TODAY’S WEATHER

☀️ It’s a bright day for Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness and London, with little chance of rain. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Warning on University funding | Government told off over FOI blocks | Burnham eyes up run against Starmer

📣 Scottish higher education needs to review its funding and scope if it’s to avoid “stumbling from year to year”, the outgoing principal of the University of Glasgow has said.

Sir Anton Muscatelli’s call comes ahead of a report from the Scottish Funding Council, to be published tomorrow, on the financial position of universities and colleges. (BBC)

📣 The Scottish Government has been reprimanded over its long-running attempts to block a freedom of information request.

The request, about discussions over a Supreme Court case on the legality of holding a second independence referendum without Westminster’s permission, was submitted in July 2022 but was repeatedly blocked.

The Information Commissioner has now ruled the Scottish Government was wrong to do so, and that it failed to provide sufficient evidence to support its decision. (The Herald has the exclusive £) (Read the decision)

📣 Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham continues on manoeuvres ahead of this year’s Labour Party conference, with him telling the Daily Telegraph that MPs have “privately called on him” to challenge Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.

He insisted he was not “plotting to get back” to Westminster, but said Number 10 had created a “climate of fear” among some MPs, and that people had been urging him on through the summer. (🎁 The Telegraph - gift link)

• Burnham’s latest comments follow an extensive interview with The New Statesman, in which he sets out his “plan for Britain”. It appears on the magazine’s cover this week. (New Statesman £)

IDEAS
Too far or not enough? Holyrood prepares to pass hugely popular measures to control rent, and landlords

🗣️ We’re in the middle of a housing emergency in Scotland: more than 31,000 households are homeless, with another 16,000 in temporary accommodation.

The declaration of the emergency in May 2024 did not, initially, seem to add up to much, but this week - some 18 months on - MSPs have some meat on which to chew: they’ve been debating The Housing (Scotland) bill, which would lead to rent controls in some areas, impose new duties on public bodies to do more to ensure people do not end up homeless, and introduce specific protections for the victims of domestic abuse, to ensure they don’t end up homeless.

According to polling commissioned by the Scottish Greens, rent controls and other protections against “rogue landlords” enjoy huge public support - 74% of people in Scotland want rent controls and 83% believe rents are too high relative to income.

Yet many campaigners say the measures being debated this week - loudly supported by the Greens and, at least in part, devised when they were still in government - don’t go far enough. Others say they go so far, they’ll collapse the home rental market. We’re about to find out who is right.

There are exemptions to the rent controls for mid-market rent and build-to-let homes, for instance, because of concerns they could suppress housebuilding.

But tenants’ union Living Rent told the BBC the exemptions “will create a two-tier system of rent controls that will leave huge portions of the private sector without recourse to challenge rent hikes.”They were also unhappy about above-inflation rent increases remaining legal.

"This bill has been gutted of its vision and potential and this government has totally conceded to the demands of landlords, watering down rent controls at every step of the way," Ruth Gilbert told the broadcaster.

The Scottish Conservatives have also spoken out against rent controls, calling them “reckless” and a threat to the housing supply by deterring investors and thus reducing the stock available to rent.

“It’s been over a year since the nationalists declared a housing emergency,” said shadow housing secretary Megan Gallacher, “which stemmed from their cuts to the affordable housing budget and introduction of rent controls. It defies belief that their response to the crisis is to do double down on one of its principal causes.”

Writing in The Times today, columnist Alex Massie also criticises rent controls, saying they show the government doesn’t understand the housing market. He credits housing minister Màiri McAllan with listening to concerns and introducing those exemptions for some forms of rental property, but “she forfeits all credit by failing to understand that if rent controls reduce the number of build-to-rent properties, it is also likely they will in time reduce the supply of properties in the sector overall.

“A disincentive for one type of landlord is going to be a disincentive for other kinds of property owners, too,” he writes.

McAllan has defended those controversial exemptions. “It was a clear recommendation of the Housing Investment Task Force that, if you want investment in mid-market rent, which comes under the bracket of an affordable home, then you have to allow the conditions to be right,” she told the Press Association.

“So we have more availability, this will drive affordability, making it easier for people to have choice – we know that’s how it works in a market.”

Scotland’s move to control rents is being carefully watched across the UK, and more widely, because a shortage of housing isn’t a problem restricted to Scotland The prize is big: McAllan says the goal is a much bigger housing stock, but also one that is affordable.

The risks are also huge: get it wrong and private landlords, letting out property those who can’t afford to get on the housing ladder, will leave the market and be replaced by private owners.

Massie says it’s another piece of Holyrood legislation that won’t work. “There is only one sensible answer to the housing crisis and it is made of concrete and steel,” he writes. “‘Build, baby, build’” is the only mantra worth even half a damn,” he says.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A young footballer has told how she lay on the pitch for five hours last weekend waiting for an ambulance after badly breaking her leg. Call handlers advised that Brooke Paterson, 19, shouldn’t be moved, but also said her case was not an emergency. That left her prone on the turf, wrapped in jackets, as darkness fell. The Scottish Ambulance Service has now apologised for the delay, which they blamed on “high demand”. (BBC)

📣 New National Trust of Scotland chair, Dame Sue Bruce, says the body may need to sell some of its lesser-visited properties to keep the charity sustainable, despite “two to three bumper years”. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 The SNP has denied claims they’ll strike a deal with Reform UK over the forthcoming Scottish budget. John Swinney had appeared to suggest he’d ask Reform to back the final budget before next year’s Scottish elections. (Scotsman)

📣 Police investigating human remains found near Loch Lomand are now searching for the dead man’s missing neighbour. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Putin wants to expand his war into Europe, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky warned the UN General Assembly, calling on the UN to help halt “the most destructive arms race in human history”.

“Putin will keep driving the war forward, wider and deeper,” Zelensky said. “We told you before: Ukraine is only the first. Now Russian drones are already flying across Europe, and Russian operations are already spreading across countries.

“Putin wants to continue this war by expanding it, and no one can feel safe right now.” (Independent)

📣 Wealthy Britons are coming round to Keir Starmer, new polling suggests, with well-off voters disenchanged about their decision to vote Labour falling to 46% in August, a 20% drop since January. It’s modest good news ahead of the November budget, and comes despite the abolition of non-dom tax benefits, VAT on private school fees and higher employment taxes. (🎁Bloomberg - gift link)

📣 Donald Trump thinks he was a victim of “triple sabotage” at the United Nations earlier this week, after an escalator broke down when he stepped on to it, his autocue malfunctioned, and there were issues with the sound while he spoke. (AP)

📣 In Scotland, we have troublesome seagulls. In California, residents are being warned to look out for an aggressive squirrel - one which has sent at least two people to A&E. A woman told local TV that she was out walking “when a squirrel seemingly came out of nowhere and attacked her leg, clawing and biting”. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Brendan Rodgers was happy with a point after Celtic’s Europa League opener against Red Star in Belgrade. Kelechi Iheanacho looked like he might have earned the Parkhead side a win, and he could have bagged a hat-trick with the chances he had, but the point was a deserved reward. (Record) (Sun)

⚽️ Russell Martin says he takes “perverse” pleasure in the pressure he’s under at Rangers, saying he and his players can take “growth” from the situation they’re in. (Scotsman)