 Èw Mayson yng Nghymru? The debate on motion 11271, in the name of John Mayson on the Bell Grove Hotel. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I invite those members who wish to speak at the debate to please press their request to speak buttons now or as soon as possible. If you are ready, I invite you to speak for 7 minutes or thereby please. I thank the members who signed the motion, which has enabled the debate to take place. I realise that the subject of the debate is a local issue in one sense and is clearly in my constituency. However, I have lodged the motion, because it has wider significance for Glasgow and beyond. As far as I am aware, this is the largest remaining homeless hostel in Scotland. It also has conditions which generously could be considered unsuitable and less generously grim decensian like a Soviet Gulag or similar. Some of the key facts around this establishment are that it is in a legal sense a private hotel on Glasgow's Gallagate. It is an art deco building that was built in between 1935 and 1937 and, originally, it was used for long-distance lorry drivers and such like to stay there. However, as a result of this history, it has an HMO licence for a house in multiple occupation, which might be suitable for a student flat but which I would argue is not suitable for 140 vulnerable men. Glasgow City Council correctly came to the conclusion some years ago that such large hostels are not the right place for homeless men who may be continuing to use alcohol and other stimulants. As a result, traditional hostels like the Great Eastern have closed down and alternative uses found for these buildings. The council and others have found alternative accommodation, often in partnership with organisations like Loretto Housing Association, which, for example, runs the Ford Nuk Centre in Bridgeton, which, somewhat strangely, is only some 500 metres away from the Bellgrove hotel. It caters for up to 42 men or women who have indicated that they wish to continue drinking, and they have a similar number of staff in fact to care and support for these people in what is reasonably modern and I think suitable accommodation. Other people instead of sharing a joint accommodation live in individual flats or some form of supported accommodation. Despite all this progress, the Bellgrove hotel continues. That is largely because it is in private hands and not subject to the same regulation as other organisations, for example by the care inspectorate, the housing regulator and other regulators. I think that it has been expected, both by the owners and Glasgow City Council, that it would gradually decline and fade away when referrals stopped, but this has proven not to be the case. Instead, it continues to be registered for 160 residents and to normally house around 140. I visited the Bellgrove some time ago, and the conditions frankly are not acceptable in this day and age. Recently, I also visited Shots and Lomas prisons, and their conditions are considerably better with long-suit facilities, which residents of the Bellgrove can only aspire to. Instead, they make do with a communal shower room that I suspect many here would refuse to even think of using. So who is responsible for all this and how can things be improved? In one sense, everyone and no one is responsible. Clearly, the owners are responsible, yet they have failed to improve either the level of physical conditions or the level of support for residents to any great extent. Secondly, the DWP is responsible because they pay the housing benefit without any real conditions being attached. They, in turn, point to the City Council, who pay out the housing benefit, issue the HMO licence and can provide some support if residents ask. The council might point to the Scottish Government to strengthen the regulatory framework. At this stage, I am grateful to the many of those who have been engaging on this issue. The HMO staff have been very helpful to me and arranged for me to visit. The council licensing committee listened, and I felt that they went probably as far as they could. The care inspectorate also sought to engage but were wardened off by the owners, and the minister has met me and provided a very helpful explanatory letter. Despite all that, we do not seem to be moving forward. In the year 2000, the BBC did a documentary in the Bellgrove, and very little seemed to have changed by the time the daily record put in a journalist under cover quite recently. The proposals of the Smith commission suggested that some control over housing benefit could come to this Parliament, and maybe then we could impose more conditions on the accommodation standards. However, if we have to wait until 2020 for that to happen, frankly, I do not find that kind of timescale acceptable. What should happen? There are two clear needs, it seems to me. One is for the alternative accommodation, and obviously there is a cost to that, and the other is for the regulation in order to prevent this scenario recurring. There would be a little point in either the council or the Government, or both of them, providing further accommodation, which might or might not be used depending on what incentives there were in offer to the residents to stay on the Bellgrove. On the other hand, I do not want just sanctions, which would perhaps close the Bellgrove overnight, when clearly we have to find alternative places for people to stay, so it has to be both and. We do need the council and the Government to work together, whether it is possible for both to engage with the owners. I do not know if the owners and management would agree to a voluntary upgrade and reduction in numbers. That would be the quickest solution, but I fear that I should not be overly optimistic about that. At this stage, I know that charities such as Salt and Light and the nearby Gallagate