Chamber and committees

I am grateful for the opportunity to hear Living Rent’s perspective. If I remember rightly, I am meeting it later this week, so I will get a chance to explore that concern in more detail. I note that Living Rent is pleased with the charter itself and that it has agreed that the charter outlines worthwhile outcomes. If I understand Living Rent’s perspective properly, its view is that what needs to change is the way in which social landlords are regulated, rather than the charter itself.

I am sorry to come back to the point that there is an open consultation on some of these issues and it might be wrong to pre-empt that. The consultation proposes greater involvement for the Scottish Housing Regulator as well as the creation of the new regulator for the PRS, which will improve standards and enforce tenants’ rights. The vision for and principles of regulation are being consulted on and will be based on standards of quality, affordability and fairness to try to achieve the tenure-neutral outcome that I was talking about earlier.

I would like to think that some of the work that we are currently doing and which will flow from the current consultation on the new deal and the rented sector strategy will go a long way towards addressing some of Living Rent’s concerns, which, as I understand them, are not principally with the charter itself or the changes that we are proposing today.

In short, I do not think that that is okay, but it connects directly with the issue of the private rented sector having no regulator or equivalent to the charter. The new deal for tenants consultation does not go into specific questions about whether there should be a charter like this for the PRS, whether the charter should be expanded to cover it or precisely what the regulator should be. Instead, it opens up a range of options in that respect. At the moment, however, the private landlord in the situation that you have described is not regulated in the same way in relation to prevention of homelessness.

Ideally, if things are working well, social landlords hear the tenant voice directly. The regulator has the responsibility, which it is given by Parliament, to monitor the work of social landlords against the outcomes, including on tenant participation and tenant voice.

As I said earlier, since the creation of the charter, in 2012, and the review of it in 2017, there has been pretty good evidence to suggest that it has been an effective tool in raising standards. Nevertheless, if there was a major turn in the other direction, that would be picked up by the regulator in its reports to Parliament and there would be an opportunity for either Government or the regulator itself to take action.

Sure, I can say a wee bit about it, but I might not be able to say much more than that because, as I say, the consultation is live. It is an important question, though, about the extent to which a regulator for the private rented sector would either align with and share some functions with or diverge from the current Scottish Housing Regulator for the social sector.

There are significant differences at the moment. We are committed to reducing the gap in outcomes between the tenures, but there will probably always be some degree of difference in relation to the legislative framework, for example. Towards the end of the charter, in the section on rents and service charges, we have a very wide difference between the legislative arrangements relating to rent in the social rented sector and the broadly free-market approach in the private rented sector.

We are proposing major changes there; we have the experience of rent pressure zones, which have not been used at all in Scotland. We now have a commitment to introduce a single, national system of rent controls with some degree of local flexibility. We are not yet at the point of having a detailed proposition on that in legislation to put to Parliament, but that work will continue. Whatever we were to say about rents and charges within the private rented sector would need to take account of the legislation that is still to be developed, introduced and debated in Parliament.

Other elements of the charter would fairly reflect an expectation that somebody should have of their housing, regardless of which tenure they are living in. Something like the charter, if that is the way we go in relation to the PRS, would have some common points but probably also some divergence. The same thing will be true of the PRS regulator that we are proposing. There will be a very live debate about the extent to which it should align with or diverge from the approach of the existing social sector regulator.

Clearly, the social rented sector should be taking that role, and very many social landlords do take a wider role in relation to environmental factors and the community at an economic and social level. As I mentioned earlier in relation to energy issues, social landlords could have a critical role in investing in the heat networks that need to be developed and implemented extensively throughout this decade. Those heat networks will have an impact not just on social landlords’ own tenants; they can be catalysts for the wider community way beyond the social landlord itself. There are already examples of that, but not enough.

The question is: to what extent should the charter seek to capture that wider role? As I said earlier to Mr Briggs, in the consultation that we undertook, we wanted to ensure that the changes to the charter that we have proposed address the issues that tenants want to be addressed in the charter in a way that they feel is effective for them. That is not to say that other issues are not important, too—to social landlords and to the Scottish Government, for our net zero targets and for our homelessness and child poverty targets. Not every important issue is necessarily best captured in the charter itself.

The wider approach that Willie Coffey talks about is hugely important, but that is slightly outside the scope of what we should be putting in the charter. The revisions that are being put forward today are pretty much in line with the strong view that what is currently in the charter was working well and needed only modest changes.

I am turning to my colleagues. I am fairly sure that there is a requirement to make tenants aware of the charter.

