 Hydiw gwlad yn cymunedig yr cyfnod. Mae yw'r cyffredinyr yw'r cyfrwyr yw'r debat yng nghyddyn sy'n ddweud ddweud yn y name angiolau Constants yn yw'r awdurdod ddweud yng nghymru yn ymrwybu osir. Gall I'm anzolau Constants yn ddweud i ddweud o'r awdurdod yn ymrwybu. A hubbwyd ar gyfer hynny'n ddweud i ddit postediadau eu cyfrwyr yw'r awdurdod ddweud i ddweud o amlinofoddgwydau'r awdurdod ymrwybu osir. I know that everyone across the chamber wants to make Scotland a more successful country. Our success as a nation very much depends on working together to deliver a stronger economy and a fairer society. On that note, I welcome new and returning MSPs and all the newly appointed party spokespeople. I look very much forward to working with you all and, of course, waiting the issues at hand. The Government believes that building a fairer society and a stronger, more resilient economy go hand in hand, as is reflected in Scotland's economic strategy. Tackling inequality and boosting competitiveness are interdependent. Our focus is very much on inclusive growth, combining increased prosperity with greater equity. The Scottish economy, as we know, has shown resilience over the past 12 months. In 2015, the economy grew by almost 2 per cent and employment reached record levels. However, we all know that there are issues that are holding Scotland back, that are holding our people back from reaching our full potential. For example, income inequality remains high relative to our many European peers. We know that tackling the deep-seated inequalities and poverty in our society is challenging. If it were easy, societies across the world would be poverty free. However, we have to accept that poverty is not inevitable and that it is our job to overcome. In Scotland, in 2013-14, poverty affected 940,000 people after housing costs. That figure is made up of 210,000 children, 600,000 working adults and 120,000 pensioners. Despite the fact that we have consistently had lower poverty rates than the wider UK in recent years, we are absolutely clear that those numbers are unacceptable. It is quite simply wrong that more than one in five of our children are living in poverty in this country today. We know that the cost of mitigating the effects of poverty is significant. This Government has spent £104 million in the past year alone on mitigating the very worst aspects of the Tory's uncaring and unwanted cuts and changes to welfare. Those imposed cuts from a Tory Government have removed a safety net, relied on by thousands to have a decent life and, time after time, we have seen more cuts and more damage to our communities. The human cost of poverty and inequality, the destructive and corrosive consequences on the lives of individuals must be addressed both for the individuals and the community that they live in. Organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group and the Citizens Advice Bureau have provided examples of the damage that has been inflicted by six years of Westminster Tory Governments, ably and supported by Cameron's best pal in Scotland, Ruth Davidson. We also know that the UK programme of welfare cuts has a particular and negative impact on women, children and disabled people, among others. It is imperative that equality is embedded across all of our work and that we clearly recognise the relationship between equality and the socio-economic inequality and justice. My challenge is to ensure that those links are made and are acted upon to the benefit of all our people. As we move forward with the implementation of the socio-economic duty and the Equalities Act, that work is vitally important. Yes, we are responding to the immediacy of poverty by mitigating the worst effects of the UK Government welfare cuts, but we want to go beyond just mitigation. We want to prevent poverty and create long-term sustainable solutions to lift people out of poverty. We want to invest in pulling people out of poverty and not having to spend our resources stopping the Tories from pushing people further and deeper into poverty. Last Saturday was World Hunger Day. Although we think that malnutrition is confined to developing countries, it is a sad fact that hunger is also a growing symptom of poverty in Scotland. The Trussell Trust reported that more than 14,000 people accessed a three-day food parcel in 2012-13, but by 2015-16, that had risen to well over 133,000. That is why we are working with a range of experts to develop a sustainable food strategy. I can announce today that we will establish a £1 million a year fair food fund. That will enable communities the length and breadth of Scotland to come together to develop empowering and sustainable solutions to food poverty, which will enable them to recognise the social value of food to help them to rebuild their communities, to help them to combat social isolation and to provide opportunities to learn new skills, helping an officer to tackle the causes and not just the symptoms of poverty. Our policies on key areas such as housing demonstrate the scale of our achievements and our ambition. We know that communities flourish when people have good, quality, warm, comfortable homes to live in. That is why this Government's priority is to increase the scale and pace of the supply of the right homes in the right place, particularly in the affordable rented and private rented sectors. We have an excellent track record. In the last Parliament, we exceeded our target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes. Our bold and ambitious More Homes Scotland approach will build on that achievement and deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes over the next five years, 70 per cent of which will be for social rent. We are backing that with a funding commitment of more than £3 billion, which will support an average of around 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs per year and generate around £1.8 billion in economic activity. Since 2007, this Government has built more homes per head of population than elsewhere in the UK. This higher per capita rate of house building in Scotland has enabled 41,000 more homes than would have been built at England's lower per capita rate. That is the equivalent of a new town the size of Paisley that has only been possible because of our sustained high house building compared to England. However, we will go further. We are determined to increase and accelerate housing supply across all tenures and support the industry and local authorities to deliver their housing priorities. Of course, it is more than just Government action that is needed. We believe that the best people to decide the future of our communities are the people who live in those communities. Our ambition is for Scotland to be a country where every person, regardless of circumstances, has the right to take part in debating and shaping the society that we live in and the decisions that we take. That ambition has informed our policy and will continue to do so as we move forward. That is why we embark on the fairer Scotland discussions. We heard from over 7,000 voices of people from Dumfries to Stornoway in relation to what matters to them. That is why this Government and the people who work for it are getting under the skin of the issues and fully understanding the needs of our citizens. That is why I, as Cabinet Secretary, am absolutely determined to hear, to understand and learn from those experiences and to ensure that, in partnership, the Scottish Government oversees a step change to ensure that all of our people reach their full potential. We also need to acknowledge that the crucial and dynamic role that the third sector plays in Scotland, particularly in tackling inequalities and supporting people and communities. That is why we are working closely with them to develop a 10-year strategy. We also intend to lead by example and introduce three-year role in funding where possible to give third sector organisations more financial certainty. Finally, I would like to talk about the new powers coming to Scotland and the opportunities that they present. Implementing and delivering new social security powers is an exciting part of my new portfolio, but I do not shy away from the challenge of just how difficult it will be. I am not sure that many of us could say that the current system is working for those who need it most. Given its scale and complexity, it is no exaggeration to say that that is one of the most challenging operations since devolution. Like many members, I see the consequences first-hand in my local community, from the families struggling to make ends meet, from those anxious about the impact of disability changes and from mums worried about how the cuts will impact on their kids' wellbeing. I know that Parliament has heard through the welfare reform committee, which I am glad has now been renamed the social security committee, but the Parliament has heard some of those voices and some of those powerful personal testimonies, and it makes me more determined that we can and we will take a different path. I am determined, as all of the Scottish Government is, to be the strongest voice for those who have been mistreated and marginalised. I will never lose sight of the fact that social security is about helping people with differing needs and priorities to go about their day-to-day lives. At some point in our lives, almost all of us may need some form of social security. We already know that almost one in four Scots may be impacted by the new powers. Around 10 per cent of people receive disability benefits, and the transfer will be a huge scale of work that will involve delivering a range of sometimes complex benefits worth around £2.7 billion. My priority is to treat people with dignity and respect and to put that at the heart of absolutely everything that we do. That ethos will underpin our approach to social security, including the development of the new agency. Iain Gray I am sure that the cabinet secretary is sincere, but her government's track record is not good. The Scottish welfare fund changed cash payments to around 80 per cent payments in kind. That is not dignity or respect. Can we be sure that she will not go down that path again? I remind Mr Gray of the action that I took in a previous post to protect school clothing grants to ensure that families and children receive the benefit via money and not through some other alternative source via vouchers or donation of clothes. The welfare fund has been a huge contribution to Scotland. Of course, we will always work with our partners and local government to ensure that we deliver support in the right way and on the right time. I am very proud of the record of this Government, who has delivered help to 116,000 people via the discretionary housing payments. 116,000 people have helped to be able to pay their rent and we have assisted nearly 200,000 people with crisis loan support and no small part due to the sanctions and mal-administration of the benefits system. I am aware that time is short and I look forward to debating more of the substance in detail with Mr Gray and colleagues on this side of the chamber. I want to conclude by saying that Scotland is a great country but we can make it an even better country. The guiding mission of this Government is to do more to create a fairer, stronger and more prosperous Scotland. That means taking the right action necessary to create a better society and to tackle poverty and inequality that continues to blight our society to secure the better opportunities for everyone and for future generations. I move the motion on my name. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I call Adam Tomkins to speak to it and to move motion in his name. I would like to start by welcoming Angela Constance to her role and by congratulating Jeane Freeman on her appointment as Minister for Social Security. Angela Constance's brief is broad indeed covering communities and local government, housing, planning, equalities and social security. From those benches, Annie Wells will speak on equalities Graham Simpson on local government, Maurice Corry on veterans, which is also part of the brief and Alex Johnston on housing and infrastructure. I am looking forward very much to Maurice Corry's maiden speech later this afternoon. The powers that this Parliament has, we have not only the opportunity but also the responsibility to make Scotland stronger, more prosperous and fairer. In those remarks, I want to set out something of what our approach will be to making Scotland a fairer nation. I am going to say something about fiscal fairness, something about fairness and welfare and something about fairness in our communities. I want to start with fiscal fairness. There is a close and direct relationship between our tax policies and our approach to welfare. We want to get people off welfare and into work. Once in work, we want to lift the low-paid out-of-tax. Those are not mere aspirations that I'dly wished for on opposition benches. This is what the Conservative Government is doing now, not just to Scotland but for the whole of the United Kingdom. We have cut tax for more than two and a half million people in Scotland, giving the average worker a tax cut of £905. In raising the personal allowance, we have taken more than 300,000 Scots out of income tax altogether. Those are fair tax policies. Moreover, they are progressive tax policies. If you are a cleaner on £15,000 a year, you have had a tax cut of 7 per cent since 2010. If you are a manager on £45,000 a year, you have had a tax cut of 3 per cent. We have helped the poorest first and we have helped the poorest most. I thank the member for giving way and would ask the Conservative Party if they would ever have done that. Were it not for the Liberal Democrats in coalition with them over the past five years? Were the Liberal Democrats any more, Mr Cole-Hamilton, and we're still doing it now? Fairness dictates that it's not only the poor who should benefit from tax cuts. In the last five years, 140,000 more Scots have become higher-rate taxpayers. One in 10 nurses pays income tax at 40 per cent, as does one in three police officers and a quarter of teachers. They deserve a tax cut, too, which is why the threshold at which the higher-rate of income tax becomes payable should be lifted in Scotland as it should be lifted in the rest of the United Kingdom. Otherwise, the Scottish Government will find it even harder to recruit nurses to our NHS and teachers to our schools. Scotland will not benefit from becoming the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom. The Scottish NHS won't benefit from it, Scottish schools won't benefit from it, it won't make Scotland fairer. It will make life in Scotland harder. Our policies, by contrast, are working. They are producing a fairer Scotland. Building a strong economy and creating jobs is helping people out of poverty. Mr Tomkins has said that the Conservatives want to see people get back into work. If that is the case, why have they cut the work programme by 87 per cent in cash terms? I think that the facts are, Mr Stewart, that two and a half million jobs have been created in the United Kingdom since David Cameron became a Prime Minister. In the last year alone, 152,000 disabled people are in work who weren't working a year ago. The Scottish Parliament, as we all know, will have significant welfare powers, as well as fiscal powers. Wealth devolution is new, so it's important that we understand what's happening and why. It will be helpful if the Parliament understands the welfare powers that are coming in three main groups. The first is disability benefits. The entirety of DLA PIP is to be