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What would that look like?

David Melhuish, you wanted to come in a while ago, as did Chris Birt and Emma Jackson. You might have forgotten the points that you wanted to make, but please come back in and scoop up anything else that has been added to the conversation.

That would be great. You quoted stats for developments in Scotland compared with south of the border. How do those figures break down in relation to the population, given that Scotland has five point something million people? It would be interesting to understand the numbers in that context and to hear how many houses we are building in relation to population size. It would be great if you could send that information to us.

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Willie. I will bring in Gordon MacRae, then Rhiannon Sims.

Thanks very much for talking about the need for a broader and more holistic approach, and the fact that people are facing not only a housing challenge but energy pressures, which are leading to rationing, self-disconnection and so on. You also mentioned people using food banks—all of that comes with cost of living pressures.

I see that Chris Birt wants to come in.

A housing and land agency might help with, for example, the presumption against out-of-town development and development on brownfield sites. Developers are being pointed towards developing on brownfield sites, but I hear that they are not keen to go into that space. Would the agency that you propose help with paving the way for housing on such sites?

That was a helpful addition to the conversation.

Miles has pre-empted the next set of questions and pushed us into another conversation. Before we go there, I want to stick with the more general housing to 2040 strategy, and then we can go back to his question. We will have a specific set of questions about the cost of living, tenant protection and interim measures, and Miles’s question might fit better there.

I will direct a quick question at you, Ken Gibb. In your written submission, you talked about some work that you have done—I think it is the JRF work that you led—and mentioned something about the need for

“Institutional reform ideas”

including a new

“housing and land agency”.

The issue of getting the land to build the housing on has not come up in this conversation. Will you talk a little bit more about that idea? I know that there are budget cuts and a new agency might not be possible, but I want to understand how that could help us.

That is a good point. Thank you for raising the housing needs and demand assessment, because, as I understand it—my understanding is based on good work that is being done in Orkney—that assessment does not uncover the real need that exists in communities, because people who live in rural communities, in particular, do not put themselves on a list because they do not believe that there is any possibility of obtaining housing. We have not really clarified that. By digging underneath that in the way that some housing folks in Orkney are doing, we can uncover the real need that exists at local level.

Let us go back to Miles Briggs’s question about whether we need a new housing bill or whether we should go back and look at what is already available and dust it off.