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The rent freeze measures do apply to end-of-tenancy rent increases. The central reason is that we already have that mechanism. Tenants have a right to challenge unreasonable rent increases during their tenancy and there is a requirement for increases to happen only once a year in the private rented sector and with three months’ notice. It is clear that we have the ability to intervene in a short period of time in response to the current emergency.

There is, of course, a longer-term argument, much of which was explored in the consultation on the new deal for tenants. The Government will address those questions in its longer-term legislative work on the private rented sector.

In many ways, that suggestion is slightly akin to the idea that all landlords will take the most exploitative or opportunistic approach. I do not think that that is true. The majority of landlords will obey the law and will not try to get around it and the majority of tenants will meet their responsibilities.

There is a concern that a minority of tenants might be tempted to stop paying their rent altogether, even when they can afford it. That is one reason why we thought long and hard about the exemptions from the eviction moratorium and decided, on balance, that there was a requirement to include severe rent arrears as a ground for exemption from that moratorium.

In my view, which we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon, tenants with rent arrears need support that is different to the interventions in the rest of the system. As the witness from Crisis said, they need direct support. Through the discretionary housing payments and the tenant grant fund, we have increased not only the amount of support that is available directly for tenants who are facing rent arrears, but the flexibility in the way that it can be offered. We will continue to look at how that might be developed further.

However, I think that the inclusion of the exemption from the moratorium will give landlords some confidence that there will not be that incentive for people to simply stop paying rent altogether. As I said, only a minority of people would ever be tempted to do that, but there will be no incentive. I think that I remember hearing John Blackwood welcome that measure as well.

I recognise that point, which has been made by some people who responded to the consultation on the new deal for tenants. If we were to try to incorporate that into the emergency legislation, we would be here a lot longer and would not have the emergency legislation in time to protect people. Some of these arguments will have to be built into the review of the existing grounds for repossession, the permanent legislation and our consideration of how we might alter that. However, your point is well made and the issue is certainly on our radar.

We will certainly keep the committee informed on timescales. If the updated research has not yet been made available, we will ensure that it is.

I think that we should all be concerned about the impact of housing policy and legislation on the housing sector and the housing systems that exist in our society. We should be concerned about provision and quality, and about people’s rights and the experience that they have as tenants. One of the longer-term goals of the Government is to close the gap in outcomes between the social and private rented sectors, because we regard adequate housing as a human right. That is the goal that we have.

Over the long term, in the past, there has been an increase in regulation in the private rented sector, which has gone alongside a substantial increase in the size of the private rented sector. The member mentioned some countries, but perhaps we can all choose the comparisons that we make selectively. There are other European countries with a higher level of regulation and long-standing systems of rent controls that have an even bigger private rented sector than Scotland. Therefore, it can be done properly and responsibly, making sure that we raise standards and that there is protection for tenants and tenants’ rights at the same time as making sure that our housing systems have an adequate supply of good-quality stock.

We have based some of the reporting requirements, as well as the provisions on the expiry or extension of the provisions in the bill, on a model that will be fairly familiar to those who followed the emergency coronavirus legislation.

It is important to acknowledge—the committee discussed this with the previous panel as well—that we are doing that having not yet dealt with some of the longer-term work that needs to be done on data in the private rented sector in particular. Aaron Hill made the point that we have more data, some of which is collected by the regulator, for the social rented sector. That is extremely useful, but we do not have that data in relation to the private rented sector. That is one of the reasons why the Government has a long-term goal not just to collect more data and have the mechanisms and machinery in place to do that, but to create a regulator for the private rented sector.

We will continue to monitor and report on the operation of the emergency legislation. We are conscious that some of the data that is being collected in real time is only going to come in as we are having to make decisions, so we want to work very closely with stakeholders, including those in the private, social and student accommodation sectors, to ensure that our decisions are informed by their expertise.

What we have been most keen to avoid is rent increase notices being issued in response to the announcement of the rent freeze policy. That is what the First Minister committed to and what we have managed to achieve. Rent increase notices issued after that date will be covered by the rent cap.

I do not think that it is possible to be more retrospective than that and go back in time to prevent rent increase notices that were issued in good faith under the rules as they stood before the announcement was made. I recognise that there are some people who will feel that all these measures go far too far and are too interventionist and others who will think that they do not go far enough and that we should be able to do a lot more. I think that we have struck the right balance in protecting tenants from rent increases that might have been prompted in response to the announcement without doing what would have been legally questionable and, I think, unfair in preventing the notices that were issued in good faith before the announcement having effect.

As we have discussed at some length in the chamber, a proposed late amendment to the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill—the purpose of which was to look at the coronavirus emergency legislation and decide which elements of that should be made permanent—proposed that a completely new provision be included that would have amounted to a near blanket rent freeze for a period of two years. As we debated in the chamber, very little argument was brought forward by the member who was behind those amendments to suggest that they were legally competent and ECHR compliant. That approach would have been much more clearly subject to legal challenge.

I am confident that we have now brought forward a bill that responds to an emergency situation in an appropriate and balanced way that reflects the interesting circumstances of both landlords and tenants.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to colleagues.

I am here to provide an update on the actions taken following my attendance at the committee on 1 March, when the committee considered the revised Scottish social housing charter.

In response to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s query about our consultation with secured creditors of registered social landlords or their representatives, the Accounts Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I can confirm that we wrote to all eight statutory consultees in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 to ensure that there was no dubiety about the compliance with the duty to consult on the charter. We sought their views on the revised charter and provided the same 12-week response period in line with the original full consultation. We received responses from all statutory consultees, including secured creditors of registered social landlords, UK Finance, the Accounts Commission, Audit Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The overwhelming response from all the statutory consultees was that they were content with the changes that had been made to the charter. In light of some additional comments that they provided, we have made some further minor changes to the version of the charter that the committee considered in March. We have added to the equalities outcome the need for landlords to eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity; revised the wording of the quality of housing outcome to provide additional clarity; changed the value for money outcome from a standard to an outcome; and highlighted the legal requirement to consult tenants on rents and service charges in the supporting narrative.

I trust that those actions provide the committee—as they have to the DPLRC—with assurances of compliance in relation to consultation with statutory consultees in the review of the charter.

The charter and the regulator’s reports provide an improvement framework for tenants and landlords to assess and compare landlord performance, and encourage landlords to deliver improved services for their tenants and other customers.

Finally, as I think I did in March, I want to place on record my thanks to the officials who have worked on what has proved to be a highly successful tool for improving services in the social housing sector, as well as my thanks to all those in the sector and others who have engaged with the consultations. I hope that the committee is content with the revised charter and that it will recommend that Parliament approve it.

The cladding stakeholder group meets regularly to explore such issues, engaging with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, UK Finance, the Law Society of Scotland and other organisations. The responsibility for the buying and selling of property needs to involve a proportionate approach, only requiring EWS1 for blocks that fall within the guidance from the RICS.

The system was put in place by the lending industry. Although we understand why that approach was taken, we believe that it must be applied proportionately. In Scotland, it is being applied flat by flat, rather than in relation to whole blocks. That is a result of the common ownership model that we have here, which David Blair was describing earlier.

However, we are working with stakeholders to try and ensure that they will accept a whole-building EWS1 as an output from the single building assessment process.