devolved in full. That amounts to about £1.5 billion of spend that will be the responsibility of this Parliament and not of Westminster. We'll have a debate next week on disability benefits to which I look forward and I'll have more to say about this topic on that occasion. The second is the cluster of other welfare benefits to be devolved in full. Care is allowance, attendance allowance, winter fuel payments and other aspects of the regulated social fund. The third and, in some ways, the most eye-catching are the powers to top up any UK social security benefit and to create new Scottish benefits in any area of devolved competence. Those powers and, in particular, the top-up power will mean in effect that the United Kingdom will continue to set the floor but that it will be for this Parliament to set the ceiling of all working-age social security in Scotland so that if, at any point, this Parliament considers that the United Kingdom has set a particular benefit too low, we will have the power to make whatever upward adjustments we want. There is, as yet, no date set by the Governments as to when, in this Parliament, those powers will be transferred. The fiscal framework agreed dates for the transfer of tax powers but not for welfare powers. Personally, I found this disappointing, and I will be pressing both Governments to secure the transfer of those powers at the earliest opportunity. I have written this week to the Cabinet Secretary and to David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland, to urge him to make progress on this as expeditiously as possible. Who should make the assessment that an individual is eligible for a benefit that they have claimed? Who should make the assessment that an individual claimant is or is not fit for work can be difficult and sometimes delicate judgments? However, there are judgments that do have to be made. No British Government of any political colour has operated a welfare system without sanctions. Can we do this better than it has done at the moment? I am sure that we can, but we will not get there just by finger-pointing at Westminster and repeating a mantra of dignity as if that word alone is going to fix everything. It does not give disabled people dignity to keep them on benefits when they could work instead. The dignity of the pay packet is much to be preferred to the indignity—let me finish the point. The dignity of the pay packet is much to be preferred to the indignity of a system that assumes that you are not fit for the workplace. Of course assessments about acclaimants' fitness for work must be made in a manner that fully respects the individuals involved. Let me finish the point. Such assessments need to be made, and acclaimants will not always get what they think they are entitled to, allowing the system to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous few would accord dignity to no-one. I thank Mr Tomkins for giving way, Presiding Officer. I suggest that Mr Tomkins may want to read some of the testimony of people who appeared in front of the previous welfare reform committee, because many of those folks were in work. One of the things that was stopping them from continuing to be in work was cuts to their DLA, which meant that they could not get to work. The system that the Tories have put in place is a nonsense, and if they truly believe in getting folk back to work, they should listen to those folks who currently are in the seat of benefit, which allows them to get to work. That is why the entirety of the DLA PIP is being devolved to this Parliament, and that is why I want to see that devolution sooner rather than later, and that is why I have pressed your ministerial team for the early devolution of those powers to this Parliament, so that this Parliament can take ownership of those issues and deal with them. We have two core aims when it comes to the benefits system. We want to be supportive of those who cannot work, and we want to be effective at getting those who are able to work into employment. That is not an either-or. Both aims are equally important, and neither should be sacrificed in the name of the other. In short, we want a social security system that supports the most vulnerable, which is focused on giving those who can work the opportunities and the support to do so, and it is flexible and personalised. That last point leads me on to the final aspect of fairness that I want to touch on in those remarks—fairness in our communities. A flexible and personalised welfare system is one in which decision making is effectively shared between ministers and local bodies, whether they are health boards or local government. If the SNP thinks that the Scottish social security system should be as centralised as Scottish policing has become under its stewardship, it will find opposition on those benches and not support. The centralisation of power in Scotland has become a depressing hallmark of the SNP's period in office, and to my mind it is a core aspect of the unfairness of modern Scotland. As Westminster has become a Parliament that devolves power and decentralises not only to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but to cities and city regions too, this Parliament has hoarded power, and we need to stop this. Indeed, we need to reverse it. As I said a moment ago, it is notable that Angela Constance's ministerial portfolio covers both communities and social security. Those should not be seen as discrete or unrelated aspects of government policy but as closely entwined. It is unfair to deprive local people of a say in how the services that they use every day are funded and operated. COSLA has made clear their belief that the lack of local decision making in Scotland is a contributory factor to many of the inequalities that persist here. Here, we should be learning lessons from across Europe, where councils are far more autonomous in their decision making and raise a much greater share of the money that they have spent. The Scottish Government talks much of empowerment, but the rhetoric needs to match the reality. At the beginning of this session of the Scottish Parliament, there is much confidence in this chamber that we have both the powers and the political will to make Scotland a fairer nation. I share that confidence, and I have sought today to set out three ways in which we on those benches will make the case for fairness—fairness in our tax system, fairness in our welfare services and fairness in our communities. I invite members to press their requests to speak butons if they wish to do so. Mr Rowley, can you move the amendment in your name too? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am moving the amendment in my name. I begin by today congratulating Angela Constance on her new role and Kevin Stewart and Jean Freeman in their new roles. When it comes to tackling the deep-rooted poverty and inequality that exists in far too many communities up and down our country, I would like to think that there is a majority in this Parliament that wants to do so. I also believe that there is a majority in our country that wants us here in this Parliament to use the powers of their Parliament to create a more fair and just Scotland where all of Scotland's people can share in the wealth and prosperity of our country. As the poverty alliance has stated, where you are born, where you live and who you are should not stop you from reaching your full potential. However, the fact is that right now here in Scotland, where you are born, where you live and who you are does stop so many people from reaching their full potential. The community's social inequalities brief is very varied and very wide. However, if we are to create a fairer Scotland, we have to join up all those parts and focus around a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy for Scotland. Indeed, it is not just this portfolio that needs to be joined up, focused on an anti-poverty strategy. It is every portfolio across government. It is every department within local government. It is the growing and dynamic third sector that we have in Scotland, and at the heart of any strategy must be communities and must be people. As SCVO has commented and I quote, many in our sector believe that the devolution of new powers to the Scottish Parliament offers a chance to take policy in a new, innovative and progressive direction. I agree, and Labour in this Parliament and in the country will work with all partners and stakeholders to push for a more progressive and bolder approach to that which we have seen to date. We must use those powers over the next five years to move beyond the reasons for not doing things to create a society that can and will tackle the big issues facing people and communities every day of their lives. We will set out in the coming weeks and months our approach to those issues. Our starting point will be to prioritise based on the state that we are in. Energiacs in Scotland is calling for a discussion on how to eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland. Age Scotland, and I quote, last winter 1,200 people died needlessly because they lived in poorly insulated housing or in homes that they could not afford to heat. So let us have that discussion. Involve our partners and build a consensus around a warm homes bill that will move us towards the eradication of the blight of fuel poverty for all of Scotland's people. Let us also be bolder in our approach to tackling what Shelter Scotland calls Scotland's housing crisis. It cannot be right, and it is not right, that in 21st century Scotland we have hundreds of thousands of people desperately trying to get a social landlord to give them a house, with hundreds of thousands more living and housing that is not suitable for their needs. The Government must be bolder. We must use the powers of this Parliament to build the houses that we need and work with all partners to get this programme going and to get it going now. We need a clear, measurable plan that sets out how we are going to address Scotland's housing crisis. How are we going to work with local authorities and house builders to ensure that it is the right kind of housing to meet the needs of people and communities? Sitting alongside that, we need to know how we will ensure the wider benefits that will come from a national house bill programme for job creation and skills development for local communities and how we will achieve that. Indeed, full employment, decent employment and well-paid employment must be seen as a key tool for tackling inequality and poverty. That again requires joined-up government and joined-up working at every level. That is why we are clear that austerity will not work for Scotland. Austerity stops the investment that is needed at the local level to provide the focus support to tackle the deep-rooted deprivation that is also familiar in so many communities up and down our country. It stops the investment that is needed in early years, in education, in skills. That is why today Labour is clear that we must use the powers of our Parliament to bring forward an alternative to cutting Scotland's future. We should re-establish the principle that those who can afford to pay a bit more are asked to do so. The benefits of investing in Scotland's future will be shared across all sections of society. Poverty and deprivation impacts on everyone. A Scotland free of poverty and free of deprivation will be a Scotland of true aspiration where all the people of Scotland share in the prosperity of our nation. The Parliament has given the opportunity to show leadership, to give direction and unite all Scotland behind the goal of eradicating inequality, poverty and deprivation from the 21st century Scotland. It was Nelson Mandela who said, overcoming poverty is not a task of charity. It is an act of justice, like slavery and apartheid. Poverty is not natural, it is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings. In our case, by the leadership and action of this Parliament and of our Government in Scotland, we have a great opportunity to bring about social justice for all of Scotland. Let's make sure that we grasp that opportunity. Thank you very much, Mr Rowley. We now move to the open debate. I call Christina McKelvie, who is followed by Annie Wills. Ms McKelvie, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. According to the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, child poverty is caused by a range of factors that work together and result in inadequate household resources. Factors that contribute to insufficient income include low wages and underemployment, employment and worklessness. There are households in Scotland where no one is paid and no one is paid employment, and those are the households that are most likely to experience poverty. There are also some common barriers to work, which include a lack of suitable employment opportunities, a lack of suitable childcare, caring responsibilities, ill health or disability and employer discrimination. The other aspect of poverty is inadequate social security benefits. Despite being intended as a safety net against poverty, many families in receipt of social security benefits are living below the poverty line. Around two thirds of households with children who have no one works experience poverty. Furthermore, on-going welfare reforms, as we have heard, are a major contributing factor to the dramatic interest in child poverty, which is projected for Scotland. Let us have a look at each of those issues in turn—low wages, which has been long recognised as a factor when dealing with levels of poverty in a nation. That is why the SNP Government has backed for many years now the Scottish living wage campaign. We now have more than 80 per cent of working people in Scotland paid the living wage, and we now have overtaken our target of 500 accredited living wage employers in Scotland, of which I should declare an interest as one of them. The additional childcare proposed by the Government will be a way that it will enable parents to return to the workplace and start contributing to the economy, but also start to bring their families out of poverty. The Government will publish a further Scotland action plan, which will bring together all the actions to tackle poverty and inequalities. The action plan will be informed by the recommendations of the poverty adviser, as we have heard. We have heard that the Scottish Government will implement it in full, and we will include the work of the fair work convention, which I very much welcome. When we talk about suitable employment opportunities, what do we mean? Do we mean discredited work fair type models, or one that looks at the needs of long-term and generational unemployment? One such excellent model is Remploy in Hamilton, in my constituency in Hamilton in Larkhall in Stonehouse. They do a brilliant job at supporting people who experience barriers such as disability to get into work in a way that respects their needs and their aspirations. Remploy's aim is to transform society and the lives of disabled people by creating equality in employment, facilitating fair access to sustainable employment and careers, enabling them to achieve their ambitions and maximise their potential. They have a superb veterans project, which has had some significant success over the past few years. I urge the Government when looking at models to use that this would be one that they would look at as an excellent example. Financial poverty is not only a terrible burden on families attempting to get through each day, but also on the economy. If more people have more money in their pockets to spend, then there will be an economic boost too. That