 and that social care assessments can happen over the festive period. We move to the next item of business which is the debate on motion 14859, in the name of market burges, with an ambitious house building programme for Scotland. Please press theambodych입니다. I call on Minister Margaret Burgess to speak to and move the motion as soon as you are ready, Minister. I look forward to hearing what you have to say at your earliest convenience. The Scottish Government is clear in its recognition of the critical role that housing plays in promoting social justice, strengthening communities and tackling inequalities. Our approach to tackling the full range of housing issues is both inclusive and comprehensive. We value the views of our partners and communities as our integrated and collaborative approach to developing a joint delivery plan for housing has demonstrated. We know the issues and we are working in partnership to deliver the solutions. If we were not constrained by the 26 per cent cut in our capital budget imposed by Westminster, we would be making even faster progress. Even with those constraints, Scottish Government investment of £1.7 billion in affordable housing over the current Parliament means that we have made huge progress. This Government has delivered 19 per cent more social rented homes over the past seven years than the previous administration did over a similar period. We have delivered 34,633 social houses over the past seven years, and Labour and the Liberal Administration delivered 28,988 houses. To date, we have helped to fund the delivery of 5,666 completed council houses compared to only six under the previous Labour and Liberal Administration. The latest published statistics show that we were 93 per cent in the way towards that overall target, and 96 per cent of the way towards our 20,000 social rented homes target. I will take a brief intervention. Jim Hulme. As you mentioned, your 20,000 socially rented target, but in your manifesto, there is a certain picture of Alex Neil and Alex Salmond. Some of you may remember him. The target there was 30,000 socially rented houses. What I would say to the member is that it is like a gramophone record. He raises this every time. Since 2011, we have made it very clear that our target was 30,000 affordable houses. That brings me on to presiding over certificates. I am delighted to tell the chamber today that the Scottish Government has now not only met but exceeded our target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes. In included within that is our 20,000 social rented homes target, which includes 5,000 council houses. Therefore, all of our targets have been met. The target is based on our live administrative data. I will take an intervention when I finish this part. The target is based on our live administrative data, as at the end of October. All confirmation of meeting the targets and by how much they have exceeded will follow in the regular quarterly publications of official statistics. However, I am sure that everyone in the chamber can agree that this is good news. I will now take the intervention. I thank the minister for giving way at that point. The minister is clearly very pleased that she has met the target. Does she think that she has met housing need in Scotland? I certainly think that we have met housing need better than the previous administration, who built less houses with rising budgets. We have met the target on falling budgets. In terms of that, yes, we have met the target. It has been a challenge. Housing is a challenge, and we are not denying that challenge. I will carry on by saying that housing, however, the 30,000, is not the full extent of this Government's ambition for Scotland. Our ambition is much greater than that, as it always is for our country. If the Scottish Government is returned in May, one of our key commitments is to increase the supply of affordable homes still further. As announced by the First Minister in May, we will deliver 50,000 affordable homes over the next five years, and that announcement has been warmly welcomed by the sector's representative bodies. I want to make some progress now, because this is our ambitious housing programme, and I really want members to hear it. This is a 67 per cent planned increase in affordable housing supply, and within that we plan to maintain our existing commitment to social housing with 70 per cent of the new target for social rent. Our undertaking is bold, credible and backed with the provision of more than £3 billion of funds. That will not only deliver more affordable homes, but it will also support on average around 20,000 jobs a year and generate in excess of 10 billion activity over the course of the Parliament. Housing is fundamental to tackling inequalities, and this Government is determined to ensure that we deliver the high-quality affordable homes that people and communities need. In the past seven years, we have maintained our support for social rented provision by RSLs with over 25,000 new-build RSL affordable completions delivered, and we will continue to work jointly with the sector to maintain its strong contribution to meeting our new ambitious target. By continuing to work with our local authority partners, we will build on our commitment to council house building. We have also protected the investment in our housing stock by legislating to end right to buy. That will prevent the loss of up to 15,500 homes over a 10-year period, helping to safeguard the supply of social rented homes for future generations to come. That is an important policy point for this Government. We want to protect our social housing stock for the future. Housing options and choices are critical. That is why we fund a range of housing to offer that choice, both for those who want to rent or for those who want to own their own home. Just recently, we announced a £10 million increase in budget for the open market share equity scheme. Bringing our funding to that scheme this year to £80 million, we also make sure that that scheme gives priority to social renters, disabled people, members of the armed forces and veterans who have left armed forces within the last two years. Other routes to home ownership have also been provided through our funding for help to buy. We want to create the right conditions for the private sector to thrive, and that scheme has supported. When will the successor to help to buy become operational? I will continue to answer that shortly. We have already announced continuing support for a more targeted, affordable help to buy scheme, and we will work with the industry to develop that approach. We are working with them at the moment to develop that approach, and the announcement was made some time ago. Taking together our investment in help to buy of half a billion pounds over a six-year period will help around 14,000 households. We know from sales forms that buyers between the ages of 18 to 34 years old have accounted for around 70 to 75 per cent of all sales across the different low-cost home ownership and help to buy schemes that we support. The private rented sector now plays a much bigger role in the housing market than ever before, but there are issues that need to be addressed to protect tenants in that sector. That is why we are currently taking legislation through the Parliament that will bring security, stability—if you will let me continue at the moment, I want to make some progress. That is why we are bringing legislation that will bring security, stability and predictability for 700,000 tenants in Scotland, while providing appropriate safeguards for landlords, lenders and investors. That landmark housing reform will introduce a modern tenancy for tenants, rent increases only once a year and the removal of the no-fault ground, while giving landlords safeguards to get their home back. That legislation will provide for a more professionally managed and better-regulated sector that provides good-quality homes and is attractive to those who want to live work and invest in it. It will also allow local authorities to introduce a discretionary power to introduce rent controls in areas where there are excessive increases in rents, and the local authorities are concerned about the impact of that on housing in communities in their area. We are fully aware of the different needs of individuals and recognise this in our ability to fund housing for a variety of needs informed by local authorities' local housing strategies. We are responsive to different geographies from large-scale regeneration to town centres' first principal, and we need to address more remote, smaller-scale rural housing needs. In September, our programme for government committed to a new rural housing fund, which will launch next year. I am very grateful to the minister for taking intervention. She will be aware of concerns in the islands that I represent about the way in which sat provisions require main electricity as a primary fuel source. As a result, what is happening is that we are having high-spec renewables devices attached to properties that are costly to operate. The Orkney industry has explained to me that the current system is forcing a fuel poverty legacy to be designed into every home. Will she undertake to speak to her colleague, the Minister for the Islands, to ensure that this is reflected and addressed through the islands bill? We have already had numbers of conversations with the islands communities and the islands minister on how we address fuel poverty and energy-efficient homes in those areas. That is very much why we have also got a rural fuel poverty initiative, as well as a rural housing fund, which will launch to take those issues into account. We very much recognise that there are differences in rural and island communities. We are working collaboratively across the private and public sector to stimulate a major pipeline of new housing supply across all rented tenures, including making the best use of our UK financial transactions resource. We are leading the way in the ground-breaking use of this type of funding, which must be paid back to HM Treasury. The Scottish Government's approach to innovative financing is leaving no stone unturned in exploring new and better ways of attracting funding into the affordable housing sector. We are approaching 4,000 new affordable home approvals through a range of innovative financing mechanisms, and there are hundreds more in the pipeline. We are the first and remain the only national government in the UK and public sector body in Scotland to invest in charitable bonds. By 2016, we will have invested £37 million in those bonds, creating loan finance to fund affordable housing in Scotland and generating charitable donations of £1.4 million for regeneration charities and £7 million for social housing. That could support the delivery of up to 600 new affordable homes. The recently announced local affordable rented housing trust is a pioneering affordable housing model that will deliver up to 1,000 homes for mid-market rent. That is supported by £55 million loan from the Scottish Government and is expected to attract matching private investment. The national housing trust initiative, the first guaranteed base scheme for housing in the UK, has seen more than 1,000 homes already completed and is in track to deliver over 2,000 homes for mid-market rent across the country. We are supporting pension funds to invest in affordable housing. Falkirk local government pension scheme fund has agreed a £30 million investment to deliver around 300 affordable homes. Scottish Government support to this trailblazer project is an initial investment of over £6 million towards 126 social homes in Falkirk and Clackmannanshire. The investment fund has potential to expand delivering over 1,000 homes to other pension funds that can be attracted to invest. We continue to outperform other parts of the UK with 79 new-build social sector completions per 100,000 population compared to 52 in England and Wales. New housing supply is one aspect of what is important, but we also need to ensure that existing homes are of good quality and that people can afford to heat their homes. Since 2009, we have allocated over half a billion pounds on fuel, poverty and energy efficiency programmes, and it is paying dividends with over a third of all Scottish dwellings now having a good energy efficiency rating of B or C, an increase of 56 per cent since 2010. Access to good housing has the ability to create the right environment to allow our citizens to fulfil their potential in terms of their health, education and social interactions in their communities. Good housing goes right to the heart of the fairer and stronger Scotland that this Government is working to deliver. Scottish Government's ambitions for affordable housing is clear, and we have demonstrated that we can deliver on our commitments and, working together with our partners, we can also deliver the new 50,000 affordable homes target that this Government has set for housing in Scotland. I move the motion in my name. I would like to begin this afternoon by making a plea to the Government that, in welcoming the fact that they have scheduled this debate in order to allow us to debate the important issue of housing, will they finally recognise that the housing situation in Scotland currently finds itself in the mid-stof is a crisis? It would appear not. In September this year, Labour called the debate on housing in order that the Parliament could recognise this very predicament, and we remain bitterly disappointed that the Government will not recognise the housing situation in our country as being a crisis. Instead, what we have is a self-congratulatory motion with the Scottish Government praising themselves for bringing forward a commitment that, in itself, falls far short of the demands of the housing sector. It also claims to be leading innovation in housing policy, which stands little scrutiny when a proper comparison is made with what is happening elsewhere in Britain. As I made clear in that last debate, it was and still is Labour's position that every person and family in Scotland should have access to a safe, affordable home. This is a stepping stone to social and economic equality for all. Simply put, it is imperative that housing construction targets are raised to accommodate the growing need for reasonably priced homes in Scotland. In 2014, 15,000 new homes were built. While there is no question that this will make a contribution to reducing overcrowding, improving energy efficiency and supporting communities, that number is nowhere near enough. As I said in September, we have to accept that, for some time, the house building numbers in Scotland have fallen far too short. That is why we are now in a crisis. If Mike McKenzie wants to confirm that that is the case, are we happy to take an intervention? Mike McKenzie. Will the member agree with me that, if it is the case that there is a housing crisis, then the blame for that rests squarely in the shoulders of one Gordon Brown, who promised to end boom and bust and ended up breaking the system? I think that that is number three on the grievance list. I am surprised that he went so far down to find the target for his grievance. If Gordon Brown is the target this afternoon, he will accept that that is your grievance point for the afternoon. In fact, that figure of 2014 is the lowest level of construction since 1947, and that is at a time when more than 150,000 families in Scotland are currently waiting for a home to live in. I congratulate the Scottish Government on achieving its downgraded commitment on the building of affordable homes, but they might not notice me making that clear as they will be too busy patting themselves on the back. If you do not mind I will make some progress. It is an unavoidable truth that we need more affordable homes than the Scottish Government have built and much more than they are now committing to. We need them yesterday. We must