Church engage with individual residents and seek to help them. I also know that workers from social work, the wider medical services, Cordia and others often go in quite difficult circumstances to help individual residents. I know as well that mental health services staff often have to pick up the pieces when living at the Bellgrove becomes too much for an individual, but they can only watch as that person drifts back to living in the same place in the same conditions. I know that the minister does not have a magic wand to sort this immediately, nor does Glasgow City Council, but we are living in 2014 and something has to happen. I have a lot of constituents who are vulnerable in different ways, but surely those 140 constituents are deserving of somebody's help. I thank John Mason for securing this important members' debate this evening. The issue of the Bellgrove hotel in Glasgow is an on-going matter, which is of great concern to many of my constituents in Glasgow. I believe that one of the fundamental responsibilities of a society is protecting the wellbeing of all its citizens. That duty particularly extends to our most vulnerable members. John Mason's motion seeks to do exactly that. In that particular case, it is protecting the lives and wellbeing of vulnerable individuals who have come to reside in the Bellgrove hotel in Shettleston, Glasgow. At that point, we have all become familiar with the richard conditions that are experienced by residents of the Bellgrove hotel. That is a place that epitomises and acts as the physical definition of deprivation and squalor and is in every sense a modern-day poor house. Based on the simple reality that the Bellgrove represents a great risk to many of most vulnerable people in Glasgow, it is time that the Scottish Government takes action. It is absolutely necessary to create new regulations on establishments such as the Bellgrove hotel so that they cannot continue to sneak by and continually pose a risk to the residents who stay there. As the motion noted, upon investigation by the care inspectorate, even after a lengthy investigation, the agency concluded that it had no ability to order changes for the hotel based on poor health conditions. To all the members of this Parliament, that should immediately signal a need for change and reform to an obviously broken system. What is worse is that, although the horrid conditions are left unchanged, those who are responsible are swindling the taxpayers out of £1.5 million every year through the housing benefits that are given to people in need to find lodgings. To anyone who is even remotely aware of the issue, we know that this is a complete falsehood. That is yet another reason why I ask for the Scottish Government to create legislation to control and change places such as the Bellgrove so that people cannot profit off the misfortune of others while providing utterly substandard accommodation. As a country, we pride ourselves on looking out for all its citizens and seek to provide a good standard of living for all people in Scotland. It is a shame that action has not yet been taken. It is time for all of us to do the right thing and do everything in our power to put an end to the cycle of abhorrent behaviour on part of the proprietors of the Bellgrove hotel and stop pushing the problem aside. We all know that what is happening is wrong. Now let us do something about it. Therefore, I fully support the motion lodged by John Mason and look forward to helping to create real change in that respect. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank John Mason for securing this debate and for his continued interest and involvement in the issue, which I know and others know he has pursued vigorously. As my colleague John Mason has already said, it is in his constituency, but it receives clients from throughout the city. My constituency, including those that borders on East End Glasgow and Kelvin, is off the galley gate. What I wanted to concentrate on is the basics of the HMO licences. For the life of me, I cannot understand how a hotel can be classed as an HMO. I have looked at the explanation, and it is classed as an HMO. How it can get housing benefit is obviously a reserve power. We do not have power over that, but I would like questions asked of the welfare system. How can people spend £200 a week in a so-called hotel? It is advertised as a hotel. How can they spend £200 a week? That is £800 a month of benefit going to private individuals. As my colleague Ann has already said, £1.5 million is made from these individual owners and landlords. What can only be said is a Dickison area for those people to stay in. There is absolutely no backup. Those men are placed there. I know that there are various reports from the newspapers. I have read them. John Mason has already read them out. Men lying in their own vomit, drunk on drugs—absolutely nobody there to look after them, two people to run this whole so-called hotel, hostel, model, whatever you want to call it, in the 21st century. We are debating in this Parliament private housing rent levels. Here is a private housing rent level £800 a month to stay in somewhere that nobody would stay in at all, yet they are taking £800 a month. In my area in Glasgow Kelvin, £800 a month would get you a very good piece of accommodation. I would also like to know how you can have an HMO licence in a place that is supposed to be the purpose of an HMO licence to ensure that accommodation is safe, well-managed and of good quality. I know that Glasgow City Council from 2010 does not want to send people there and they have only given it a year's HMO licence, but something has to be done to ensure that those men are human beings after all, are looked after properly, that they have the support. John Mason has named a number of agencies that support cordial mental health