is another reason for a living wage. When it comes to the Government's plans, I very much welcome the plans that the Government has got for a new programme of financial health check-ups to help pensioners and those in low incomes to make the most of their money. Those check-ups will ensure that people are on the best energy tariffs and have access to an appropriate bank account—an absolutely horrifying situation of people not being able to access bank accounts. There will also be a summit of utility companies to challenge them. As we know, for some people the choice is to eat or heat and the energy costs become one of the biggest spends in a family budget. That is something that needs to be tackled head on. When I think of social security, I think of social protection. The idea of social security implies that people ought to feel secure. Secure in the knowledge that, at times of hardship, disability and unemployment, we live in a land that protects, that cares, that supports them at the hardest times in their life. However, what we have is a system that penalises, condemns and undermines people who face hardships and ask women to prove that they have been raped before they get access to child tax credits. What we want here is a system that supports, that protects, that nurtures, that cares and, above all, treats our people with dignity and respect. Presiding Officer, for some time now I have been helping out at the Hamilton district food bank since it opened a few years ago. The kindness and dedication of the volunteers there is awe-inspiring. However, they would rather not be doing what they do every day, but some of our people need their support. It is usually due to benefits delays, mix-ups with lost files and sanctions, but mainly vicious Tory cuts to in-work benefits. They also support a school uniform bank. Can you imagine not being able to dress your child for school? An absolutely more, most heartbreaking, they have now started a baby bank. Imagine not being able to provide even the basic essentials for life every day with dignity to provide for your newborn baby. The baby box, which I have spoken about before in the chamber, is very, very welcome indeed. I welcome with open arms, Presiding Officer, the Scottish Government's commitment to build a security system that restores care, dignity and respect and, therefore, confidence for our people. I look forward to a system that does not make people with terminal illness go through multiple assessment procedures. I am going to use the same quote that Alec Rowley used, but I am going to use the whole quote. Nelson Mandela once said, Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity. It is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. To finish the quote, sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be this great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Let's live up to that fantastic ideal. I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate today. It is a hugely important subject and one that is close to my heart. Creating a fairer Scotland is surely a challenging but nevertheless vital goal and one that I am wholeheartedly committed to. I am also pleased to know the consensual and co-operative tone of the Government's motion this afternoon. It is important to recognise that there is, of course, cross-party support for ensuring a fair society in Scotland. While there will be some honest differences on policy, it is important to remember that every member in this chamber surely aims to make Scotland a fairer place to live. We are all committed to tackling inequalities in order to build a fairer Scotland. As the Government motion makes clear, part of that will undoubtedly mean addressing deep city issues. Achieving genuine change will take time and will require a clear and shared vision of what a fair and equal Scotland should look like in the years to come. The transfer of significant welfare powers to the Scottish Parliament begins a new phase of devolution. The Scottish Parliament will hold devolved powers over a range of areas, including many disability benefits, new flexibilities in the main out-of-work benefits and for the topping up of reserved benefits, and the new social security system can be set up as well. It is clear that those new powers blaming the UK Government is no longer acceptable or an appropriate answer. We can take a different path in Scotland if we choose to. The devolution of those powers in Scotland allows us all to have a rigorous discussion about how we support some of the most vulnerable people in our society. How can we ensure that the most vulnerable are protected, while at the same time ensure that those who want to work can work? The question goes to the very heart of the matter and debates such as this are essential to the process of addressing this pressing issue. Part of the reason why this issue is so important is that if we do not design the Scottish social security system properly, we will be letting down the most vulnerable. Indeed, we need to ensure that we use those powers responsibly and effectively to craft a Scottish social security system that promotes fairness and is able to help all those who need it. We want to see a Scottish social security system with three basic principles at its heart. It should primarily support the most vulnerable in our society, it should be flexible and personalised, and it should give those who can and want to work the opportunities and support to do just that. As I have suggested, it is important that our social security system should always have the individual claimant in mind. To this end, I believe that it is necessary to make measures to ensure that Scotland's social security system is personalised, responsive and flexible. Extending flexibility to claimants also means giving them the choice over the frequency of payments, as well as the option of split payments. Some of my party's priorities for social security include our desire to align carers allowance with jobseekers allowance to support over 60,000 carers in Scotland. That would move towards greater recognition of the contribution of carers and provide them with greater support. We also want the new welfare powers to be used to encourage people back into jobs, with a target to half the disability employment gap. If Ms Wells could tell us whether she agrees with the 87 per cent cut to the work programme that the UK Government has thrust upon us. Today, we are talking about a fairer Scotland that we are going to deliver in this Parliament and look at what the devolved powers are in here, and that is what I am here to do. The motion today makes mention of numerous vital issues in creating a fairer Scotland, unfortunately I do not have the opportunity to discuss all in full, but I would like to recognise the importance in passing. In terms of affordable housing, as our amendment to the Government's motion makes clear, we want to see 50,000 affordable homes as part of a broader tenure of 100,000 house-building targets. As I said in my first speech, empowering local communities is an issue, and that is a priority for me. I am glad to hear what the cabinet secretary had announced in her opening speech. I have not got much time left, sorry. By strengthening community engagement and promoting a greater degree of localised participation in the decision making, we can encourage more people from different backgrounds to take the lead in their community and make Scotland a fairer, better and more inclusive place to live. In the remainder of my time, I would like to focus on the equality of opportunity. It seems clear to me that promoting a quality of opportunity across Scotland will be essential in tackling deep-seated inequality. From child poverty to the attainment gap, we need to take robust action to ensure that we address these issues early on to make sure that everyone has an equal and fair chance to succeed and fulfil their potential. For those later in life, it is of paramount importance that we focus on improving and increasing training and skills opportunities. It is clear that such opportunities to develop and learn new skills are vital in helping people back into work. Only by promoting such opportunities and ensuring that we are available for the broadest possible range of people can we ensure that we fully promote a fairer Scotland. One important aspect of promoting a quality of opportunity is employability support, and, of course, for those who cannot work, support must be provided, but for those who can and want to work, we should do more. It is essential that we ensure that all people in Scotland can access employment support services, but that that needs remain flexible enough to make the employability needs of each individual. It is clear to me that we need to make the best use of the resources to help and employ people into work. While focusing specifically on people who want to work, we should face the most barriers into work. We should aim to provide targeted help with job-searching and coaching, as well as making sure that the skills development is readily available for all those who need access to it. I would like to start off by congratulating Angela Constance on her new position. These first-time speakers have had the pleasure of hearing over the past few weeks on a wide variety of subjects and their passionate and insightful contributions. It is heartening to realise that so many of them are clearly committed to creating a fairer Scotland and a fairer society. In order to create that fairer society for everyone, we have to be willing to look at every aspect of how we can improve Scottish society, where and when it is required. The Scottish Government's manifesto was brimming with ways in which to achieve a fairer and more equal Scotland. I was delighted to hear from the First Minister that the Scottish Government was keen to work with people from all parties in tackling the issue of fairness for all. My constituency is, in a part of Glasgow, a city where poverty levels are higher than anywhere else in Scotland, the very fact that the numbers of children living in poverty are rising indicates that the Scottish Government is right to use the newly devolved powers to target socioeconomic inequalities head-on, no matter how limited those powers are. The Scottish Government's commitment to giving children the best start in life will positively affect her baby even before it is born. It is great news that all pregnant mothers will now receive free prenatal vitamins, a universal move that is all welcomed by both parenting support groups and healthcare professionals. When a baby is born, it will be further supported with the now famous baby box of basic supplies, a signal of our Government's early commitment to every child. Those measures will be a very welcome addition to family life throughout my constituency and, of course, the rest of Scotland, showing that, right from the very start of life, the Scottish Government recognises that every child is valuable, respected and full of potential. The key to child development, growth and social fairness, of course, is education. It is clear that the Scottish Government recognises education as an investment in our children, our communities and our future, and there is no clearer sign of that determination to get it right than having the Deputy First Minister in charge of the education portfolio. The right to high-quality education should not be dependent on the area in which you live or the social background to which you are born. Every child and young adult should be afforded the best start to life and a firm foundation for growth. Of course, doubling free childcare to 30 hours per week continues the theme of supporting children from the very beginning of their lives. Do you accept that in your constituency, as in so many constituencies across Scotland, we have deep-rooted generational poverty and deprivation, and that the way to support that has to be to get resources into a community level to get those people the skills and the opportunity to be able to get the chance to get employment? If so, do we need to put the resources in? I completely agree with an awful lot of what you just said. I also think that it would only be fair to comment that the city that I represent or the constituency that I represent is in a city that has been represented by Labour for over 50 years, and many of the deep-seated, rooted problems that you are talking about were caused by the party that you represent. Raising attainment throughout Scotland is clearly a priority for the Scottish Government, and I welcome the many new initiatives that are put in place to achieve it. Targeting the most problematic geographical areas on our educational map will be pivotal in establishing fairness throughout our education system, and therefore fairness throughout society. The attainment Scotland fund is absolutely necessary as it focuses not only on the key areas of the curriculum where improvement is required, but on the areas across Scotland where families are facing the most challenges. That includes part of my constituency of Kit Kat, and I welcome wholeheartedly the Deputy First Minister's announcement back in February of doubling the total attainment Scotland fund that is available to £180 million in the next four years. In order to ensure the attainment gap between the least and the most deprived communities in Scotland is narrow, the addition of the national framework for Scottish education will play a vital role in ensuring that each and every child is progressed at the level where they should be and that their academic abilities are monitored will equate to better progression throughout their educational journey. Those measures are indeed excellent practical examples of an investment in fairness. However, to create a truly equal and fair society, we must recognise some in many groups still at a much greater risk from poverty than others. For example, recognition should be given to those who are committed carers. Organisations such as Glasgow South East carers are doing an incredible job in supporting carers but we must do more. According to several charities, young carers are more susceptible to bullying and self-esteem issues. Young carers quite often have mental health issues of their own whilst at the same time being completely committed to those they care for. Those young people deserve the same support and rights as every other member of society. In order to progress the rights of those young carers and building a national strategy, I was delighted to see the Scottish Government adopt a Green Party initiative of a young carers grant, a move that I am sure will be welcomed across the chamber. Through my work with the Daisy Project and Waves, women against violent environments, both based in Casemont and my constituency, I have learned that despite all the good work that has been done, we still have much to do when it comes to ensuring a fairer society for those who have faced domestic abuse. Women who live in poverty or who have a disability are at heightened risk of experience in the form of domestic abuse in their lifetime. Yet sadly, there are still many women who feel that they cannot or indeed should not come forward to report those crimes. Equally safe, the Scottish Government's joint strategy with COSLA has made it clear that there is absolutely no place in Scotland for any abuse against women and I am sure that there is not a member of this Parliament who would disagree with this statement. They will continue to implement and develop its prevention and eradication strategy whilst educating people throughout Scotland. Every woman in Scotland should