SCOTLAND’S housing emergency has left a record 10,000 children “without a home to call their own” amid plummeting housebuilding numbers under the SNP, according to Anas Sarwar.

The Scottish Labour leader used the final First Minister’s Questions before Holyrood’s Christmas recess to hit out at the impact on young people’s lives of soaring homelessness.

Citing statistics released by the Scottish government on Tuesday that, despite having declared a housing emergency almost a year ago, housebuilding had since fallen by 10 per cent and “affordable” building starts had nose-dived to their lowest levels in a decade.

Mr Sarwar asked First Minister John Swinney at FMQs on Thursday if he was proud of that record, saying: “Scotland is in the middle of a housing emergency.

“While all of us here will wake up on Christmas morning to see the joy on our loved ones’ faces, this year a record number of Scots will wake up without a home to call their own.

“Homelessness is at record levels. Ten thousand children are living in temporary accommodation and hundreds will be left to wake up in hostels, refuge centres and B&Bs.”

Mr Swinney accepted “we are not building enough houses,” but argued: “We have built more houses, more affordable houses, per head of population in Scotland than in other parts of the UK.

“But we are not building enough, which is why the government has significantly increased the housing budget for the next financial year by over £200 million.”

Mr Sarwar dismissed that increase as a replacement of the £200m slashed from the budget by Mr Swinney’s predecessor Humza Yousaf a year earlier.

He said: “The facts speak for themselves: 10,000 children in Scotland are in temporary accommodation — a record high — and all the First Minister wants to do is point to other parts of the country instead of looking at his own failure.”

The First Minister hit back: “I’m afraid it’s not good enough for Mr Sarwar to dismiss the points of evidence I am making.”

Challenging the Scottish Labour leader to back the SNP budget at a crunch vote in six weeks’ time, he said: “We will find out in a few weeks’ time is whether Mr Sarwar is interested in a solution or if Mr Sarwar is just interested in rhetoric because the government’s budget is going to have to be voted for in this Parliament.”