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I am listening with interest to the points that you are making, but I still have in my head what Megan Gallacher and Jeremy Balfour said about your amendments having potential unintended consequences.

That figure of 700 is interesting. It is not one that I had heard before. Do you know if there is any breakdown or analysis of those 700 cases? Before supporting amendment 1052, I would like to understand what those 700 stories look like. Are there themes and trends within that?

What happens if we move away from giving discretion to local authorities? I do not want to get into giving local case studies in my city and constituency, but I have seen good use being made of that discretion—I realise that that might be a controversial thing to say—and I have to wonder about the unintended consequences of taking it away. If we can analyse and understand the circumstances of those 700 cases, it will inform Parliament, either through this process or at a later date, when it comes to enacting the provisions that you are suggesting.

Is the member suggesting that, when local authorities carry out their due diligence in relation to their plans for addressing housing needs and investing in the social rented housing stock, they are not taking into account the general housing needs in the local authority area? My understanding is that local authorities are quite attentive to those issues, so I am trying to work out what amendment 1078 is trying to fix.

I will finish this point and then I will take your intervention.

I suggest to Mr Balfour that we amend the bill today, then work with Mr Stewart and others ahead of stage 3 to refine the legislation where we think that it could be improved. That would keep us together on a cross-party basis, which would be really important and powerful.

I do not have any other particular comments to make, other than to thank Mr Stewart for his intervention and to emphasise again that it would be really beneficial for us to hang together as a committee, due to the importance of Mr Stewart’s amendments. Mr Stewart eloquently put on the record why they are so important, so I will leave it there.

I agree with Maggie Chapman on all of that. The question is not whether we should have targeted strategies to support different groups but whether we should put in statute additional specific provisions for them in order to underpin those strategies. That is the debate that we are having. I will wait to hear what the minister says on that issue, but I thank Maggie Chapman for putting her concerns on the record.

I will be uncommonly brief with my contribution. During that exchange, we lost a bit of the purpose of Mr Stewart’s amendments. It is crazy that, if we are trying to prevent homelessness, anyone would ever consider making a judgment call on how someone in their time of greatest need came to be threatened with homelessness. If our ambition is to sustain people in their tenancies, that seems crazy to me. The idea of taking intentionality and that judgment call out of the system is an absolute no-brainer. Quite frankly, history will show that we should have done that some time ago. That is at the heart of these amendments to the bill.

I suggest to Mr Balfour—he said how his party will vote—that we have a three-stage process to legislation in the Parliament. Knowing Mr Stewart well, I am sure that he would work with you if you support the amendments today.

I am listening with interest to the points that you are making, but I still have in my head what Megan Gallacher and Jeremy Balfour said about your amendments having potential unintended consequences.

That figure of 700 is interesting. It is not one that I had heard before. Do you know if there is any breakdown or analysis of those 700 cases? Before supporting amendment 1052, I would like to understand what those 700 stories look like. Are there themes and trends within that?

What happens if we move away from giving discretion to local authorities? I do not want to get into giving local case studies in my city and constituency, but I have seen good use being made of that discretion—I realise that that might be a controversial thing to say—and I have to wonder about the unintended consequences of taking it away. If we can analyse and understand the circumstances of those 700 cases, it will inform Parliament, either through this process or at a later date, when it comes to enacting the provisions that you are suggesting.

I welcome the fact that you have said that you will seek to withdraw amendment 1077 in order to work further with the Government. I think that one of the reasons that you gave for having the register related to applications being made to two local authorities, which would mean that there could be duplication. Could the double counting of people who are homeless be an issue? Might that issue need to be resolved at a later date?

I have a few comments about Mr Griffin’s amendment 1072 in relation to the housing first model. I went to Finland with Mr Simpson and other colleagues to look at the housing first model there, and one of my take-home messages was that there is no one housing first model—lots of different models are badged up as housing first—so, if we were to act in the way that Mr Griffin suggested, having a clear definition of housing first would be important. However, the amendment is incredibly well intentioned, and there might be benefits to it.

In relation to giving priority access to welfare services, I think about my constituency case load and the purpose of the bill, which is to prevent homelessness. The housing first model involves, quite rightly, picking up people who have experienced the homelessness system—they might have been rough sleeping—and providing them with wraparound support. In my casework, I deal with people who need intensive support because of significant rent or council tax arrears and who have precarious tenancies, so I hope that the bill is aimed at supporting them. It can be quite difficult to get the attention of local authority welfare services and third sector services so that they can provide those people with that intensive support. However, we have managed that from time to time, and tenancies have been retained and secured.

Mr Griffin’s amendment 1072 would give one group in the homelessness system priority access to services, but that could be at the expense of other groups of people who are threatened with homelessness, which I am sure is not his intention. I am unsure how I feel about his amendment, but I will probably not support it.

Alexander Stewart’s amendment 1014 and Maggie Chapman’s amendment 1070 seek specific homelessness strategies for different groups in society. I am conscious that, although there are protected characteristics, when possible, we want to mainstream our homelessness strategy and be attentive to all of the various groups at the same time. If we prioritise some groups above others, we might lose that mainstreaming approach.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the impact of digital exclusion on poverty levels among pensioners, the reasons for that, and how those might be addressed. This session follows on from the round-table evidence session that we held in February.

I welcome our witnesses: Louise Coupland, digital health and social care manager, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, or the ALLIANCE; Jillian Matthew, senior manager, Audit Scotland; Kyle Scott, policy manager, Citizens Advice Scotland; and Miriam Craven, chief operating officer, Social Security Scotland. I thank you all for joining us today and helping us with our short inquiry.

We will move straight to questions from members. I ask Jeremy Balfour to open the questioning.