Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I said in my opening remarks and reinforced to the convener, we believe that we have struck a balance that achieves a degree of parity. Private rented sector rents are significantly higher than social rented sector rents. A 3 per cent increase in the private rented sector is broadly equivalent to an impact of £5 a week—or thereabouts—in the social rented sector, if we look at the most common property type, which is the two-bedroom property. Obviously, there will be slight variations for one-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom properties, because we cannot apply that average at a uniform level. We would need to control each rent individually to achieve that, but setting that 3 per cent cap achieves something that is broadly in parity in monetary terms.

I reinforce the point that the additional safeguard for landlords is there. If they face additional prescribed property costs during the specified period, they can apply for an increase of up to 6 per cent through Rent Service Scotland. I think that that strikes the appropriate balance between tenants and landlords, who will in a significant number of cases face significant challenges through the cost of living crisis.

On average, tenants in the private rented sector tend to have lower incomes than those in other tenures. They tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on their rent and are facing a number of other challenges. We believe that the legislation strikes the appropriate balance, going forward.

I am aware of Shelter’s criticisms, and I would very much welcome having further dialogue with it and, indeed, with other agencies—I know that Citizens Advice Scotland has been discussing the same issues—and hearing their ideas about what more we can do.

That said, I draw attention to the significant amount of work that we have done as we have developed the new deal for tenants and in our particular focused activity around the 2022 act. I am talking not just about conventional news releases and other activity across conventional media but about a wide range of social media content. For example, the renter’s rights website has been updated and advertised widely, and we have made wider cost of living information available through general practice surgeries, libraries, community centres and leisure centres. That information has included numbers and contact details for organisations that can offer individual advice and support, not just generic information about the legislation’s provisions, and of course it includes Shelter and Citizens Advice Scotland.

There has also been direct communication through key partner organisations such as tenant and landlord representative bodies, social and local authority landlords and educational establishments, giving tenants the information that they need about the new legislation and telling them how to access more information, should they need it. We have also had direct communication with registered landlords via local authority text message alerts and with registered letting agents, and there has also been engagement with the three tenancy deposit schemes to facilitate dissemination of information to tenants who are registered on their newsletter. There have also been direct messages to an extensive list of stakeholders, including colleges, universities and purpose-built student accommodation providers, confirming the nature of the measures and giving information for tenants.

As I have said, though, we continue to be very open to further suggestions about what more we can take forward on this. I know that, particularly as changes come through, landlords as well as tenants will continue to have questions about what those changes will mean for them, and we are keen to ensure that they have access to the answers that they need.

We confirmed fairly recently that we intend to introduce that legislation as soon as we can after the summer recess this year.

There are a number of areas where there is a clear public expectation from stakeholders about the provisions in the plan, particularly around homelessness prevention. Through the new deal for tenants, we have also signalled a number of other areas where we expect to make progress. It talks about not only the development of a national system of rent controls, but other tenants’ rights—for example, some of the softer things that give people a sense of dignity at home, such as the ability to personalise their home or to keep pets. We have also talked about some of the more challenging issues, such as protection from eviction during the winter months. The legislation that we will introduce to Parliament later this year will address a number of those measures as well as others.

It is important to flag up the recognition across political parties of the value of the approach that is taken in “Housing to 2040”. It is also important to flag up that the approach involves not only developing plans extensively with stakeholders and the public, but trying to create a long-term vision for the role that housing plays in meeting wider policy objectives for people in Scotland. That includes tackling poverty and inequality, creating and supporting jobs, looking at issues around demographics and depopulation and the work on our hugely important targets for emissions reduction and net zero. Between the housing bill and the heat in buildings bill, we will address all aspects of that.

I begin by reinforcing my earlier answer to Miles Briggs about the pattern of evictions in different tenures. For quite a long time, eviction from the private rented sector was extremely dominant as a source of new homelessness. That began to come under control, but it remained high before the pandemic. The emergency regulation that was brought in at the start of the pandemic significantly reduced that. After that time, and before the introduction of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, we saw a steady and very marked increase in homelessness from the private rented sector. We did not see that same effect in social housing that is provided by either local authorities or registered social landlords. We recognise that something significant and harmful has happened regarding the sources of homelessness.

We took the view that the economic situation has not markedly changed since the introduction of the legislation. There is a necessity to give a level of protection, not only by pausing evictions to allow people more time to find new accommodation but by having significant measures to create disincentives for unlawful eviction, which remains a serious problem in Scotland. Landlords previously faced a very low level of penalty, which meant that they did not find it to be a disincentive.

We have made it easier and more relevant for tenants who are faced with unlawful or unreasonable eviction to take action to protect themselves from that. We believe that both the moratorium and the additional protections that are provided by the measures against unlawful eviction remain necessary in the current circumstances. The concerns that other members have raised about the availability of rented housing in some parts of the country reinforce the necessity of those measures.

I am not aware of recent contact from the universities on that issue.

