Sir Tom Hunter and Lord Willie Haughey have both welcomed the Scottish Government’s intent to declare a national housing emergency. The SNP announcement came during a debate in Holyrood, with Ministers blaming UK Government budget cuts and austerity.
Joking that their Go Radio Business Show and The Herald had helped to motivate this new recognition, Lord Haughey said: “We and our partners at The Herald have made this a number one topic over the past seven months, so it’s great to see there’s been a climbdown by the Government after slashing the housing assistance budget by £196 million.
“I don’t want to pour cold water on this but the only reason it has recognised a national emergency is because all of the opposition parties were going to put forward a motion and the Greens would have backed it.
“So the SNP have done it because they had to.”
Sir Tom questioned how the Scottish Green party could offer its support for the emergency when its co-leader Patrick Harvie’s housing bill, in his opinion, had caused part of the housing problem.
“The contradiction in terms over a matter of weeks is frightening,” agreed Lord Haughey. “The Greens were going to side with the opposition about the emergency yet they are part-architects of it.
“If I could give new First Minister John Swinney any advice at all, if he wants to sort the emergency, the first thing he has to do is can Patrick Harvie’s housing bill.”
Sir Tom pointed out there was a view the Greens are draconian in pronouncing: “Here’s what we’re doing. We don’t care about your point of view, here it is. We win, you lose, and that’s it.”
He added: “The only way we solve this – the only way things get done in the world – is if we both win. If I win and you lose, that isn’t really a win.
“It’s time for everybody to stand up and actually call it out. The only way business and government can win is to win together.”
Sir Tom cast doubt on the current position of the Scottish Greens’ co-leader, saying: “How can Patrick Harvie vote against his own bill?”
Lord Haughey responded: “It’s mind-blowing. But what I have said for months, and written about in newspaper columns and mentioned in this programme: Here is a fantastic opportunity for us to take two huge negatives and turn them into one huge positive.
“So we have climate change on one hand – and we all want to be green – and we’ve a housing emergency on the other. If we get really clever people in the room, I am telling you, there is a solution to this.”
Responding to Sir Tom’s praise for his own innovative build-to-rent initiative – a programme that aims to create tens of thousands of affordable, sustainable homes in Scotland – Lord Haughey said: “We have demonstrated the solution when it comes to building houses and how we can drive down the costs.
“If you want to move into one of our houses, you can move in for a month or for life and I can’t put you out. The rent will be way, way below average.”
He added: “I want to make this clear: we can only deliver a small portion of what Scotland needs. I’m delighted to show anybody what we’re doing and invite them to try to copy the model.
“We need about 100 small SME builders all to jump on board here because, if we are going to deliver the houses we need, we must start with the truth: we have delivered nothing like 124,000 affordable homes. We need about 25,000 homes a year at the moment just to catch up.”
Lord Haughey concluded: “If I was First Minister tomorrow, I would only have two things I’d be totally focused on. One is delivering 100% green energy into the homes of Scotland. The second is fixing the housing problem.”
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