PE1827, lodged by Chloe Bird, is on the provision of support for first-time buyers in areas with higher house inflation. It calls on the Scottish Government to increase the help-to-buy threshold to £250,000 and to extend the deadline for the first home fund.
The committee has received a response from the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning in response to its questions from our meeting on 25 November 2020. The petitioner was invited to respond but has not responded to date.
The extent to which we support people and how the effectiveness of the purpose of the policy of the Scottish Government or whoever is affected by economic change is an interesting issue. There is no doubt that, in some areas, house prices have gone up post-lockdown, simply because there was a backlog of people who were able to move, but that might change again; we do not know.
I am interested to hear members’ views, starting with Tom Mason.
Getting first-time buyers and young people into the housing market has always been and will, I think, continue to be an issue. There is undoubtedly an increasing expectation that housing should be provided, although I am of an age that I can recall when taking on the parents’ house up to quite old age was common, so in some ways I am quite envious of the situation.
The situation is as it is, but I think that the petitioner has managed to achieve quite a bit of what they asked for, in as much as the first home fund has been extended and the threshold has been increased to £250,000. Progress has been made and, at this stage, I do not think that the petition can achieve too much more than that. The petitioner can always open up a new petition when things settle down in the new session of Parliament, so I think that it is appropriate for us to close it at this stage.
I agree with everything that has been said. It is an important issue. In my constituency, there is a real issue with first-time buyers, although there is help out there for such people.
I think that Tom Mason is absolutely right. The petitioner’s proposals have been met, and I do not think that there is anything further that the Public Petitions Committee can do, so I agree that we should close the petition.
I agree with my colleagues’ comments. It is an extremely difficult area. We are short of housing in general, so we need to build more of it, including affordable homes. At this stage, I have no option other than to recommend that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of the standing orders, and that we make sure that the appropriate bodies are made aware of the need that our nation has for such support.
Thank you very much. First, I am encouraged by the fact that the petitioner’s proposal for the deadline for the first home fund to be extended to March 2022 has been met. Secondly, the minister has explained why the current threshold is at £200,000 and has said that an evaluation of the scheme will be considered in 2021. I think that that will be important because, at that point, I hope that there would be engagement on the issue of house prices in different parts of the country and the consequences of house inflation.
I am content for us to close the petition on the basis that I am absolutely confident that the question of the balance when it comes to how we subsidise housing will be part of future parliamentary discussions. It is a question of how we build houses, how we build houses for social rent, how we support first-time buyers and how we get the balance between those right in a housing market that will be complicated by the pandemic. I am absolutely sure that that will be discussed in the new session of Parliament as part of any Covid recovery. However, as has been said, progress has been made. We know that if progress does not continue to be made in the future in Parliament, the issue could perhaps form the subject of a petition to our successor committee at a later stage.
We thank the petitioner for highlighting such important issues. I have no doubt that she will continue to pay attention to Government policy in that regard and to ensure that it is the focus of political attention. We thank her for her involvement.
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