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The point that you just made to Mr Doris and what the minister said to Meghan Gallacher highlight the concern that I have. Surely, in order to pass good legislation, you should consult COSLA and stakeholders first, and then work out what the legislation should be. We are doing this the other way round. You—and, to some degree, Mr Stewart—are saying, “Let’s pass the legislation, and then we will work out what it means and how it will work with COSLA.” My concern is that, in quite a number of areas in the bill, we are being asked to pass the principle without knowing the consequences of it. I worry when I hear that local authorities have not responded to your amendment, because it means that we do not know how it will work in practice, and the same is true, to some extent, with Mr Stewart’s amendments.

You almost took the words right out of my mouth, as Meat Loaf would say. We have not received purpose and effect notes from any of the other members. I also put on the record that I only received the Government’s purpose and effect document at 10 to 9 this morning—10 minutes before this meeting started—so I have not been able to reflect on that in any way at all. That is slightly disappointing, because we normally receive those documents 24 hours before the committee meets. It has been impossible—certainly for me—to be able to reflect on it. It has made it more difficult not to have had that before us earlier.

If we are going to talk about these documents, we need to make it clear that we have not received any from back benchers and that the Government’s document came too late to be able to examine it.

I will follow up on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s point. The powers that we are talking about have been in legislation for, in some cases, decades, but given that we are still facing problems day to day with young folk not getting appropriate accommodation, how will the duties be enforced? We can pass the best legislation in the world, but if it does not affect a child in Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow, why are we doing so? What will the Government actually do to ensure that children live in appropriate accommodation?

Accommodation in and of itself is important, but the right type of accommodation is as important. I lodged amendment 1015 because I want to look at the suitability of accommodation for people with some protected characteristics.

I will use the most extreme example. Somebody might be found a flat in Edinburgh but, if they have a wheelchair and there is no lift to the flat, putting them in it would mean that they would be housebound for the whole period. Yes, they would have suitable accommodation, in that they would have a roof over their head and would be dry and warm, but so much of the rest of their life would be restricted.

I am concerned that, because there is so little accommodation in many parts of our cities and rural areas, people are being placed in accommodation that does not fit their needs, whether they have children, are disabled, are older or have other protected characteristics. We need to ensure that we see a house not just as a place where people can be warm and dry—although, clearly, that is very important—but as a place where someone can function and lead as normal a life as possible, given the restrictions on them. I would be interested to hear what the minister has to say about that.

I support Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendments 1050 and 1060 although, depending on what she has to say about them, I might change my mind. I support Roz McCall’s amendment 1073 and look forward to hearing Maggie Chapman’s remarks on amendments 1070 and 1071.

I move amendment 1015.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the minister and his team of colleagues.

I will go through the amendments in the group. As I said in my earlier intervention, I am sympathetic to what Mr O’Kane is trying to do with amendment 1078. However, one of the issues with it, with those of Mr Griffin, and with a lot of the bill is that there are lots of carrots but not too many sticks. If we were to amend the legislation in this way, we would need to look at how it could be better enforced, because the only way open at the moment is full judicial review of a decision, or the lack of a decision by whoever was making it. I wonder whether amendment 1078 could be looked at again to see whether it might have other consequences, and I would make the same comment about Mark Griffin’s amendment 1053.

As for the rest of Mr Griffin’s amendments, I am sympathetic to what he is trying to achieve, but again I have some concerns, particularly about the lack of clarity in the wording with regard to age and how this would work, particularly for 17 and 18-year-olds. It depends on what the member wants to do, but I might be looking for him to bring the amendments back at stage 3 with slightly different wording. If that does not happen and he moves them today, I and my colleague will abstain, simply because the wording needs to be looked at and tightened up.

For the record, there is some concern at Crisis about the homelessness definition and the Government’s ability to change it through regulations. The Scottish Conservatives will support amendment 1047, because its intention is right, but I would like to have further discussions with the minister.

My intervention is similar to that of my colleague Megan Gallacher. I am not sure that I heard you address the issue. Would the amendments mean that, in practice, for a local authority, we would go down to one list? How would local authorities then work with that list in practice?

Depending on where we go this morning, I am unclear on what that actually means. What does that test mean? How would it be applied? One reason why we do not support the amendment is the lack of information around that. What does that mean for the average housing officer in how they deal with people? For that reason, we will not support amendment 1052.

I am very sympathetic, in some ways, to Mr Stewart’s amendments, which I know he has worked on with Crisis and the Scottish Government. However, I am still concerned about some of the wording in some of them. We still need to work a wee bit harder on getting definitions correct and getting things correct.

On this occasion, we will therefore abstain on all Mr Stewart’s amendments in this particular area, in the hope that, whether they are agreed to or not this morning, a wee bit more work can be done between stages 2 and 3, between all parties and with the third sector, to ensure that we end up with something that is not only good for those who are being threatened with homelessness, but workable for those who have to work with the system. I am not sure that we have quite got that balance right within those amendments.

I want to explore further the point that Mr Griffin made in his intervention about the Government’s proposed ability to redefine homelessness through regulation. We are making legislation not just for the current Government in this session of Parliament but for future Governments in future sessions of Parliament.

I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which spends a great deal of time looking at regulations. It is obvious from our work that regulations do not get the same scrutiny as primary legislation does. We do not know what a future Government might look like in five, 10 or 15 years’ time.

Will the minister tell me why there might be a need to introduce a new definition of homelessness via regulations? Why can we not simply include a definition in the bill? If a future Parliament or a future Government wants to change that, it should do so through primary legislation rather than through regulations.

Good morning. Thank you for having us along to give evidence.

The simple answer is that I am not wedded to that model at all. I see the funding of a disability commissioner’s organisation and how it functions as being the least important aspects of its operations. The disability community wants to have an independent voice on Government, health services and local government issues. How that organisation might be put together is a secondary consideration.

The reason for my going down the road that you have described was that that was the one that was taken for other commissioners in the past. At that point, it seemed logical to keep everything under the same roof, as it were. However, if the committee or the Parliament, either now or in the future, were to say, “Look—there’s a different way of doing this that would provide economic benefit or allow us to pool services,” that would not concern me. There are different ways of doing this, which we could perhaps explore later in the meeting. I am not wedded in any way to that one model.

You are right to say that there are existing models that work, and there might be others that you would like to explore. For me, the key issue is to get a disability commissioner in place and advocating on behalf of a community in Scotland that feels that it has been left behind and has, in practice, been left behind, both before Covid and certainly since then.