In our view, the provisions will clearly, almost by definition, have prevented some rented sector households from falling into homelessness by, as I said, giving them extra time to find alternative accommodation or seek housing advice and support from specialist agencies.

For private rented sector tenants, the measures continue to provide protection by making it easier and more meaningful, as I said, to challenge unlawful eviction. Unlawful eviction is a type of experience that people can go through that is more likely to lead to homelessness. In fact, I count myself among their number. I narrowly avoided homelessness when I was evicted from a flat by a dodgy landlord long before some of the current protections were in place, so I take very seriously the impact on people’s lives when they encounter those behaviours or practices.

The longer-term work on homelessness prevention duties is, I think, long awaited by the sector. We have engaged extensively with stakeholders to make sure that the measures that we bring forward will help to strengthen the protection against homelessness and to reduce it. I am not sure whether Adam Krawczyk has any current data that he wants to throw into the conversation on current patterns.

The impact has been a subject of concern from the social rented sector, but we have been pleased with our ability to reach agreement with the sector. The average approach—the approach of not setting a cap and not even seeking a voluntary, uniform cap for the social rented sector, but of offering an average instead—allows for some flexibility.

Some social landlords will have an urgent need to invest in quality and maintenance as well as other aspects of their investment programme. Some will have managed more successfully than others to keep rents low and under control during the pandemic. They will not all have followed exactly the same path, because they are independent bodies. Given the different circumstances that different social landlords are in, it was appropriate that we allow some degree of flexibility.

Social landlords exist for a social purpose and they are not there to extract the maximum rent that they can extract from the properties that they have on offer; they take that social purpose very seriously. None of them would seek to impose unaffordable rent increases or ones that could reasonably be avoided. In fact, we are seeing early indications that the rents that are being set are significantly below average. I have seen figures from some local authorities that have set their rent increases for the coming year at 2, 3 or 4 per cent—significantly below the average that we have been seeking. We anticipate that that will continue to be the case, and the Scottish Housing Regulator will continue to give us information on that.

Obviously, we are in regular dialogue with them. I have to say, though, that I have seen some media reports that have not quite captured the full detail of this. If there is an announcement about what is going to happen to the cap, not every media report will properly capture the difference between the impact on the social rented sector and the impact on the private rented sector. That is why we need to continue to work directly with social landlords, for example, who have that on-going responsibility for consultation and tenant engagement, as well as with private landlord representative bodies and organisations that speak directly to and advocate on behalf of tenants.

It also worth reflecting on the fact that there is a role for organisations that engage with tenants in the social rented sector but which are not social housing providers, such as the Tenants Information Service, and the work of local authorities such as Glasgow’s tenant-led housing panel—is it a panel? [Interruption.] I have been told that it is a commission—I will actually be seeing some of them later this week. They, too, continue to have a role not just in letting us know about additional channels of communication that we should be using but in speaking directly to tenants. Indeed, they have been very active in doing so.

Previously, when we have debated not so much this legislation but the new deal for tenants, it has been clear that ideology comes into the debate a little bit. There are some who are of the view that a more deregulated, more free-market approach to housing will increase supply and that any impact on prices will be detrimental to that. Actually, if we look at some European countries that have had systems of rent controls in place for a long time, we see a larger private rented sector as a proportion of the housing stock than we see in Scotland.

That is not the universal experience, and it is well understood that rent controls can achieve their objectives well or poorly. We continue to engage with all stakeholders to ensure that we design a system that is right for Scotland and that will be able to achieve protection in terms of affordability but which will also be consistent with what Scotland needs in terms of good-quality housing supply and investment in all the hugely important priorities around the transition to net zero.

There is a connection between rental income and investment in either sector. That relationship between rental income and investment is not the same in the social rented sector—which, as I said earlier, is a non-profit-making sector—as it is in the private rented sector. There are examples of build to rent, but a great deal of private rented accommodation is not actually provided by landlords—it is not necessarily built by them but is acquired by them as existing property.

Therefore, there are huge differences between the sectors, and we are keen to continue to do the work that we have been taking forward since the publication of the new deal for tenants and which will continue to be in development until the bill is introduced later this year. I look forward to further extensive dialogue with the committee at that point.

To give tenants confidence, the Government is already doing a huge amount of work—and more is to come—on communications with people about the cost of living crisis, the support that is available and the advice that they can follow to minimise their exposure.

As for the sector, I come back to exactly the same points that I made to Miles Briggs about working closely with the sector ahead of any decision about the cap’s future. The initial six-month period, to the end of March, does not directly impact on social landlords’ rental income, but it gives a clear focus to ensure that we can work with them and make a decision that is well informed by their perspective on the future operation of a cap and the future of how to support tenants, not just through investment in the quality of properties—in repairs and maintenance and in net zero measures—but through the wider services that social landlords provide. We are actively engaging with them and creativity is being brought to bear, as I have said.