charities. They do go in and try to support those people, but if you are thrown into a place like that where nobody cares at all, all they want is a money off you with a chance of these men got whatsoever. I would like to see letters, meetings with Westminster authority, one that is possibly along with Margaret Burgess, the Minister for Housing, to ask if there are some conditions that can be put on housing benefit that is not paid out to this type of model. I certainly remember in Glasgow that that is what we called a model or a model, not a hotel. I want to know if those conditions can be put there, that they do not receive this money. I also want to know why the care commission is saying that they do not look into this. The care commission is there to protect people. They should be going in there. There is legislation, there are guidelines, and they should be going in there and enforcing those guidelines. In this day and age, it is not good enough that people are put into an area like this where people are making a profit off of the misery of others, and I feel the support, the motion in John Mason's name. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much. I now call Alex Johnson, after which I will move to closing speech in the minister. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am the only person who will speak in this debate who does not come from the area where the Bellgrove hotel itself exists. However, I am keen to take the opportunity to speak in this debate for two reasons. One, I want to take a slightly different approach to one aspect of it, but secondly, I want to take the opportunity to and effect back almost everything that John Mason has said. The two points that I would like to make, however, is that there are two key things we must remember. Firstly, that the private sector does manage to work very effectively in the provision of accommodation for a great many people. It operates in the areas of private rented flats and homes. It also operates effectively in the area of houses of multiple occupations, particularly in our cities and towns where universities and colleges are a strong part of the local economy. We have a system there that does work very effectively in certain circumstances, and one in which we have to be careful of not regulating out-of-existence. The second thing that I want to say relates to the people who are living in the Bellgrove hotel. Now, if they are in need of care, then care is what they should have, but those are obviously people who are outside the care system. From a legal point of view, they are private individuals and they must have the right to continue to make decisions about their own lives and the way that they conduct themselves in their lives. The circumstances that they find themselves in in the Bellgrove hotel are obviously distasteful and unsatisfactory, inappropriate in the opinion of many, and on the descriptions that I have heard I would agree. However, those individuals have rights and they are free to live as they see fit. For that reason, it is important that we always remember the rights of those individuals. I will, at this stage. You say that those individuals have rights, but they are very vulnerable individuals. Do you not think that it is incumbent on the people who are taking the money of those individuals to offer more than just not even a bed? Absolutely. As I move on, I have to say that within a system that has across the country a great deal to commend it, we are doing very well when it comes to ending the use of hostels to deal with homeless people. We are finding ways to give good quality accommodation to those who require it, but there are still holes in the safety net. There are still loop holes that people fall through. That is why it is so important that John Mason has been able to bring this issue, which has already been aired in the press and on television, but to bring it here to the Scottish Parliament, because there is an obvious requirement to get much better value for taxpayers' money, if nothing else. However, there is also a significant requirement to improve standards. Where standards have been improved across so much of Scotland, so much of Glasgow—we have even heard about how there are much better examples within a few hundred yards of the Bellgrove hotel—surely something can be done. It is very difficult to pick your way through the regulations that we have in this area. However, it is surely not beyond the wit of senior well-paid civil servants to find a way that we can do something in relation to this. I would hope that we can find a way to protect the rights of individuals, encourage reasonable levels of investment, even from the private sector that will deliver for people who are in need of housing. However, I will close by saying the same thing that John Mason himself said, and that is notwithstanding everything that I have said, surely those 140 people are deserving of somebody's help. That is our job tonight, I think. I now move to closing speech from the minister. Seven minutes or thereby, please. Okay, thank you, Presiding Officer. I would also thank John Mason for bringing his concerns about the wellbeing of the occupants of the Bellgrove hotel to this chamber and the important subject of it to the Parliament. As members have heard, the Bellgrove hotel provides accommodation to around 140 vulnerable men who are at risk of homelessness. As John Mason's motion notes, this has been an on-going issue for the council for many years for Glasgow City Council. Glasgow City Council, as Sandra White pointed out, has not repaired homeless applicants to the Bellgrove hospital hotel since 2010. However, for various reasons, a number of men are willing to stay at that hospital and have their rent paid directly to the owners through housing benefit. I have a great deal of sympathy