Chamber and committees

That is helpful.

I have a final question. The committee has been grappling with the issue of data collection around all areas. I think that the cabinet secretary referred to it in her opening statement, but will she expand on how the data is collected and monitored and whether it will be published in a public way so that we can see how the change is working over a three-year or five-year period?

If I lived in Blackpool, or wherever, down in England and I had a local connection with Inverness, would this not apply to me? Is it not correct to say that, if I lived outwith a Scottish local authority area, I could not use this even if I had a very strong connection with an area in Scotland?

I appreciate that the numbers are, relatively, very low, but two years is a very long time to be in temporary accommodation while waiting for a permanent house. How many of the people you have looked at previously would go into temporary accommodation and how many would go into a more permanent place?

Good morning to you and your team, cabinet secretary. I will follow up on a couple of my colleague’s comments. I do not want to keep this Edinburgh-centric, but most people in Edinburgh who are in temporary accommodation are there for two years. Will you clarify whether somebody who makes an application goes on to a temporary accommodation list or whether they jump the list and go straight into accommodation, which is obviously very scarce in Edinburgh?

I think so, yes. However, I am not sure why we have gone down the road of suspension rather than removal. I did not quite understand the answer. Will you elaborate slightly on that? Why not just remove the test completely?

That is helpful. Thank you.

You might have seen that one respondent to the committee’s call for views on the bill called for agricultural charges to be reformed rather than abolished. Have you reflected on that?

Just to clarify that point, have we reached an agreement? Has the Scottish Government reached an agreement with the UK Government on the matter? Are you still waiting to hear back from the Scotland Office?

On both those points, if we were to get a response before the stage 1 report comes out and before the Parliament debate takes place, that would be helpful and would allow us to reflect. If you could do that by correspondence, that would be helpful.

I will close with two technical questions.

The legislation was drafted before the Covid pandemic, and contains a requirement on use of electronic signatures. You might have heard the concern that people will have to have a particular type of software if they are to do that in the way that is suggested in the bill. Now, post-Covid, electronic signatures can be done much more easily than by using that software. That would particularly affect small businesses, which might not have that software. That is quite a technical issue, but we might need to look at how the provision is drafted.

Thank you.