be able to live without fear and that is not only about fairness but about dignity and basic humanity. To implement the changes that will take to make Scotland fairer, those policies and objectives should filter right through to local government and beyond. We need to empower the people of Scotland to take local decisions into their own hands. Better working relationships will only benefit constituents. The joint integration of social care and health is already an excellent example of positive change. Importantly, those who live in a community should continue to gain more power and I welcome local community councils who can demonstrate a strong democratic mandate being able to deliver some services. Community council elections being held the same day will fairly give them the recognition that they deserve. If fairness is truly the goal of this Parliament, then it is right that we allow the people of the communities to help design and deliver it. I look forward to being part of a fairer Scotland, a Scotland that is modelled in respect and social equality. My constituents and the people of Scotland deserve to live in a society that is designed to encourage people to flourish and prosper, regardless of the social surroundings or geographical areas of their birth. A Scotland that recognises our worth from before they were even born. For those reasons and many others, I am not only happy to support but I am proud to support this motion. Thank you very much. I am allowing time to members to take interventions. I think that that is appropriate but there will be an impact on later speakers. So, later speakers, I appreciate that sort of doing, please. Pauli McNeill, to be followed by Claire Hawthorne. May I begin by thanking the many members across the parties for their warm welcome? I received a turning to this place after five years. It was unexpected in more ways than one. I believe that it will be a wonderful Parliament to be part of with 51 brand new members with a strong minority government and strong opposition as envisaged by the constitutional convention. Indeed, there are so many new members that I accidentally found myself on the lobby stairs last week at the SNP group photo, which the First Minister very kindly came over to show me as she tweeted it to her followers. I have reassured my leader, Kezia, that I have not had a change of heart. Indeed, I am very proud to be part of a strong Labour team that will challenge the Scottish Government on many policy areas. That is, of course, not technically a maiden speech for me, but it is the first in this new Parliament, so I would like to take this opportunity to set out how I intend to represent people of Glasgow and how I think a fairer Scotland can be achieved. Before doing that, like others, I want to pay tribute to my predecessors and McTaggart, Hanzala Malik and Drew Smith, whom I believe is a certain loss to this place. It is an honour to represent the city of Glasgow, the second city of the empire, not least because my dad would be especially proud to see me return, but because it is a unique city. It demands a special focus, as others have said, from this place. 33 per cent of children in Glasgow sadly live in poverty, and in some neighbourhoods 55 per cent. Shockingly, figures from 2013 show that almost one-fifth of households are in less than £10,000. It is the highest figure of any local authority. I am not one who likes to ban figures around, because I think that sometimes it cannot turn people off to listen. However, it is the hard statistical evidence that we have heard today that illustrates that Glasgow's high level of poverty and disadvantage must be tackled. I will use my term to challenge the Scottish Government on the local government settlement for Glasgow, and I would ask for an early meeting with the new finance minister, Derek Mackay. I believe that this is a Parliament that can make a difference if we choose to make it, in this fifth session of the most powerful Parliament in the world. It is this portfolio that I congratulate the new ministers, which has the potential to make transformational changes to our society and change the course of austerity. Community empowerment, land redistribution, fairer benefit rules, trade union rights and the power to disrupt the vested interests of those who are perpetually getting the best of our education system and of the political system generally. With new powers at our disposal, we must explore how we can use them to raise the living standards of Scotland's poorest and most disadvantaged and create a modern Scotland that all Scots can thrive in. There is a clear consensus, or so it seems, that inequality of opportunity in education is a priority for us all. Whether that turns out to be rhetoric or reality is a matter for every elected member, but with an obvious and necessary responsibility on the Scottish Government. However, few Administrations have had such strong offers from Opposition parties of shared policy positions to achieve their manifesto commitments. Arguably, no left-of-centred Government has had an offer to support a rise in taxation to fund shared objectives. The institution, I believe, must rise and stature. The committee system needs to be allowed to do its job, and I think that committees should be harder on the Government where it will lead to better implementation of policies that are creating a fairer Scotland. The voters themselves demand it, and I would argue that the context demands it too. Strange and worrying things have happened across the globe that even the brilliance of Stephen Hawkins cannot explain the horror of the Trump phenomenon. However, we had better tried to understand it, because, unfortunately, it may well happen. However, in my opinion, you do not have to look very far beyond the financial crash of 2008. Taxpayers may have been unaware of the hidden and real powers of the banks to affect and disrupt their lives, but they should be under no illusion now. I believe that it was the most significant event in the 21st century and, of course, the narrative behind the austerity question. The next generation, regardless of coming from traditional working class or middle-class backgrounds, will now likely have a lower standard of living than their parents. People work longer, they earn less and will probably get less in their pensions, so we can never forget this important lesson in history. I believe that it is the main reason that voters across Europe and the United States are looking for alternative political voices. I humbly plead that we lift our eyes to the context of the austerity debate and whatever interpretation that you wish to have. I happen to be of a similar mind of that of Paul Mason, the former Channel 4 economic editor. I am sorry on the return speech. Could you wind up, please? It is undergoing one of its periodic transformations. I believe that it provides a context for those in which we are expected to make important decisions so that we can achieve our fairer Scotland. It is as if you have never been away. Can I call now Claire Hoche to be followed by Maurice Corry, please? Thank you, Presiding Officer. Firstly, can I add my congratulations to you and your colleagues on your election? I am very pleased to have been selected to make my first speech on an issue that is so close to my heart, building a fairer Scotland for all her citizens. A Scotland where everyone has the same opportunities to succeed in life, regardless of their background, race, creed, age, gender or sexuality. A Scotland where a baby is provided with its basic needs at birth in the form of a baby box and its parents have access to a named person who can support them when they need advice or assistance. A Scotland where nursery provision provides a good start in education for all children and allows parents to work without the financial burden of childcare. A Scotland where schools are supported to bridge the attainment gap and school communities play a key part in managing where their budget is spent. A Scotland where college bursaries are higher than the rest of the UK and university is tuition free, where access to further education is based on your ability to learn, not on your ability to pay. As a nurse, I am particularly pleased that nursing and midwifery students will retain their bursaries. Those are essential, particularly to mature students who without them would not even consider a career in nursing or who would not be able to complete their course. The Conservative Westminster Government plans to withdraw bursaries in England, and that, I fear, will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of students applying to train as nurses and midwifes. A recruitment crisis is inevitable if they continue with those plans. A fairer Scotland extends beyond childhood and education. Under this Government, all will have access to an NHS that will remain safely in public hands, free at the point of need and without a tax on illness in the form of prescription charges. New powers will also allow us to establish a social security agency for Scotland with fairness and dignity at its core. As a mental health nurse, I have seen the anguish and the terror that disability benefit reviews have caused to some of the most vulnerable in our society. Stress and anxiety is having an adverse effect on the mental health of those being assessed, re-assessed and re-assessed. Many are being refused benefits or having benefits cut or withdrawn only to have them reinstated on appeal while, in the interim, having to try and make ends meet financially, and as a direct consequence many have to rely on food banks to survive. For our workers, fairness means access to fair work for fair pay by continuing to work to extend the living wage. The biggest threat to workers' rights at the moment is the Westminster Government's trade union bill. That legislation, if passed, will make it almost impossible for trade unions to operate effectively. It will restrict the ability of unions to recruit and to represent members. It will restrict how they use their resources and it will place restrictions on peaceful picketing and protests. All of that, taken together, fundamentally undermines the rights of unions to organise and to negotiate on behalf of their members. It also undermines the basic human rights of workers to withdraw their labour by placing draconian restrictions on carrying out strike balance. All of that at a time when industrial unrest is at an historic low. I must declare a vested interest in the proposed act. As an active trade unionist for many years, I have fought discrimination and unfair working practices. I have represented workers who have been accused of wrongdoing, and I have been on strike and manned picket lines to try to protect NHS pensions. This Government has pledged to do all it can to mitigate the effects of this bill, but some of those sitting in this Parliament should remember when they voiced their opposition to this legislation. Their parties had the power to devolve powers over employment and trade union law during the Smith commission. They chose not to do so. So, do not criticise this Administration for not doing enough when you leave it to fight for Scotland's workers with one hand tied behind its back. As this is my first speech, it is only correct that I play tribute to the previous Ruthergyn constituency MSP James Kelly and thank him for the service that he gave my community over the past nine years. I am sure that the people of Ruthergyn were grateful for the representation that he gave them here. He was elected on the Glasgow list and so has returned to the Scottish Parliament. I look forward to working with him and all of the Glasgow list MSPs from across the parties to ensure that Ruthergyn constituency thrives and grows over the next five years. I am a Ruthergyn girl. I grew up in the town. I spent my childhood playing in the local streets in the parks. I attended local schools and I returned to the area to raise my own family, knowing that it was an ideal place to live, learn and work. Ruthergyn, Cambuslang, Halfway and Blantyre, have an industrial heritage of coal mining, steelworks and manufacturing, and all those played a part in building up the constituency and the populations of the area. Local industry was decimated during the Thatcher era. We recently saw shadows of that past in the threat to the Liberty House steelworks in Cambuslang. Through the efforts of the Scottish Government and the steel task force, we were relieved to have that threat alleviated. I am extremely proud and humbled to have been trusted by my local community to come to Parliament to represent them and I intend to do that to the best of my ability. A fairer Scotland can only benefit all the people of Scotland. My constituents have voted for a better future and one where economic and social inequalities are addressed. My promise was that I would be a strong voice for them here and I will use every opportunity to fulfil that promise. Deputy Presiding Officer, first of all, I congratulate you and your colleagues on your new appointments and also the cabinet secretary in her new role. That being my first speech in the chamber, I am delighted and honoured to be elected to the Scottish Parliament as a member for the West Scotland region and to represent its residents, businesses and organisations in Parliament. I would like to thank the staff in Parliament for the excellent induction and training that the new members were given. I would also like to pay tribute particularly to Baroness Goldie for all the work that she did for the West Scotland region as an MSP. I congratulate Jackson Carlaw on being returned as a member of Eastwood constituency and I am pleased to see that he has maintained his excellent sense of humour. My region represents many types of industry and businesses from ship building, ship repairing, drinks shipping, power generation tourism, including the Loch Lomondon National and Trossick's National Park and other activities and sectors. Furthermore, I have Her Majesty's naval base Clyde in my patch, the home of the UK submarine service, which is critical to the strategic defence of our nation. The base at Fass Lane, along with the Cullport and Glendouglas establishments, means that the Ministry of Defence is a very significant employer in the region for residents on both sides of the Firth of Clyde and beyond. Helensborough is my birthplace, as the Vale of Leven hospital in Alexandria was for all of our children when we received the most fantastic care over the years and two of my daughters today are present here. As I said many times in my election campaign, the Vale of Leven hospital has cared for many residents in Argyll and Bute and Western Bartonshire over the years and it is now our turn to care for it and nurse it back to full 24x7 accident and emergency services on the north side of the Clyde and within reach of people who live and work in the area. I am delighted that I was able to bring my family back to Helensborough having spent time in the Balkans where I was stationed with NATO and when I was in Afghanistan and the Middle East. That enabled my wife and I to bring them up in the great area of Scotland on the banks of the Firth of Clyde. I want to encourage our local authorities and the regions to address job creation and they will get my full support in doing so. I call on the Scottish Government to address more effectively a long-term solution for the A83 at the rest and be thankful. I shall only then rest and be thankful when the new minister has put this solution in place. Turning to creating a fairer Scotland, I would like to draw attention to the armed forces community covenant, which was established in 2011 as the main instrument to deliver the military covenant, which was signed between the UK Government and the Ministry of Defence. This was an act of duty by the people of the UK to the men and women of our armed forces and veterans, to ensure that society was fair to them and cared for them in their hour of need when they had fought and cared for us in our hour of need. I am pleased to say that Scotland has 100 per cent record with all its 32 local authorities from Shetland to Stranraa, from Banff to Berwick. All have signed up to the armed forces community covenant and all have implemented it. The key purpose of the armed forces community covenant is to encourage integration between the military and civilian communities, to break down the barriers and work and live in the communities together. 