Dr Scott Arthur

I thank the Minister for her statement. I hope she will accept my apologies for being a little bit late; I missed the first few seconds of her statement, although I have read it. In a few hours’ time, I will be getting the train back to Scotland. This is a place where Scottish Labour recently forced the Scottish Government to declare a housing emergency, made worse by the fact that they had cut the affordable housing budget in Scotland by 37% between 2023 and 2025. Hundreds of households are in hostels and B&Bs in Edinburgh. We are now in the crazy situation where the council will use tourist tax income to build houses to move homeless people out of B&Bs and into those houses so that tourists can actually get in the B&Bs where they should be—it is absolutely incredible. I am sure that my constituents will be listening to the Minister’s statement with envy and thinking about how that money could be spent in Scotland if the Government there had the same kind of ambition. The Minister will know that one of the categories of the homeless that people are most concerned about is veterans. She talked about public services and public institutions, and I know the Ministry of Defence is doing great work to prevent veterans from becoming homeless and supporting them when they do. Does the Minister’s strategy connect with what the MOD is doing?