 The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Shona Robison, cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to provide members with an update on the work of the Scottish Government in carrying out to identify and remediate unsafe cladding and specifically our single building assessment pilot that we introduced in 2021. That has not been an easy process for anyone. The Grenfell Tower tragedy shocked us all. It highlighted that many could be living in buildings that pose a clear risk to their safety, and that risk was never commonly understood by developers, lenders, building insurance firms and even surveyors and fire engineers. Overcoming this breakdown in shared knowledge and systems about what safety means has been central to our learning. I want to share today how we plan to use that learning to help home owners. I understand how stressful and frustrating a time this has been for home owners, and I am grateful to them for their involvement with us. I also want to reassure people that I expect the vast majority of buildings to be found safe. I know that for many home owners progress has not been quick enough, but we have to understand the extent of the problem in order to fix it. The purpose and approach of the single building assessment, which was a recommendation of our expert building and fire safety ministerial working group, is to carry out a comprehensive inspection of whole blocks of domestic residential buildings looking at fire safety and suitability for mortgage lending. This is a free assessment with no cost to property owners. Single building assessments or SBAs identify what needs to be mitigated or remediated on a building by building basis and in line with the most current building standards. That includes the more stringent requirements laid last month that effectively ban all combustible cladding on relevant buildings. Our initial approach for the SBA pilot involved giving grants to home owners typically through an intermediary, such as a property factor. Although that has worked, it came at a high cost in terms of time and demands, particularly on home owners. It was slower than we would like and is complex. The spend on surveys last year as part of the pilot amounted to £241,000. Through assessing the pilot, we have concluded that this method requires to be changed as we scale up to a national programme. I wish to thank specifically the residents in the 26 buildings that are participating in the pilot surveys and also the home owners' associations, factors and others who have helped to shape the process and understanding of how best to deliver at scale. I am clear that the pilot has been necessary but, as I have said, the time scales inherent in the initial method were proving too long and onerous for those not familiar with such a technical process. Therefore, I can inform Parliament that I have taken the decision to alter our method to allow us to scale up and expand the programme. Using powers and procurement tools that are available to the Scottish Government, we will now begin to offer SBAs directly. That means that it is the Government that will take on the role of procuring surveys and fire engineers to carry out assessments on behalf of buildings. That takes away the burden on home owners or the need for factors to move beyond their traditional role in managing common parts. That will remove several months from the process of completing a lengthy and technical application and simplify the commissioning of survey work. Importantly, that will allow many more buildings to be brought into the programme at the same time, allowing us to scale up the programme. As a result of that change, I can confirm that every block in the pilot that has not yet submitted a full application under the previous approach has been written to with the offer of a directly procured SBA. I can also confirm that from today we will begin writing to more than 80 unique blocks that submitted an expression of interest last year to invite them on to the programme through a new simplified application process. To achieve that increase in pace, I encourage qualified fire engineers and surveyors to be ready to meet the demands of this programme of work. We have already begun the process of placing tenders for single building assessments on to procurement contracts Scotland and asked them to register and be prepared to bid. From 2023 we will invite all remaining privately owned high-rise buildings, about another 100 buildings, into the survey programme. We will contact them shortly to explain the timescales and process. Our programme of surveys is important for today's home owners and for tomorrow's too. I set out in our programme for government by the end of this parliament we will introduce a register of safe buildings. We are already working with the key institutions that will need to have access such as insurers, mortgage lenders, the fire service and home owners themselves. This measure will help overcome a key difference between our tenure system and that in the rest of the UK, the absence of a single building owner. Vitally, it will offer assurance to those who need it that a building is safe. I want to now turn to the UK Government's recent announcement on a developer fund. The Scottish Government has engaged in good faith with the UK Government right from the start on its approach to the building safety programme. I have written a number of times with my Welsh counterpart, who I have worked closely with on this issue, to UK Government ministers and only last week met Lord Greenhall to raise my concerns about the way the UK Government has fallen short when it comes to basic commitments such as collaboration and transparency after saying from the outset that they wanted a four-nation approach. Instead, we have had little information and sudden announcements, with those announcements increasingly focusing on fixing problems in England only. It remains the case that the UK Government's approach to tackling key issues in England only benefits from powers only available at a UK level, such as corporation tax, which has been used to tax UK-wide residential property developers. However, we are continuing to explore whether any elements of the UK developer fund might still be applicable on a four-nations level, for example extending the scope of any legal agreement entered into between the department for levelling up and