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I am sorry, convener, but I think that that is someone else’s section.

That is very helpful. It gives us a basis to interrogate the spending review and to flag up to the Government the lack of detail that would give local councils more certainty about the individual figures that they will get.

Leaving aside the principle of the spending review giving local authorities longer-term or medium-term stability, I want to ask about the content of the spending review. The five-year review is a flat-cash one, which means, with inflation as it is, significant real-terms reductions to local authority budgets. That is on top of cuts that go back over the past 10 years, probably. What is the Accounts Commission’s view on the ability of local authorities to continue to provide the services that are needed, based on projections of real-terms reductions of upwards of £700 million over the next five years?

Would any of the online witnesses like come in at this point?

Yes. My questions are on waiting lists, demand and communication between authorities and those on waiting lists. We have had quite a bit of discussion about that, so I probably know the answer to this but, generally, what is demand like? How many people are on the waiting list in your area? How has that changed since the 2015 act? I come to Rosanne Woods first.

I want to touch on communication with people on waiting lists and what local authorities can do to identify duplications on waiting lists. Ian Welsh, you touched on data protection issues, but there are ways around everything. For example, if allotment associations asked people for permission to share the data, could local authorities play a bigger role by having a comprehensive, local authority-level waiting list? In that way, with applicants’ permission, councils could co-ordinate waiting lists and encourage incorporation, perhaps looking at particular sites where authorities own land. That does not seem to be beyond possibility, provided that people give their permission to share the data.

I am the owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

Amendments 109 and 110 seek to improve the information, evaluation and reporting of the operation and effect of the provisions in part 4 and their precursors, which is substantially lacking at the moment.

It is clear to anyone with an interest in the private rented sector that there is a lack of hard and fast data to give an understanding of that sector, particularly when it comes to the length of tenancies, rent levels and the make-up of the sector. Amendments 109 and 110 seek to address that in a small way through the collection of more data, which would put us in a much more informed position ahead of the forthcoming housing bill and in assessing how the provisions have worked and continue to work.

Amendment 109 would require an evaluation of the operation and effect of part 4 and that tenants, landlords and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service be consulted. It would also require that the impact on those groups be assessed one year after royal assent and in time for the housing bill.

Members will know that the provisions in part 4 maintain the pre-action protocols and the requirement for all eviction grounds to be discretionary. Those measures are already active in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Act 2020, so amendment 109 would require the evaluation to cover three years of continued operation.

Amendment 110 would require the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to publish quarterly statistics relating to the operation of the provisions in part 4. Anyone who has tried to retrieve statistical information from the service will know that that is difficult. It is a transparent body and publishes its individual judgments clearly, but it has been difficult to find overall aggregated statistical information on the work of the First-tier Tribunal.

We want tenants’ rights to be protected so that people are not evicted from their homes as a result of hardship faced during the pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis. However, we recognise concerns that the measures in the existing coronavirus legislation are not supported by information or evidenced reporting on their effectiveness.

At the moment, the extent of the debate has essentially been two sides—the tenant side and the landlord side—saying that they do or do not agree with the measures, but without there being any underlying evidence for their positions. The reporting requirement would fill that gap.

The Scottish Association of Landlords has questioned the effectiveness of the move to discretionary grounds, having published its analysis of tribunal cases. That fairly lengthy piece of work showed that only one eviction had been prevented on the grounds of reasonableness.

I am pleased that Shelter Scotland supports my amendments. At stage 1, it recommended evaluation and monitoring of the pre-action protocols so

“that they are working in practice, with the Tribunal ensuring that they are upheld.”

Legislation without robust evidence of the impact of the policies was far from best practice, albeit that it was done with the best motivations in mind. It would be entirely unacceptable to remove tenants’ rights in the absence of any compelling information to do so. I believe that the amendments strike a balance in setting a requirement for post-legislative evaluation to assess the effects of the decision to legislate two years ago.

I move amendment 109.

In relation to amendment 111, we were sympathetic to the idea of a sunset clause, but one that was linked to the introduction of the housing bill. However, I understand that there are difficulties with that in legislative terms. I do not support amendment 111. It seeks to introduce a hard date for the relevant provisions to expire, which could result in the protections that the bill introduces for tenants simply expiring if the housing bill was not introduced by the specified date.

Amendment 109 is unique in the sense that representatives of landlords and of the tenants lobby are equally supportive of using the proposed provisions to fill a particular data gap and to fill a gap in assessing the Government’s performance against the measures in that part of the bill. However, I take on board what the cabinet secretary has said and the offer that he has made for Mr Harvie to meet me to discuss the matter. Therefore, I seek permission to withdraw amendment 109.

Amendment 109, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 110 not moved.

Amendment 111 moved—[Edward Mountain].

Are any authorities doing that proactive engagement work with people on lists to identify sites and encourage them to work together?

We certainly intend to put that question to them, and we will reflect your comments back to local authorities when we come to them.

We have touched on the provision that says that local authorities should

“take reasonable steps to ensure”

that the number of people on waiting lists is

“no more than one half of the total number of allotments”.

Do you know where that figure came from? Was it just plucked out of the air? Is that a reliable or reasonable figure to use?