Seòmar agus comataidhean

I appreciate the point about the public finance manual and public finances in general. However, do you accept that, if you consult on the principle that you are not seeking full cost recovery and then lay regulations that, as you have just said, seek full cost recovery, there is a disparity? There is clearly an issue with the consultation and how the Government has set out the principles of what it intends to do.

Amendment 408 would allow for

“the interest of the joint tenant”

under a private residential tenancy to

“be assigned to another joint tenant”

before the day on which they provide the landlord a notice outlining that they wish the tenancy to come to an end. However, under those circumstances, the tenancy

“must remain on the same terms as the existing tenancy”,

which would, I hope, allow for more flexibility for people in shared tenancies and, potentially, for easier and smoother transitions between tenancies.

I move amendment 408.

Amendments 268 and 269 would require Scottish ministers to review grounds for eviction under schedule 3 to the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 within 12 months of the bill coming into force. From analysing the case load of the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, listening to the submissions of organisations that act on behalf of tenants and observing the outcomes of changes that were made to schedule 3 of the 2016 act and the emergency legislation that was made during the pandemic, it is clear that at least some of the grounds for eviction mean that the balance of rights in such cases is tilted unfairly away from tenants. While the grounds remain discretionary, the opportunity will exist for unscrupulous landlords to take advantage of the imbalance to unfairly evict tenants.

Although I am in favour of much of the thrust of part 2 of the bill, which will tighten up the circumstances under which eviction should be allowed, there is further to go in ensuring that the balance of rights is fair. That is why I support all the amendments in this group that will make it more difficult to allow unfair evictions.

My amendment 268 would allow the Government to review the structure under which such unfairness can take place. The amendment deals with the cause of the imbalance, while the rest of the bill attempts to mitigate the effects of that. We have all heard stories about tenants who, having been told that the landlord intends to put the property on the market, found that, after they were evicted, the property was put back up for rent, often at a higher price. All my amendments in this part of the bill seek to ensure that the balance of rights is re-weighted towards tenants, while still allowing landlords the ability to end a tenancy when there is a legitimate need to do so.

The time has come to review the grounds for eviction so that the Government can properly consider them in the light of the time that has passed and the experience that has been gained of the application of the grounds since the 2016 act and the subsequent amendments to the schedule came into force.

I take on board the Government’s commitment to undertaking the review and the fact that the timescale of 12 months might be overly prescriptive in relation to consulting on and providing a full perspective of the changes that are required, so I do not intend to move amendments 268 and 269.

Amendment 502 would prevent landlords from evicting tenants under no-fault circumstances for 12 months after they have carried out work as a result of a grant made under the ECO4 scheme. A 2023 Scottish Government report estimated that, by March 2024, nearly half of all households in the private rented sector would be living in fuel poverty. The ECO4 grants are part of the UK Government’s strategy to meet carbon emissions targets and reduce the impact of the cost of living crisis. The focus is on households that are deemed to live in fuel poverty. Grants are means tested to the tenant’s income; there is no relation to the landlord’s situation. If a landlord receives a grant to make improvements to the energy performance of the home, the decision has been taken to award the grant because of the financial circumstances of the tenant and not those of the landlord.

The tenant in question, having been the reason why the landlord got the grant and having been inconvenienced by the work that was carried out in their home, should be given more protection from eviction, so that they get the intended benefits of the improvement to the property, rather than the landlord being able to evict them and then, as is often the case, re-let the property at a higher price due to the improvements, which were funded by the Government because of the circumstances of the tenant.

I appreciate the points that the cabinet secretary makes, so I do not intend to move the amendment at this stage. However, there is a gap in the legislation on how we deal with that, whether that be at a UK or Scottish level. I am happy to have further discussions to iron out the anomaly of a landlord getting funding to improve a property on the basis of a tenant’s circumstances and then evicting them to re-let it.

I am not opposed to conditions being attached to the grant. I am not aware of the legal discussions that have gone on in relation to that scheme or whether there are difficulties between reserved and devolved competencies with regard to the laws on housing evictions and other areas. As I said, I am happy to have a discussion with the Scottish Government on the legal interaction between reserved and devolved competencies. I am happy to not move the amendment, to leave that to a further discussion and to come back at stage 3, potentially.

I turn to the amendments in the name of my colleague Katy Clark. Amendment 409 aims to strengthen the criminal law relating to unlawful eviction and the action that can be taken against the worst landlords, particularly repeat offenders.

Freedom of information requests from the Legal Services Agency to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service revealed that, of the 153 complaints that it received of unlawful eviction in the five years to 31 March 2018, COPFS proceeded against only 56 to 59 people. Such proceedings resulted in a minimum of three and a maximum of 12 convictions annually. At the time of a 2020 publication by the Legal Services Agency, the First-tier Tribunal had made an award of damages for unlawful eviction only once in its entire history.

Amendment 409 seeks to tighten the legal provisions against unlawful evictions by amending the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 to create a wrongful termination offence that criminalises the act of misleading

“a tenant into ceasing to occupy a let property.”

That allows for a defence where an individual had not intentionally misled the tribunal or the tenant.

An individual who is guilty of that offence on a summary conviction would be liable to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to a six-month maximum custodial sentence, or to both. If convicted on indictment, the individual would be liable to a fine or to imprisonment for a maximum two-year term, or to both. The amendment is an attempt to strengthen the penalties in the most extreme cases.

On amendments 413 and 414, further to the previous amendment, amendment 413 also seeks to strengthen deterrence against unscrupulous actions by landlords by setting higher penalties under a “wrongful-termination order”. The amendment would increase the maximum penalty for wrongful termination. It also seeks to increase the cumulative total that the tribunal may require landlords to pay from six months to 36 months.