the big Scottish developers of Scotland's buildings. The terrible tragedy of Grenfell Tower exposed the risk that many tall buildings were clad in materials that made the consequences of fire much worse and the cost of remediation huge. Let me therefore move to the issue of funding. We received £97.1 million in consequentials in 2021-22, and this Government is committed to ensuring that every penny of this and any additional funding received for this programme will be invested in assessing buildings and making unsafe buildings safe. However, further changes in UK Government policy mean that we cannot be 100% sure what further funding might be received in future. The UK Government faces the same issues as we do in assessment and remediation, yet the scale of cladding issues in England is not matched by the funding identified or committed from the UK Government. That creates an issue for Scotland, because we only get the Barnett consequentials when the UK Government actually spends the money, so by shortchanging England itself the UK Government is therefore also shortchanging the devolved Governments. We have estimated that we may get associated funding of around £300 million as a share of already committed UK spending on cladding set out in the HM Treasury spending review published last year. I will reiterate that our intention is to spend any associated funding that we receive on assessment, safety and remediation so that we are adequately ensuring the safety of residents and supporting home owners over the lifetime of this programme. However, given the complexity and scale of the issue, those resources may not be enough, which is why that will not stop us from doing what is right and necessary. We will make our resources go further by working collaboratively with housing developers, the finance industry and home owners to fix the issue properly and fully from the outset. I now wish to turn to our engagement with the house building sector. It has become clear that even with the possible joint approach with the UK Government on the legal contract behind the pledges, that would practically only impact on around 12 developers operating in Scotland, a fraction of the total, most of whom are small and medium sized. I am therefore pleased to inform Parliament today that Homes for Scotland, the house building member's body, has agreed to work with the Scottish Government to develop a Scottish safer buildings accord with its members and the broader sector. Together we will identify fair and workable solutions for all. I see no reason why a developer would not commit to doing in Scotland exactly the same as it has agreed to do in England as part of the UK Government's pledge. Developers must play their part in making unsafe buildings safe wherever they are. I have met a number of developers in the past few days with more meetings to come as we reach out widely to build our accord with those affected by unsafe cladding. I am pleased to say that many of the major developers want to do what is right and discussions have been co-operative and collaborative. We will be working together on the fine detail of the accord in the coming weeks and will be involving home owners in this work. It is my clear expectation that developers linked to buildings with problematic cladding will fund remediation where that is identified. That will ensure that when public funds are needed to be spent, we can use them to focus on buildings and works where a developer cannot be identified or no parent developer exists. The creation of our accord with the house building sector and home owners will form the basis of a way to address each building's needs. However, I want to make clear that, if required, I will make full use of the powers available to us to bring parties to the table, including, if necessary, using legislation to do so. I hope that this update has been helpful to members and to those affected by the issue. I look forward to continuing to update Parliament as we make further progress with this important programme of work. Thank you. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be grateful if members who wish to ask a question were to press their request to speak buttons now. I call on Miles Briggs. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I start by thanking the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement as well. The Scottish Government only began carrying out three single building assessments in August 2021. By then, many home owners had already paid for safety assessments out of their own pockets. I ask a couple of questions with regard to home owners who have been such, so desperately affected during this time. What plans do ministers have to help to cover those costs that have already been associated with the work that the cabinet secretary has announced today? Secondly, home owners who are now currently being prevented from moving or obtaining mortgages due to the flats covered in potentially combustible cladding are seeing their properties valued at zero. What discussions have the Government taken forward both with the banks around those mortgages and with the insurance industry around affordable insurance for home owners in those properties? I think that all those three issues have not been covered in the statement but are really important for property owners. We will look and speak to home owners about any payments that they have already made in terms of those assessments. I know that officials have been engaging with some home owners around that, and we will continue to do so, because it is an important point. Let me be clear about the reason that the single building assessment is so important. Of course, it was only launched last summer because a lot of work had gone into the very to address the very issues that Miles Briggs describes, and that is that the single building assessment would have the confidence of the sector, of lenders, of financial institutions. The reason that that is important is that we expect that the fact of a single building assessment having been done with the remediation work then identified should, in itself, be enough confidence for those mortgage lenders, which would enable people to be able to move their property on if that is what was required. That shows the importance of getting that SBA right and getting it recognised to go forward. A lot of those issues can be captured in the