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I will ask Laura McMahon whether that is practical from a legislative or legal point of view. I appreciate the point that you are making, and I would be comfortable with that.

I have met Scottish Women’s Aid regularly, and that has been discussed. It is incredibly important. You gave a couple of examples. One involved the Scottish Prison Service, which is a key stakeholder. We have discussed the issue with it and will develop it further together. Again, we are trying to build on best practice. We heard a couple of examples in which some prisons are probably further ahead than others. A key thing that was talked about was consistency. That is an important point.

More broadly, when it comes to how we deal with domestic abuse, in my time as a councillor—which you were, too, Ms McNair—I saw how that was handled. It is partly about making sure that we are properly resourced—and a part of that is about training. Having dealt with it and seen it at first hand through people with lived experience, I can say that sometimes it depended on who they ended up with in the local authority. If somebody had the necessary training, they knew how to deal with the situation and had the necessary ability, which comes back to how to deal with somebody who is in trauma. Alternatively, if somebody had not been trained, that could actually make the situation worse.

One thing to talk about is how to make sure that victims are aware through the Scottish Prison Service, local authorities, the NHS or women’s aid organisations, for example. Again, it is about trying to strengthen what is already there. I have seen examples in which the council has dealt with the situation very well, and that helps the person quite quickly. However, if the situation is not dealt with, as you will have seen, it can result in more trauma.

Again, it is about having a more focused and more holistic approach. Why does it happen that nobody passes on the information from the SPS, the NHS, Scottish Women’s Aid or the local authority? If it is not handled well, it makes the situation worse.

Discussions with local authorities are on-going. The issue was also raised in the discussions that we had with the 140 practitioners that I mentioned. If you can attend our event in October, that point can be raised. However, it has been discussed within local authorities, within the Scottish Prison Service and with Scottish Women’s Aid.

Again, it is about building on what is already there. The legislation will give a duty to ensure that we pick up on that. We cannot have the inconsistency that we have at the moment.

Good. Thank you.

Do you mean in terms of—

There are a number of things in that. I will come on to the bill in a second. The policy that the legislation is wrapped around is important. We met COSLA last week and talked about funding for additional acquisitions. At that stage, for the ability to look at acquisitions and voids, it was agreed to focus on the local authorities that are under more pressure than others at the moment.

The housing to 2040 strategy group also met a couple of weeks ago, and key things that we said were, first, that we should try to make more properties available and, secondly, that there should be a real focus on how we get children, specifically, out of temporary accommodation as soon as possible. That is the supply side of how we deal with the issue.

Last week, I met Glasgow City Council. It probably has the biggest issue at the moment, so we talked about how to bring more supply. Again, there are voids, acquisitions, allocation policies and so on.

A key thing in the legislation is the holistic approach. It comes back to being aware between the two-month period and the six-month period. Having been a councillor, you will know that two months is not enough for someone who presents as potentially homeless. We need that longer period. That part of the legislation on its own—just trying to identify what the risk could be—is really important.

As we know, the Crisis homelessness monitor talked about the local housing allowance as one of the two biggest drivers of the rise in homelessness, particularly in families with children. I will pick that up with my United Kingdom Government equivalent, as I tried to do previously. It is also about the level of universal credit and dealing with poverty. Many people who arrive in that situation are in poverty, so that six-monthly approach is incredibly important. If there is necessary financial help that they can get, that is really important.

Again, we need a holistic approach from local authorities and from, for example, the NHS or link workers. One of the key things at the NHS level is the experience of link workers. I met link workers in Edinburgh six or seven months ago. One of the biggest drivers for people getting into that situation in Edinburgh is poverty, so it is about trying to identify the link workers and their role in the broader NHS to pass people on to get financial advice and so on that picks up on the key issues.

The six-monthly approach is incredibly important. It is about engaging with the NHS on its approach to identifying problems at an early stage. A fifth to a quarter of women who end up in homelessness do so because of domestic abuse, so it is also about engaging with the likes of Women’s Aid. If people are in hospital, it is about identifying that. If somebody has suffered domestic abuse, they might end up in hospital. How do we pick up on that? There are a number of occasions when we can.

The real issue comes back to that holistic approach and dealing with it at a much earlier stage. That is the incredibly important part of the issue. It also comes back to Roz McCall’s point about making sure that we are dealing with homelessness not just in urban settings but in rural settings. Early engagement and the holistic approach that the bill is pushing is incredibly important.

The prisons inspectorate would look at the SHORE standards with regard to specific points around the prisons.

We are in discussions with the Scottish Housing Regulator about what that scrutiny looks like, and building on that is one of the key things. You are right that there is no point in just saying that we are trying to get improvement. How do we evaluate that? How do we monitor that? That is the important part. For example, we talked with the Prison Service about remand prisoners. What does it need to do when prisoners are released early? What do we do about that? Again, some of that is about what the prisons inspectorate does and how we work with the housing regulator. We are in discussion with them about what happens at that particular moment. I will maybe ask Catriona MacKean or Matt Howarth to comment on that particular point. We are engaging with the housing regulator to ask how we evaluate and monitor that.

Again, some of the key things will be about getting figures from the local authorities and engaging with them on a local basis about how important that is. We are in discussion with the housing regulator to make sure that the standards that we expect—and how we measure and evaluate them—will be part of the discussions going forward.

I do not know whether Catriona MacKean or Matt Howarth have anything to add on that.

You will know from dealing with people when they arrive at that point that nobody wants to be homeless. Some people arrive there very quickly for various reasons. One of the key aspects of the wider discussions that we have had with the likes of the Scottish Prison Service is how we deal with prisoners who are leaving prison. If we do not deal with that, particularly for remand prisoners, they will end up sleeping on a friend’s couch or sleeping rough. One of the key things is to avoid that situation.

It is also about trying to engage with the NHS at a local level. It is not so much about discussing stigma as it is about making sure that, in dealing with people who are at that point, we give them the respect that they deserve, which comes back to the crux of the matter. We cannot have people leaving prison and going to sleep on a friend’s couch or sleeping rough. That is why we are trying to deal with remand prisoners in a way that solves that issue by changing the period from two months to six months.

It is the same when it comes to domestic abuse. Women suffer stigma because of domestic abuse. If we identify potential homelessness in domestic abuse cases over six months rather than two months, that will allow us to deal with such situations more quickly and manage them in the best way possible. We talked about the fund to leave, which was brought in. We worked closely with Women’s Aid on giving women the ability to leave by providing them with funds. It is about building on that work and managing the situation rather than people getting into a position where they quickly become homeless. It is literally a crisis situation at that particular point. The stigma issue is dealt with as part of the whole thing. It is about trying to plan as much as possible, and moving from the two-month period to the six-month period, as well as the legal obligations, gives us the ability to do that.

We have had round-table meetings, so the subject has been discussed. We have had two or three of those, if I remember correctly. There has been direct involvement of landowners.

Yes. It has to. I return to the point that all 32 local authorities are different. We need to try to get the right approach across Scotland.

We are talking about social landlords, but we have also had discussions with the private rented sector. As members will know, hundreds of thousands of landlords are involved in the PRS, so we have met the Scottish Association of Landlords to discuss its approach and it is aware of what it needs to look at. Discussions are on-going with the broader PRS when it comes to individual landlords or landlords who have a small number of properties. However, again, we are focusing and working on that with SAL, and it knows that it needs to develop that approach.