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Will Mr Balfour take an intervention?

I have a number of amendments in this group, all of which relate to the rights of the child when it comes to their being threatened with homelessness or being placed in temporary accommodation.

It might seem strange that I have lodged a number of amendments that amend my own amendments, but that was done purely on the advice of the legislation team. I had planned to lodge duplicate amendments stipulating that a child is a person under the age of 16 and that a child is a person under the age of 18, to give the committee the opportunity to make a decision on where it felt that that distinction lay.

My preference is for all the amendments to my amendments to be agreed to, as that would stipulate that a child was someone under the age of 18, an approach that is supported by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. Therefore I hope that the amendments with an A after the number are agreed to, too, if the committee agrees to the substantive amendments.

On the detail, amendments 1053 and 1054 present alternative options—they are very similar. Amendment 1053 uses the wording

“best interests and rights of children”,

whereas amendment 1054, which is the alternative amendment, simply refers to the “rights of children” to make things slightly tidier, given that article 3 of the UNCRC requires that the best interests of a child be considered anyway. Indeed, it might be tidier just to agree to amendment 1054, but I thought that it would be good to give the committee the option to make it absolutely clear that we should consider children’s “best interests and rights”. It was good to hear the minister comment on the amendments in yesterday’s debate in the chamber. If I caught his meaning correctly, he indicated support for them.

Amendments 1053 and 1054 refer to the rights of the child threatened with homelessness and state that children should have their rights under the UNCRC and their best interests considered when relevant bodies make decisions about them. We covered some of that ground in the chamber yesterday, but the motivation behind the amendments is Shelter’s report, “In Their Own Words: Children’s Experiences in Temporary Accommodation”, which tells stories of children forced to live in completely unsuitable temporary accommodation, and how their lived experience of homelessness, of being threatened with homelessness or of being placed in temporary accommodation was, essentially, life limiting. Decisions that were being made for them were disrupting their education, their health and their social life, and limiting their future life chances.

With record numbers of children in temporary accommodation and more than 16,000 children part of households that are applying to be homeless, we should take urgent action to ensure that, in the relevant policies and laws that we hope to pass through the legislation, we capture the requirement for their rights under the UNCRC to be considered.

Amendments 1055, 1056 and 1059 relate to decisions to place children in temporary accommodation, and ensure that children who are homeless or threatened with homelessness have their rights and best interests taken into account and that local authorities allocate them to either temporary or permanent accommodation. The amendments are a response to the conditions that Shelter described children as living in when they are allocated to unsuitable temporary accommodation. That report, which I think most of us will have read, argues that local authorities must take a rights-based approach when dealing with children who are facing homelessness so that they are protected from unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

I ask members to support the amendments and I look forward to the Government’s response to them.

Peter, your organisation has called for a remediation programme for RAAC, similar to what exists for cladding. Can you expand on why that is necessary and how you think it could operate?

Some of the points that I wanted to ask about have been covered. Beyond the actions that the Government has said that it is taking, such as issuing guidance about not blaming tenants, the actions of the regulator on statistics, and the potential inclusion of a form of Awaab’s law in the Housing (Scotland) Bill, what else do the Government, landlords and the regulator need to do on damp and mould?

We have heard about skills and the accreditation of assessors, the potential for recourse to tribunals for tenants, and the withholding of rent. Are there any points that have not been covered so far on what powers we should give to tenants or action that the Government or landlords should take?

Another area that I want to cover is the guidance that is out there, which is more focused on non-domestic buildings. What is the Government’s role in producing guidance when it comes to RAAC in domestic properties? I am talking about guidance on surveying, remediation and potentially demolition that applies to both owner-occupiers and tenants. Is that a space that the Scottish Government should be entering?

My last question is about an issue that I touched on with the previous panel. There are flats or terraced rows or semi-detached properties where one person is an owner-occupier and one is the tenant of a social landlord. The RAAC panels cross the ownership boundary. It is impossible to remediate one side without impacting the other. How can the Government give guidance to local authorities or social landlords to get around that legal minefield, so that we are not in a position where nothing happens because we cannot agree on how to manage the difference in and the legal complexities of ownership?

Yvette, are owner-occupiers being given any support at all if they have to decant from a property that has been certified as unsafe?

They are just being told that their property is unsafe and they need to find alternative accommodation themselves.

When an owner-occupier finds RAAC, the value of their home drops. How does that affect the prices that are being offered by a local authority when it comes to compulsory purchase?

My last question is about properties that can be remediated. I am thinking about properties that I have visited in terraced rows, where RAAC panels cross over property boundaries. Some are local authority properties and some are owner-occupied properties, and the local authority is proposing to remediate its stock. How can it remediate its stock where a panel crosses into an owner-occupier’s property, potentially leaving that property at risk of collapse, while not giving the owner-occupier the opportunity to participate in the remediation scheme or, seemingly, any involvement at all in the works?