accord in terms of moving forward and making sure that home owners are fully briefed and informed. Miles Briggs also mentioned the issue of insurance. That is, of course, an issue that is reserved to the UK Government. However, we have been discussing with the UK Government around the need for insurance issues to be clarified. I received a letter from Michael Gove just in the last few days where he was saying that they were hoping to move forward with progress on the issue of insurance over the coming months. I know that that is an issue of great concern to people. I am happy to perhaps arrange a cross-party briefing where some of those issues can be explained in a bit more detail if that would be helpful. The pilot has compounded resident stress and worry about the safety of the building, some of which are currently valued at worthless by financial institutions. They have struggled to find qualified competent assessors when I feel that the Government should have offered a true service from the start. All too often, Government schemes like that are set up to push the work and the stress on to the householders on this pilot is showing that that will not work. Today, the Government has announced a delay that many more will now have to wait until up to 2023 for action, but will the cabinet secretary agree to publish a timetable for the scaling and completing of that work and agree to publish a quarterly report on the numbers assessed, the remediations completed and the spend of the £97 million plus any additional funding as it pays out contained within those quarterly reports? I recognise the frustrations that home owners have, absolutely. I recognise the technical challenges and difficulties that not only home owners but also the factors that we are struggling with in terms of commissioning reports. That is why I have announced in the statement the move to the proactive commissioning of the SBAs directly and to try to harness the skill set that is in Scotland. That is going to be tough because we need a lot of the skills to be focused on that work, so we are going to have to work to make sure that we are able to get those skills to take forward the SBAs at peace. In terms of the timetable, I am happy to look at setting out as far as we can. More detail on the timetable, I have set out in my statement the initial 80 then 100 buildings that will get us way down the line of the buildings affected and prioritising those buildings most at risk. I am happy to furnish Parliament with a quarterly update in terms of the numbers. I think that over the next year we will see a ramping up of the numbers of SBAs being completed and then the remediation work will scale up. I should also say that a lot of the buildings after being assessed through the SBA process will be found to be safe, and that in itself will be important for those home owners. I am happy to work with Mark Griffin again. I can offer if he would find a more detailed briefing with some of the technical detail of some benefit and help, then I am happy to arrange that on a cross-party basis. I thank the cabinet secretary for this statement and I would welcome a cross-party briefing on the further details. I am concerned that, despite assurances from the UK Government that the four nations would work closely together to tackle building safety issues, the interests of the devolved nations are being ignored. Does the cabinet secretary believe that the UK Government is no longer interested in co-ordination when it comes to cladding remediation? If so, how should the Scottish Government proceed? I can tell Cocab Stewart that, along with our Welsh colleagues, we have continually called for a joined up four nations approach to this issue, because we thought that that would be the simplest and most straightforward way of moving forward, given the complexity of the issues. However, a few weeks ago, the UK Government did move to what is clearly an England-only approach. That is despite matters, such as insurance, mortgage lending and corporation tax, clearly being reserved and playing a major part in the solution. Due to that, and I think that for homeowners primarily but also developers, that co-ordination between the nations would be a better way forward and with Welsh counterparts will continue to pursue that. In fact, there is a building safety four nations meeting due to take place later this month, at which we will continue to pursue these matters, along with our Welsh colleagues. However, this was part of the reason for my statement and the announcement of the accord. I think that we have to be realistic. It looks like the UK Government is going in a particular direction of travel, and that is why we have to progress and plan our own way forward to ensure that we are doing the best by-property owners when it comes to cladding remediation, and the accord will be the forum in which to take that forward. Cabinet Secretary, individuals who have bought flats with flammable cladding have found themselves in an unfortunate situation with the value of the property plummeting and insurance cost rising. In the statement, you indicate that the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that every penny of any additional funding received will be invested in assessing buildings and making them safe. Therefore, does the cabinet secretary recognise that more may be required to achieve the support for those individuals who have found themselves affected by this cladding crisis? What steps will the Scottish Government take now to ensure that? I thank Alexander Stewart for his question. First of all, as I said earlier, on the issue of insurance, the UK Government has contracted with an insurance underwriter to back the provision of a UK-wide PII scheme. There has been some delay to that, but it will provide professional indemnity insurance for fire risk assessors across the UK and will help to move things forward. However, the issue of insurance for homeowners continues to be something that we believe is best addressed at UK level because of the nature of UK-wide insurance institutions. I am happy to keep Alexander Stewart and others appraised of the discussions around that. All the money that we receive in consequentials will absolutely be spent on every penny, but we have to spend the money wisely. That is why, in my statement, I was clear that I expect developers where they can be linked