100 per cent participation by our local authorities in Scotland in accepting the community covenant means that our armed forces service men and women are recognised by our civilian communities, along with our veterans and both communities working together. This is so important when the father of the house or nowadays sometimes the mother of the house are deployed in operations and may be away for several months. So communities will come together to help each other and school staff will do likewise with the school children from these families. The stigma of not being part of the community is disappearing and integration is on the increase. Now fair treatment has been shown on a much fairer scale in Scotland in respect to assessing education, health services, housing, social security benefits, care and travel and I hope that this will continue at pace. Equally there is a growing number of armed forces veterans in Scotland year on year and this is encouraging as it shows that they are coming together within the communities and helping each other where these people have served their country many with distinction and bravery. Finally we have come a long way since 2011 in Scotland but we still have some way to go yet. The armed forces covenant has played an important role for men and women and families serving in the armed forces and for veterans in Scotland and creating a fairer Scotland for them. This clearly demonstrates that communities are better together than being apart. I welcome the cabinet secretary to her new role and the ministerial team in that subject area. I also congratulate the Presiding Officer and the corporate body for heeding the calls of our committee last year to remove the term welfare from what we do in this Parliament and I am very glad that there is now a social security committee in this chamber. I would like to commend Claire Horkey and Maurice Corry for their very moving speeches today, their first speeches in the Parliament and I look forward to those yet to come at the moment. On a day when we are talking about community empowerment, fairness, involvement and giving the best opportunities for young people, I feel that I have to raise a local issue that is affecting many families in my area at the moment. On Friday, the one-stop shop for autism, a pan-lanxure service, will close its doors to the families that it supports in North and South Lanxure. Far from that being community involvement, the community has called out for the local authorities to come together and work together to save this service going forward. An individual service in either of the council areas cannot hope to mimic what has been a welcome, effective, well-thought-of service that has met the needs of people, the families, the carers and the service users with autism in my area. Even at this very late stage, I would encourage both councils to come work together to try and save this service going forward and meet the needs and aspirations of the families who have made their voices known to both councils. I raise this also because we need to work together in Scotland to achieve our ambitions. We need the third sector to work with the local authorities—our local authorities—to work together where it is appropriate to meet the needs of the citizens of Scotland. We also have a challenge going forward, yes, we will do it. Are there to ensure that we properly resource local government so that they do not have to implement cuts and provide the services that we all value? I know that that is Ms Lamont's position on that, but I wonder how those councils could provide a similar service and equivalent service in two different areas, how that can possibly cost less than just funding an existing one. It is like building two houses to replace one that is already… I must make no point whatsoever about the specific case that you raised. I was saying that perhaps in this Parliament we could work together to find a way of using the powers of this Parliament to raise resources so that we could fund local government properly and do the kinds of things that we want to do to tackle poverty and disadvantage. I will always work together with people that I agree with, but I do not agree that we should be raising money off the backs of the poorest people in our communities, like the Labour Party proposed in its last manifesto. If I could possibly move on, we have a challenge ahead because the Scottish Government will have to work with Westminster. We are going to have a DWP system that is delivered from both parliaments for the first time as we take over the delivery of universal credit and the administration and the function of PIP. That will mean good government relations with the delivery mechanism, whether that be at local level or whether it is done on a Scottish-wide basis. We have a lot of work and a lot of challenges going forward, but that cohesiveness is really important. I would like to highlight some of the work that we carried out last year as part of the welfare reform committee in looking at the impact of welfare reform on women and how detrimently affected they have been by the Tory welfare cuts and their approach to what has happened. The House of Commons library tells us that 85 per cent of the £26 billion cut has been taken from women's incomes. We are aware of the challenges that women are finding in accessing good-quality childcare. We know about pink-collar jobs, where women are underemployed, where they earn less in the workplace, and we know that our society overlies on women for caring. Women have fewer financial assets, less access to occupational pensions than men, and women are twice as likely to give up paid work in order to care. 92 per cent of lone parents are women. Women are twice as dependent on social security as men, and those findings were supported by research commissions by the welfare reform committee by Sheffield Hallam University. That report found that lone parents are in fact one of the hardest hit groups and stand to lose an average of £1,800 a year from their income from the changes to the welfare system. Our deliberations in the committee were supported by organisations such as Engender, Women's Aid, Stop the Gap, The Faucet Society and the Scottish Women's Budget Group. Many contributors from people who gave evidence to our committee show how hard it is for women to deal with this. We know what the challenges are and what the report has given us in terms of the women's specifically affected refugee women, women who are carers, women who are in abusive relationships and all those individual groups who face additional challenges under the system. If I could finish with a quote from the Faucet Society that said, until we can get to the stage where our young boys and girls are brought up without the danger differentiation that pushes women into low-paid, lowly valued work and until we change the situation where carers are almost exclusively women while boys stay away from doing any of the domestic support work, we have to design our system through a gendered lens. Moving forward, I trust that this Government will look with new eyes and through a new lens. Thank you very much. I call Monica Lennon to be followed by Gail Ross. Deputy Presiding Officer, I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate on creating a fairer Scotland. A caring and confident Scottish Parliament is one that is not afraid to admit that, for too many people in Scotland, Scotland is not a fair place to live. A courageous Scottish Parliament is one that is prepared to change this. Every single priority and choice that we make over the next five years must be designed to reduce poverty and inequality. That is my ambition. In those initial debates, I have enjoyed listening to new MSPs speak alongside returning members. Contributions have been good-natured and a lot like the mood around the Parliament as 51 newcomers find our feet. I am grateful to all the members and the staff in the Parliament who have added to the welcoming atmosphere and I am grateful to my constituents across Central Scotland who have given me the opportunity to serve them. Deputy Presiding Officer, information published this week and highlighted by others in the chamber already reconfirms that where a young person is born continues to determine their life chances. Growing up in one of Scotland's most deprived communities is likely to put you at the bottom of the class and, in too many instances, into an early grave. There is no time to waste in ending this injustice. We must use the powers of this Parliament to relentlessly target the causes of inequality in order to eradicate them. Do any of us believe in our hearts that we are doing all that we possibly can to redistribute wealth and make Scotland fairer? If we are rooted in the reality of our communities, we will be only too aware of children and families who are living through poverty and inequality. If members have not lived through that themselves or cannot think of a young person in their community, they could perhaps keep Kirsty in mind during the debate, the Holyrood baby. Kirsty is a child born into one of Scotland's poorest communities. Unless we change her course, Kirsty faces an uphill struggle and poor life chances. Another baby born at the same time in one of the wealthiest communities is expected to live a whole 10 years longer than Kirsty. A couple of miles can mean a decade of a difference in life expectancy. Some people believe that if Kirsty works hard enough as she grows, her talents and endeavours will overcome any adversity. The evidence proves this wrong. The impacts will not be felt just by Kirsty and her family alone. For every door that closes on Kirsty, for every opportunity missed and every hardship that she endures, our public services, our economy and the fabric of our communities will be washed off. By failing Kirsty and children like her, we fail ourselves. When I was growing up in Lanarkshire, I was fortunate to have a good roof over my head, although my bedroom was always freezing until the council put the central heating and the double glazing in. I was fortunate that my turbulent teenage years did not stop me from getting to university at 16 and unlocking a better future through education, but I could have found myself going off the rails. My background is not unusual, but the anguish of alcohol harm and what it can do to families has influenced me. I know that anyone of us could get sick or have poor mental health. It is not a mark of failure or a lifestyle choice, it is a reminder of our humanity. Yet without support or a second chance, too many are left to sink. I know that Scotland can do better to break the cycles of poverty and inequality and help everyone to reach their potential. We need the Scottish Government to have courage and trust in the progressives in the chamber, along with the people in Scotland, so that we will back them to do what is right and just. I believe that all of us care deeply about the communities that we represent, but we will never secure prosperity and opportunity for all if we refuse to properly invest in our public services and communities. To make Scotland stronger and fairer, we need to convince more Scots that Kersti's future is not just someone else's problem to fix. People take this Scottish Government seriously. If Nicola Sturgeon decided to use the summer to have a conversation with the people of Scotland about why tackling inequality matters, I am convinced that people would listen to our First Minister. The cabinet secretary who I congratulate on her new post will be very welcome to visit central Scotland to see both the impacts of the cuts but also the positive results of targeted investment. In closing, the commitments that we make to each other form the building blocks of a fairer Scotland, our NHS, our social security, our schools, our social housing. To build a fairer Scotland, we need to use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to make different choices and stop the cuts to our public services. Fairness means those who can most afford it contribute a little more. Then everyone will benefit from stronger public services. We will create a more dynamic economy through harnessing the potential of all our people. We have choices to make. We can choose a different path for our young people. We can chart a different future. On behalf of my constituents in central Scotland, I look forward to playing my part. I would also like to warmly welcome you and everyone else to their new roles. I will begin in the same way that many of my fellow new MSPs have done. First, I thank the people of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. You have placed your trust in me, and I will not let you down. You have told me about the main issues in your areas, in your communities and in your lives. I thank you for your openness and for your hospitality, and I want to reassure everyone in my constituency that I have been elected to represent every single one of you. That is exactly what I intend to do. I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Rob Gibson. Rob remains an unrelenting advocate for the far north and a tireless campaigner for Scottish independence. I know that he is missed in this Parliament. As convener of the Racky Committee, Rob helped to drive the land reform agenda that is going to be vital in my constituency and, indeed, throughout Scotland. People have often told me that his are big shoes to fill, and yes they are, more than two and a half times the size of mine, but, while I am not Rob Gibson and while I will tread my own path in my own stilettos, I have no doubt that Rob will be treading softly alongside me all the way. Thank you, Rob. I learnt from Rob that one of the privileges of being a member of this chamber is the opportunity to bring issues to greater attention and seek common ground across the chamber to make change. Our NHS is a remarkable institution, and its staff provide care each and every day from our first day to our last. I was proud to be elected on a manifesto committed to implementing the new £100 million cancer strategy to better prevent, detect, treat and care for those affected by cancer. On 5 September 2001, a man by the name of Raymond McDonnell died in Aberdeen royal infirmary. He left behind him a wife, four children, four grandchildren, countless friends and a small town in Caithness, much poorer for his passing. He was 65 years old and hadn't even enjoyed a full year of the retirement he had worked so hard for. Raymond McDonnell was my dad and he was taken by a brain tumour. Fast forward eight years and 32-year-old Mark Toshney had just returned from a holiday in Calgary when he felt ill on the flight home. He had four seizures and was put into a controlled coma in intensive care in Aberdeen royal infirmary, and after seven