze measures do apply to end-of-tenancy rent increases. The central reason is that we already have that mechanism. Tenants have a right to challenge unreasonable rent increases during their tenancy and there is a requirement for increases to happen only once a year in the private rented sector and with three months’ notice. It is clear that we have the ability to intervene in a short period of time in response to the current emergency.

There is, of course, a longer-term argument, much of which was explored in the consultation on the new deal for tenants. The Government will address those questions in its longer-term legislative work on the private rented sector.

In many ways, that suggestion is slightly akin to the idea that all landlords will take the most exploitative or opportunistic approach. I do not think that that is true. The majority of landlords will obey the law and will not try to get around it and the majority of tenants will meet their responsibilities.

There is a concern that a minority of tenants might be tempted to stop paying their rent altogether, even when they can afford it. That is one reason why we thought long and hard about the exemptions from the eviction moratorium and decided, on balance, that there was a requirement to include severe rent arrears as a ground for exemption from that moratorium.

In my view, which we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon, tenants with rent arrears need support that is different to the interventions in the rest of the system. As the witness from Crisis said, they need direct support. Through the discretionary housing payments and the tenant grant fund, we have increased not only the amount of support that is available directly for tenants who are facing rent arrears, but the flexibility in the way that it can be offered. We will continue to look at how that might be developed further.

However, I think that the inclusion of the exemption from the moratorium will give landlords some confidence that there will not be that incentive for people to simply stop paying rent altogether. As I said, only a minority of people would ever be tempted to do that, but there will be no incentive. I think that I remember hearing John Blackwood welcome that measure as well.

I recognise that point, which has been made by some people who responded to the consultation on the new deal for tenants. If we were to try to incorporate that into the emergency legislation, we would be here a lot longer and would not have the emergency legislation in time to protect people. Some of these arguments will have to be built into the review of the existing grounds for repossession, the permanent legislation and our consideration of how we might alter that. However, your point is well made and the issue is certainly on our radar.