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Auditor General, I notice that one of the audits that you are due to publish in May will be on the Scottish National Investment Bank, which, since it was formed in November 2020, has had two permanent chief executives and an interim one. The current chief executive is about to retire, which means that the bank will soon be on its fourth chief executive in less than five years. That is an issue.

I know that you cannot tell us exactly what will be in the audit, but I wonder what level of detail it will go into. Are you looking at individual investments made by the bank and the value for money that they represent? Is that the kind of thing you are looking at?

Okay. So you will be looking at things such as the condition of the police estate, and what are, in a lot of cases, crumbling police stations—

Before I move on, convener, I wonder whether other members want to come in.

Okay. As I said earlier, these schemes can use up an awful lot of public money. Is your report going to look at who is responsible for spending that money and developing the schemes?

Will the report look at the number of health boards and the value for money that that represents?

I would like to ask for some clarity. Sarah Boyack talked about creating a national register. What level of detail would that go into? I presume that that would not be a register that names individuals as being homeless but would, rather, be a register that collects the numbers of homeless people. Have I got that right?

I would like some clarity. The minister says that he supports an amendment from Bob Doris, which is not being considered by this committee, so it will not be voted on today. He also mentioned amendment 1012, which was lodged by Alexander Stewart. To be clear, is the minister saying that he thinks that, if Mr Doris’s amendment is agreed to, Mr Stewart’s amendment is not necessary? We cannot know whether Mr Doris’s amendment will be agreed to, because it is not being considered today, and it is being considered by a different committee. If it is not agreed to—I am sure that it will be, but if it is not—will the minister be minded to support Mr Stewart’s amendment?

I am listening carefully to what the minister is saying. I do not think that Jamie Halcro Johnston is at all suggesting that somebody who goes out in the wilds for a walk and maybe takes a tent with them, with the intention of going home the next day, is rough sleeping. Surely the minister is not suggesting that.

I look forward to that engagement. Looking at section 42, which is very short, I can immediately see that, if the minister was prepared to work with me at stage 3, we could easily add to the phrase,

“the needs of persons in the area”,

the words “including students”. That is a suggestion. If the minister really is willing to work with me, I will work with him. He knows that. I take the issue extremely seriously, and I will come back to it at stage 3. Today, however, I will not press amendment 1003.

Amendment 1003, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 1004 and 1005 not moved.

Section 42 agreed to.

Before section 43

Amendment 1088 not moved.

Section 43—Local authorities etc: consideration of domestic abuse

Amendment 1013 not moved.

Amendment 1022 moved—[Maggie Chapman].

I want to start by welcoming the minister back to the committee. I am glad to see that he is looking well. We were all quite concerned when we heard that he had health problems, so it is really good that he is back.

I have ditched my two hours’ worth of speaking notes for this group of amendments, and I hope that that wins some support from the committee. [Laughter.]

It is quite simple. Section 42 deals with housing strategies. I mentioned the report that the cross-party group on housing produced on student homelessness. One of the recommendations from that report was that councils’ local housing strategies should include student housing. It might surprise people to hear that, at the moment, they do not. In a city such as Edinburgh, where there are thousands of students, as I mentioned earlier, there is no requirement for that to be reflected in the local housing strategy. You might think that that is quite incredible. There is an opportunity in the bill to rectify that.

As many other members have done, I have had discussions with the minister, so I think that I know what he is going to say, but we will let him say it. Amendment 1004 says that housing strategies should include consideration of student provision. Amendment 1003 is a technical amendment that is consequential to amendment 1004. Amendment 1005 merely spells out what we mean by “student residential tenancy”.

There we go. That was short and sweet. My amendments are very simple and very sensible, and I hope that the minister will see the common sense in them. If he does not support them now, perhaps I can persuade him to do so at some later point.

I move amendment 1003.