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Will the member take an intervention?

I do not know why that always happens when I stand up.

Scotland’s national housing emergency has numerous causes, some of which were enumerated by Ben Macpherson. When we speak of housing, we are all speaking of having a right to a home. First, I will give some background. Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy helped many former social housing tenants to get onto the housing ladder. It was a good idea at the time, but it destroyed the supply of council houses for rent. That is still having an impact today, although the SNP Scottish Government got rid of the policy.

Scotland’s population has risen from just over 5 million at the start of the 21st century to 5.4 million in 2022. Furthermore, our ageing population means that there are many more single-person households, which is impacting on the number of new houses that are needed. In Scotland, there are at least 2,509,300 single households.

The effects of the 2008 financial crash, exacerbated by the austerity measures that were introduced by the Tory-Liberal coalition Government from 2010, then the Tory Government from 2015, and now being continued by Labour—goodness knows what Rachel Reeves’s budget will say—are having an impact. There is also the impact of Brexit on the cost of construction materials and the supply of workers, which I think Anas Sarwar conceded. Those are some of the economic realities. As a result, the average cost of building a new house in Scotland is nudging towards £200,000, which must impact the Scottish Government’s affordable housing programme. I have been advised that, in the Borders, that estimate can reach £500,000. Smaller rural developments are costly, as Rhoda Grant referenced.

I have local and national suggestions for the Scottish Government. Locally, in the Borders, £8 million was returned to the Scottish Government as the council could not proceed, through housing associations, with new builds within the contractual timescale. Some reasons that were given were costs of materials exceeding original estimates and lack of construction workforce. That £8 million was then not available to renovate some of the 200 houses currently empty in the Borders. Flexibility over the use of that funding would have been good.

Nationally, the Scottish Government has three key priorities: economic growth, eradicating child poverty and tackling climate change. That can be achieved in part by maximising investment in new house building.

The £200 million cut to the Scottish Government’s housing budget that was made in December 2023 should be reversed. I suggest reversing the decision on the active travel budget, which has about the same amount of funding. It is a hard choice to make, but, respectfully, I suggest that the Government puts housing first.

The Scottish Government could authorise and encourage local councils and housing associations to build new houses for sale as well as for rent. The surplus income from sales should then be used to subsidise the costs of building new houses for social rent.

The Scottish Government and, indeed, local authorities could invest some of the £20 billion of available pension funds money in building at least 100,000 houses for rent. I understand that funding mechanisms are already in place in parts of the UK that protect those investments. At the end of the borrowing period, I understand that the ownership of the houses reverts to the Government or local authority without any need for additional payment.

Another issue is the workforce. On 17 May 2024, the Construction Industry Training Board in Scotland published a report stating that an extra 5,220 workers a year will be needed to meet the continued construction growth expected over the next five years. For almost a third of construction employers, as has been mentioned, finding suitably skilled staff remains a key challenge, particularly with more older workers retiring and not being replaced.

There are local and national problems and solutions. If the Scottish Government priority is to eradicate child poverty, where better to start than with affordable homes for rent in the public sector? That is where I started.

As for economic growth, that would go hand in hand with that investment. In Scotland, such a programme could create more than 30,000 new jobs, more than £500 million additional income from construction taxes, more than £1 billion savings to the NHS—because a bad home or no home leads to illness—and £1 billion savings from the reduction in homelessness.

In conclusion—this is quite controversial—transport is considered to be so important that it has a dedicated cabinet secretary. We have a fundamental right to a home. I cannot follow why housing does not have a dedicated seat at the Cabinet table.

It is essential that we focus on the individual. As the cabinet secretary will remember, he recently visited the Borders general hospital with me to learn about hospital at home. The clue is in the name. At that time, 16 patients were opting for that, freeing 16 beds, and there was more than 90 per cent patient satisfaction, mainly from elderly people. Can that be rolled out further, to increase patients’ options?

Will the member give way?

I say to Mark Griffin that speaking up for Scotland’s pensioners is never wasted time.

In 2005, when Labour and the Lib Dems were in power here—and Labour was in power in Westminster—Labour led a debate on closing the opportunity gap. I focused on pensioner poverty, with one in five pensioners then living in poverty. Then, as now, the solution was a decent state pension. That, of course, as my state pension is, is subject to tax, if relevant, but then—as now—the UK state pension, compared to those in other European nations, including Norway, the Netherlands and Iceland, was abysmal. Then, as now, UK pensioners were forced to claim pension credit. Then, as now, the figure for those not claiming was more than 30 per cent. Some 20 years on, the figure for non-claimants is just under 40 per cent, so it has increased.

Therefore, Labour knew those figures then, as it knows them now, and those were, no doubt, factored into the savings that it would make, knowing that millions of pensioners will fall foul of pension credit rules. That was bad enough, but now it denies them their very basic right to their winter fuel payment. The online application form is bad enough, but I have the paper form here—all 24 pages of it, with 24 pages of notes. Here are some samples of the questions. On page 23, one of the questions is:

“Have you claimed Tax Credits in the last 12 months?”

If the answer is no, you go to question 102. Further down the same page, question 111 asks:

“Do you or your partner pay ground rent for the place where you live?”

If you answer yes, it says, “Please send us proof”. There are loads of questions such as that—they are bewildering. It is no wonder that people do not fill in the form. It is set up for people to fail to claim. No wonder applications are desperately low. On top of that, if you survive the application form and get to the end of the 24 pages, you might just be above the cut-off point.

By the way, when I received my winter fuel payment, like many other comfortably-off pensioners, rather than return it to the Treasury, I donated it to charities, many of which are necessary because of successive decades of austerity.

According to Independent Age, in my constituency 1,445 pensioners do not claim pension credit and 92 homes in Midlothian and 133 homes in the Borders will go cold, just because they do not claim pension credit. Of course, those figures are only for those who are entitled to pension credit.

To add insult to injury, in energy-rich Scotland, we have higher energy costs and colder, longer and darker winters, and we are losing this vital support as a result of a cruel policy that was dreamed up in the balmy home counties. Oddly enough, if you live abroad you will still get the winter fuel payment if you claim pension credit. Maybe we should all move to sunny Spain.

Seriously, in Scotland, there will be excess illnesses and even deaths. Shame on Labour—Labour, which I thought was for the people. It is not for the people. It looks after itself, but it will not look after Scotland’s pensioners. Shame on the 37 Scottish Labour MPs, who know the score but failed to speak up for Scotland’s pensioners. There is no need to wonder why there was not a single cheep about this in its manifesto, when it was obviously planned. If it had been in the manifesto, I do not think that there would be 37 Scottish Labour MPs.

Will the member take an intervention?

That is very gentlemanly of you, Mr Whitfield.

I beg your pardon, Presiding Officer. The member is a gentleman. Does he think that making the winter fuel payment dependent on claiming pension credit is the right thing to do for Scotland’s pensioners? Yes or no?

I just want to say that the member actually does not benefit from that change, because his tax goes up accordingly.

I declare an interest as the golden eagle champion—not many members know that.

The South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project in my constituency has increased the number of golden eagles in the south of Scotland from 10 to nearly 50 over six years, with relatively small calls on public money. It has now advised me that it is at serious risk of closure at the end of the year unless it can access new sources of funding. Will the First Minister look into the matter to ensure that that valuable project, which has increased the population of an iconic bird, can continue?