Amendment 414 relates to eviction orders for occupied properties on the grounds of sale, only for landlords to later seemingly abandon those plans to sell. Research from Generation Rent in 2022 found that, despite tenancy reforms, nearly a third of private landlords who evicted tenants in order to sell their property failed to sell the home more than a year later, with 9 per cent of cases of tenants who were evicted on grounds of sale seeing the home simply sold to another landlord who then re-let the property. Therefore, amendment 414 would add protections on property sale, restricting landlords from letting or attempting to let the property in question within 12 months of an eviction order being granted.

That covers the amendments in my name and Katy Clark’s name, but I want to touch briefly on the amendments in the name of Meghan Gallacher that relate to protections due to terminal illness. I support the work that Meghan Gallacher, the cabinet secretary and Marie Curie have done in that area and hope that we can reach a consensus and strengthen protection for those who are terminally ill and their families.

I also want to touch briefly on the issues raised by Willie Rennie, Fulton MacGregor and Meghan Gallacher on the use of properties that are held by religious organisations. In general, I agree with Maggie Chapman that the organisations that hold such properties should not dictate how easy it is to evict. However, if that leads to those properties lying empty, especially when they are the large, family-sized properties that we are crying out for, it would be helpful for the Government to look at how to allow those organisations to let such properties and relieve that pressure, with the assurance that they can bring them back into use for a minister, a priest or any other employee.

Some of the evidence that we have received from stakeholders suggests that the introduction of fees for planning appeals and reviews favour the more well-resourced developers. What is the Government’s take on that? Do the fees deny an appeals process to some developers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprise developers? There has been a contraction in the number of SME developers across the country, but they are key, particularly when it comes to rural and brownfield development. When the Government carried out the business and regulatory impact assessment on the instrument, what assessment was made of the impact on SME developers?

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s support in principle for the intention behind my amendment 417 and the Government’s on-going dialogue and engagement with Scottish Land & Estates to work towards making potential changes at stage 3. I therefore seek permission to withdraw amendment 417 in order to allow those discussions to continue.

On Maggie Chapman’s point about amendment 419, I realise that there would be an increased burden if we were to switch from a three-year to a one-year cycle of registration, but we need to balance outdated rent levels and outdated registrations. Some landlords stop being landlords but do not withdraw from the register; they simply allow their registration to lapse, potentially up to three years later. The concern is that there might be compliance gaps lasting up to three years, and the burden of annual registration needs to be balanced against the live information that could be gathered annually.

My amendments in the group are data driven, and I am reassured by the cabinet secretary’s comment that there will be a separate engagement exercise on data that we will be able to lean on for policy making. I still think that there is a potential gap with regard to the rights of a prospective tenant compared with the rights of a prospective house buyer, who will have far more information at their fingertips to allow them to assess decisions, so I might well come back to that issue at stage 3.

Amendment 417, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 418 and 488 not moved.

Amendment 454 moved—[Ross Greer].

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s comments. I am sure that my colleague Katy Clark will take up her offer to discuss the issue ahead of stage 3. I seek permission to withdraw amendment 408.

Amendment 408, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 378 to 382 moved—[Shirley-Anne Somerville].

I appreciate that this is a point of principle for the Government. What I am saying is that you consulted on a different basis to that of the instruments that you have introduced. Do you not think that there is an issue with consulting with developers and the sector on one basis, and then introducing regulations that do something else?

My final question is on access to justice. The Law Society of Scotland and Homes for Scotland have raised issues about the lack of any option for a fee waiver or refund of a fee. What consideration has the Government given to fee waivers or refunds, given that we know that more than 50 per cent of applications are granted on appeal?

Amendment 271 would require the Scottish Housing Regulator to publish a monthly dashboard of information about social housing tenants in Scotland—which means continuing to publish the information that it has previously made available as its quarterly Covid-19 dashboard. The information that was contained in that dashboard was incredibly useful during the emergency conditions of the pandemic. As we are now a year into a housing emergency, having up-to-date information on progress and on the effects on tenants in the social sector would be similarly invaluable.

From the Government’s biannual reporting on the emergency rent control legislation, and from the extensive discussions that we have had at committee on the adequacy of the data provided by the private rental sector and the landlord register, it is clear that, in order to take action to keep rent affordable, we must have access to up-to-date and accurate data. While we improve the depth and breadth of the information that is available on the private sector, it is important that the quality and amount of information on the social sector cannot be allowed to slip below what is necessary and what we have previously had access to.

I note that the SFHA has highlighted a couple of concerns with the amendment, and I acknowledge its point that monthly updates would place a high burden of resource on smaller housing associations. For that reason, I am content not to move it at this time and to work with the sector and the Government to ensure the quality and depth of data required for the social housing sector at future stages of the bill. It would be unfortunate if we lost the level of information that we had during the pandemic and no longer collected or published it.

Amendment 272 is designed to allow for an opportunity to push for a more robust approach from the Scottish Housing Regulator on social housing providers setting out and measuring standards. It would strengthen the regulator’s role in providing guidance; it would require the regulator to issue guidance on the competence and conduct of individuals involved in the provision of services in connection with the management of social housing.

The Scottish Housing Regulator can already set out standards that housing organisations need to achieve. In the existing regulatory framework, standard 6 states:

“The governing body and senior officers have the skills and knowledge they need to be effective.”

That is a fairly vague statement, and there is little guidance on how that should be measured. Further, it applies only to RSLs, not to local authority staff. The guidance required by my amendment 272 would be much more robust and could include provisions around the knowledge, skills, experience and conduct of people holding certain positions within the social housing sector. The amendment includes a requirement to review the guidance at least once every five years and a requirement for the regulator to consult whoever they consider appropriate when developing or revising the guidance.