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I am aware of Shelter’s criticisms, and I would very much welcome having further dialogue with it and, indeed, with other agencies—I know that Citizens Advice Scotland has been discussing the same issues—and hearing their ideas about what more we can do.

That said, I draw attention to the significant amount of work that we have done as we have developed the new deal for tenants and in our particular focused activity around the 2022 act. I am talking not just about conventional news releases and other activity across conventional media but about a wide range of social media content. For example, the renter’s rights website has been updated and advertised widely, and we have made wider cost of living information available through general practice surgeries, libraries, community centres and leisure centres. That information has included numbers and contact details for organisations that can offer individual advice and support, not just generic information about the legislation’s provisions, and of course it includes Shelter and Citizens Advice Scotland.

There has also been direct communication through key partner organisations such as tenant and landlord representative bodies, social and local authority landlords and educational establishments, giving tenants the information that they need about the new legislation and telling them how to access more information, should they need it. We have also had direct communication with registered landlords via local authority text message alerts and with registered letting agents, and there has also been engagement with the three tenancy deposit schemes to facilitate dissemination of information to tenants who are registered on their newsletter. There have also been direct messages to an extensive list of stakeholders, including colleges, universities and purpose-built student accommodation providers, confirming the nature of the measures and giving information for tenants.

As I have said, though, we continue to be very open to further suggestions about what more we can take forward on this. I know that, particularly as changes come through, landlords as well as tenants will continue to have questions about what those changes will mean for them, and we are keen to ensure that they have access to the answers that they need.

I begin by reinforcing my earlier answer to Miles Briggs about the pattern of evictions in different tenures. For quite a long time, eviction from the private rented sector was extremely dominant as a source of new homelessness. That began to come under control, but it remained high before the pandemic. The emergency regulation that was brought in at the start of the pandemic significantly reduced that. After that time, and before the introduction of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, we saw a steady and very marked increase in homelessness from the private rented sector. We did not see that same effect in social housing that is provided by either local authorities or registered social landlords. We recognise that something significant and harmful has happened regarding the sources of homelessness.

We took the view that the economic situation has not markedly changed since the introduction of the legislation. There is a necessity to give a level of protection, not only by pausing evictions to allow people more time to find new accommodation but by having significant measures to create disincentives for unlawful eviction, which remains a serious problem in Scotland. Landlords previously faced a very low level of penalty, which meant that they did not find it to be a disincentive.

We have made it easier and more relevant for tenants who are faced with unlawful or unreasonable eviction to take action to protect themselves from that. We believe that both the moratorium and the additional protections that are provided by the measures against unlawful eviction remain necessary in the current circumstances. The concerns that other members have raised about the availability of rented housing in some parts of the country reinforce the necessity of those measures.

I am not aware of recent contact from the universities on that issue.

What you mean by the rent freeze period is a matter of interpretation. Under the previous legislation, a rent increase notice is the mechanism by which a landlord increases the rent. That action cannot take place inconsistent with the cap from 6 September onwards until or unless the cap is removed or changed.

The legislation has been exactly as successful as I thought it would be. When it was introduced, I welcomed the fact that something was being tried, but I was sceptical whether rent pressure zones would be enough to solve the problem.

There is a lack of data available to local authorities. We know that none of them has taken forward such a zone; the reason is that local authorities do not have the data to justify it, and they could be exposed to the threat of legal challenge if somebody argued that a zone was a disproportionate interference in landlords’ rights. As we develop our longer-term proposals for reforming the rented sector, including a national system of rent controls, we need to fill in the data gaps that exist.

If rent pressure zones had been put into practice and we had seen them work, we might be in a very different position. In my view, the bill that provided for RPZs was unlikely to be successful. RPZs were unlikely to be put into practice and therefore unlikely to reduce anyone’s rent, and that is what has come to pass.

We are now in a situation where, as I have said, some landlords are being very responsible and have tried to protect tenants from rent increases, whether during the cost of living crisis or the years of the pandemic. However—and I am sure that members from across the country are aware of this—others are imposing eye-watering rent increases. I will be far from the only Glasgow MSP who has heard from tenants who are seeing 20, 30 or 40 per cent increases, which are simply unmanageable, unaffordable and unsustainable and will not take place under this legislation.

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.