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I want to pick up on Willie Coffey’s point about councils being a volume provider for air-source heat pumps or whatever technology might be appropriate for a house. It is an issue that we have discussed in our evidence-taking sessions, but is it something that councils could do? Is there any space in procurement for that? Are there any blocks that would prevent them from doing that, or could they just decide, “Yeah, that’s a good idea—let’s be part of that roll-out and be a trusted provider”? I know that Home Energy Scotland offers a pathway for people to find suppliers or those who can fit the technology, but Willie Coffey was asking whether councils could be the place to go if you wanted to buy these things, because of economies of scale and therefore reduced prices? Would there be any block in the way of councils doing that, if they decided that they wanted to?

It would be good to have a look at that.

That would be great.

I have a couple more questions, under the heading of next steps. I touched on this at the beginning—given the very limited time between the end of scrutiny and the finalisation of the plan, I am interested to understand what processes are in place to ensure that parliamentary and stakeholder feedback genuinely shapes the final document. I will integrate my other question, seeking concrete examples: what feedback has already been integrated into the climate change system? If it is a living document, that would be great to hear about.

Thank you for that very positive opening statement. Thank you for your efforts on the housing portfolio in the budget. We have a number of questions about the affordable housing supply programme, after which we will move on to energy efficiency and decarbonisation and then cladding. Those are the areas that we want to cover this morning.

I will lead with a few initial questions. You have set out a four-year investment profile for the affordable housing programme. How confident are you that that profile puts you on track to meet the commitment of providing 110,000 affordable homes by 2032? From the work that you have done, can you tell us what the risks are of so much delivery being pushed towards the final year of the target period? What are you doing to reduce those risks?

That sounds very positive. However, something that causes alarm bells to ring, and which I have started to think about it quite a bit over this session, is the fact that it is one thing to invest, but Scotland suffers from a history of wealth extraction. One of the pieces of work that we have been doing over this session has been on the idea of community wealth building. We are encouraging all that external investment, but how do we ensure that wealth is not completely extracted through shareholders and so on, and that the communities are actually invested in? How do we build that wealth?

Earlier, we were talking about place-based work with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and the amazing work that is happening at Granton with out-of-silo funding. The main point is, how do we ensure that investment comes in but also that the wealth stays with the communities?

For clarification, you would work with community enablers on identifying need. They work to support communities to get the confidence and capacity when they are embarking on a £6 million housing project and they have never had the experience of doing that. Helping to build that confidence seems to me to be a crucial role.

11:45

I also like what you said about how it should not just be left to communities to do it. Councils need to take a facilitation approach in supporting the community to deliver rather than having a volunteer board that can be hung out to dry when any project goes on for quite a long time.

I want to pick up on something that you said earlier about building standards. At the beginning of your opening statement, you talked about the budget and what fits into that envelope, and you mentioned building standards. We have not really gotten into the detail of that, but I think that that issue is connected to the conversation that we have just been having about cladding and RAAC. Over this parliamentary session, the committee has started to really look at building safety and quality. In our evidence sessions on cladding, RAAC, and damp and mould, it has come up that sometimes the materials that are used—for example, the cladding technology and the chemicals that are in it—are problematic. Is there something that we need to do in that space?

We were thinking about a couple of issues. One is whether there needs to be an inventory of the fundamental materials that go into house building in the future, so that we know what materials our houses are being made of. The other issue is whether we are making sure that the materials that a construction company or a housing developer chooses to put in are actually up to standard. Nobody could have imagined a situation in which cladding led to the horrors of Grenfell tower, but do we need to be doing something to monitor that kind of thing?

It is helpful to hear from you the differentiation between cladding and RAAC and that you are taking a broader view of that forum. A question about its scope has come up at committee, because once you get into a building, you discover other things.

We both agreed, cabinet secretary, that we were straying a little from discussing the budget, but the issues were connected. We are now talking about cladding remediation in the context of a budget, because of the fact that we were misinformed about the materials that ended up being used. There is absolutely an interconnection—I do not know whether that is systems thinking or out-of-silo thinking. Are we using the right materials? Will it get us into a situation down the line?

I totally take your point, Stephen, that we cannot necessarily predict the future of something, but it is about having an awareness of what the construction industry is choosing to use and ensuring that we are getting the right materials into people’s homes.

You will possibly be glad to know that that was the end of our questions for you. It has been a very good discussion. The housing budget has had a wobbly time over this parliamentary session, and from this discussion, it feels like it is now in a much better space.

I really appreciate your focus and, I would say, diligence. As convener of this committee, I am grateful that we have a Cabinet Secretary for Housing, because we absolutely needed that level of leadership in this space. It is great that we finally got there in this session.

That concludes our questions and the public part of the meeting.

12:18

Meeting continued in private until 12:47.

That is very interesting. I was going to ask this question later, but I will ask it now, because you mentioned renewable energy and the idea that, given that Shetland islanders are hosting such infrastructure, they should get more infrastructure that will benefit them personally by transforming their lives and that will support them to help us to meet our carbon ambitions.

Has the Scottish Government explored opportunities for community ownership of renewable energy? Countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands are often cited in that regard. In Denmark, there is 50 per cent community ownership of renewable energy, although that could include community and local authority ownership. Have you thought about entering into those conversations? Ownership, rather than benefit, could bring considerable income for local authorities and communities to help us to achieve the ambitions that we are talking about.