2. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the final report of the homelessness prevention review group. (S5O-05066)

We commissioned that work in response to the homelessness and rough sleeping action group’s recommendations for ending homelessness. We welcome the prevention review group’s recommendations, and we are grateful for the commitment of Crisis and other partners in delivering the report. I express my thanks to people with lived experience of homelessness, because of the vital role that their lived experience had in shaping the recommendations.

Shifting the balance of services and response towards prevention is more important than ever, given the current public health and rapidly developing economic crises. We will give full and proper consideration to the recommendations and will publish our formal response later this year.

The report includes many valuable contributions to the debate on how to prevent homelessness, and I hope that the Government will take its recommendations seriously. It would be good to know early on whether the Government intends—as has been recommended— to make permanent some of the emergency changes to the private rented sector that have been made as a result of coronavirus.

What additional measures does the Minister believe are necessary to strengthen the position of tenants in the private rented sector as part of the drive to prevent homelessness?

I completely and utterly agree with Mr Harvie that it is a valuable report. The Government will consider it and improve on our homelessness prevention legislation at the earliest opportunity.

We made that clear at the outset, when we commissioned the report in 2019. The recommendations are thorough and we will need to work through them to get the right legislation in place.

We will look to see how we can implement some of the measures that have been put in place during the pandemic period in normal, day-to-day business. For example, I would like pre-action protocols for the private rented sector to continue. I am sure that none of us wants a situation in which we put people in cliff-edge situations at the end of the pandemic. We must do all that we can to prevent homelessness as we move forward.

It would be useful if the UK Government did a U-turn and continued with the universal credit payments that are being made at the moment, looked more closely at housing benefit and got rid of the benefit cap. Those actions would help prevent homelessness without doubt, and I hope that the UK Government will do them.

Question 3 has been withdrawn.