days was diagnosed with a grade 3 brain tumour. He spent eight hours in surgery to remove a golf ball-sized mass from his brain. Mark survived, but the tumour was cancerous and Mark spent the next six months undergoing intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy. His wife, Carlin, created a fundraising group to raise funds for brain tumour research, because while it is a leading cancer killer of men under 35, women under 40 and children under 2, it receives only 2 per cent of the funding that is raised through cancer charities. She has dedicated her life to this, running marathons, half marathons, 10ks, tough mudders, organising charity balls and perhaps her most famous of all fundraising efforts, the 2011 and 2012 bear all for brain tumours calendar. That turned out to be a great source of amusement at my party vetting in 2011. Unfortunately, John Finnie is not in the chamber, but he was at the vetting and he might tell you about it if you ask him nicely. Carlin truly is a remarkably driven and compassionate individual, but for Mark, although classified as terminal and although he still has 10 per cent of the tumour left in his brain, he is for now cancer-free, so why does he do it? Mark still has to go for scans every six months because there is always the worry that the cancer will come back and, if so, it is guaranteed to be aggressive because he has a six-year-old son that needs his dad because he feels as if he has to do something. Early diagnosis of brain tumours is difficult and they are often initially misdiagnosed. Some people are treated for migraines, others for depression or stress. Early diagnosis could increase chances of survival hugely depending on where the tumour is sighted. Mark was lucky. To date, Carlin and her many helpers have raised over £130,000 through her charities Beryl for brain tumours and Friends of the Neuroward ARI. She is an inspiration and she deserves to be heard. Earlier this year, she and others took the message to Westminster and now I am helping her to take the message to Holyrood. Through the new cancer strategy, I look forward to working with the Government and others across this chamber to explore what more we can do. In conclusion, for me, a fairer Scotland is one where everyone has a fighting chance if they fall ill, where their disease is adequately researched in our world-class facilities and where everyone can continue to have access to the world-class treatments that our hospitals and our excellent staff can provide. I would like to congratulate new colleagues across the chamber on their very impressive first speeches and I look forward to working with them all during this session wherever possible. I would like to take this opportunity to thank voters in Lothian for giving me the opportunity to carry on working with them on a wide range of issues and representing them in Parliament and I would like to thank all those activists who worked to share our message across Scotland. I welcome to the cabinet secretary to her new role today. It is an important new role and I also welcome the collaborative tone of the Government's motion. Speaking of new members' contributions, I was struck by that of Maurice Golden yesterday. Mr Golden suggested that the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems were a cabal. A cabal is a small group of secret plotters. Obviously, I am pleased that we are a larger group than we were, but I do not think that it is a secret that the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems agree that more cash is required to fund the public services that we rely on, although our manifestos set out different ways to do that. However, Greens will work with all parties who recognise the need to and the opportunity to use the new powers optimally to properly support those in Scotland who, for a wide variety of reasons, rely on social security. I am pleased that this Government and I would hope that this Parliament use those words social security when we discuss those issues. How did the words welfare and benefits become associated with skiving and scrounging? We know that too many people who are eligible to claim for financial assistance and other assistance might make a real difference to the quality of their lives, to the ability to live with dignity aren't doing so. Much work has to be done to ensure that people are aware of their entitlements and that they are willing to claim them. We have to work hard as a Parliament to remove that stigma that too many people feel. Some people cannot claim, at least without assistance, because the form-filling is an obstacle that they cannot overcome because they do not have IT, so they need help. The welfare and welfare children project in Glasgow showed what can be done. It helped parents, the majority of whom were lone parents, to gain an average of £3,000 in financial benefits over a year and a half. You can appreciate the difference that kind of cash made. Other colleagues have mentioned that austerity is gendered, so that is the kind of project that would bring many preventative benefits to women and children in particular. UNICEF ranks child wellbeing in the UK as worse than all our neighbours, yet the UK Government has cut pregnancy and child-related benefits across the UK by £1.5 billion a year. The Institute of Fiscal Studies forecasts a massive increase in child poverty in Scotland, with up to 100,000 more children living in poverty in 2020 than there were in 2012. Greens welcome the Government's commitment to increase take-up of benefits, but we will work with all parties, organisations and individuals who are committed to a caring social security system that puts individuals at its heart. A system that has no place for the sanctions regime that I would maintain is discredited. We know that nearly half of all sanctions are overturned on appeal and that sanctions are one of the main reasons that we are seeing an increase in number of people attending food banks and applying for hardship loans. Holyrood will control several important benefits, including support for carers and those with disabilities. It will have the ability to top up existing payments and create new benefits. With the devolution of those further powers comes the need for greater collaboration between this Parliament and Westminster. Jim McCormack of the Roundtree Foundation, when he was giving evidence to the Scotland Bill Committee in the last session, spoke of the need for much-improved governmental relations if we are going to deliver those fairly and properly. We really look forward to working together to increase the carers allowance to make sure that all working in social care have a living wage plus and, as James Dornan mentioned earlier, increasing provision of financial assistance for those young carers. We also seek to work with all who want to make primary care fair. 90 per cent of patient contacts with the health service are with GPs and other primary care professionals in our communities, but those services are not equally available to all who need them. Depend practices write to us about this inverse care law. The more people need help, the less cash there is, and they tell us how challenging recruitment is in those practices. We have to face the challenges of our ageing society. We would like to see a commission to explore how Scotland can help our older people to live more independently and healthier. We have to look at their low incomes and also the fact that 35 per cent of Scotland's households are experiencing fuel poverty. Robin Harper, my predecessor in this Parliament, introduced his warm homes bill in 2003. It is now 13 years old on, but I am glad that there is a consensus that we have to act on that agenda. We need a real living wage, and we need to start investing in bricks and mortar, not simply subsidising high rents. We need transport justice, too, in a fairer Scotland. Let us invest in that fairer, affordable public transport, and let us see more emphasis, too, on walking and cycling. Those are the most affordable forms of transport, and it is no secret that I think that this Government has continued to neglect the area. I invited the previous minister, Mr Mackay, to champion those issues, although it was not to be. Mr Yousaf is not in the chamber today, but perhaps he will be such a transport justice champion. There are many, many issues that are required to make Scotland a fairer place to live. I would ask in closing, Presiding Officer, that the Government takes action to protect children equally against assault on the law, and that the Government takes action to reform the gender recognition act. I look forward to working with colleagues across the chamber to ensure that, in a fairer Scotland, we all have access to truly equal opportunities. I call on Mary Evans to be followed by Alex Cole-Hamilton. Can I ask people to keep to a strict six minutes, please, Ms Evans? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I feel deeply humbled and privileged to be here in this chamber today as part of this new Parliament, and to do so representing the people of my home constituency, Angus North and Merns. It feels as though things have come full circle for me, because I was in this building when it was mid-construction as part of a tour during my very first work experience in the then First Minister, Jack McConnell's office, an experience that may or may not have had an influence on my political beliefs. I would like to start by paying a tribute to my predecessor Nigel Dawn, who served this Parliament both as a list and a constituency MSP since 2007. Nigel carved a real niche for himself here with his work on the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which he chaired in the last session. He was dedicated to that work and served this Parliament well. I also had the pleasure of having John Swinney as my constituency MSP for a period of time before the boundary changes in 2007, who left a lasting legacy in the parts of the constituency that he once represented. However, I feel that I have to start today on something of a negative note, because I really do take exception to some of the claims that were made in the debates earlier this week. First of all, Ruth Maguire claimed that she lives in the greatest constituency in Scotland, while Kate Forbes claimed that she has the most beautiful constituency, and not just in Scotland but in Europe. Well, I can beat you both hands down, because I have the most talented constituency. Now, we have Breachan, as well as being Scotland's eighth great city, is home to Robert Watson-Watt, who developed the use of radar that proved pivotal in the Second World War. We have our Buthnet, home to James Leslie Mitchell, better known under the pseudonym Lewis Grassic Gibbon, who I believe to be Scotland's greatest author, who penned Scotland's greatest novel, Sunset Song, which is based in the heart of my constituency in the Merns. In Stonehaven, which is home to Robert William Thomson, inventor of the pneumatic tyre, and who can forget forfer, home to that great culinary invention, the Bridey. But from coast to glen, I really am truly blessed to live in and represent all the diverse and unique communities across the north of Angus and the Merns. But to today's debate and the important theme of making Scotland fairer, I come from a local authority background having been a councillor in Angus for the past nine years, and I believe that an integral part of this debate, if we are going to talk about a fairer Scotland, is our local democracy and the relationship between our councils and our communities. Some of the issues facing local government were highlighted in a council of Europe report on local and regional democracy in the UK, put forward in March 2014. I have been fortunate enough to represent Scottish local government on the Council of Europe since 2012, alongside my colleague Christina McKelvie, and was part of that discussion. If there was anything that I learned from my work with that organisation, from the in-depth analysis and monitoring across the local governments of its 47 members, it is that while there are some examples of good practice that we can share, there is certainly a lot that we can learn from our neighbours. Because I am sure that most of us are aware of the issues that face local government. We all know the statistics about our local authorities and their size, the fact that we have the largest local authorities in Europe, from Highlands, which has a bigger land mass than Belgium, to Glasgow City Council, which serves a population of over 600,000 people. Over the past 100 years, Scotland's councils have been consolidated at a faster and more dramatic rate than anywhere else in Europe. From over 1,000 councils in the 1900s, numbers gradually decreased to 65 in 1974 and now to our current 32. There is the lack of equal representation on our councils. Only 24 per cent of our councillers are women. The average age of a counciller is the mid-fifties. Then we look at turnout. For the level of government that is closest to the communities that it serves, we had a turnout of only 39 per cent in the last election and in some words, turnout barely reached the double digits. It was also the lowest turnout since the whole-scale restructuring of local government in 1974. There is a fundamental disconnect here that we need to try and change. The situation is exacerbated by other public bodies, such as community planning partnerships and health boards. Community planning partnerships are great in theory, but in practice there is still a disconnect between community aspirations and the strategic-level decision-making. When we look at our health boards, one of the key issues in my constituency at the moment is the threat of closure to the Mulberry unit, a mental health in-patient facility at Strathrow hospital. Local elected representatives were not consulted or informed of what was coming and, with only one councillor from each of the three local authorities on the health board, it is simply not representative. There is a real lack of transparency and accountability, though I hope that the integration of health and social care will start to address some of those issues. We have started on the path of decentralisation of powers through the community empowerment act and we need to see that work go further. That is why I welcome the commitment to participatory budgeting, giving communities direct control of funding, as well as over control over crown estate revenues, giving more powers to schools with their own budgets, and giving more powers to community councils. Perhaps most importantly, giving local authorities more flexibility when it comes to finance, and I look forward to seeing what develops here. In conclusion, our local government is the closest to our communities, yet it often feels the opposite—quite remote and distant—from the people that it serves. If we really want to reform local democracy and governance in Scotland, we need to be bold, brave and ambitious. I am excited to see the plans for this reform emerge over the terms of this Parliament, because we have the power to make a real difference to our communities and we can best do that by empowering them. I have Alex Cole-Hamilton, followed by Rona Mackay, Mr Cole-Hamilton. I start by echoing my congratulations to Angela Constance and her ministerial team on their new role. I look forward to shadowing the range of briefs that they hold in their portfolio. Similarly, I look forward to shadowing the range of briefs that other cabinet secretaries hold in their portfolio. The challenge of social inequality in our society and how to meet it is the benighted task that falls