Seòmar agus comataidhean

As we previously agreed to take item 4 in private, I close the public part of our meeting.

We are now joined by our second panel. In the room, we have Carolyn Lochhead, who is director of external affairs at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. We are joined online by John Blackwood, who is chief executive of the Scottish Association of Landlords; John Kerr, who is co-chair of the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, or ALACHO; and Timothy Douglas, who is head of policy and campaigns at Propertymark. Thank you for joining us.

I will ask the same questions that I asked the previous panel. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the scale of the problem of dampness and mould in housing. For example, are dampness and mould more prevalent in particular housing types or geographical areas?

I will start with Carolyn Lochhead, as she is in the room.

Thank you. Debbie King, I will come back to you. Shona Gorman and Aoife Deery both said that they do not have statistics to that level of depth. I am interested to hear whether you have a sense of how common complaints are about damp and mould in housing.

That concludes our questions for today. Thank you very much for joining us and giving evidence.

At our meeting on 16 May, we will hear from the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and the Scottish Housing Regulator as well as the Minister for Housing on the same issue and have the chance to explore with them the issues that have been raised today.

Thanks very much for that. Emma Saunders, you have indicated that you want to come in. If you have any information to add on the types of houses or geographical areas, that would be interesting to hear.

Thanks, Annie. We go now to Miles Briggs for questions.

The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission noted that

“Racing greyhounds suffer specific injuries, particularly around the foreleg, that we do not see in other dogs—companion dogs or dogs that run but not in races.”

Can you give some more information about the types of injuries that racing greyhounds endure compared with those of other dogs, and can you outline the role and importance of having vets present on the site?

We are just—

I want to look at geopolitical and environmental risks in the future. Joe Hind, given the risks of trade deals like those with Australia and New Zealand undermining food production to the higher environmental standards that we have been discussing—those in place in Scotland—is there a need for something like a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which the EU is bringing in, to increase the price of imported goods from countries where carbon taxes are not in place? Do we need a similar mechanism to increase the price of meat and other food products imported from countries with lower environmental and animal welfare standards?

I am hearing from your example of Shetland something about getting the right scale.