to a building to remediate the cost of that building. However, we want it to be done under the single building assessment, so it is done properly and it is done once. To give assurances that it is done to a standard to meet all the current standards, that is important for homeowners and assurances. Will more money be required? Yes, it will. Obviously, we have the building safety levy, which the UK Government just announced a couple of weeks ago, which is an England-only levy that is going to be a levy through local government. What we will need to do is to look at what equivalent we may need to use here in order to bridge any gap. The money that we will be spending and the public money will be for those buildings where no developer can be found and those homeowners must get the same treatment. Therefore, we want to give assurance that that is where we will focus that public money in any gap that we have to work through the accord to look at ways of bridging that. The expansion of the single building assessment pilot programme has resulted in properties in my constituency now being included, something that has been welcomed by affected constituents in Dundee City West. However, uncertain finances could undermine progress with the SBA. I wonder if, following on from the last question that the cabinet secretary could say more about discussions with the UK Government about the consequentials, it is really important that we make sure that the level of funding is sufficient to support the needs of the work that requires to be done across Scotland. First of all, I was really pleased to be able to support the expansion of the pilot. Today, I have announced that our new programme will tackle the most complex buildings and increase the properties in the programme and remove the burden from home owners. I know that that will be of particular importance to Joe Fitzpatrick, some of his constituents. I think that what I said in the statement about the funding is that the UK Government has moved away from this essentially being treasury funded driven to a mixture of funding, which essentially is partly through the corporation tax on developers and through the building safety levy. That is quite a complicated landscape of funding. We have been able, after quite a lot of digging and backwards and forwards, to identify the additional £300 million through consequentials. What is hard to find out whether or not how much of that is related to the corporation tax money that is raised or whether that is through treasury, it is very difficult to define. One principle needs to be clear that any monies that are raised through corporation tax on a UK basis, that Scotland and Wales under Northern Ireland, for that matter, should get their fair share of that. We then have to, as I said earlier in an answer, look at where we would need to find our own mechanism to bridge any gap that we identify. The building safety levy is what is happening down south, what we need to find our equivalent, because none of that will generate any consequentials for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, so we will have to meet the gap ourselves. I have written to the minister on many occasions about my constituents in Glasgow who do welcome the fact that they have been prioritised for the single buildings assessment, but others will have to wait until 2023. In both cases it means that they can still not get adequate buildings insurance, which is actually quite dangerous. In view of that, I ask the minister again, will the Scottish Government consider indemnifying those owners, standing behind them, while we wait on the final outcome? If the minister is confident that we will get to that point, I think that the Scottish Government should not find that so risky. I am happy to continue to discuss with Pauline McNeill about all those issues. The Accord will give us a forum, not just with developers but with homeowners as well, to look at what more we can do in the here and now. Clearly, the issue of insurance is very complicated. However, I would restate the good thing about the single building assessment, because it has been worked through with so many critical institutions that it will have the confidence of those institutions. The point at which the SBA is completed could be a really important point in resolving some of those matters rather than having to wait for the remediation works to be completed. I think that that in itself could perhaps give homeowners a bit of confidence that the SBA process itself will unlock doors for them. I am happy to keep Pauline McNeill informed about those discussions as we take them forward. Before we move on to the next member, I will just perhaps make the chamber aware that time is very tight. There are many members who would like to put a question to the cabinet secretary. I call Jackie Dunbar to be followed by Willie Rennie. Developers should absolutely be expected to remediate cladding on buildings that they have built, but what support is available to homeowners where there is now no developer because they have stopped trading? How will the Scottish Government make sure that those buildings are also assessed, that any problems identified are fully fixed and that there is no burden on home owners in need of assistance? I absolutely agree that developers must take responsibility and remediate the buildings that they have built and are associated with. My approach is to ensure that we work in a positive way with developers on that in the interests of homeowners. I expect, through the Scottish Safer Buildings Accord, to take that forward. As I said in my statement, that means that the public funds that we have available can be prioritised for the very buildings and works that Jackie Dunbar talks about that are without a linked developer so that homeowners are assisted in every way possible. I think that that is the best way to make maximum use of the collective pot of money as we go forward. Willie Rennie to be followed by John Mason. I mean, we are five years on from Grenfell and I'm afraid it's really disappointing that the minister comes here today to declare after a year of this pilot being in place that it's taken too long and too onerous. Homeowners have been aware of this. It's been blindingly obvious for a long time as we've seen from the evidence that they have provided. So why is it taking so long for the government