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With regard to the wording of amendment 1089, what do you understand by the phrase “including consideration”? That could mean someone thinking about it, then simply moving on. What would you expect “including consideration” to actually mean in practice to a local authority housing officer sitting there on a Tuesday afternoon?

This is an important part of the bill, and one which, I am sure, all members will want to see work in practice.

I appreciate that Katy Clark will not be pressing amendment 1061 or moving her other amendments in the group, but I should say that we would have supported them, because the intention behind them is right. However, going back to the meaning of the phrase “including consideration”, which I raised in my intervention, I do not want to teach my granny to suck eggs, as Katy Clark is a better lawyer than I ever was, but I do think that there needs to be a better legal test. My fear is that this will simply become a box-ticking exercise.

We will support Maggie Chapman’s amendments 1022 and 1069, if she decides to move them. We also support the amendments that will be discussed later by Meghan Gallacher and Rachael Hamilton.

Amendment 1023, in my name, creates a duty on social landlords to point those who have experienced domestic abuse to appropriate legal advice and opportunities. I claim no expertise on what it must be like to experience domestic abuse, but I am sure that people need legal help and advice at an appropriate point. Often, though, it is not clear where to get such advice, nor is it clear which legal firms still do that type of work, wherever you are. There is, particularly in rural areas of Scotland, a lack of criminal or civil lawyers who do legal aid work on domestic abuse. The amendment, therefore, would make the social landlord not do the work themselves but point the individual towards it. That would be really helpful.

Will the member take an intervention?

Good morning. As we go through the amendments in this group and those in other groups, I suspect that we will see some of the weaknesses that exist in the bill. I am sure that all members want the bill to work, but, as it is constituted at the moment, there are simply too many unanswered questions and too many uncertainties with regard to the duty to act.

In his comments about amendment 1090, Mr Griffin said that there was a lack of clarity on the ask and act duties. I think that he was being kind, because there is a gaping hole with regard to what those duties will mean in practice if the provisions come into play.

I will give the committee an example that I have given to others. If someone comes into the royal infirmary up the road at 2 am on a Saturday night and discloses—or it becomes clear—to a nurse that they are homeless, what should that nurse do? What is her duty in that regard? There is no clarity on that. I think that we will be setting up public bodies to fail unless we give people a clear definition and a clear understanding of what is required.

When Kevin Stewart was on the committee, on one occasion on which we were taking evidence, he forcefully pointed out that there needed to be a change of culture if the ask and act provisions were to work. It is true that there needs to be a change of culture, but there can be a change of culture only if people understand what that culture change is meant to look like in practice. At the moment, the bill simply does not provide such an understanding.

On Mr McLennan’s amendment 1040, I note that one of the problems with the bill is that it puts a lot of weight on guidance. As the minister will understand, guidance has no legal authority—there is no way to enforce it. Guidance can be a piece of paper that comes out but gives neither the public body nor the person who might be threatened with homelessness any rights or any possibility of legal challenge in relation to it. We will support amendment 1040, but, in my view, this should be done by amendment and not by guidance.

On amendment 1018, in my name, I suppose that we are hoping and expecting that there will be a cultural change in public bodies and that everyone will simply understand the ask and act duty on them. However, there is no stick in the bill for a public body that does not achieve that change. There is a lack of clarity on what happens if NHS Tayside, NHS Lothian or any other public body that we end up with does not achieve that. There is absolutely no stick to hit them with. That is what amendment 1018 would allow. It would allow somebody who has not been treated correctly by a public body to at least have the option of challenging the decisions made by that body. That seems to me to be a legitimate right.

I appreciate that you can already have a judicial review in regard to the decision of a public body, but my amendment would put it in the bill. It would not create a new right or something that is not there in law already, but it would give a strong indication from the Parliament that we expect public bodies to take the ask and act duty seriously and that, if they do not, they could be open to legal challenge. That seems to me to be where we want to get to. I will leave it there.