act swiftly and effectively as the stakes are simply too high, not too. Supporting housing construction is supporting the Scottish economy. In 2014, £730 million was invested in the land and building for homes. That is at a time when house building was at its lowest. That is still translated to a £1.9 billion increase in economic output and a £203 million increased resident expenditure according to Homes for Scotland. The direct economic benefit of housing construction is obvious and can be massive in scale. At the same time, 27,000 homes in Scotland sit empty with no long-term occupants. Unfortunately, far too much of the affordable housing that exists is more likely to be a poor quality with about half of those accommodations falling below minimum quality standards. We cannot ignore that 29,000 families are currently assessed as homeless in Scotland with around half of those households led by a person under the age of 30. The problems associated with homeless now go far beyond finding a place to rest your head at night. Often those without a home find themselves mentally and physically ill and with serious damage to self-confidence and dignity. That can be especially damaging for women making homeless applications who are often younger overall than their male counterparts. Therefore, we must continue to look for solutions to end this growing problem. Increased investment in the prevention of homelessness and quality of accommodation is only the first step. A comprehensive multilateral approach is needed to ensure that the basic right to a home is protected for all those in Scotland who need that help. Many of those seeking shelter turn to temporary housing, but that solution, while effective in the short term, is simply not sustainable for long-term accommodation. That type of accommodation is more costly and not conducive to good health and tenants. Children in unfit conditions such as those are far more likely to develop problems such as chronic coughing and asthma as a result of the quality of the accommodation. Temporary housing applications for households without dependent children have risen in volume by 26 per cent since 2008. Local authorities are unable to keep up with that demand, as over 10,000 households with 4,000 children are now seeking such accommodation. Fuel poverty is another issue that we must tackle as winter quickly approaches. An estimated 39 per cent or 940,000 households in Scotland are fuel-poor, with 10,000 being extremely fuel-poor. The youngest and oldest amongst us routinely battle hypothermia as a result of being unable to adequately heat their domicile. The energy-efficient homes are simply vital to the wellbeing of the public and communities at large. I appreciate the member giving way. I do not think that anybody is arguing with his description of the need, but I just wonder if he has any solutions. Would he like to switch money out of the health budget into housing, or perhaps out of the transport budget into housing? I think that the response of that intervention shows you the depth of the understanding of that problem. Those are health issues. Those are issues that the spending on housing will improve. If we want to find more money for housing, we will find that, and Labour will bring forward its proposals, but it will resort to the tired old arguments. The minister laughed because he thinks that that is funny. The reality is that they are making a commitment to build 10,000 homes less than people say that we need. You want to argue about whether we would transfer money from health or transport into that budget. We will find the money because we want to build the houses, and that is the priority. The new homes that are being built need good insulation, energy-efficient systems and effective heating measures, to name a few suggestions, but we must also work to ensure that existing homes are outfitted to make it affordable and environmentally friendly to successfully heat a home. That is a party that we believe that access to low-cost energy is vital, and it is past time that we saw effective policies enacted on that principle. The social benefits of housing construction go further than getting people off the streets and into safe homes. Homes for Scotland has estimated that over 135,000 trees and shrubs were planted or retained during housing projects in 2014, with 77 per cent of the construction waste recycled. Many house builders have commendably taken steps to limit their carbon output and are keeping energy standards in the forefront of their plans. Previously developed brownfield land, deemed suitable for housing, is routinely used to minimise environmental impact and promote sustainable developments. House builders want to build homes in the right places, and more should be done to help them to do so, because housing construction is not only good for the people who will occupy the new homes, but for the community in general. Special attention must be given to the elderly and disabled among us, as well as those living in rural areas. Over 100,000 houses are currently provided for the elderly and people with physical disabilities, and those homes are constructed differently to suit the needs of disabled people and to ensure that those people can live in their home for as long as possible. The official reports have suggested that the number of older households will increase by 50 per cent in the next two decades, doubling the number of households led by a person over 80. That is an issue that will only increase in severity in the coming years, so fixing the problem now is of high importance. We must continue to fight for the housing rights of all citizens of Scotland, including those living in rural areas. Houses in those rural areas are significantly less energy efficient than the rest of Scotland to the detriment of those living both in the homes and surrounding areas. The number of rural households in fuel poverty is more than double the proportion in the rest of the country. That is not only embarrassing for our government, but heartbreaking for the families who live in those areas and are unable to maintain a warm safe dwelling. The evidence is before us that it pays to invest in housing. The home building industry alone supports more than 63,000 jobs, with some estimates saying that 4.1 jobs for every single home is built. Increasing the supply of homes to pre-recession levels alone would create 39,000 new jobs for Scotland. The people of Scotland deserve affordable, warm, accessible homes, and they deserve them now. Labour calls for more action than the Scottish Government plans to act more swiftly and broadly and to right the wrongs that we have created to bring Scotland home. I urge Parliament to reject the complacency of the Scottish Government and to support Labour's amendment, which I move. I move amendment 148.59.2. I move amendment 148.59.2, where the previous speaker left off. There is complacency written right through this motion of the Scottish Government today. Yes, at the outset it says that Parliament recognises that housing helps to promote social justice, strengthens communities and tackles inequality, as well as being good for the economy. Those truths cannot be denied and nobody will try to amend that out today. But the clauses within that amendment are recognisable because we have heard them so often before. The first is that we apparently welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to providing access to good-quality housing and recognises that it is a high priority for the current administration. Well, let's look at their record and again use this motion as our agenda. It's been said already in this debate, but I will say it again that the Government's claim to have achieved its objective of building 30,000 affordable homes is a misrepresentation of the truth. The manifesto commitment was to build 30,000 socially rented homes and it was an early action of this Government to revise that total to 30,000 affordable homes, a much easier target to achieve, 20,000 of which will be socially rented. That means that if they achieve their objective, as they describe it today, they will have missed their target by a full third. Let's also remember that there is more than that flight of hand going on because there was one year early in the current administration when they very shrewdly switched from counting starts to completions, which will mean that at the end of this five-year period, when they count their total, they will actually be counting houses that were built in a period longer than five years. So there is a great deal of sleight of hand going on. The next clause is that we apparently acknowledge the achievement being made despite the drastic reduction in capital budgets as a result of the UK Government spending cuts. Well that's always the next line, is to blame the UK Government. The problem is that this Government in Scotland, through successive budgets, singled out the housing budget for disproportionate cuts. So if that is a demonstration of what they treat as a priority, then I don't know how they define priorities. The fact is that this Government has been doing all it can to encourage house building but without taking responsibility for itself. For example, it slashed the hard grant and saw a vast reduction in the amount of houses being built within our housing associations. In order to prevent that number dropping, our housing associations borrowed up to their limits and stretched their assets in order to keep building. What did they do with local authorities? They found ways to encourage councils to build houses. But almost invariably it was councils that were left to borrow the money to fulfil this Government's targets. So the great claims that have been made about the number of council houses built under this Government may be accurate in terms of numbers, but to suggest that this Government is paying for them is to misrepresent the truth. Indeed, why not? I don't think that at any point that the Government has ever said that it's paying for every single council house that is built. However, I would say that this Government's policy has given councils the ability to build again, which your policies previously denied councils because of stupid right-to-buy policies that decimated social housing in this country. Ah, yes. Right-to-buy is one of the little totems that this Government waves occasionally. The truth is that right-to-buy had withered on the vine. There were very few people using right-to-buy. Of them, as many as 70 per cent were people who had been tenants since before the 2001 act. Those are people who, if they are not allowed to buy their properties, will simply remain tenants. I doubt that more than a handful of homes have been freed up for the social rented sector through the action of this Government in ending right-to-buy. It was simply a distraction to avoid us noticing that they were failing to build homes. I think that I will continue and try to get mine in. Perhaps the member could attract the Presiding Officer's eye and may be allowed to speak during the rest of this debate. What we need to be doing today is thinking about how we get more homes available in Scotland. It means being innovative about how we take forward investment, and this Government has tried to focus on key areas. In fact, if you read the right publications, you will discover that this Government has great respect for the potential for developing the private rented sector. It makes you wonder why they bring in the private housing tenancy Scotland bill, which seems, in many areas, to have a negative effect by taking confidence away from those who would wish to invest in the private rented sector and discourage money that could be invested in Scotland from being invested here. It is also the case that this Government has fallen into the habit of claiming credit for things that were not, in fact, its own responsibility. If you look, for example, at the schemes such as Help to Buy and others, the case is that the money used for those schemes is allocated to Scotland from the treasury of the Westminster Government. It has not been secured through careful negotiation with private investors. To hear the minister once again stand up and claim credit for those schemes simply because they are required to administer them in the Scottish context is dishonest in the extreme. The truth is that, as it stands, the kind of legislation being proposed by the Scottish Government is going to drive outside investment away from Scotland. As a result, we will find ourselves with compounded problems as time goes on. If home seekers are going to meet their housing needs and their aspirations for the tenure of choice and statistics show that home ownership remains by far the preferred option, then this Government can and should play a role in that. The problem is that we have heard all the excuses and we have heard very little sign of any action. I now call on Jim Hume to speak to and move amendment 148.59.1. Mr Hume, six minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Since the last time we discussed the housing shortcomings in Scotland, we heard the Scottish Government applied and we have heard that today of 50,000 new homes for the next parliamentary session. We have also heard that the current goal of 30,000 is near to being reached. For the purpose of clarity, honesty and transparency, going from 30,000 to 20,000 social rented homes leaves a third of that commitment to be bought with a mortgage, not by the Government. Since the last time we have talked about our housing, we have also heard that the current affordable housing need in Scotland is just half of what is really needed. The SFHS, the CIH, the Shetha Scotland report makes this very point, yet the SNP pledge is still half of that. Still, the well-received report of the commission for housing and wellbeing estimates that the total number of new homes required each year is actually 23,000. Just to give some real facts, the Liberal Democrat Labour coalition in the previous Government delivered 23,757 homes in each year on average. During this Government's record, it has been 17,690 wine. That is almost 40 per cent less on average year-on-year. I hardly think that it is appropriate to characterise the Government's performance as ambitious. I will take a… John Rees, sorry. When the member says that the previous administration delivered 23,000, were all of them subsidised by the Government? Those were all houses delivered year-on-year every year. About 40 per cent less has been delivered in this Government's reign here. I would like to make some progress. I will only have a few minutes. As the blueprint for Scotland's future says, I quote, we quickly came to the conclusion that there is very clearly a homes crisis, and the numbers do speak for themselves—150,000 households on waiting lists, 940,000 households, almost a million in fuel poverty, 29,000 people homeless. It is safe to say that the Scottish Government's housing goals have little regard for the mounting and current housing crisis. Meanwhile, when the Scottish Government got financial transaction consequentials from the UK Government in the 2013 budget, the finance secretary called it funny money. Within weeks, his ministers were donning high-vis jackets to show how the money was helping people on to housing ladder. We suggested to him back in 2014 that he used some of it to build homes for rent. That was partly to be offset by the move away from the SNP's 2011 manifesto commitment of 30,000 socially rented homes in favour of homes to buy. I note that the finance secretary was positive about the suggestion, and we have started to see some of the fruits of this. Last week, I got confirmation from Margaret Burgess that the so-called funny money was underpinning the local affordable rented housing trust for this year. That is good—practical action that the Government here has shown it can do when it takes a break from complaining about the