The charter relates more to the responsibilities of social landlords than to those of the local authorities, unless we are talking about council housing. The separate function with regard to the provision of, for example, welfare rights advice or housing advice is separate and does not necessarily come within the charter’s ambit. That said, the approach that we are taking in trying to achieve tenure-neutral outcomes and to introduce regulation in the PRS that, although perhaps not identical to that for the social rented sector, integrates with it to get a more coherent approach to achieving the human right to adequate housing for everybody, regardless of tenure, will go a long way towards addressing situations such as you are describing.

Some of the responses from individuals might have been about the service that they were getting from their social landlord, rather than about the contents of the charter. That is probably the main reason for that statistical difference between organisations and individuals in their overall level of positivity .

In that context, it is always legitimate for people to raise whatever issues they have. If they have an issue with a social landlord, it is perfectly fine for that to be heard. That individual difficult case or circumstance needs to be dealt with by their social landlord or, in extremis, by the regulator, rather than necessarily being reflected in the charter itself.

However, the overall view from organisations and from individuals was pretty supportive on the contents of the charter. There were really not many major proposals for change. That is why the changes that we are proposing are relatively modest.

I do not think that I have any registered interests that I am required to declare, but I draw members’ attention to the voluntary section of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which says that I am an associate member of the National Union of Journalists. Since joining this committee, I have asked for an addition to the voluntary section to show that I am a vice-president of the European Movement in Scotland.

I congratulate the convener and Donald Cameron on their appointments.

The committee covers an interesting mix of topics. As you said, convener, on some issues within our remit we will clearly be partisan, which might result in slightly more polarised debates. However, I like to think that there are more aspects of our remit on which we will find that we are on the same page.

On the constitutional side, there is, obviously, a possibility—some would think that it is a likelihood—that a referendum bill will be referred to us. However, given that the framework legislation for referendums has already been passed, such a bill is likely to be fairly simple and technical. The debate on constitutional issues is much deeper and more complex. We might give some thought to how we might separate a debate on what might be a fairly straightforward bill, in legislative terms, from the much richer debate on constitutional questions.

I very much agree with Donald Cameron’s comment about interparliamentary working. Even aside from the constitutional debates in recent years, there has always been much more of an opportunity to do interparliamentary work—not just with the UK Parliament but with other Parliaments—than has ever been realised. There is also the issue of scrutiny and challenge of the intergovernmental machinery. Even many people at the UK level recognise that that machinery is pretty dysfunctional at the moment and that it needs to be examined.

Some constitutional issues will be cross-committee ones as well. Issues such as the fiscal framework will involve constitutional views as well as matters for the Finance and Public Administration Committee to consider. There are immigration, housing and health issues. For example, there were proposals in several party manifestos for the Holyrood election that related to the regulation of health professions, and there are devolved and reserved aspects of that. There may be a number of issues that are slightly lower down the list of priorities for the committee, but a bit of interaction—[Inaudible.]

On Europe, as members have said, there is the impact of Brexit and the issues of common frameworks and parliamentary accountability, especially in relation to common frameworks. How are Governments held to account in the Scottish Parliament or the UK Parliament for decisions that are signed off between them? That is a really big, unanswered question about our current constitutional status.

A point has been made about relationships within the UK and between the different parts of the UK, and the same point should be made about Europe. Without the role that the former Europe committees had in engaging with the European legislative process when we were a member of the European Union, we now have the responsibility to maintain strong and active relationships at the European level. That will be important for Scotland in the long term.

I am really glad that everybody who has spoken has talked about the importance of not losing sight of culture. I think that I am right in saying that culture has moved between committee portfolios in every session of the Scottish Parliament. It has been shuffled around between different committee remits in every new session, which is regrettable. I am keen that we do not see culture issues fall off our radar.

Donald Cameron mentioned the impact of Covid and the potential for looking at recovery from Covid in a way that benefits the cultural scene. We have a tradition of talking about the creative industries, which is relevant and important, but creativity and opportunities for people to access and be involved in creativity and culture go beyond the formal creative industries. That relates to arts funding, which people have talked about, and to much more than that.

The Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee did some work on the screen sector that will be really important. That sector used to be significant in Scotland. It has been in a long-term decline, but it has a real opportunity to rebuild and become much more significant. The convener is aware that I have flagged up the issue of BBC Studios in Glasgow and potential changes that are being proposed there by the BBC at the UK level. It is unclear whether BBC Scotland will be in a position to make a decision for itself on that subject. There is a suggestion that a decision might even be made next month, which would not allow the committee an opportunity to scrutinise the question. I have suggested that, in the first instance, we write to BBC Scotland and copy in the director general at the UK level, asking that the matter be considered, that some caution be exercised and that we have an opportunity to take evidence before a decision is reached. That was a bit of an overview, but I hope that committee members will be happy to support our writing a letter along those lines.