I will come back to that point, because I want to address it in relation to another amendment. It is a fair point, and I will deal with it.

As for amendments 1024 to 1030, I will not be moving them this morning, but I am interested in hearing more about where the Scottish Government is on the matters in question. The first of those amendments would put the duty that will exist for social landlords on to private landlords, too. I have had helpful conversations with the minister about this, and to pick up on Mr Doris’s point, I think that such a duty would probably be overly burdensome for someone who owned one or two flats, so it should not be followed.

However, as Mr Doris also pointed out, the duty should perhaps apply to someone who owns multiple flats, and I think that that should perhaps be the case for not just amendment 1023 but amendment 1024. I am interested to know whether the Government would look at those amendments in a different light if they were to set out the number of flats that the duty would apply to, so that they did not pick up landlords with just one or two individual flats.

The rest of my amendments are in some ways similar to Katy Clark’s, in that they would put a duty on social landlords to think about whether they should evict someone simply for being in arrears. Arrears are an important issue, because every social landlord has to keep revenue coming in to make their cash flow work, but I would be interested in hearing from the minister whether there could be a longer grace period for social landlords and whether we could explore that at stage 3.

We all want those who have experienced domestic abuse to be protected from eviction, and it makes little sense for someone to be evicted from a property, become homeless and then have to start the journey all over again. We are aware that such situations often affect children, who have to move school and lose friends and their support network. As a result, we all want greater protection for people to allow them to stay in tenancies if at all possible, while at the same time recognising that social and private landlords need to have rent coming through so that they can continue to exist. I would be interested to hear what the minister has to say about the rest of my amendments.

I want to explore further the point that Mr Griffin made in his intervention about the Government’s proposed ability to redefine homelessness through regulation. We are making legislation not just for the current Government in this session of Parliament but for future Governments in future sessions of Parliament.

I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which spends a great deal of time looking at regulations. It is obvious from our work that regulations do not get the same scrutiny as primary legislation does. We do not know what a future Government might look like in five, 10 or 15 years’ time.

Will the minister tell me why there might be a need to introduce a new definition of homelessness via regulations? Why can we not simply include a definition in the bill? If a future Parliament or a future Government wants to change that, it should do so through primary legislation rather than through regulations.

Although we have taken a number of minutes to discuss these amendments, that has shown the advantage of having things in the bill rather than in guidance and regulations. Guidance is not scrutinised at all by the Parliament. It can be introduced by any Government without any scrutiny. Nor does it have any legal authority. As I said previously, with due respect, regulations are not given the same scrutiny as primary legislation.

My real concern is that the Government is not willing to put things in the bill because it does not want to have proper scrutiny from me and my colleagues and to be held accountable for those things. That is a concern in relation to the different amendments that have been lodged for this section.

I say with gentleness to the minister that, particularly with regard to my amendment, he has really not grasped the issues that many disabled people face. We are told by the minister that amendment 1015 is not required because it is already covered by other legislation. However, if his case load is anything like my case load, he will know that such legislation is having too little effect for many disabled and older people, who are too often put into accommodation that is unsuitable for them. I also completely accept the point that Mr Griffin makes in amendment 1015A that it is not just those groups who are affected and that there can be other issues in relation to rural areas, for example.

It is deeply disappointing that the minister has dismissed the amendments so quickly, with no practical solution being given. The minister keeps saying that we need to have further consultation on this and see what comes up in guidelines. Surely, that work should have been done before the bill was introduced, so that these issues—which are fairly obvious—could have been ironed out before this point. There has been a lack of thinking by the Scottish Government on how the bill would work in practice.

Having said all of that, I will not press amendment 1015 to a vote this morning. I will look at the matter again with the minister, if he is willing—as I am sure that he is. However, I am deeply disappointed that the amendment seems to have been dismissed without giving real consideration of what it means for disabled and older people across Scotland.

I am happy to.

I am very sympathetic to amendment 1078. If a future Government did not make such housing available, what would be the consequences? How would the provisions be enforced?

On a point of order, convener.