constitution. What I and millions of others in Scotland are expecting to see now is how the Scottish Government will act to increase the supply of houses across all tenancies. It is necessary to see the issue as a chain of events, because we have limited supply and very high demand. We are seeing the increase in the private rented sector. It currently represents 13 per cent of the entire housing market. It has more than doubled in 10 years. Although there is no question that the private sector is good for the economy, we want people who move into the private sector to have had a choice. No one should have to be forced to spend more than they can afford just to cover their rent. Yes, yet almost half of all households renting Scotland in 2013-14 received financial support to help pay for their rent. Deputy Deputy Presiding Officer, the warnings are clear. Unless we increase the demand to match the supply, the result will only be more and more people without a home. We have heard some of the back mentors go on about where would the money come from. They just have to look at the facts. Last year, £51 million was underspent in housing in Scotland alone. In fact, £347 million was underspent. According to Public Audit Scotland, by the Scottish Government, underspent money gone to waste. With affordable housing construction still at 40 per cent less than before 2008, people are simply running out of options. We need a Scottish Government that will carry out what it says and do it promptly. We need a Scottish Government that is not going to leave 5,000 children homeless at Christmas time. I move the amendment in my name. We now move to the open debate. Six-minute speeches are there by Colin Clare Adamson to be followed by Paul Martin. I am afraid that I have had to rethink the opening of my speech in light of the way the debate has gone this afternoon. I find myself again where this is an opportunity for us to come together with ideas, to work together in partnership across Scotland to deal with the great challenge of housing. Instead of that, we have just got an SNB bad rhetoric all over the chamber, which is somewhat disappointing. I think that we have some challenges. The challenges have been acknowledged by the minister, but I think that there is much that we can do in partnership to tackle the issue—not at the moment, sorry. In the last debate in September, the minister said that the availability of suitable good-quality housing and housing services makes a vital contribution to the success of the integration of healthcare and social care, and we work closely with the housing sector to deliver appropriate housing support and services. To me, that is the heart of what we are talking about this afternoon. It is not just about the bricks and mortar of a building, it is about a home. Earlier this year, I watched a programme about world poverty on the television. Professor Rosling was talking about poverty in the developing world, and he used the comparators of families from Malawi to Cambodia to what he called Dollar Street, which is where most of the people in the chamber would find themselves living. However, what was key to all that was that a home, a place to live, is an innate human necessity and an innate human right. That is as key to us here in the UK as it is to the rest of the world. However, I have great concerns about the growing inequality in our country, and I think that the recent figures from the Trussell Trust in food bank use would highlight that. However, the Scottish Government continues to lead the way in terms of innovation in this sector. Its contribution to new housing supply for innovative financing approaches is substantial and is growing. As has been said, 3,000 new affordable homes were approved, and around £400 million of housing investment was unlocked by this Government. Those approaches have seen developing of products for the mid-market rent and shared adequacy, and has seen our home ownership grow in this country. I think that that has to be, should be acknowledged and recognised. In 2009, Shelter invited us as politicians, along with homeless children in Scotland, to design our ideal home and draw up for them. It was quite a humbling exercise for us all to do and seeing some of the drawings of the children was very moving at that time. When we discussed that in September, the minister again said that everyone in Scotland should have access to a warm, safe, secure and affordable home. The Government's strategy document, Homes Fit for the 21st Century, lays out that aim in detail. The link between good housing, wellbeing, social cohesiveness and social justice is established and I am sure acknowledged across the chamber. That is why I welcome that housing, particularly social housing, remains one of the Government's highest priorities, as demonstrated by the £1.7 billion investment in affordable housing over the lifetime of this Parliament. It has to be welcomed that today we have reached the target of 30,000 affordable homes in this term of the Parliament. That will be exceeded and again we welcome the First Minister's commitment to build 50,000 over the term of the new Parliament. Will she at least acknowledge that the manifesto commitment on which she stood has not been met? I think that what has been delivered is 30,000 affordable homes to the people of Scotland and every single person who is able to take advantage of that new home will have welcomed and acknowledged that this Government has done everything that it can possibly to tackle this problem. The appellation of the right to buy has been key to this. I take issue with what Alex Johnson said in this. It has significantly improved the availability of the housing stock and it will protect homes for the future, homes that will remain in the social rented sector, which is to be welcomed. Good housing invigorates communities, empowers them and allows them to flourish. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 27, states that children have the right to a safe place to live, food and clothing, and to take part in the things they enjoy. I think that this is absolutely key. Before I became an MSP, I was a councillor in North Lanarkshire and I have to challenge Labour in the idea that this problem arose as soon as the SNP took off is here. Labour has had control of North Lanarkshire council for years—no, not under my last minute, I'm sorry. Actually, I know as a councillor and he will know as an MSP that our houses are available in North Lanarkshire, but the failure to look after communities, the failure of regeneration policies of Labour councils have left some communities languishing. What we have to do is encourage and work in partnership with our councils to improve the existing stocks at the air to make them more appealing to people and to help solve this crisis by working in partnership and moving forward in this area. I'm glad that the SNP will be keeping 15,500 houses in the sector because of the abolition of rights by, and I'm sure that they will continue to make progress in what is this very challenging area. I always welcome a debate in housing, but I think that the Government has the tone of a debate when it gets involved in the self-conglatatory tones. During its motion, it commends that the Government congratulates the Government. That is not the tone of the crisis that it faces in Scotland, and that would challenge the Minister at the same time to recognise that it is all very well for us in the comfort zone of a debating chamber in here to have the debate about homelessness, which is not, I noticed in the minister's contribution that the word homeless did not get mentioned. For me, that is the crisis that faces our country, as the fact that nearly 40,000 people made applications for housing who were homeless in Scotland. That is the challenge that we have within the comfort of a debating chamber in here that the Government should be facing up to. Actually, if we did want to have the partnership approach, which Claire Adamson quite rightly referred to, then let us have a debate about how the Government will take forward the challenges in homelessness. The fact that 150,000 people are waiting for the home that they have dreamed of when they submitted their application for housing. Many of the cases that we deal with and I know that I deal with—I am sure that other members of various constituencies and regions do—is well for people who want to be rehoused and are not given that opportunity. That is the kind of challenges that the Government should face up to. I will be constructive on the point that I agree with the Shelter Charity, who says that it advises that we should be looking into how we make more use of our empty homes. I think that that is a challenge that Governments need to face up to the fact that we have the number that has been referred to by Shelter, and we do not face up to the fact that we should be looking at that. We cannot simply say as a Parliament that let us just leave that to local authorities to take care of us as a housing authority. Let us show leadership in how we would have—I will welcome that intervention on that point. On the point about empty homes, I do not disagree with that member saying that the Scottish Government fund the Shelter project and have funded it through till 2019 to help to tackle empty homes. It is something that we all have concerns about, and we look for ideas from anyone in this chamber on how we can better deal with empty homes, but it is something that we are putting money into. Empty homes is not something that was invented a couple of weeks ago or a couple of years ago. The Empty Homes challenge has been facing the housing industry for many years. Community-based housing associations, which I am going to come on to, have played a crucial role in that. If I shall look at a number of people who have been commenting on that issue, George Clark, who is the UK Government's adviser in empty homes, said that, with thousands of empty homes across Scotland, it is a disgrace that so many families are going without something so fundamental as a home of their own. George Clark and others are to be commended for the work that has gone on across the UK. That particular initiative is showing leadership in how to take that forward. That is something that the Government has to also take leadership in taking that forward as well. I have mentioned this before in housing debates in the chamber. I think that the Government could do so much more in partnership with our community-based housing associations. They are the ones for many years, since I have been an elected member for nearly 22 years now, who have been leading the way in regenerating our communities throughout Scotland. They have been doing it in a sustainable manner. The houses that they build to this day are the ones that are still there to tell the tale. This Government, rather than cutting the housing association grants that were made available to those housing associations, should ensure that they invest in those community-based models. I welcomed the apology from Bob Dorris during a last housing debate on that very issue, confirming that the Government should not have cut the housing association grants that are available to those housing associations, because those were the very organisations that were leading the way in tackling homelessness, dealing with the challenges that we have with empty homes and ensuring that people have a good, safe home to live in at the same time. I think that we should be encouraging them in the good work that they are doing instead of cutting the housing association grant levels that have been made available to them. I think that the other challenge that it faces as politicians is that all the parties that look at the issue are being obsessed with targets. Yes, here is a box that I can take. I have met the number that is required of that. I think that it is a challenge that faces every single party in this chamber. That was the very challenge that faced those people who looked at the famous red-road flats. Let us look at where we can locate 4,700 people from the slums in Glasgow and other parts of Glasgow—give me a second—and the slums in Glasgow. Where can we place those people? Let us build the red-road flats. That ticks the box and ensures that we build the number of homes that we need to build. What we did not do was ensure that the homes that we are building were actually the homes for the future, and that we will meet the existing housing need and the housing need for the future. Just to simply say that we have ticked the box, we have met the numbers and let us move on is simply not good enough, and we will find ourselves in the future in a very similar position unless we ensure that that investment takes place effectively. Bruce Lee-Kevin Stewart, please. I thank Mr Martin for giving way, and I do not disagree with the points that he made about some of the housing decisions in the past, which were truly awful. However, he says that it should not be just about ticking boxes and targets. Why is it then that Mr McMahon in his opening speech called for greater targets in terms of housebuilding? Does he agree or disagree with Mr McMahon in that regard? Paul Martin, I give you a little bit of time back. I made the point that, if you are going to submit targets, you should ensure that you are going to meet the targets first of all and ensure that whatever investment takes place is sustainable. At the end of the day, there is no point in having a target set, and we do not ensure that it is sustainable. It deals with the demand that is out there and the homelessness charges. I do not disagree with Michael McMahon, but I do not disagree with any of the targets that have been set. The point that I actually make is that we set the targets without thinking about how we ensure that they are delivered and that the investment is actually good value and that it is future proof at the same time. That is what housing associations out there have been asking us to do and shelter for many years. Meet the housing needs that are out there and ensure that people who have to be placed in those houses actually need the houses as well. That is the challenges that face us in this chamber, and that is the ones that we should be taking forward with. Again, this is the same kind of debate that we have had on a number of occasions where the Government has not brought forward the challenges that they should be facing up to. I call on them to do that for the future, and I ask members to support the amendment to Michael McMahon's name. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am very proud of the Scottish Government's record in housing, where on target, as we have heard, to deliver our manifestal commitment of building 30,000 affordable homes during this Parliament. Before I get the very predictable interventions, I do not care what kind of affordable houses we build. The important thing is to build affordable housing, and that is what we have done. That is a very impressive achievement against the background of a 26 per cent cut to our capital budget, because there was a world of difference to the pre-credit crunch era and the post-credit crunch era. I am not even through my first minute, but I am very impressed that so many members will not intervene. I must be on the right territory. We have also shown the political courage necessary to bring right to buy to an end. Something the Labour Party manifestally failed to do for many, many years. These are two very significant achievements, and the signal, a fresh approach to housing, because a fresh approach was needed. We were unable to meet the overall established need for housing in the boom years before 2007, so a fresh approach that recognises the post-credit crunch reality was a matter of urgent necessity. In listening to the arguments of the opposition parties on housing this afternoon, I am forced to wonder if they have any understanding at all of the subject. They have attempted to describe the problem, but not a single one of them has presented any credible solutions. I am happy to take an intervention. The subject, the members went on about the 30,000 affordable homes being the manifesto commitment. The manifesto commitment, and I will repeat it, was for 30,000 socially rented homes. Only two thirds of that has been delivered. I will give you an answer again, Mr Hume, just in case you did not hear it the first time. I do not care what sort of affordable homes are neither to the people that move into them. Housing debates seem only ever to dwell on social housing as if the public sector could ever solve the housing problem on its own. The opposition parties have criticised because we are building shared equity housing. I am very surprised to hear that coming from Tory members. A criticism that ignores the vital part that the private sector plays in helping to solve the housing problem and the necessity, therefore, of getting young people on to the first rung of the housing ladder. That is the problem with the opposition parties. They are always prepared to throw the babies out with ideological math water. Of course, there is a housing challenge, but it is nothing compared to the crisis that we see south of the border. The start fact is that there is an established need for 35,000 new houses per annum across all 10 years. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I did not mean to intervene from a sedentary position. Is Mr Mackenzie genuinely saying that there is a housing crisis in England but he does not accept that there is a housing crisis in Scotland? Is that what he is saying? What I am saying is that the problem in England is worse than the problem in Scotland. Thanks to the good works and actions of the Scottish Government. The start fact of the matter is that, pre-credit crunch in the period of the boom, the height of the boom, we are only building 25,000 new houses a year in Scotland. The start fact is that, after the credit crunch, we have only now just worked our way back to building 15,000 new houses a year. Of course, there is a challenge. I am therefore very pleased that the First Minister has leaked part of our manifesto well ahead of next year's election and given that commitment to fund to build 50,000 new affordable homes over the course of the next parliamentary session. That demonstrates a commitment that I think I have already heard enough from you this afternoon, Mr Johnson. That demonstrates a commitment, even as we brace ourselves for continuing austerity and significant ongoing cuts, to place housing at the very top of our agenda. It demonstrates an understanding that decent housing underpins the social fabric of our country. It demonstrates an understanding that decent housing represents a vital part of our economy. It demonstrates an understanding that there are a few better investments than housing in terms of economic multipliers or the creation of jobs. At that point, I am very grateful to Homes for Scotland in its analysis that suggests that there are 4.1 jobs created or saved for every house built. I would suggest that the figure is even higher in rural areas where economies of scale are not so easily found. That is why I am glad of the Government's recent announcement of our rural housing fund, recognising the significant part that housing plays in the sustainability of rural communities. I would also play a tribute to the Government's quest to find innovative financial models for new methods for funding housing, recognising that the banks still are lending and recognising that housing, new housing, either for sale or rent, represents a very good, secure and long-term investment. One final point. The delivery of housing requires an efficient and effective planning system. The last planning act, the 2006 act, was conceived and delivered in very different times to those that we now face. Incremental improvement has not been sufficient to deliver the necessary change in planning culture. That is why I am delighted that the First Minister announced a route and branch review of the planning system. We will not deliver an adequate supply of housing unless we have a comprehensive approach that seeks to work with public and private sector partners. I am delighted that the Scottish Government is doing that, and I am confident that it will deliver the new target of 50,000 homes in the next parliamentary session. Before we move on, I remind members that, if they do not wish to take an intervention, the courteous response is just to say no thank you. I call Kevin Stewart to be followed by Malcolm Chisholm. I, too, found myself standing up and probably giving very different speech from the one that I intended to give because of the strangeness of the debate. What is particularly galling, and what will be galling for those folks who are watching this at home, is that we seem to have a chamber now, an opposition, who are very good at pointing out problems but never ever offer any solutions. Never offer any solution in terms of what they would do differently or how they would fund that different policy. There is always the great escape away from actually facing up to facts that we have restricted budgets in this place. I will take you in a second, Mr Hume, because I will give you the opportunity to come back at something. We also got what we expected, the Tories attack and the demise of right to buy, but that policy has allowed councils across this land to rebuild new council houses, which were greatly needed by our folks. Although, I have to say, in some local authorities, including my own and Aberdeen, that seems to have stalled. I will come to Mr Hume now, because we heard the usual from Mr Hume where he bleats on, but again offers no alternatives. We seem to have had an attack from him today on the private rented sector. I am not a huge fan of the private rented sector, but was that a real attack today on the private rented sector? Mr Hume? No, not at all, not an attack on the private rented sector, just a recognition that things have changed and what I was going to address was the point that you said that there is no ideas come up, but we know that Public Audit Scotland reported that, last year, £51 million of the housing budget in Scotland was not spent. Surely, if that money had been spent, that would have went a long way to address homelessness in Scotland. I am glad that Mr Hume has not attacked the private rented sector, because having a look at his register of interests during the course of the debate—I did not hear any declaration about that—Mr Hume seems to have seven properties, five in Edinburgh, one in Fife and one in East Lothian, one of which I assume he lives in, but it would be interesting to know whether he rents the others or not, and if his attack on the private rented sector was an attack on himself as a landlord. In terms of the £51 million, Mr Hume well knows that that money will have been subsumed into this year's budget and will be invested in the priorities of the Scottish Government. Let me turn to some of the things that I really wanted to mention during the course of this debate. Aberdeen has high-cost housing and high demand. Mr Shear, I have a point of order, which is not ideal in the middle of a speech. Ken Macintosh has a point of order. It is far better for Mr Hume to defend himself, but there is an order for a colleague to question the integrity of another colleague when he made no reference whatsoever to the private rented sector and his own interests in that. There are members across the chamber, certainly many members of the SNP who own rented properties and rent them out. I do not think that making accusations against Mr Hume helps your argument or helps this debate in this chamber. I would ask the Presiding Officer if he could look into whether that is actually treating members with respect. It is not a point of order, Mr Macintosh. You have made your point. It is up to Mr Stewart what he raises in his speech, Kevin Stewart. I will follow on from that, because Mr Hume mentioned the private rented sector during the course of his speech. What he did not do is declare an interest about his own. That is public knowledge. It is in his register of interests. I am just raising what is there, Presiding Officer. Mr Stewart, if I could hurry you along because there is not a lot of time left in this debate. Aberdeen, high cost of housing, high demand. We have a council house building programme, which is stalled. We have seen regeneration opportunities like Broadford Works, which private entities have not brought forward. That is a real problem for my city. I am glad that Aberdeen City Council and Shire have put housing at the heart of their city deal bid, and I fully support that. However, we also have to look at other aspects to back up that housing bill, including investment in water and sewerage. Manchester has been extremely interesting. I paid a trip to Manchester with some colleagues from the local government committee recently to hear about their pension fund. I pay tribute to Councillor Kieran Quinn, the chair of that pension fund, and Peter Morris, the executive director for their enthusiasm, proactivity and vision in terms of investing in housing. The Greater Manchester Pension Fund has provided the capital to fund developments while Manchester City Council and the homes and community agencies south of the border has provided five sites. Half of the 500 homes were being built for sale, half for market rent and a mix determined by commercial factors. I understand that Falkirk will make use of their pension fund to do likewise in investing in housing here in Scotland. I hope that the other pension funds follow suit. That is a case of not only pointing out some of the problems but also offering the solutions. That is what we should be doing more of in this place, rather than abrogating our responsibilities, whether that be in government or in opposition or in backbenches, but pointing out how we would resource the things that we would like to see, which is something that has been sadly lacking here today. I hope that, in future, we will see a different push forward from some of the opposition parties in that regard. Let us not only point out the problems, but let us find the solutions. I like Mr Stewart a bit more time because of the interruption, but I am afraid that we now have to stick to six minutes. Please, can I come to him to be followed by John McAlpine? I do not really want to get too involved in the statistical battle, but I thought that Johnston did make some interesting points. Some of that is also reflected in our report by the infrastructure committee in the first few months of this Parliament. One other point is that we have to be careful that we do not compare apples with pears, because the figures from the last administration were social rented housing and from this administration it is social rented plus the other forms of what is called affordable housing. I looked at the five years when I was involved as Minister for Health and Then Housing. Basically, the social rented figures for those five years are broadly comparable for the current five-year period. The conclusion that I draw from that is that neither Government has built enough social rented houses, so let us concentrate on need. I think that that is the right starting point for this debate. The commission on housing and well-being, shelter, SFH, CIH, all say that we need 12,000 affordable houses a year. Shelter says that at least three quarters of them should be socially rented. Edinburgh has also done its assessment of need. The council has said in partnership with others that 16,000 houses are needed in the next 10 years. Again, the percentage of social rented is very important for Edinburgh, because Edinburgh has by far the longest housing waiting list in Scotland. I saw a graph today, and it was way above the second council. That reflected in the fact that routinely in Edinburgh, when someone applies for a council or housing association house, there could be 200 applicants. That happens every day of the week. The percentage of social rented is particularly important in Edinburgh. I met a local housing association chief executive quite recently, and he emphasised the centrality of hag housing associations and grant levels for the number of socially rented houses that his housing association could build. He gave the example that, currently, with a housing association grant level for each house of £58,000—an increase on what plumeted to 36,000 three or four years ago—he can have the mix between social rented and other forms of affordable housing. There is a recommendation from a high-level committee that has gone to the Scottish Government, which says that the hag level should be raised to £70,000. If that happens, he said that he could build 70 per cent social rented, 30 per cent other affordable housing. If I have time, I will take it, but I have a lot to get through. If I have time at the end, I will like taking interventions, but I have three other points that I want to make. The first one is that the other big problem in Edinburgh is sites. There are lots of landowners sitting on land waiting for an increase in value. In fact, there is land with housing planning permission in Edinburgh sitting there with planning permission for 9,000 houses at 9,000 homes, and it is just frozen. The council has an important role there, and I think that that should include compulsory purchase order. I have got three other local issues that I want to raise in the remaining three minutes. Firstly, if you have gone down Leith Walk recently, you will see lots of new houses, and they are all student accommodation. We had an interesting discussion at Leith Central Community Council on Monday about that. Also, there is currently a student housing guidance out from the council. If I can just read one sentence from that guidance, it is not concluded yet. Balanced sustainable communities require the dominant residential component to be permanent and not temporary. I am certainly not against student accommodation, but I think that too much can destabilise the mix. I have to say that some people at the strong community council too can even have a stronger view than that. I think that it is important that Edinburgh is trying to say that we need to restrict the percentage. Some rulings from the reporters unit recently have overruled the council and said that it has to take very high percentages of student housing. That is one issue. The second issue is that we need land to be available for big housing developments. Sometimes we have applications for small housing developments in inappropriate places that are not going to do anything to meet the housing needs of Edinburgh. There are two classic examples in my constituency at the moment. One is a restaurant at Cannon Mills, where there is an application to destroy and build a very small number of houses on that site. The other one is an even smaller number of large houses at the foot of Trinity road, which are going to tower over one of the most beautiful conservation areas in Edinburgh. The local council has rejected both applications. There have been hundreds of local people who have opposed those developments. It is in the hands of the reporters unit. I know that the minister or the cabinet secretary or the planning minister will not want to get involved, but I draw it to his attention that there will be uproar in my constituency if the reporters unit goes against the democratic decision of the council and the wishes of hundreds of local people. It highlights a democratic deficit in the planning system. Finally, I welcome the place strategy being worked on by NHS Health Scotland. It talks about the importance of social capital, which I suppose could be said to be social networks and people doing things for each other. A sense of community, the community of the gear, is in my constituency. It is called Lorne. There are tenants there who are fighting for their homes because the landlord, which is a charitable trust, wants them to move so that they can sell off the houses. They have had a magnificent campaign and I have a question tomorrow about it, but since it is nine, we may not get to it. Let me make my point now. They are looking for alternative solutions, whether that be sold off to a housing association or a co-op. They do not want that community to be destroyed. All that I have asked in the question is what support can the Government give. I know that I do not know what the answer will be. The minimal support would be verbal support, saying where on your side, but obviously if more support can be given to that community it will be greatly appreciated. It is probably too late to take the intervention now since I have had six minutes, is it? It would need to be very brief. We will briefly make Mackenzie's point. He is passing now. I made all my points, so thank you very much. Thank you. Joan McAlpine, to be followed by Colin Kear. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I would also like to welcome the First Minister's announcement last month that, if re-elected, the SNP Government will build another 50,000 affordable homes. There are those across this chamber who have argued that the target is not ambitious enough and, of course, that view deserves a hearing. The target set is not a limit on the Scottish Government's ambition, but we must be nice to the fact that nothing takes place within a vacuum and we cannot get away from the fact that Westminster has cut Scotland's capital budget by 26 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2016. We all know that more houses need to be built and that these are challenging times. The minister has also stated that her officials are working tirelessly on innovative ways to use the reducing finances to ensure that we can be stretched from there. I want to focus today on another facet of the debate. In June this year, the Scottish Government published its joint housing delivery plan, which takes us at starting point the Government's housing and regeneration outcomes and the strategy document homes fit for the 21st century. I want to focus on two of the actions that came out of the delivery plan—placemaking and sustainability. In terms of placemaking, the plan acknowledges that people want to influence what happens in their neighbourhood but that often regeneration and new housing can appear to happen despite community wishes and concerns. As outlined by Homes for Scotland, of particular concern at the moment is that local development plans continue to identify land that is unlikely to deliver much-needed new homes because either there is no market demand in that area or it is not economically viable. A striking example of that is in St John's Town of Dorae and Dumfries and Galloway, where the local housing partnership developed brand new two-in-three-bedroom family homes for shared equity. Half of them are still sitting empty because there is simply no demand for family homes so far from local jobs. Although I have no doubt that the root and branch review of the current planning system will create a more effective system that recognises and reflects the importance of local housing delivery and acts as an enabler for that lever, efforts to make the existing system function better are to be welcomed. I am pleased that the plan outlines clear actions to do just that by developing a clear understanding of meaningful community engagement in the development and planning process. That will allow true community-led regeneration and new communities to flourish. Importantly, that hinges on improved capacity building across all sectors of the community through support from community anchor organisations and other local agencies. To that end, I would like to mention Dumfries and Galloway small communities housing trust, which are working with their Highlands and Islands equivalent and rural housing Scotland to create a new community housing alliance. The principal aim of the Dumfries and Galloway small communities housing trust is to work with small rural communities to identify and address local housing needs as part of a wider rural regeneration. Building on that, the purpose of the alliance would be to encourage and provide practical assistance to community groups who want to improve and increase the delivery of local housing across Scotland. That is much needed and I am encouraged that the wheels are in motion to start building capacity in this area. Housing will be central to Scotland's efforts to combat fuel poverty and as well as achieving the ambitious goals that are set out in the climate change act. Fuel poverty is prevalent in all parts of Scotland, but the availability of mains gas and sand standards tariffs vary. That means that many rural areas such as my own are unable to use fuel sources that lead to significantly higher heating costs. Fuel poverty currently sits at 45 per cent in Dumfries and Galloway, which is higher than the Scottish national average. Part of the plan that I mentioned focuses on developing a specific set of actions that will be relevant to rural remote-off-gas properties and feeding them into work on the development of fuel poverty policy, as well as new energy efficiency programmes. A local example is the dormant park development just outside the small village of Dalton in Dumfries and Galloway. The development was designed and specified to the exact and pioneering passive house standards by the Whitehill design studio, a local architectural practice specialising in sustainability and low-energy design. I very much encourage such development, so that development was funded by a Scottish Government pilot project, which has now come to an end. To conclude, while it is vital to focus on building as many affordable homes as we can, that must coincide with a focus on developing robust long-term plans to tackle the different fuel poverty and energy efficiency issues in off-gas and rural areas, as well as looking at how the housing sector engages with communities to build places that people want to live in. Only then can we describe the programme as truly ambitious. As a councillor here in Edinburgh prior to being sent to Holyrood, and now, obviously, during my term as MSP for Edinburgh Western, I can say that there has been one constant historical difficulty that has shown itself regularly throughout my periods as an elected member. That is the supply of social, affordable and rented accommodation. As a child, my family moved into the Clermiston area of the city. As far as I remember, every house was a councillor-owned. Now, thanks to right to buy, virtually every house in that area is now privately owned. I have to admit that my parents at the time took advantage of the scheme as my father realised that the deal offered at the time was too good to ignore. Now, of course, as a result, in Edinburgh and elsewhere, there is a lack of social and affordable housing. An example that perhaps many in this chamber may recognise in their own areas showed itself back in about 2008-2009, just after the boom years, as we are calling them now. Now, when 1,000 applications were made for a council flat in the world that I represented on the city of Edinburgh council, I commend the Scottish Government for ending right to buy and for being on target to produce the 30,000 affordable houses, including the 20,000 social rented homes by 2016. This achievement, done in the face of slash and burn economic policies by the Tory Liberal Democrat Coalition—the Tories on their own—and, of course, prior to that, by the Blair Brown Labour Party, it is no wonder that most people believe that the SNP Government has acted in the best interests of the people of Scotland. Of the future, the Scottish Government plans to build another 50,000 affordable homes—a highly commendable goal that I wholly support, but I would add a note of caution. At this moment in time, my constituency, Edinburgh Western, is currently faced with the possibility of being overrun by housing developments without having the infrastructure to cope. The areas from Newbridge, Maybury, South Gile and North to Barnton and Calmo are one of the biggest traffic blocks in Scotland. Air quality in St John's Road and the Queensferry Road are some of the worst polluted in the UK. There is nothing in the second attempt at the local development plan that should be passed—what should have been passed—by the council some months ago, which can mitigate traffic congestion along the two most important western road approaches into the city centre of Edinburgh. Yet, because the city council planning committee failed to provide a concise local development plan for consideration, there are areas such as Maybury and Calmo that could be opened up for development should the reporter agree. Given that housing development should be sustainable and create good and safe communities, I and many others fail to see how those two areas, as an example, can be made so without, most importantly, traffic infrastructure being in place. I should also say that the community of East Craig's would be incredibly badly affected if infrastructure for Maybury and Calmo was not upgraded to a proper level where Maybury and Calmo could be developed. The problem in Edinburgh is extremely difficult. We desperately need housing, and much of what Malcolm Chisholm in fact said, particularly around land banking, I totally agree with, because there are serious pressures in Edinburgh. We need the housing, but our planning authority, in my and others' opinions, are not addressing the basics. Before I go any further, I should say that the Edinburgh tram line makes no difference to traffic volumes going into the city along the Queensferry road and Cirstorten Road corridors. It is my hope that ministers in the Scottish Government can discuss strategic growth with our capital city, with council officials and elected representatives, in order for sustainable housing developments to take place. Should a way not be found, it is my fear that development will be unsustainable, and Edinburgh will find itself in a position that, unless you are incredibly wealthy or have access to property, you will not be able to live here. The economy of the Edinburgh is such that we need more people to live in the city. I am delighted that, in my constituency, the 21st century homes initiative has been moving forward down in Muirhouse, Pennywell, with more than 700 new homes in the pipeline. According to a city of Edinburgh council committee report from the health, social care and housing committee of 10 November this year, around 30 households are taking the advantage of the help-to-buy scheme. Elsewhere in the city, we have seen plans for or actual developments at Gracemount, Cremillor, Leath and Scythe hill. Since the financial crash of 2008, it has not been easy for private or publicly backed housing development. I became very aware of this when I was a director of the city of Edinburgh council arms length development company EDI, and when I joined the board, it was pretty desperate financial times. Although the financial markets have stabilised, diminishing real-terms budgets to the Scottish Parliament and local authorities still make life difficult, we require housing, and I commend the Scottish Government for the various initiatives and, of course, the models that are being raised for achieving capital investment. We do not just need housing, but we need proper strategic planning. We need infrastructure in order to build safe, sustainable communities, ensuring that our capital city remains viable in the future. Thank you. Many thanks. I now call Hanzala Malik to be followed by John Mason. There is now a little bit of time available for interventions. Thank you very much and good afternoon. It is a pleasure to know that I may have extra time, which is very rare for me because I am usually at the end. It is a pleasure to talk about the ambitious home building programme for Scotland today. Housing is one of the most important issues that brings constituents to my office. Poor quality housing, overcrowding and a general lack of affordable housing is a common problem for the people of Glasgow and across Scotland. The motion for debate submitted by Margaret Burgess is an interesting one, so the Scottish Government is patting itself on the back for exceeding its five-year target for delivering 30,000 affordable homes by March 2016. Remember, affordable homes, not social homes. It is all very good to try and meet targets, but it is more important to meet needs of ordinary people. Hence, the point is that the target itself falls short of its mark. This is proven by the fact that 1,500,000 homeless are still on the waiting lists and over 10,000 households in temporary accommodation. The rate of house building is just not good enough, I am sorry to say. Several of my colleagues have quoted the reports by three of Scotland's leading housing organisations that analysis of housing need as at last 12,000 affordable homes a year for the next five years. This is double the current target that needs to be met. Homes for Scotland have said that housing production is 40 per cent lower than in 2007, despite a record population and growth in number of households. Now that it is a better reflection of what my constituents tell me every week, that the self congratulating of the Scottish Government. So let's look closely at the affordable housing need and look into the type of tenancy provided to make figures look good. The government has allowed house developers and housing associations to build pigeon lofts as homes with very small rooms. There was a debate on this very issue brought forward by Alex Johnson MSP to ask the government to have minimum room sizes for building new housing. I also joined in the debate for large homes which reflect current needs of real families, but of course that will not look good for the numbers of houses that we built. A bit of camouflaging perhaps. Scotland has abolished the right to buy in order to maintain the stock of socially rented homes, but why is the Scottish Government not doing more to increase this type of housing? Shelter Scotland wants to see an affordable housing programme with at least three quarters of homes provided through social renting. Once we have sorted out our housing shortage and are in a home that meets the needs of the people of Scotland then we can focus on home ownership. With nearly half of all homes falling short of official standards we need to improve the existing housing stock and make more land available to build on them. I would very much like to see the Scottish Government use the tools at its disposal to unlock brownfield sites to build infrastructure and encourage investment by supporting good financial schemes such as the Housing Association resource for investment schemes, which is a specific purpose vehicle set up to allow housing organisations to access large scale yet affordable finance through pooling their resources together. Many members have, particularly from the SMP, have suggested that we are not giving them examples of how to go forward. Well, I have certainly given a couple of examples and there I'm sure there are many more. It is not all about money and the Government listening to Scottish Federation of Housing Associations call for practical support off to the sector to deal with the challenges of procurement law. Once again presiding off, as I say, it is now time to meet the housing needs, not the targets. We need to get off her seats and actually do something. I agree with some of my colleagues in terms of we need to work together to deal with issues. Claire Anderson was very passionate about the fact that we need to be working together and we need to bring ideas together. The fact is that the Labour Party has consistently given ideas but unfortunately it's fallen on deaf ears. I once again say to the minister she really