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Thank you.

Convener, my questions about the support that local authorities and housing associations provide to tenants have been heavily touched on, and the issues for private home owners who live in properties with RAAC elements have also been touched on. I do not want to stray into questions that other members want to ask, so I will leave it there.

The points that have been raised in relation to data are very important with regard to different categories of persons who could be impacted. I wonder whether the Government might want to explore that further with members, looking toward stage 3. Members have referred to particular groups, but I am certain that there are probably more groups that have not been identified in committee.

The amendments raise a lot of concerns regarding strategy and whether various groups of people need direct support and therefore need to be included in the legislation. Perhaps the minister can expand on those points, because I believe that they are important. Care-experienced young people fall into a different category, right enough, given that we already have the Promise, which all political parties signed up to and endorsed and which they continue to support.

Roz McCall’s comments about how we need to do more are bang on. Housing is critical to ensuring that we deliver the Promise by its benchmark target dates, so amendments that would promote that and allow those targets to be met should be welcomed and supported.

That is all that I have to say just now, but I am interested in the aspects around the amendments in this group, and I think that other discussions might need to be had.

Will the minister take an intervention?

There are two housing waiting lists—a general waiting list and the homelessness waiting list. Given the minister’s local government background, how does he think that Kevin Stewart’s amendments would work in practice, should they be agreed to? Do they relate to the concerns that the councils raised in the short consultation that the Government carried out? If so, that would need to be looked at. That relates to Jeremy Balfour’s contributions on strengthening those elements. The minister would need to take a serious look at how the housing waiting list system works.

I hear what the member is saying but I think that it comes down to what it looks like in practice. We know that councils have vast numbers of people who are stranded, languishing on waiting lists up and down the country. As Jeremy Balfour rightly pointed out, amendment 1052 would mean moving to one waiting list, and that would change the whole structure of the housing list system and how it functions. Would it be the case that people who desperately need help might not be able to get that help because of the new system and what it could look like within the scope of what is being asked in the amendments? That is something that we all have to watch out for.

Again, I am not saying that the issue should not be looked at, but we should look for the unintended consequences that could come from the amendments in this group. I believe that we need to know what it would look like in practice before we progress.

I am looking at a report on the Scottish Government website that says that

“when our children leave the care system, they are too often not ready for adulthood”,

and they become homeless. The whole purpose of these amendments is to try to address the homelessness issues that care-experienced young people face. That is part of the Promise, and it was part of the legislation that was passed in this Parliament and that the Government said that it would fulfil and achieve.

I might be mistaken here, but I have not seen anything directed at the Promise that relates to tackling homelessness for care-experienced people. Will the minister outline how that will be achieved and what the Government has done thus far? We will end up in 2030 not having anything in legislation that tackles the problem.

In relation to the debate yesterday, recommendations were made, but there is a clear disconnect with regard to the implementation of the recommendations on children in temporary accommodation. That is on the back of the 2023 outcomes set by the Scottish Government. We need to look at those specific issues, and it is incumbent on the Government to do so and see whether something can be brought back at stage 3, because it is clear that what the Government is doing just now is not working. The amendments in the group have been lodged, because there is a significant problem with children living in temporary accommodation in Scotland, and we need legislation that will help solve that problem.

As we can see by looking at the petition, a lot of this ground is covered in the Housing (Scotland) Bill. It is important to look at the concerns that have been raised, but they could be debated at a future stage. I am sure that we will have such conversations when we approach stage 2 of the bill.

I sympathise with the issues that are raised in the petition. In past years, we have seen a number of leisure and cultural facilities disappear from our communities up and down the country. That relates directly to funding. We should regularly debate the council funding that is being delivered by the Scottish Government and the impact that potential service reductions across the board will have on communities.

I would like the committee to return to the issues that the petition raises and explore them at a future date, because we really need to look at public services, the landscape across the country and which areas have been heavily impacted by the reduction of leisure and cultural facilities. I hope that we will explore the issue in the future, because it is one that I really sympathise with.

My point is similar to those that have already been made. It is an issue to be mindful of with regard to the present scope of the Housing (Scotland) Bill and what we might need to look at as we approach stage 2. It is for individual ���˿��� to look at the matter further and engage with those who might be impacted.