to any Government and local level to any Parliamentarian. It is arguably why many of us chose a career in politics in the first place. Social inequality crosses the threshold of our constituency offices with all-too-frequent regularity. Different fronts in this seemingly endless battle open with the ebb and flow of economic and social circumstance. No sooner is policy enacted or resource directed at a certain problem to close one gap than another starts to appear with the publication of a report or set of statistics. In this agenda, above all others, our constituents look to us as politicians to work together and we do them a profound disservice to trade blows here. As such, I congratulate the Government on bringing forward this motion so early in the first days of a Parliament newly empowered with the levers that can make a real difference in closing those gaps that still pepper our society. Those benches wholeheartedly welcome the commitment to build 50,000 new homes and would urge the Scottish Government to go further on its 70 per cent commitment to make those available to social rent and push that up to 80 per cent and 40,000 homes. That is the way that we will begin to tackle that growing crisis in our socially rented sector. We are also hugely gratified by the cross-party consensus that is emerging around the need for a warm homes act to finally address that Dickensian spectre of fuel poverty that currently blights over a third of households in modern Scotland. We also welcome the intention expressed by the Scottish Government to use the new powers of social security with greater fairness, in particular restoring DLA to families whose children go into hospital for protracted hospital stays and in protecting housing benefit for young people. However, the challenge before us is still great, and we must accept that public policy has come adrift of this reality in which we find ourselves and that we have failed to use the levers at our disposal to meet that. That can be measured out in lives. Those are the lives of young men from deprived backgrounds who are still 10 times as likely to take their own lives and suicide as those are counterparts in more affluent parts of the country. In the lives of drug users who are now unable to access certain avenues of support through ADPs who have lost funding due to a cut of £15 million in the last Scottish budget. In the lives of the 15,000 children who, on any given day in Scotland, are either looked after and accommodated in this country, who are exponentially more likely to end up in prison than in university. Presiding Officer, we have before us a blank canvas and an opportunity to build the structures of state support that will empower and protect the most vulnerable of our citizens, but our challenge extends beyond ensuring that that support is available. We have a job of work to do to ensure that those living on the fringes of our society can even make it to the starting line to access state support. Last week, I was contacted by a constituent named Elsbeth. Her daughter, Eila, has been struggling to cope at school for some time, and following an assessment by educational psychologists, she was referred to CAMHS. After two months, Eila received an appointment where she and her family received the devastating news that her assessors felt that she was on the autistic spectrum but that a full ASD assessment would be required before a diagnosis could be given. Ten months later, Eila is still waiting for that assessment. Without that assessment and without that diagnosis, not only have Eila and her family been left in a limbo of uncertainty but they have been deprived of the benefits and state support that such a diagnosis would bring. Presiding Officer, we have failed her family and we have failed many others like her. If we are truly to build a meaningful safety net with these new powers afforded to this chamber then we must also build and invest in the systems that feed into it. So often, the agenda is distilled into simplistic parameters of cash and poverty, and absolutely they are essential to both cause and solution in the social inequality agenda, but we must use the levers of public policy now available to this place to address the causes of inequality. We must lead by example by only extending government grants and assistance to companies who pay the living wage. We need a whole systems approach that empowers the third sector, a group of organisations that have had generations of working miracles with next to nothing while on their needs themselves. It is that whole systems approach that will address that poverty of opportunity, ambition and access that hobbles so many of our constituents in our communities. That requires a broad reaching and selfless consensus across this chamber, and that is why the Liberal Democrat benches will support the government motion this afternoon. I ask to speak in this debate today because I am passionate about fairness and equality and believe that it is the mark of a civilised society. In fact, it is the reason why I became involved in politics in the first place, which I suspect is true of most people in this chamber, but fairness and equality is about making political choices. I left the Labour Party in the 1980s not because I had abandoned my socialist principles but because I realised that I could not raise my children in a fairer Scotland until we had control over running our own country. Like many others, I fought my election campaign based on building a fairer, more equal Scotland and I am pleased that the progressive programme for government outlines how we will do that. Poverty is not inevitable and tackling the root causes of poverty and deprivation is the SNP's choice. Indeed, it is the mark of a government making the right choices for the people of Scotland and moving ahead with the correct priorities. Closing the educational attainment gap, free university education, transformational changes in childcare, strengthening child protection and maintaining free prescriptions in building 50,000 affordable homes are all part of building a fairer Scotland. In addition to the baby box of essential items to help all children to get the best start in life, all pregnant women will receive free vitamins by next spring as part of the Scottish Government's commitment to building a healthier Scotland. I welcome this and I am proud that once again Scotland is leading the way on the issues that matter most. However, I despair that for six years we have been dictated to by a Westminster Government that strips social security payments from a man for missing his job centre appointment because he was taking his father to a hospital who had suffered a heart attack and who sanctioned a woman for not turning up for her appointment on Christmas day at the request of a computer-generated letter. I know that everyone here would agree that that is not fair and that it is ludicrous, but the Tories in this chamber have chosen to represent and support a party that implements those policies. Along with all the things that they like such as austerity, low taxes, the free market and all the rest, they get the nasty bits too. Thankfully, as the cabinet secretary has outlined, our new powers over social security will be based on dignity and respect and that is the way forward to creating a fairer Scotland. We will put a stop to the indignity of continuous assessments and support those who are the most vulnerable in society. How anyone can argue that spending £160 billion on a useless political weapon of mass destruction based on our shores is fair, while the queues for food banks in Scotland are growing month by month, is beyond my comprehension. Presiding Officer, that is money that could be spent on closing the poverty gap and allowing older people to live in dignity. Last winter, 1,200 older people in Scotland died needlessly because they lived in poorly insulated homes that they could not afford to heat. Over half of single-pensioner households and nearly half of pensioner couples in Scotland live in fuel poverty. The choice between heating and eating is a daily reality for many and should not happen. Our Government's commitment to tackling poverty will lift people out of that reality and ensure future generations do not have that experience. The Labour Party has nothing to crow about on the fairness and equality front either, with Labour-led councils for decades paying women less for doing the same job as men, many of whom are still in power, although that will change next year, and many are still wrangling over pay-outs. Their failure to challenge the Tory's austerity agenda at Westminster has cost them dear, as we have witnessed on this side of the chamber. I believe that the route to a fairer, more equal Scotland can only be found when we have full control over our own affairs and an independent Scotland. Until then, I am happy in the knowledge that we will make a difference by using the hard fought for powers that we are about to receive. Graham Simpson, please, to be followed by Neil Findlay. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I declare an interest as a councillor in South Lanarkshire. I also welcome the ministers to their new posts. How much have I enjoyed the contribution of members making their maiden speeches today? In particular, Gail Ross, Alison Johnson, who I agree with on cycling, and Mairi Evans for providing some clear Tory thinking on local accountability. Now, when we ask how do you create a fairer Scotland, it's like one of those nightmare questions that you might get asked at a job interview. It's a trap for the unwary, designed to snare you as you head down a blind alley only to find the turn you've taken is not the one the interviewer wanted, because fairness and, indeed, equality can mean different things to different people. There's no right answer to the question. Fairness could take you off in the direction of those who want 50-50 gender representation on pretty much every body you could name. I tend to agree with my colleague Rachel Hamilton that giving someone a position based just on their gender and nothing else is demeaning and hardly fair. I prefer to see fairness—no, I think we've heard enough of you today—I prefer to see fairness in terms of helping people achieve their potential as individuals and not as men, women, able-bodied, disabled, black, white, straight, gay, religious, atheist or whatever. The test for me is treating people and communities with respect. As we go through the next five years, there's a danger that people will box themselves into fixed stances early on, but if we achieve anything as parliamentarians in this session, then we must genuinely learn to work together. As a councillor, I've put aside my huge differences with Labour to work together for the good of the people of South Lanarkshire for the past four years, and it's worked. We see councils made up of all sorts of alliances throughout Scotland and we should, as MSPs, follow the lead shown by councillors. They're the people empowered to represent, to lead and shape communities. I should say that I'm looking forward genuinely, despite my comments that he's run off, to discussing how to take forward the local government agenda with Kevin Stewart. Perhaps someone can tell him when he gets back. I hope that he can set aside time in his diary for a get-together soon, and I hope that he would be able to reassure me more than the First Minister did earlier on today. Her announcement that the SNP Government will force councils to decentralise was something of a surprise. For sure, the decentralising should be happening from Holyrood to councils. It's happening from Westminster to here, but that seems to be where it stops. Strange that, isn't it? One of the tendencies of the last SNP administration was its centralising tendencies, as Adam Tonkin said earlier. This led to it in my mind and many others, to being almost disdainful of local government. That's not fair to communities, be it imposing the council tax freeze, forcing local authorities to stick to teacher numbers, meddling in planning matters, best decided locally, or driving a wedge between some councils and others. The theme was, we're in charge, not you. My party instinctively believes that decisions are best taken as close to those affected as possible, so that means leaving councils to do what they do best, and, as I said earlier, even giving them more powers. Last year, four councils left COSLA and formed a Scottish local government partnership. It just so happens that Glasgow, Rentrushire, South Lanarkshire and Aberdeen were all Labour-run, so you might argue that there was a bit of party politics involved. That wouldn't tell the full story, though. They left COSLA because they felt let down, and there was a strong feeling that COSLA, and therefore all of Scottish local government was being routinely ignored by the Scottish Government. I share that thought. The new body accounts for 25 per cent of the Scottish population. It's surely a matter for councils whether or not they're members of this body or that, but the Scottish Government stands thus far, has been to refuse to engage with the partnership. That is town to mountain to saying, it's COSLA or nothing. That's not respect. I'd urge Mr Stewart, or I would if he was here, to think again on this. Oh, he's come back. That's good. Perhaps your colleagues can tell you what I've been saying. I'd certainly be happy to assist him on the other matters that I've mentioned. This week, the independent report commissioned by ministers— You'll have to close, Mr Simpson. Certainly. If we're going to empower communities, if that's going to mean anything, then we must give them the powers they need through councils and stop the top-down approach of recent years. I can give five minutes to the last two speakers, so I first of all call Neil Findlay. I'm sure that the chamber is devastated that I've been cut a minute, Presiding Officer, but the world is not a fair place. The economic system that operates across the globe is systematically designed to create inequality. It's not an accident. New liberal economics, no matter which Government administers it, is designed to create an inequity of power, influence and wealth. It promotes a small-state, laissez-faire approach with austerity and low taxes, a central plank of economic policies, designed to see our economy and society owned and managed by a small, extremely powerful elite, while the rest are left to make do with what we are given. If we do not challenge that system, then we will never, ever address inequality. Within that system, Scotland sits our country, a place that we all take great pride in, but a place that is extremely unfair. It's not fair indeed that it is immoral that people in our poorest communities are dying up to 20 and 30 years before their wealthier fellow citizens. That is a fundamental unfairness, incompatible with any commitment that we have to human rights and the commitment to equality, and the myth that somehow we are different. We have to challenge that. I want to suggest a number of very proactive and positive ways in which we could, with the political will, do just that. We could make the ending of health and wealth inequality the overriding national objective of government, economic and social policy, with every other policy that is measured against that objective. We could hand the responsibility for achieving that objective to the office of the First Minister, making she or he accountable for its success or failure. We could make a policy of full employment and economic priority, ending the abuse of low pay. We could revisit public procurement to