needs to get together and get to grips with this issue and rather than worry about trying to tell us and convince us that these small homes are actually covering the needs of the people today, I can assure her it's not. I have constituents who cannot get a house because their families are too large. We just cannot get the homes available, affordable or otherwise. I'm sorry, I disagree with her thesis that they have met the targets, they haven't, because when the people have got the houses that they actually need to be in that is when I will agree with her that we have met our targets, otherwise I'm sorry she hasn't and she needs to try harder. Many thanks. I now call John Mason to be followed by Kenneth Gibson. As in all debates, we want to strike a balance between the good things that have been achieved and the challenges and the needs that we face going forward. The idea that we can either paint housing and house building as totally good news or totally bad news is far too simplistic. Clearly, the advantages of good housing are accepted by virtually everybody here. People are somewhere warm and dry and safe to live in, they can afford to heat their homes if they're well insulated, young people have room to study and benefit educationally and building and maintenance jobs are provided. We all agree with that. The fact that 30,000 affordable homes are going to be achieved is something well worth celebrating. I think that abolishing right to buy is also a real achievement, especially in the more attractive areas. Council and Housing Association houses had been drifting away for years and that reduced the chances of needy individuals and families getting a suitable property that they really needed. When I say suitable property, I'm not just thinking physically the right size, no stairs for older or disabled folk, things like that. Healthy communities need a whole mixture of housing so families can stay in close proximity to each other. I get so many constituents coming to me about housing and there certainly will be the type of housing or the flat that they need, but so often the parents are desperate to stay near the grandparents so that the kids can get support. There may be a disabled relative in the area that they need to care for and often a child with particular needs is very settled in a particular school and they don't want to be moving school every time the family needs to move house. I think that another area of need that the housing system struggles with is those very homes that its constituents are applying for. Housing Association provided them in the East End of Glasgow, which we share a responsibility for, for many years, but the cutting of the Housing Association grant has meant that that development has almost come to a standstill. I'll go on to some of my local developments, but I mean certainly Parkhead and Shetleston Housing Associations in my constituency, together with the Commonwealth Games Village, there is a considerable amount of development going on. One of the advantages of cutting the high-grade, which I think was temporary, was that some Housing Associations were sitting on un-rings-fenced reserves. Parkhead Housing Association bought houses off the shelf in the Belvedere village without any grant because they had that money sitting there. One of the advantages of the lower high-grade for a time was to bring some of that money back into the housing equation. Another area of need that the housing system struggles with can, for example, be where a father needs a spare room or rooms in order to have his kids stay at weekends or families want to foster or adopt in the need extra rooms. Also, there can be informal arrangements where a single mother needs help and friends need a spare room to take her kids for a few days. I'm not suggesting that every household requires an extra room just in case they need it, but I would argue that such social and community factors are not always well catered for in our housing provision and housing allocation policies. We need more housing, everyone is accepting that, and I very much welcome the SNP commitment to 50,000 affordable homes in the next five years if we are re-elected. Link to new housing is maintaining and improving existing housing. If we maintain and improve existing housing better, we clearly do not need so many new houses, and certainly in Glasgow and I believe elsewhere, many homeowners are not investing in their properties as they need to be. Sometimes that may be because they just ignore the problems, but I think more often than not that it is because they are struggling to afford it. If we as a society can look after our existing housing stock better, then in turn that takes some of the pressure off the need for new housing. I do not believe that we can just leave owner occupiers to their own devices. Many older folk with low incomes cannot maintain their properties, and I believe that we as a society have a responsibility to help. I have to say that some of those owner occupiers were misled by the Conservatives. They celebrate right to buy in their amendment today, but they failed to spell out to people who had never owned a property that there are heavy maintenance costs that go along with right to buy. If I personally was re-elected, I have wondered about a member's bill that would look at having more good-quality factors with sinking funds in shared properties like tenements. In that way, perhaps more essential maintenance work and improvements like insulation would be carried out. However, while focusing on the genuine challenges, let us not forget the good things that are happening. Locally members will not be surprised to hear me mention the Commonwealth Games village once again, with its 700 homes, 300 for sale and 400 for social rent, but the games in the village were never meant to be ends on themselves. I find it very encouraging to see that link housing, which I used to work for, are planning to build 550 units—that is 300 affordable and 250 owner-occupied—very close by at the Delmanic power station where it used to be. I also have to say that it is very much thanks to the urban regeneration company Clyde Gateway, who has worked to decontaminate that land. That is money that has gone into housing, although I suspect that we do not normally call it part of the housing budget. We have had some very useful briefings for today's debate, including from the likes of Shelter and SFHA, and I would also like to thank Glasgow City Council for some of the specific numbers that they gave me on housing developments in my constituency. For example, currently, 459 houses are under construction around Ballaston. Another 168 have recently been completed. Another 1041 are either going through planning or have the potential to do so, so there is a fair bit of good news around that as well. Another challenge is whether to invest in mainstream housing or specialist like Shelter, very Shelterd or for disabled people, and the finance committee previously looked at that. Finally, if I may, I do think that at this time we should mention refugees. In the short term, we can understand the argument that if there is only one empty house in the village and two local families needing it, why would we bring in additional family from overseas? However, I think that that is very much a narrow and a short term argument. There are many reasons for welcoming refugees, but those include our humanitarian need to help them, the fact that Scots have been helped in the past when they went overseas and, in the long term, our economy benefits. Scotland and the UK are rich countries in the world stage. I do not see any conflict between providing housing for our own people and housing for refugees and asylum seekers. Many thanks. I now call Kenneth Gibson, and after Mr Gibson we will be turning to the closing speeches. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Housing is of course great importance to people right across the country, and that is reflected in the caseload that many of us have. Our home is, after all, where we spend much of our lives. It is where we sleep, study, eat and relax. Securing a home that is suitable to one's needs and those of one's family at an affordable rent or price is paramount in all of our lives. To facilitate that, it is essential to provide a variety of housing types, whilst also making conditions right to ensure a continued housing supply to meet every increasing demand and replace substandard stock. Government must have a role in planning, funding, encouraging and constructing house building projects, particularly in areas where demand outstrips supply. To meet that challenge, the Scottish National Party Government is investing more than £1.7 billion on affordable housing over the lifetime of this Parliament, and I was delighted, like the rest of my colleagues, that we have now exceeded our target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes. That figure includes 5,000 council houses, as we heard from the minister. A somewhat marked improvement on the six council houses managed by the previous Labour-liberal administration of our full four-year term in power, in issue the remain ubersensitive and embarrassed about, understandably so. The SNP Government also, as we have heard, abolished the right to buy to ensure that we maintain high-quality local authority housing stock for future generations. Despite the rhetoric in this chamber regarding council housing, in Wales, the only place where Labour remains in government, a meager 20 council houses, 20 have been built in the last eight years and right to buy remains sacrosanct. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that Scotland spends 85 per cent more per head on social housing than England and Wales. Of course, with cuts of more than a quarter to this Parliament's capital budget, we are limited in the amount of building that we can fund directly. It is for that reason that innovative models of delivery, such as the national housing trust, are so integral to meeting housing demand. Working with 16 separate developers, local authorities and lending institutions, the Scottish Government has delivered 1,350 homes across 10 council areas, supporting 1,750 jobs in the construction industry in the process. Housing not only serves a purpose in itself but, as other colleagues have mentioned, is a vital part of our economy, employing tens of thousands of people in design, supply, construction logistics and maintenance. In North Ayrshire, building developer Lovell is trialling a new state-of-the-art method of measuring the economic impact of an affordable housing project in the local community. That will show just how much investment a housing project brings to an area by tracking where the money is spent and where it is spent within the wider economy. On top of the innovative national housing trust model, I am pleased that the SNP Government is exploring the use of charitable bonds to fund the construction of affordable homes. As the minister said, those bonds now have raised £37 million, which could allow housing associations to build up to 600 homes across Scotland. Of course, making use of existing stock that lies empty also makes sense, and Paul Martin talked about that at some length. The Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, run by Shelter Scotland, works with councils to help to bring empty private sector homes back into use. Since 2010, the partnership was brought over 900 homes back into use and encouraged 17 of Scotland's 32 local authorities to have pointed dedicated empty homes officers. In June, the minister announced a £4 million fund to help to bring even more empty homes in high-street units back to life. That fund will see an additional 478 homes back into use across 17 different projects. The creation and execution of an affordable, effective and workable housing policy is complex. Although there are challenges to met, as we have heard in great detail this afternoon, it is evident that the SNP Government is delivering on its key commitments and providing safe, warm and affordable homes. Labour's contribution to today's debate, excluding Malcolm Chisholm's contribution, reminds me of a line from a 1991 P.M. Don song that set a drift on memory bliss. Reality used to be a friend of mine. My comic man actually blushed when John Mason asked how Labour would pay for its uncosted wooly proposals. The intellectually lazy argument that we should just build more houses fails to recognise the relentless assault on Scotland's budget and hearts back to the days when Labour and Glasgow built housing schemes without shops, community centres or even pavements, as I can attest having been a councillor in Parliament. One also wonders where housing fits in with the decision taken at Labour's conference, which has committed Labour to establishing a debt disposal department whose sole responsibility will be to use the Scottish Parliament's new boring powers to raise funds not to build new houses, not to invest in infrastructure but to buy back the £28 billion of PFI debt run-up by Labour themselves. Labour's position reminds me of Kezia Dugdale's recent visit to meet her colleagues in Wales. Discussing Welsh Education Minister Hugh Lewis' approach to policymaking, Ms Dugdale said, I said to him, where are you finding the money from these other big commitments? He replied, they would worry about that later. Just like her colleagues in Wales, Kezia Dugdale and her party have absolutely no credibility when it comes to tackling housing or other big issues in Scotland. Only the SNP has shown in government that we have the imagination, creativity, vision and ability to meet Scotland's housing needs and we will continue to do so in the years ahead. Support the motion. We now turn to closing speeches and I call on Jim Hume. Seven minutes please, Mr Hume. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think that what we have heard this afternoon from the open debate was the Government pointing fingers again to Westminster for cuts to the budget, the same old, same old. I have had about nine years of that here, so what the Scottish Government continually avoids to mention is that the money it has and is not spending, such as the £51 million housing underspend in 2014-15. There was another £7 million back in 2013-14. In fact, last year, a total underspend was £347 million, so had that money been used, would we still be seeing the 5,000 children homeless this Christmas? Had the Government been honest with people in Scotland in 2010-11, would we not have seen 10,000 more families housed and not on wasting lists? Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, I thank the member for taking an intervention. Can I have Alex Neil's microphone, please? Can I suggest that he talks to his good friend, Sardani Alexander, who was the one responsible for 26 per cent capital spending cuts? Sardani even will admit and explain that the £51 million is not unspent, it is not lost to the housing budget, it is not replaced by other money, it has been spent on housing. The minister goes on about a 26 per cent cut over a period of time, but I remember fighting a budget here where the Scottish Government wanted to have a 55 per cent cut in the draft budget, which was reduced to 41 per cent after the Lib Dems made that one of their priorities for supporting that draft budget. Had the Scottish Government been honest, I do not think that we would have seen 10,000 more families housed and not on the waiting lists. I have heard from other members today that the current level of affordable house building remains at 40 per cent less than before 2008. However, I do want to bring a positive point as ever, that we are seeing a shift in the quality of housing and not an exclusive focus on just the quantity, and that is very important. The minister in fact pointed out that quality standards are being reinforced and I do welcome that. However, I am yet to be received a satisfactory answer from the Government to the question that I asked regarding the discrepancy between the success rates reported by social landlords to the Scottish housing regulator as opposed to the findings of the Scottish house condition survey. Although the housing regulator reports a 95 per cent success rate by registered social landlords for meeting the Scottish housing quality standard, the Scottish house condition survey reports that 43 per cent of social housing is in fact failing quality standards. In our response to myself, the minister mentioned that the discrepancy rate can be attributed to different methodologies between the two reports, but I do not quite buy that a 52 per cent discrepancy rate is simply because of different methodologies or timing. In fact, with 940,000 households, almost a million in fuel poverty and around half of all rural area households in fuel poverty, it is extremely necessary that we tackle that problem. 