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I come back to indicators. Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the provision that Mark Griffin secured through the Housing (Scotland) Bill. Is that where you are going to start to delve into what your indicators might be?

Yes—the efficiency standard.

On the conversations that you are having with the UK Government about its warm homes plan and the lack of clarity, you talked about the unknown with regard to the electricity and gas link. Delinking electricity prices from international gas prices would radically transform our fuel poverty situation. Have you or Government colleagues had any conversations or discussions with the UK Government about the direction of travel on that?

You mentioned that quite a lot of other bits of secondary legislation will come out of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. It would be helpful for the committee to understand what you know now about what might come forward and at what time.

I have a final question on regulatory controls. I would be interested to get an update on the progress of the assessment of the regulatory controls relating to housing. This year’s programme for government includes a commitment to publish by the end of 2025 an action and implementation plan that is based on an assessment of the regulatory controls that exist in key growth sectors, starting with housing, public infrastructure and green industries, and designed to make it easier to do business, which is something you have been talking a bit about. Do you have any updates on that?

It is great to hear that you are doing that. Some of the amendments that I lodged at stage 2 were about unlocking land for housing, so it is good that you have picked that up.

You will be happy to know that that concludes our questions for this morning. It is good to have had you before the committee to talk about your portfolio and to get a bit more detail of where you are going with it, as well as on the cladding work that you are doing. Many thanks for joining us this morning.

As we previously agreed to take the next items in private, that concludes the public part of the meeting.

Certainly. That leads on to the next point that I wanted to raise. What prompted the Government to launch the open call at this stage in the process—I guess that that is part of the expansion that you talked about—and what information does the Government hold on buildings with potentially flammable cladding? We would be particularly interested in the data provided by the 2021 inventory of high-rise buildings and the subsequent evidence that was gathered.

It was a very helpful answer, and it brings to mind an issue that the committee as a whole has been exploring since it first came up in one of our first sessions on cladding. You said that the responsibility for dealing with RAAC lies with the home owner—the differentiation that you made in that respect was helpful.

I can imagine that home owners do not necessarily know what their homes are made of. We have been discussing in the committee whether we need to get something set up so that people will know not necessarily the tiny details that go into homes but the general products. It would be something to ensure that, when people buy a home, they know what they are buying and whether there is RAAC in it or it is clad in a particular material. That would let people start to understand that they are not just buying a home but they need to maintain and operate it in a particular way because of the materials that are involved.

That is a different way of looking at a home. Many people are used to just buying a home and living in it, but we are moving in a new direction in which we are exploring things such as the Passivhaus approach. The point that is coming up is that we need to learn how to maintain and operate homes—not just to clean the gutters but to understand in a bit more detail what we are living in. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Because it is a live document and a live approach, we would be interested to get a sense of how you intend to monitor implementation of the plan. It seems that you are using a two-pronged approach of tackling the initial pressures, along with long-term investment. What can you say about monitoring implementation and the impact? What indicators will you use to assess whether the housing emergency is actually reducing?

It is good to hear you say that you have your eye on the 10 per cent target for rural and island housing. I will ask for your thoughts on whether the rural and islands housing fund will move into a multiyear pot. There are situations in which housing is built for future proofing; there are different approaches to how the fund is used. I have encountered communities that are building high-quality housing that is future proofed and which helps us to lower our carbon emissions, whereas other housing does not go as far as that. I know that the fund was reviewed recently, but my sense is that we might need to consider reviewing it again to look at whether more money could be put towards designs and projects that support the reduction of carbon emissions.

Some rural communities that have been given the funding do not have a wind turbine or something that generates an income that allows them to keep a project officer on. They have money for the housing, but they do not have money to keep the project officer from one year to another. We desperately need a pipeline of housing in rural and island communities, and we are giving money through the fund, but we are not making that easy, and that is a block that we need to address. I wonder whether you have your eye on that situation, given that you have your eye on delivering the 10 per cent target—and I would say that the figure should be at least 10 per cent.