To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the “Housing Statistics for Scotland Quarterly Update: New Housebuilding and Affordable Housing Supply to end June 2025”. (S6O-05044)

The Scottish Government recognises the challenges that are set out in the latest housing statistics. That is why we have increased the 2025-26 housing budget to £808 million. We did that in September, when we doubled our funding for acquisitions to £80 million under the housing emergency action plan. That will help family homes to be acquired now to relieve evident pressure. We are also committing up to £4.9 billion over the coming four years, which is a major increase. An uptick in delivery will follow.

In 2018, Scotland saw 23,337 housing starts. This year, it is just 15,104, which is a 35 per cent collapse. Social sector starts are at their lowest level since 1997, when we started publishing the statistics. Since 2018, 3,435 more children have ended up in temporary accommodation and, tragically, 1,188 more people have died homeless.

How will the Cabinet secretary and the Government reverse that devastating trend? Does the Government have a target date for ending the use of hotels and bed and breakfasts as temporary accommodation for children?

The availability of temporary accommodation is a vital safety net under Scotland’s housing and homelessness legislation, but it ought to be just that—it ought to be temporary.

The actions that we have taken to date—not least the delivery of 140,000 affordable homes since we came into government, more than 100,000 of which have been for social rent—have meant that, in Scotland, we have access to 47 per cent more affordable homes per head than in England and 73 per cent more than in Wales. Despite that, Mark Griffin is right that there is considerable strain in the system. I do not want any children to spend longer in temporary accommodation than they need to. That is why, on 2 September, our housing emergency action plan committed to a number of actions to turn around that trend, including setting out multi-annual funding for affordable homes, record investment in affordable homes over the coming years and other changes, including changes to the planning system so that it facilitates the change that we are determined to see.

Mark Griffin has some nerve to stand in the chamber and criticise the Scottish Government’s action on tackling Scotland’s housing emergency when the Labour Administration of 2003 to 2007 completed only a dismal six council homes and was lacking in crucial innovation and collaboration with local authorities. Will the Cabinet secretary advise me how the Scottish Government’s ambitious investment in voids and acquisitions will empower local authorities to replenish existing housing stock to create permanent homes for hundreds of families throughout Scotland?

I very much welcome the question and the context. The new affordable homes that we have delivered since coming into government set us apart in the United Kingdom, but it is also important to put the stock that we have to better use.

Rona Mackay asks about voids and acquisitions. Since declaring a national housing emergency, we have brought almost 1,000 homes into affordable use through £40 million of targeted investments in acquisitions and through bringing social voids back into use. On 2 September, in the emergency plan that I mentioned, we doubled the fund for acquisitions to £80 million. We have asked councils to go out now to use that money to acquire homes that are on the market—family homes, which are needed to get children out of temporary accommodation—and relieve the pressure, and we will invest in home building at the same time.