To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take in light of the findings of the ending homelessness together 2025 annual report. (S6O-05340)

The annual report shows that more action is needed to end homelessness, but it demonstrates important progress and a significant step up in the past year. By September 2025, 31,064 affordable homes had been completed towards our target. In 2024-25, we invested more than £120 million in homelessness prevention and anti-poverty measures, which helped people to remain in their homes. We introduced new homelessness prevention legislation to ensure that people get the support that they need prior to presenting as homeless and at crisis point. In September, we published a housing emergency plan, which included a commitment to invest up to £4.9 billion in affordable homes in the coming four years.

Crisis, the homelessness charity, has noted that the current homelessness system is not sustainable, but there is a desire to do more preventative work across public sector bodies that have responsibilities.

The Cabinet secretary previously described the prevention duties contained in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 as having the potential to be the “gold standard”. What commitment can she provide that the Government will take the learning from the pilots that are taking place in relation to the delivery of new duties in order to implement the legislation as soon as possible and in the best way possible?

I am absolutely committed to ensuring that learning is taken from the pilots. A pilot process, which is being supported by Advice Direct Scotland and which covers health and justice sectors and local authorities, will inform the effective implementation of the duties, which is what Emma Roddick is rightly calling for.

To enable all of this, the pilots will report at quarterly intervals and at the end of this calendar year. We are commissioning independent research to help to estimate the impact of the duties on public bodies and others and to inform the drafting of the guidance and the secondary legislation, which will be critical. The duties are the gold standard and have the potential to transform our approach to ending homelessness.

I am afraid that the annual report exposes the Scottish National Party’s continued failure to get a grip of Scotland’s housing emergency. Record numbers of households remain stuck in temporary accommodation, and the number of people who are rough sleeping continues to rise. I hope that the Cabinet secretary shares my view that it is disgraceful that, while we are in the chamber today, 10,000 children are growing up without the security of a permanent home. All the while, councils are left struggling as a result of the savage cuts that the SNP Government has made to council budgets.

Prevention is key, but we also know that, in order to end homelessness, we need to ensure that the supply of homes meets the demand. I have asked the cabinet secretary this question before, and I will ask it again: if the Government is hellbent on dismantling the housing sector brick by brick, how does she believe that the Government will reach its target of providing 110,000 affordable homes by 2032?

As is quite often the case, Meghan Gallacher’s characterisation of the Government’s approach is incorrect, and she has misrepresented how we are viewed by many of the stakeholders with whom I work.

We are taking action on the issue across the board. Temporary accommodation is available as a vital safety net, but let us not forget that most people in temporary accommodation throughout Scotland are in local authority properties while they await a permanent home. I want the time that people spend in temporary accommodation to be shorter, but, nonetheless, that provision provides a vital safety net.

We are taking action, as set out in our housing emergency action plan, not least through the continued delivery of affordable homes. We are also making available £80 million this year for councils to buy homes and make them available for families.