Seòmar agus comataidhean

I declare an interest as a result of my former work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

Amendment 1077 is important because we need to understand the scale of our national housing emergency. Currently, we do not have enough detailed data on those who are threatened with homelessness or those who are now experiencing homelessness. The amendment would provide a national register of homeless households.

The amendment follows on from an excellent cross-party briefing by the City of Edinburgh Council, which I attended. Preventing homelessness and supporting people who become homeless are huge priorities for that council. If the amendment were to be accepted, it could ensure that organisations are able to work together in order to allocate suitable housing, which would streamline the resources required for households that have applied to be assessed as homeless in different local authority areas.

The amendment would also result in the provision of more detailed information about the depth and breadth of the housing issues that are being faced in Scotland. It is important to understand the scale of the issue in order to identify how many new homes we need. The amendment offers the opportunity to get exact information on the scale of the housing need through a deliberative, preventative framework, and to deliver an opportunity as a result. Having a high degree of accuracy about the number of homeless households and where they are will help us to be more exact about building and planning for the homes that we need to address homelessness.

I move amendment 1077.

I will seek the committee’s permission to withdraw amendment 1077. However, I want to get the issue up the agenda, because it is seen as an issue in Edinburgh. I accept that the GDPR issues would need to be worked through, but I go back to the point about having a framework so that we know how many people need homes, because tackling the housing emergency must be a priority.

That is why I want to explore the issue further. The City of Edinburgh Council raised the issue as a challenge, so we need to pick it up.

The minister’s response was constructive, so I am happy to seek to withdraw amendment 1077, but I hope that we can make some progress, ideally before stage 3. We should at least have a conversation so that the minister can understand the concerns of that local authority, which is facing a housing emergency.

Amendment 1077, by agreement, withdrawn.

Commissioners are independent, and they are also there for a set period. That is very different from ministers, who do not know how long they are going to be there for and, indeed, do not know what their role will be, because it can shift. When I was a minister, I set up cross-ministerial work on sustainable development, but those kinds of things come and go.

A commissioner is a robust position that is held by a person who is accountable to the Parliament and who will have a plan. That function can be complemented by ministers but, in a way, you do not want either one or the other. We would want ministers to be working on such issues all the time, although, from my perspective, it should not be about one minister doing just one thing: we need cross-Government work. There are also thousands of officials who should be working on the issues.

There will be leadership from ministers, there is the work of Government itself, and there are the public bodies and local authorities. We must ensure that all of them deliver on the ambitions that are set out in legislation that we pass in the Parliament.

I will comment briefly on the issue of policy coherence. The Parliament has passed a large number of bills since 1999. More than 30 of those bills refer to sustainable development, but where is the policy coherence to join up the dots between those pieces of legislation?

I come back to the point about a long-term impact. Politics tends to be much more focused on short-term impacts. That is one of the issues that we face in embedding wellbeing and sustainable development in the work of the Government and public bodies. We have more than 130 public bodies out there. Who gives them advice? Some are large bodies, while some are very small. Where is that extra capacity? The work of a commissioner would increase the capacity of the Parliament and its ambition for the legislation that we pass—when we tick the box and move on—to join up. Policy coherence is absolutely critical.

Fantastic campaigners and lobbyists encourage us to ask questions and have a debate, but that is not the same as a more processed approach, through which somebody focuses on an issue all the time. Commissioners are appointed for a number of years, they are accountable to the Parliament and they are able to regularly update different committees—you might assume that a sustainable development commissioner would report to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, but, for example, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has had an impact on transport and education.

It is a question of having policy coherence across the piece, which, without the focus of a commissioner, we would not get. That is the added value that would be provided by the commissioner that I have proposed, both in relation to the decisions that we make now and those that we make for the longer term.

Pressure on committees is definitely an issue. They need expertise and support, as we can see when committees appoint experts for short pieces of work in addition to the Scottish Parliament information centre’s capacity. We could increase that capacity through annual reporting, so that commissioners report to specific committees. A commissioner would have an expectation of which committee it might report to, but it might have done work in one year that relates more to another committee than the one to which it previously reported, so that would be an issue.

The points that you make about pressure on the SPCB are important. Could the Scottish Commission for Public Audit provide overarching support that would help to prevent the SPCB’s having to do everything? It goes back to the question earlier about why we choose the SPCB model—we do so because we know it and it works. That relates to why the committee is doing the inquiry. What lessons can be learned?