with members' concerns about the amount of public money being paid to the owners of the Bellgrove hotel in this way. However, housing benefit is currently reserved and there is currently nothing that the Scottish Government can do on that issue. That applies throughout the private sector when we all know of landlords getting money for housing benefit and not keeping the standard that we would expect. If housing benefit were devolved fully, it is something that we could certainly take action on. However, as we talk about this, it is a very complex issue. We have a private accommodation, but it is a house of multiple occupancy because it has three or more unrelated people, which can be a flat and sharing facilities that can be a flat, a student hall, a hotel on this basis, or a hostel. Although it calls itself a hotel, it is treated as a hostel and the rents are served by the local rent committee as well, rent services. I have previously said to John Mason that we are working with Glasgow City Council to ensure the safety of the people at the Bellgrove and to look at alternative solutions for them. Clearly, the situations that we have seen in the paper and in the press about the conditions that Sandra White pointed out as well are not acceptable, but those are people who have not engaged with the services or have engaged and then removed themselves from any engagement from the services. We have to look at how we treat those people. We cannot force them out of those premises or force them into something that we think would be more suitable. I think that the answer is about getting round the table and looking at this together and a scaling down of those premises in certainly knowing new people being sent into them. I have met the leader of Glasgow City Council on this issue earlier this year, and the meeting made it clear the commitment of the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council to address it. We agreed that any long-term solution could only be arrived at by a partnership working between us. That has led to on-going contact and looking to identify potential models and indeed any financial implications for providing alternative accommodation and services for the residents of the Bellgrove hotel. Let me be clear that any lack of solution is not due to a lack of commitment to address the situation, otherwise a solution would already have been achieved. The Scottish Government will not ignore that just because it is a challenging is very challenging to get that solution. That is why we agreed to work with Glasgow City Council to look at how best to address the needs of vulnerable homeless people as part of their current strategic review of homelessness services. I will come back to that. It is my understanding that the council has explored a number of avenues in relation to addressing the concerns that are expressed about conditions at the Bellgrove, and that included an approach to the care inspectorate, which a number of people have mentioned, who, after investigation, indicated that they did not have a role in relation to the accommodation. The care inspectorate concluded that the services provided at the Bellgrove do not fall within the definitions of housing support or care home, and as such, the hotel does not require to register with the care inspectorate, and the inspectorate has no power or duty to intervene. In arriving at the decision, the care inspectorate involved its health and legal colleagues, colleagues, spoke with the police, social work and the manager of the hotel. It also concluded that supporting staff from other organisations, consulted supporting staff from other organisations, engaging with residents of the hotel. The care inspectorate will review its decision if the hotel functions change. Further inquiries have also been made in relation to issues such as HMO licensing, and Sandra White was alluding to that. The purpose of HMO licensing is to ensure, as Sandra White said, that accommodation is safe, safe, well managed and of good quality. The local authority has to be satisfied that the landlord is fit and proper person and that the property is being managed properly and acceptable standards of physical accommodation have been achieved. Officials from Glasgow City Council licensing team have inspected the premises for granting the new licence, and that is why the licence was only granted for 12 months. The owners of the hotel have been given a number of issues to address, and they have got that 12-month period or within that 12-month period to look at. It includes a number of things, standards, ratios of WCs, bath and shower provisionals and electrical sockets, so all of that has been looked at just now. However, as John Mason and Scottish ministers have ensured statutory guidance to local authorities, it is the local authority that sets the standards that are required and sets fees that are charged in the licence application. As John Mason noted, Glasgow City Council has granted the licence for the year, and we are looking at that, and I am now repeating myself. I am assured that the City Council is actively engaging with the managers of the Bellgrove hotel to ensure that it meets those licensing conditions. As I have already mentioned, I believe that the best approach for addressing the long-term welfare of the Bellgrove residents is part of the wider task of considering the needs of the most vulnerable homeless people in Glasgow as part of the council's current strategic review of homelessness services. I know that John Mason has been a tireless campaigner in recent years in raising the issue of conditions in the Bellgrove, and I hope that today we have given him some reassurance that the Scottish Government remains committed to working in partnership with Glasgow City Council to find a satisfactory solution to this very complex matter.