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I am grateful to the committee for allowing us to speak this morning. I also put on the record my gratitude to the Government for its co-operation in this area, and I am very thankful to Crisis for the engagement that I have had with it.

As committee members will be well aware, I served as the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning from 2016 to 2021. At that point, I commissioned an expert group led by Jon Sparkes, the former chief executive of Crisis, to recommend short and long-term solutions to ending homelessness in Scotland. That group—the homelessness and rough sleeping action group—asked the Government to revise laws that act as barriers to people getting the help that they need to prevent and resolve homelessness.

One of the pieces of legislation that the Scottish Government agreed to revise was the test for intentionality. Following a formal consultation period, I was proud to introduce the changes that led to the provisions on intentionality becoming a power and not a duty, which Maggie Chapman mentioned.

That change gave local authorities the discretion to investigate whether a household had brought about their own homelessness. Crucially, it ensured that some form of accommodation and housing support was available for those few folk who were found to be intentionally homeless.

I am pleased to see that that change to the law back in 2019 has made a real difference again, as Maggie Chapman highlighted in her speech. The expert group that I mentioned—HARSAG—consulted through the “Aye We Can” consultation with many people with lived experience of homelessness in Scotland. It heard from many groups of people, including LGBT+ people, who reported that the intentionality test was a major barrier to getting support and that there was a lack of understanding of the realities of family breakdowns when they were coming out.

In my humble opinion, convener, it makes no sense to put legal barriers in front of people who are in housing crisis and who need help to remain in their homes. That is why I have lodged amendment 1032 and the related amendments 1033 to 1035, 1037 to 1039, 1046 and 1048 to remove intentionality as a consideration in a case where someone is threatened with homelessness.

We should all unite on this issue. I hope that the Government will continue to co-operate and make that a reality. Finally, I once again thank Crisis for its input and engagement, and I urge members to support the amendments.

I wonder whether Mr Balfour could let us know, here and now, which parts of those amendments and which definitions he has a difficulty with.

As I said in my comments, I would like everyone in this Parliament to unite around this issue. I am willing to work with anyone in order to reach a point where we can deal with an issue that has caused great difficulty for many people across the country—many fewer people than previously, but we still have a way to go to improve it.

My plea to Mr Balfour and to others is, if there are genuine difficulties around definitions or technicalities or whatever it may be, I am willing to work with anyone to get it right.

I do not want to speak for Crisis, but I note that it has a representative in the public gallery. I have found the input of Crisis in all of this to be immensely beneficial. People might therefore want to take the time out to talk to it and engage with it on the subject.

This is an extremely important debate, as I think that we are seeing in this room today.

First of all, I say to Mr Balfour that his colleague to my left, Mr Simpson, knows that I am someone who does not like unintended consequences and will go through things with a fine-toothed comb. There has been discussion today about folks’ own experiences of local government and how lists work and do not work in certain places. The fact is that we have different situations in different places.

However, the one key thing is the people aspect, as Ms Chapman has rightly said. Mr Doris talked about case studies; it would be difficult to put some uniform case study together, but I have to say that it can be brutal to listen to the voices of lived experience who have faced a knock-back, because of intentionality. I am not going to relay cases in the here and now—we will all have seen them in our casework to one degree or another. What we have to realise is that, after some of the trauma that folk have gone through, they do not necessarily want to tell the world about it.

I think that we need to get to a logical position here. I recognise that some folk think that there might be unintended consequences, but I also think that we all have a duty to work together to get this right.

Good morning, minister. I have a general question. In your discussions with the UK Government on the bill, has the Scottish Government taken the opportunity to reinforce its wish that all employment law be devolved to this Parliament?

I am sure that you will keep trying.

The hike in employer national insurance contributions was one of the top things on the agenda for Michies pharmacy. I will not go there today—we all know how damaging the NIC hike is. I want to look at some other issues. Sometimes, they are not the fault of Government per se, but we have not set the parameters well enough when it comes to dealing with business.

Bureaucracy gets a lot of business folk down. It seems that bureaucracy grows to a greater degree in certain parts of the country, and in certain public bodies, than in others. Let us stick with the pharmacy scenario, where data sharing is often a problem—Dr Malik may be more aware of that than me or anyone else. If somebody has come into a pharmacy for treatment to save them going to their general practitioner, data sharing can often be a problem. That is particularly the case in some parts of the country, although not in others.

How can we cut down on that bureaucracy, particularly if it has been built up by public bodies that seem to apply their own rules? How do we get this right for everyone and save business a huge amount of difficulty? Perhaps the Deputy First Minister could answer that first, and then Dr Malik.

Good morning to the witnesses. I want to tease out your comments on cross-Government working.

Public health and the economy have been mentioned. I want to look at pharmacies. I visited a pharmacy in my constituency a couple of weeks ago. Discussion, of course, was about health issues and how pharmacies have been delivering more services. That conversation got into non-domestic rates and the hike in employer national insurance contributions, although that is an issue that is reserved to Westminster. It sometimes seems that there are no linkages between the likes of the health portfolio and the economy portfolio, and little policy changes can often make a huge difference to how a pharmacy operates and keeps its head above water.

My question is for the Deputy First Minister and Dr Malik. When policy decisions are being made in other portfolios, are people thinking about the impact on the economy as well as the impact on whatever policy area that portfolio covers—health, in my example?

Has there been any movement from the new UK Government to allow for the devolution of employment law?

Thank you. Dr Malik, do you have anything to add?

Thank you very much.