39 per cent of households in Scotland are in fuel poverty as a total. As I mentioned earlier, almost half of those households renting in Scotland receive financial assistance to pay for the rent. 39 per cent of households pay more than a third of their income on fuel, so it is no surprise that people are becoming fast, exasperated with a timid performance on housing. The World Wildlife Foundation in Scotland has provided a context for our current housing condition. At least 85 per cent of today's homes will still be lived in by 2050. I note that the Government has made a commitment in June to make improving the energy efficiency of Scotland's buildings a national infrastructure priority, but, given its record on missing the emissions target for the first time in a row, that commitment makes a less-incredible promise, which I nonetheless do support, of course. Scottish Lib Dems have a strong record of delivering housing in Scotland. We want to see a Scotland where homelessness is a thing of the past, and we want to see a Scotland where we are able to use innovative and bold solutions to deliver the right sustainable and long-term solutions. We know that there are 27,000 homes sitting empty across Scotland, and what are we doing to use those to regenerate communities and boost the wellbeing of our economy? When we discuss housing, it is time that we shifted away from the silo way of thinking. To this point, I want to agree with other members in the chamber that housing is, of course, the starting point for a healthy and stable life. The fact is that this Government has not been totally truthful to the population. When it announced an ambitious house building programme in 2011, it has delivered less than that. With its announcement of an ambitious house building programme today, I am very aware of its reneging on the goals once again and leaving 150,000 families on waiting lists for even longer. I urge everybody, of course, to support my amendment. Thank you, Presiding Officer. There has been a fairly high degree of disagreement across the chamber over the course of the afternoon, but let me start with one area of agreement. The area of agreement is that all parties in the chamber and all independents within the chamber believe that housing is a critical and vital issue. I think that it is beyond dispute that we face severe challenges across the sector. Families across Scotland are feeling it, the sector and stakeholders across that sector feel it too, and I do not think that it is an exaggeration to describe it as a housing crisis. Some of the figures have been put out there by members already, but they are worth repeating. 150,000 households currently waiting for social housing, 60,000 households clast as overcrowded and half of housing falling short of official quality standards, all of that according to the commission on housing and wellbeing. I can be objective enough to accept that that is not all down entirely to the fault of the current Scottish Government or, indeed, the previous Scottish Government or, indeed, the UK Government before the first Scottish Executive. There are complex reasons for the challenges that we face and there are complex solutions going to be required over the short, medium and long term if we are to make a dent at all, but particularly if we aim to solve the crisis. It will require a huge number of solutions. Thank you very much for accepting an intervention. Do you think that the UK's cut in the capital allocation to the Scottish Government of 26 per cent has helped to hinder the Scottish Government's ability to deal with housing problems in Scotland? I do not accept for a moment the SNP arguments on the budgets, which I will return to in just a moment, but let me finish off the consensus part. Mr Gibson obviously does not like consensus and wants to move on to bare knuckle debate, so I am happy to do that. If we are going to solve the crisis in the long term, it will require an all-tenure approach, as stakeholders have pointed out, and all of us need to focus carefully on that. I think that it was courageous of the Scottish Government to bring this debate forward, I have to say. It has been there Achilles heel over the last three or four years. It is not an area on which they are comfortable and it is one on which I think that there are areas of culpability that I turn to now. The first one is this. There was a manifesto commitment made by the SNP. Every single member here within the SNP and those who are not stood behind that manifesto. We have heard it read out word for word, but the manifesto commitment on page 17 said overall, our aim is to build over 6,000 new socially rented houses each year, a clear commitment in black and white for 30,000, and they will not achieve that in the time frame. It looks like they will get over 20,000, or they maybe are over 20,000, but they are not going to get 30,000, which was the commitment. It does their party, and indeed this chamber, no good at all to pretend that that commitment didn't exist. They fell short by 10,000, they fell short by a third of the entire commitment. To come back to Mr Gibson's point, we cannot blame Westminster for this failure. This is a devolved issue, and this is a failure entirely of the Scottish Government, because when the manifesto commitment was made in 2011, they knew exactly how much money they had for each of the following four years. They made the commitment almost a year after the emergency budget and a good six or seven months after the full spending review. That commitment was made knowing exactly what funding would be available, and the only difference since then, of course, is that funding has increased. It is their failure, and I just think that it is a bit disappointing on behalf of backbenchers on the SNP. First, it will not even acknowledge that there has been a failure, and secondly, it does not even seem to want to know why that failure happened. Perhaps Mr Neil in his closing can tell us why he fell 10,000 short, because if he cannot deliver on the smaller numbers, how seriously should we take their current pledge of a larger number of 50,000? We have heard again from the Scottish Government how it is their priority to deal with housing. Mike McKenzie says that there are few better investments. There are economic multipliers, there are jobs, and it takes just about every box. That was the same Mike McKenzie, who, along with every other SNP member in the chamber, voted in successive budgets to give disproportionate cuts to housing. We accept that there was an overall real-terms budget cut, and there was an overall real-terms capital budget cut, but the political choice of the SNP and this Government was to put the lion's share of those capital cuts on to housing. Not on to any other part of capital, it concentrated its cuts specifically on housing, and that is one of the reasons why we voted against the budget in 2012, 2013 and 2014. We had an almost 40 per cent drop in the affordable housing budget over a four-year period. Now, since then, of course, the budget has been increased, and so the 15-16 budget is back up close to the level of where it was, because some funds have been added back. However, the SNP should acknowledge that all of them stood behind drastic budget cuts concentrated on housing, and I do not remember a single member in any of those debates raising a single question about increasing the housing budget. In terms of the things that the Government can do, because it cannot control entirely the private sector, two-thirds of the housebuilds are built by the private sector and not through Government funding. However, in terms of some of the areas where they can influence and control, help to buy is a particularly good example. It was an innovative initiative, described initially, I have to say, by the Scottish Government as funny money, but then when the money was put to use, suddenly it was an innovative and wonderful way to deliver houses, as if we did not notice the metamorphosis, Deputy Presiding Officer. However, the question that I put to Margaret Burgess, and this is what I was very disappointed, was quite simply, when is the successor to help to buy going to be operational? She said that she was going to answer the question shortly and quite simply did not. I hope that Alex Neil will be able to answer that question in his summing up, because it has been closed to new entrants since 26 May. There was an announcement in September that something will be done at some point. We are now into mid-late November, and we do not know almost six months after it is shut when the successor is going to be operational. I ask simply how we are going to get investor confidence if we have the stop-start mechanism, which is not the first time that has happened, and perhaps in closing the minister can tell us when the successor to help to buy will be operational, as it has been south of the border from day one, and continues to be so. As many members in the chamber will recognise, I am an optimist. I continue to live in hope despite many years in this Parliament. When I heard that the Scottish Government was bringing forward a motion and a debate on housing, I looked forward with anticipation. When I read the terms of the wording of the motion, I was slightly disappointed. I was trying to work out why exactly this was the ambitious house building programme referred to in the title, when it seemed to me to be a rehash of much of the material that we have heard over many years now in the Parliament. Of course, what I discovered today when I saw the Scottish National Party press release is actually the real reason for this debate, and apparently we are going to celebrate the Scottish Government meeting its housing target of 6,000 affordable homes per year. However, if I may say so, and as emerged in this debate, there are two very good reasons—at least two very good reasons—why that is not a cause for celebration, and the first is that that was not the SNP promise. As Jim Hume and others have said, the SNP manifesto specifically said, overall, our aim is to build over 6,000 socially rented houses per year, paid 17 of the SNP manifesto, not affordable homes but socially rented homes. There is a difference, despite the fact that Mr Mackenzie does not seem to recognise it. There is a crucial difference. A mid-market or affordable home in a place like Aberdeen is not the same as a social rented accommodation. After all the people come to their surgery after all these years, you think that there is a similarity, then you are sadly mistaken and it really matters to people who are waiting to afford a home. Secondly, and far more importantly, the Government's target, even if we take the target of 6,000 affordable homes, is not the same as housing need. In fact, it is not even close. According to Shelter, the CIH, the SFHA, building 6,000 affordable homes is just half of what is needed. The minister is effectively asking us to celebrate the fact that her policy will not deliver for half the people in Scotland needing a decent, warm, secure home. The word ambitious featured in the housing motion title, but this has not been an ambitious debate. In fact, the words that we have heard across the chamber have been self-congratulatory, complacent. It has been a pat on the back from one SNP member to another. It does not even address existing need, let alone paint a picture of the kind of Scotland that we can aspire to. The only line in the motion that is ambitious is the last line, which talks about further 50,000 affordable homes. However, as the minister and others will know, Shelter, CIH and SFHA have recently just published an independent assessment of housing need, in which they recognise and identify that we need 12,000 affordable homes. Over five years, if I may confirm, my mathematics makes that 60,000 homes over five years, not 50,000. I do not see how setting a target that fails to meet the needs of Scotland by 10,000 is ambitious. Will the 60,000 fully meet housing need in Scotland? The point is that I think that we should set our ambitions and our targets at need, not set them below what we already recognise as need. At the very least, 60,000 should be a baseline for what we want to do. Not 50,000 a target to aspire to, but a baseline to go beyond. I actually thought that there were a number of thoughtful contributions that Mr Mason included, including John McAlpine, Malcolm Chison and others. I thought that there were a number of contributions that John Mason and I questioned. He started off interventions by suggesting that the Government does acknowledge the challenge facing us and that there is no disagreement across the chamber about the need. However, the point is that there is disagreement across the chamber. The minister will not recognise that we are facing a housing crisis. I have challenged both the minister and the cabinet secretary to recognise and use the word crisis, or to even recognise that others consistently use the word crisis to describe the situation that Scotland is experiencing at the moment, and that they refuse to do so. I noticed that Mr MacKenzie, when he was challenged, refused to do so. Willing to throw brickbats across the border, as usual, and say that there is a housing crisis in England, but not to recognise the same situation here, does that not recognise that as a blinkered view? I am sure that Mr MacKenzie will agree with me that there is a similar, but deeper and more urgent problem south of the border, and that that is beyond any argument. We are getting close. It is a similar crisis, but is it a crisis? I did not hear the words yet again from Mr MacKenzie. I am not trying to downplay. I am not trying to say that the Labour Party was perfect in power. I am not saying that, and neither was Mr MacKenzie, despite accusations to the country. We are not trying to downplay the effects of the recession, but we point out that the SNP has been in power for eight years, and that housing is an entirely devolved issue. The SNP Government has made decisions in power specifically to cut housing. The accusation is often made against Labour that we have not followed up our actions at budget time. We very much did so in this case, because I was the opposition to Mr Swinney when he made the cuts. In 2012 and 2013, Labour specifically identified the housing budget and named the funds that we would put there instead, along with colleges. They were the two big cuts, and we specifically identified those areas and said that this is the wrong thing to do. We put our money where our mouth is, but the SNP will not take responsibility for its own actions. Alex Johnson pointed out in his contribution that not only have you cut the overall housing budget, you have specifically cut the HAG grant to housing associations. The effect is that it is not just that private rents have gone up in this country, but that social rents have gone up in this country. If you were to look at the housing association rents, they have gone up, because you have cut the HAG levels and you have had to