to admit that this pilot was failing? The minister talks about using powers to compel developers and other parties to come to the table. What powers and how are they going to be deployed? First, I don't believe that the pilot hasn't been a success. I think that the pilot has been a success in being able to test out the single building assessment. The problem has been the way the single building assessments have been commissioned. It has shown to be too complex and too onerous for homeowners and factors. That's what we have learned and therefore are now switching to a commissioned basis, but the basis of the pilot and the single building assessment is absolutely sound, because what it will do is to help to identify those buildings that are safe and can be given the green light and that's good, but it will also identify those buildings that require remediation, what that remediation is, to do that on a once basis only to a high standard and to make sure that the developers that are associated with those buildings pay for that and get on and do that and that we can support those buildings where no developer can be found. In terms of Willie Rennie's last point, I have every faith that the accord from the discussions that I've had with developers, they want to do the right thing. Every one of them that I've spoken to wants to do the right thing. What I said at the end of my statement was that should we be required that if there are some that don't want to come to the table, then we will look at using powers at our disposal to compel them and we will look at legislation to do that if we need to. I don't think that we'll need to do that because I think that developers want to be seen to do the right thing and fulfil their responsibilities, but as I say, I will keep Parliament updated on these matters as we go forward. Thank you. I appreciate the minister's desire to provide comprehensive responses, but we are very tight for time. I call John Mason to be followed by Ariane Burgess. In following on from the cabinet secretary's statement and her previous answer, it sounds like the developers are fairly positive towards what the Scottish Government is planning. Are the developers willing to work under separate schemes in England and Scotland? Are they just accepting that? Yes, they are. It doesn't make it easy for anybody in this situation, but, yes, they are. I think that it is important that developers recognise that, even though there is an England-only focus from the UK Government, many of the developers are UK-wide organisations and that their responsibility is to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as the work that they are going to do in England. So far, the decisions that I have had have been very positive in that space. Ariane Burgess, to be followed by Marie McNair. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of the statement. Changes to building regulations secured by Green Minister Patrick Harvie mean that combustible cladding can no longer be used on higher-rise building, but remediation of existing buildings must happen urgently. Can I ask the cabinet secretary for her thoughts on safe building assessment, an MOT for buildings, for every building in Scotland going forward in the future, so that we understand the components and the construction and make sure that things are fitted properly? Ariane Burgess is quite right that we have just passed more recent building standards around this issue, but they build on quite robust building regulations and standards prior to that. I think that it is important to say that, and that goes back as far as 2005. Absolutely, the safe building register that we have talked about and are committed to is going to be important not just for homeowners but also for those institutions that we have talked about in terms of mortgages and insurance. That is a commitment, of course, as Ariane Burgess has noted that we have committed to taking forward. Marie McNair, to be followed by Annie Wells. The UK Government's move from the building safety fund to a pledge letter in England clearly has impacts here in Scotland. Did the Scottish Government have advanced sight of the April announcement and can the cabinet secretary advise of the work on the accord that she has outlined, which has been carried out since the UK Government's announcement, is going to cause any issues in the planned roll-out of the cladding remediation programme? Cabinet secretary. No, we really hadn't, neither had the Welsh had any sight of the announcements that were made, which took us a bit by surprise, because until that point we had assumed that work was being taken forward, particularly around the levy on a four-nations basis, but we are where we are and we are determined to make sure that we now look towards what we can do here in Scotland. We will continue to work with Wales very closely, and we have a very good working relationship there. Of course, we have the four nations building safety summit, if you like, that is taking place later this month, where we will continue to pursue areas where we might still be able to work together. Essentially, we will have to find some of the solutions ourselves. Cabinet secretary, flambo cladding has been found on both the Queen Elizabeth University hospital in my region in Glasgow and the Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh. Can the cabinet secretary tell us if any flambo cladding has been used on any other government buildings, and if so, how soon can remedial works begin? Annie Wells has raised a number of issues there. Of course, we have said on a number of occasions that we will support and work with public bodies and health boards to understand their current estates and make sure that they have done detailed assessments and to make sure that any issues are resolved. Where they are found, we will support them with the technical expertise to assess and remediate as soon as possible. I am happy to write to Annie Wells with an update of the particular buildings that she cited. Thank you. That concludes ministerial statement update on cladding remediation programme. The next item of business is stage 1 debate on motion 4310, in the name of John Swinney, on coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland Bill. I would be very grateful if members who wish to speak in this debate were to press their request to speak buttons now. Thank you.