There are ways in which we could support commissioners without overwhelming the SPCB, and if we think about what capacity exists, there are definitely wins to be had, which would be a big benefit for our committees and help us to learn from best practice and experience.

I, too, am happy to be in front of the committee today.

I looked at the model of the other commissioners and, indeed, the Auditor General. For me, it is about independence from Government but also accountability to the Parliament. There is a principle to do with supporting the work of the Parliament. I am conscious that some of our committees are quite stretched these days, given the work that they need to do, such as post-legislative scrutiny.

For me, accountability to the Parliament is critical. The issue is also about the responsibilities that the commissioner should have and the public duty that would come with my proposed legislation, and about clarity in the definition of wellbeing and sustainable development. There is also the opportunity to promote best practice, to carry out research, which would help with best practice, and to identify issues on which action is needed. There could also be investigations into public bodies.

The model is well established, and I looked at the best practice in what has been done. I agree with colleagues about back-office stuff, especially in setting up a new commissioner. You can learn from those experiences, but it is a question of adding capacity and having a focus that we would not have without a commissioner. In my view, we need to have accountability to the Parliament, separation from the Government and the ability to contribute right across the public sector in Scotland. That is why my proposal is for the standard model of commissioner. I am happy to get feedback from colleagues around the room on that issue.

On Jeremy Balfour’s comment about people’s voices not being heard, even when people’s voices are heard, what happens next? At a meeting of the cross-party group on sustainable transport the other week, we were talking about disability, and we realised just what a huge project it is to make transport accessible. Our cross-party group is doing work on equalities. We will send it in to the Government, but again the question is: what happens next? In that respect, there is something to be said for the always-on approach of a commissioner, and having somebody in place who has that responsibility.

When I look back, I am struck by the work of the Christie commission over a decade ago and its message about investing now in order not to have to pay later, and keeping people well and healthy instead of trying to cure them afterwards, which is much more expensive. Moreover, we do not have a co-ordinated and coherent approach to the sustainable development goals.

We do not lack people lobbying us or coming up to us as multitasking MSPs on committees, in our constituencies and regions and in the chamber, but there is something to be said for having that other focus.

For me, it all comes back to having specific guidance, having best practice to look at and being able to get people around the table. Things will not happen without those.

Let me give you an example from Wales. We had feedback from the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, who talked about engaging with the Welsh NHS. A new hospital was being built, and when she asked about the climate impact, she was told, “That’s not our job—we’re the NHS.” Then she asked whether they were going to put in a solar farm, and she was told that it would be a “nice to have”. The solar farm was put in after that engagement and conversation, and it now makes a profit that goes into the Welsh NHS.

The fact is that everybody is just in their own bloc. A commissioner’s role is additional to that of an MSP; they are not Government officials, and they are able to come back and report to the Parliament. I think that having commissioners adds capacity to our Parliament. The issue is how to manage them, which was the convener’s first question. There are lessons to be learned, but if you just say, “Right—there’ll be nothing”, what happens to the issues that are not being addressed? For example, we have three climate acts, but we are still not cutting it on that matter.

There might be different models that could be used. However, independence from the Government is critical. There is a challenge for many existing bodies: you could ask them to increase their number of priorities or to do more coherent cross-Government or cross-policy thinking but, if it is not in their day job and they do not have the capacity to do it, it will not happen.

One part of my proposed bill is about establishing a commissioner, and two parts are about having a clear definition of sustainable development and wellbeing, and introducing a public duty to promote them. However, even if both those components of my bill were to be passed, the extra scrutiny still would not happen—because who would be checking up on it?

There are different types of commissioners, and I know that some of them have different roles. However, we need to think about what changes we want to make. For me, the changes are about implementation—making things happen and accountability—and that comes back to the Parliament.

It is simply not happening, though. We need a push to make it happen and to kick the issue up the agenda. If organisations do not see that role as an immediate part of the day job, who is going to do it?

All public sector organisations are under pressure. One group that I have not mentioned so far that would be covered by my proposed bill is local authorities. We know that they are under pressure, and my bill would help by giving them support and advice and helping them to share best practice. It would also provide focus, because it would mean that there could be an investigation if it was clear that clearly defined legislation was not being implemented. It is about going beyond thinking about the issue as a nice to have or thinking, “We’ve legislated on this, so we tick the box and move on.” The scrutiny is not happening in real life.