John Lamont

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on doing so well in the private Member’s Bill ballot and on bringing forward this Bill. He first brought his Affordable Homes Bill to this House back in 2014. While we have many differences on what the remedies to this challenge might be, his persistence on this issue deserves respect. As the House knows, the planning provisions in this Bill would not apply in Scotland, where housing and planning are devolved to the Scottish Government, but the problems that it tries to tackle do not stop at the border. Families in the Scottish Borders face the same struggle as those in west Cornwall. Young people cannot find a home in the town that they grew up in, and key workers cannot live where they work. Communities need new homes, but they find the system stacked against them. I will use this debate to set out what that looks like in the Scottish Borders and the lessons that it holds for both Governments. Let me start with the scale of the problem. In 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national housing emergency. More than two years on, the figures continue to head in the wrong direction. In the year to March 2026, some 17,268 new homes were completed in Scotland, almost 2,000 fewer than in the year before. Completions of affordable homes fell to their lowest level in a decade. In the year to June, social sector completions were at their lowest level since 2007. The SNP Scottish Government have promised 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. By the end of June this year, 36,518 had been delivered—barely a third of that target. Shelter Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Chartered Institute of Housing say that Scotland needs almost 15,700 social and affordable homes every single year, but less than half of that number are being delivered. Behind those numbers are real families. At the end of September last year, some 10,480 children in Scotland were left living in temporary accommodation. That is more than 10,000 children without a safe, reliable and stable place to call home. It does not have to be that way. When the SNP Government cut the affordable housing budget in 2024, housing associations and councils explicitly warned them of the serious consequences of that decision. They were right, but their warning went ignored at the time, and while funding has since been restored, we cannot get back the years wasted or the projects stalled or abandoned.