unpick some of the work and tried to restore it. However, there has been a direct effect here. If we look at the crisis, fundamentally it is about a lack of supply. I believe that most people, as is a point made by Philip Hogg from Homes of Scotland, still aspire and still want to own their own home. However, the average house price in Scotland is now about five times average income, so it is out of reach for many, many people, particularly for families starting out in life. They cannot afford a home of their own. As young adults are ending up staying at home with their parents, overcrowding is on the increase. We have about 75,000 people living in overcrowded accommodation according to Shelter. There are 150,000 people waiting on a housing association or council property that just simply is not there. However, another result is forcing people into the private rented sector, so it has been doubled in the last 10 years alone and tripled since devolution began. That might have been a lifesaver for some. It has been a dissolution for some, but for others, the fact that there is no regulation or lack of regulation of the private rented sector means that they never feel quite secure in their own home. Of course, it has meant a huge extra cost, because the average rent in the private rented sector is 86 per cent more than in a social rented accommodation. In hotspots such as Aberdeen, Edinburgh, those cities are becoming rapidly unaffordable. There are about 312,000 households living privately renting in Scotland. The majority are young working adults, but there are some 80,000 families with children. That might not cause worry by itself, except for the fact that Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out that the number of households in poverty in the private rented sector has doubled in the last decade. Again, this afternoon, we have heard constant accusations from the SNP benches that Labour identified the problems but did not propose solutions. We constantly proposed solutions. If I may say so, last year, we proposed the solution of intervening to control rapidly rising rents. However, what did the SNP do? Rather than align with us and recognise that that is the problem and introduce a living rent to match our commitment to a living wage, they would rather vote with the Conservatives and reject our proposals. The problem is not limited to the private rented sector, it is across the board. The commission for housing and wellbeing, commissioned by Shelter, pointed out that we need to take a number of steps. Poor housing affects people across Scotland. It affects their health, their education, their employability and their life chances. We need to build more homes. We need to build more homes of all tenures, but we particularly need to build social rented homes. Let's not celebrate building half the houses that we need. Let's not set a new target that continues to fall short of Scotland's needs, but let's be truly ambitious. Let's actually build the homes that we want. Let's give people the warm, decent and secure home that they deserve. I now call on Alec Neill to wind up. You have until 4.59 please, cabinet secretary. I say that it's a great pity that Malcolm Chisholm isn't still the shadow spokesman on housing because he was the only member of the Labour benches who made any sense as afternoon and showed an understanding and a deep knowledge of the housing sector, unlike any of his colleagues. Earlier today, I attended the housing joint delivery group with organisations such as COSLA, Chartered Institute of Housing, Shelter, Homes for Scotland, Existing Homes Alliance, Council of Mortgage Lenders, Tenants Group, Scottish Association of Landlords and others. They were all extremely complementary about the housing policy of the Scottish Government. Indeed, one member who has been involved in housing for the last 30 years said that he had never seen a Government so committed to housing and to the building in particular of a significant number of new houses. Let me just give the facts because, quite clear to me from spokespeople right across the Tory benches to the left, the Tory benches to the right and the Tory benches over there, they do not know or understand some of the basics about housing. Let me start with the record. If you look at the number of social houses completed between 2000 and 2006-07, the last administration, Labour and Liberal Coalition, completed 28,988. During a comparable period for us, we have built 34,500. As has already been stated, they built a total of six council houses. We have built a total of nearly 5,400 council houses. The completions that we have made over their period from 2000 to 2007 totaled 9,000 hours since we came to government have totaled 15,300. If you look at the expenditure during that period that I referred to, our expenditure is of the order of 50% higher than that spent by the previous administration. I do not really take it seriously when I have people who supported that previous administration in the Labour Party and the Liberal Party trying to lecture us about housing. I certainly do not take the Tories seriously or the Liberals seriously or Alasdair Dowling's party seriously since they are the ones who have cut their budget available to the Scottish Government for housing through the massive cut in our budget. When it comes to the right to buy, which destroyed the social housing sector in Scotland, during the period of the LibLab coalition, they sold off thousands of houses and did nothing to put an end to right to buy. Now they sanctimoniously tell us that we have not got it right. In fact, this Government has ended right to buy, a measure that has been called for for many years indeed ever since this Parliament was set up. We have done what the Labour Party and the Liberals utterly failed to do. Let me also say, and then I will give way to Alex Johnson, but he refers to council housing. He does not seem to realise that we subsidise council housing to the tune of £46,000 on average per unit, and without that subsidy the councils couldn't build the five and a half thousand council houses that they have already built. The council housing forced councils further into debt in order to achieve it. However, the question that I need to ask you is that you knew what the budget was before you set your previous target. You missed that target by your definition, but you have now set a target for £50,000. In the next Parliament, should you be elected, could you tell me two things? Firstly, how many of those 50,000 houses will be for social rent and how many of them are conditional on George Osborne giving you the money? If interventions are going to be that long, I will not be able to take many, but let me say that, under every administration since the First World War, council housing has been funded through the public works loans board very often without any subsidy to the councils. We provided a subsidy that you clearly did not know about, and that is why we will get five and a half thousand council houses being built when, under every one of the other three parties, we get no council houses in the last 20 years. Let me just also say that, when it comes to particular issues—I appreciate Paul Martin's seriousness in that—at a conference yesterday, Mr Clack, who is one of the experts in this area of policy. That was a conference on the empty homes. It actually praised the Scottish Government for our initiatives on empty homes. Again, that was a first. Until we came to power, there had been no initiative in empty homes whatsoever, and we are putting substantial money in. For example, we have had the empty homes town centre fund, which has been extremely successful indeed, not mentioned by Mr Martin. I do not know if he knows about it, but it has been a very successful programme. Not only are we funding shelter to help with strategies in place with local authorities, but we are actually putting real money into converting property and converting empty property for the use of housing in town centres. I will take a brief intervention. Does the minister agree with John Mason's statement? Who advises that the housing association grant reduction was a good thing? Has it forced the housing associations to use their reserves? Does he agree with that statement? The point that John Mason was making is that at one point in the past few years, the housing associations had collected reserves of well over £300 million, and therefore it was perfectly reasonable that at least some of those reserves—not all of them—were put to use to help fund new projects. John Mason quoted one of the projects that did not require any subsidy from the Scottish Government whatsoever. I think that that is a perfectly reasonable proposition, and the housing associations thought that that was a perfectly reasonable proposition as well. I also say to Gavin Brown to put him out of his misery that we can confirm that the successor programme and help to buy will run operationally from April 2016 for three years until 2019 and will have total funding of £195 million. I also say to him that we intend that that fund will be particularly intended to help people in the lower income scale to get on the housing ladder to reach their ambition to be able to buy a home for themselves. I think that that is a real success story. If I may say so, the evidence shows that in the first generation of help to buy, the programme in Scotland was actually more successful than the programme South of the Border. Gavin Brown? For giving way and for that news, does that mean that help to buy was effectively closed for business from 26 May this year and it will not reopen until April next year, closed for about 11 months? No, it is not closed for business because, for example, we have a very dedicated small scheme for small builders, and I think that the total for that from memory is about £30 million. That has been extremely active, extremely well taken up and is particularly aimed at helping small companies in this sector. Again, if the Opposition members actually read their facts about the housing policy that we are implementing, they would not need to ask such questions. In terms of looking forward, no Government has ever gone as far as this Government in committing ourselves over the next five years to build 50,000 houses. Let me make two points in response to some of the nonsense that I have heard from the Opposition parties. First of all, we deliberately set the target on completions, because completions is a far tougher target than either starts or approvals. By definition, you have to complete the house, it takes longer than trying to start the house, lay a foundation or get an approval, so it is actually a tougher target. We set ourselves not an easier target. The second point that I would make is this. In reference to what people have referred to, the Shelter report. There have actually been two Shelter reports. There was the first report by Robert Black, which was the Shelter report, which said that we needed a total across all 10 years, including on our occupied, of 23,000 new houses a year going forward. Out of that, we needed 10,000 new houses a year. Then there was a second report prepared by the CIH, supported by Shelter, uping that figure to 12,000. We have said that we are absolutely committed to 50,000. Depending on the settlement that we get, we will try to stretch the money further to go further. However, if our budget is ripped apart the way it has been in recent years, it makes that very difficult to do indeed. I am sure that Mr Swinney will be able to enlighten the House on the precise numbers on 16 December. Let us look forward. Malcolm Chisholm's speech was absolutely the right thing to say. If you look at the demand for housing—I think that this is one point on which everybody is united—there are three major factors influencing demand in future. One, a rising population to record levels, so many people want to come and live in an SNP-run Scotland. Secondly, the backlog of council house waiting lists. Thirdly, the on-going trend of lower occupation per house. We accept that there is a need to work across every tenure, every type of house, every size of house and every location. That is what we are doing, which is why our housing record is easily the best since this Parliament was established. That concludes the debate on an ambitious housing programme for Scotland. The next site of business is consideration of business motion number 14864, in the name of Jofus Patrick. On behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a business programme, any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request speak button now and a call on Jofus Patrick to move motion number 14864. The next site of business is consideration of four business motions. I would ask Jofus Patrick on behalf of the parliamentary bureau to move motions number 14866 to 14869, setting out stage 1 and 2 timetables for various bills. I propose to ask a single question on these motions. If any member objects to a single question being put, please say so now. No member has objected to a single question being put there, therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motions number 14866 to 14869, in the name of Jofus Patrick, would be agreed to. I will agree that the motions are there for agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of four parliamentary bureau motions. I would ask Jofus Patrick to move motion number 14870 to 14873 on approval of SSIs on block. Questions on these motions will put decision time to which we will now come. There are five questions to be put as a result of today's business. Can I remind members that if the amendment in the name of Ken Macintosh is agreed to, the amendments in the name of Alex Johnson and Jim Hulme fall? The first question then is that amendment number 14859.3, in the name of Ken Macintosh, which seeks to amend motion number 14859, in the name of Margaret Burgess, on an ambitious housing programme for Scotland to be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14859.3, in the name of Ken Macintosh, is as follows. Yes, 34. No, 78. There were no abstentions. The amendment is, therefore, not agreed to. Can I now remind members that if the amendment in the name of Alex Johnson is agreed, the amendment in the name of Jim Hulme falls? The question is that amendment number 14859.2, in the name of Alex Johnson, which seeks to amend motion number 14859, in the name of Margaret Burgess, on an ambitious housing programme for Scotland to be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14859.2, in the name of Alex Johnson, is as follows. Yes, 15. No, 95. There was one abstention. The amendment is, therefore, not agreed to. The next question is that amendment number 14859.1, in the name of Jim Hulme, which seeks to amend motion number 14859, in the name of Margaret Burgess, on an ambitious housing programme for Scotland to be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14859.1, in the name of Jim Hulme, is as follows. Yes, 50. No, 58. There were four abstentions. The amendment is, therefore, not agreed to. The next question is that motion number 14859, in the name of Margaret Burgess, on an ambitious housing programme for Scotland to be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 14859, in the name of Margaret Burgess, is as follows. Yes, 58. No, 54. There were no abstentions. The motion is, therefore, agreed to. I propose to ask a single question on motion number 14870 to 14873 on approval of SSIs. If any member objects to a single question being put, please say so now. Nobody has objected to the single question being put. So the next question is that motion number 14870 to 14873, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on approval of SSIs be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motions are, therefore, agreed to. That concludes decision time. We now move to members' business. Members who leave the chamber should do so quickly and quietly.