address the massive missed opportunities that that offers. We could end the granting of contracts, grants and loans to companies who exploit and abuse their workers, fail to recognise trade unions, or fail to pay the taxes that they owe. We could end the attack on our councils. They are the front-lining fighting unfairness and inequality. He cannot claim to support a fairer Scotland when, all the while, you are starving our councils of essential funding with jobs and services cut as a result. We could invest to address educational inequality. This week's attainment figures are stark evidence of the failure of Government policy in this area. We could reinstate, as Alex Cole-Hamilton rightly mentioned, the £15 million cut to the drugs and alcohol funding. There is huge concern among support organisations about that. They tell me that this will result in more blood-borne infections, higher hospital admissions, greater risks to vulnerable children, higher drug-related crime and more homelessness. Through this withdrawal of financial support and outreach services, we are entrenching inequality among some of the most marginalised people in some of the most marginalised communities, and at the same time criminalising poverty. Can I appeal to the minister, whoever is replying in the debate, if he will address that very point about the cut to the funding for drugs support? I am sure that Mr Cole-Hamilton will be pursuing that point, and so will I. We have the powers in this Parliament to tackle some of those issues head-on. We could raise the rate of taxation for our wealthier citizens and redistribute the revenue to the people and communities who need it most. That is a progressive, practical way to tackle poverty and inequality. Warm words and rhetoric are all very well, but they do not heat houses, create jobs or feed families. If you fail to put support progressive taxation to help and create a fairer Scotland, then it will be evidence of the Government saying one thing and then doing something completely different. The political police I hold seek not to mitigate the damage and social impacts of prevailing economic orthodoxy, but to replace it with a more democratic and a more socialist way of doing things. Another world is indeed possible, but only with real political will can we challenge the status quo and the deep unfairness within Scotland. The Government will be held to account on those issues over the next five years. Finally, I heard Mr Tomkins talk about the unscrupulous taking advantage of the system. I thought for a minute that he was talking about corporate tax evasion and avoidance. I thought that he was talking about tax cuts for the rich and benefits cuts for the poor, and I thought that he was talking about— You will have to close now. Mr Cameron's daddy's panama arrangements, but no, it was the same old Tories taking their attack out on the poor and the vulnerable. I now call the last of the open speeches. Mr Doris, you have five minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I agree much of what Mr Finlay said towards then, but rather strangely I am going to start in a spirit of consensus by agreeing with something that the Conservatives said this afternoon. They made much of dignity in relation to payment of disability benefits. Adam Tomkins specifically said that he wished power and control of those benefits to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament as soon as possible, so that our Scottish Government can take control of those matters. That is what he said. From my point of view, a tacit acknowledgement perhaps from the Conservatives in this chamber that their Tory colleagues in Westminster have not acted in the best interests of Scotland's disabled citizens, and many more also I have to say. I am glad that we can agree that this Scottish Parliament will do a better job than London to bring dignity, fairness and respect into the benefits system. Certainly many of my constituents in Mary Helen Springburn have felt victimised, demonised and excluded by Westminster's management of the benefits system, and I welcome the fresh, more humane approach that our Scottish Government has signalled. A brief one perhaps, yes? Adam Tomkins has acknowledged that it was the Scottish Conservatives that brought the prospect of the devolution of those powers to the Smith commission table, because we published them in our report of the Strathglide commission before the independence referendum. The devolution of welfare powers is a Conservative idea, and it has been legislated for in the Scotland Act 2016 by a Conservative Government. Bob Doris I will not make that mistake again. You must be in dreamland, Mr Tomkins. The Conservative party has got the most shameful record for denying Scotland's power of its own affairs for generations, and we will take no lessons from the Conservatives in this place, Mr Tomkins. I have to move on and talk a little bit about where I feel that real difference can be made in Scotland in relation to tackling poverty and promoting social justice. Alex Rowley mentioned something that was of great interest to me, and it was in relation to the scourge of intergenerational poverty. Many communities in Scotland do well in the good times and not so well in the bad times, but for many of my constituents, their communities have never ever felt the good times. It is not boom and bust for many of my constituents, but it has always been a recession for them. That is social injustice, and that is much of the intergenerational poverty that Mr Rowley referred to. However, I would like to mention some of the parts of my constituency that have suffered from that, where good things are starting to happen. In Royston, for example, groups such as Royston Youth Action, a variety of housing associations, Rosemount Development Trust and Rosemount Lifelong Learning have mentioned a few organisations, along with local elected representatives. I have designed a regeneration strategy for the area that is community-led. The reason for that is that the council did not have one, but community empowerment has led them to attracting investment to the area and having their own regeneration strategy. A second area would be Hamilton hill. A huge demolitions in 600 new homes are being proposed there. The Hamilton hill community information group contacted me as soon as they heard about it, because they do not just want to be consulted in the new homes, they want to be co-producers of what their community will look like. That was inspired by Mary Evans in an excellent speech today, because we can do all that we can in relation to education, income maximisation, employment and childcare. The list goes on and on about how we lift communities out of intergenerational poverty, but it is about community empowerment, which underpins all of that, quite frankly. Measures were made to participate in the budgeting, much was made about the flaws in the community planning process and much was made of the new historic community empowerment act. It is a cultural change when it is from society to liberate our communities from the grassroots up to build the kind of society that we want to see. That, more than anything, will tackle intergenerational poverty and provide the fair and powered Scotland that we all want to see. We now move to closing speeches, and all those who have taken part in the debate should be in the chamber. I call on Mark Griffin up to six minutes, please, Mr Griffin. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Firstly, I would like to welcome the cabinet secretary and her able deputies to their new roles. I look forward to working together constructively as we set the new course in social security that the cabinet secretary spoke about in her opening remarks. I would also like to congratulate those who have made their maiden speeches. Today, they have added a sense of realism and a welcome wider experience to the chamber. Clare Hockey talked about the impact of assessments on the patients that she has treated in her previous life as a nurse. Morris Corry talked about the integration of veterans and their families into civilian life. Monica Lennon spoke about Kirsty and the Scotland's children of poverty, who have faced massive challenges to succeed and, indeed, just survive among a few of the fantastic contributions today. Dignity, fairness and respect are three words that I have thought a lot about over the past few days. Three words that, at a young age, brought me into the Labour movement. Three words that have been in every Scottish Government press release. Three words that have permeated every third sector briefing for which I am, as ever, grateful. Three words that stand before this Parliament in the motion in front of us today. There are also three words that simply cannot be used in rhythm with the dismantling of support for our most vulnerable citizens, which we have witnessed over the past six years. We are at the early stages of what should be a wide-ranging conversation on how we support our most vulnerable people. Powers, agencies, structures, tests, assessment, support and the corporate language, which, as the scene I go on, of welfare reform will soon dominate discussions. I ask colleagues across the chamber to first consider those three words. I put it to you that it is not fair that anyone is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder through no fault of their own, that there is no dignity in leaving an assessment for personal independence payments shaking and crying as a result. There will be no respect for a Government that does not act to rid us of that experience. I say that it is not fair that a single person should die in such poverty, that their family cannot cover the costs of a funeral, that there is no dignity in having to ask for assistance to bury a loved one. There will be no respect for a Government that does not ensure that support comes with compassion and love. It is not fair that, in 21st century Scotland, a child should be born into poverty, that there is no dignity in visiting a food bank to ask for the essentials to feed our children. There will be no respect for a Government that does not provide the necessary support to our new mothers. It is not fair that the work chances and independence of our disabled people are subject to the arbitrary decisions of Government cost-cuttings. There is no dignity in being put out of sight and out of mind marginalised in society. There will be no respect for a Government that just supports that there is not enhanced the lives of our disabled citizens. It is not fair that our elderly relatives are playing roulette with the thermostat, anxious about their fuel bills. There is no dignity in our loved ones who have given us so much shivering in their own homes. There will be no respect for a Government that does not provide warm homes for our parents and grandparents. The realities of modern Scotland must sober our thoughts as we move forward. They demonstrate the challenges that we face as a nation. They show us that the driver of that conversation must be the vulnerable people themselves and their experience. I urge ministers to speak to those in our society who are facing the toughest barriers, those who face the most challenging circumstances and those who have faced the depths of unimaginable tragedy. They must be our partners moving forward. Their voices heard above those of officials, policy makers and politicians. Their voices must be heard over the cacophony of stories in the media that repeatedly portray them as scroungers, scrivers or frauds. We have heard that in the chamber today. If we really consider the words of that motion, dignity, fairness and respect, if we really dig into the experiences and challenges of our most vulnerable, I believe that this Parliament can be the principal crucible of a new and compassionate approach, an approach that can be celebrated alongside the post-war settlement. We can provide a sense of hope and opportunity for those who need it most. I call on Liam Kerr, up to eight minutes, please, Mr Kerr. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Let me say at the outset that my pride and honour in giving this my maiden speech to Parliament is as great as my surprise at finding on the morning after the election that I'd be coming here to make it as representative of the north-east region. Not, it has to be said, as great as the surprise of my wife, whom I had left some 12 hours earlier with the words, I'll be back in the morning, don't worry, everything will be back to normal then. But contrary to popular myth amongst the Aberdeen Association, she was delighted. Delighted because she's born and bred of the north-east. It's a region she loves dearly and she realised that for the next five years her husband would be doing everything possible to promote and represent the people of the north-east region. It is a region and a people that over the 11 years that I have lived there practising law with three different firms representing companies and individuals alike, acting as non-executive director for local charities like the Aberdeen Foye, that I too have come to know and love. It is by far one of the most exciting, most vibrant areas in the country. Indeed, just last weekend I was on Aberdeen's Belmont Street at the Aberdeen country fair, sampling some of the fine produce of our local businesses. I went to see an art exhibition with works created by the service users of Panumbra, a mental health charity. The following day I was delighted to accept an invite to see the vintage buses at the Grampian Transport Museum before heading up to Peterhead for the sailing club Open Day, in a port that remains the largest whitefish market in Europe. Finally, the next day I cycled down the D-side line in glorious sunshine to check on the progress of the western peripheral route and stopped by one or perhaps more than one of the fine hostelries in Stonehaven Harbour. All this from the region that has powered the Scottish economy for generations, be it through oil and gas, the fishing, the farming, the tourism, the universities, the creative and gaming industries, the region that statistically is the most entrepreneurial place in Scotland, and yet. The one thing that people told me time and time again when I chapped their doors during the campaign, whether in Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, Bancary, the Broch in Vruery, was that the voice of the north-east is not being heard. And I say on their behalf in a debate about a fairer Scotland, I ask simply this, where is the fairness in Aberdeen being the lowest-funded council such that two public pools can no longer be kept open, with the shire being the third lowest-funded? Where is the fairness as we see a crisis that sees job losses runs at tens of thousands and Sir Ian Wood predicting 45,000 jobs could be lost in 2016 that just yesterday this house says to our highly skilled unemployed in the north-east, there will be no fracking here, and that in the context of the Greens committing to shutting down the industry altogether. Where is the fairness in doubling the large business supplement, which hammers—made in speech, I'm afraid, but I've clearly hit the mark, so thanks for that. The large business supplement is going to hammer 27 per cent of business premises in Aberdeen City. We are already the second highest contributor to the Scottish Government coffers on non-domestic rates. Angela Constance talks of boosting competitiveness to tackle inequality, yet then her own government seeks to make us less competitive with this move. Where is the fairness that in an area with some of the most eye-watering house prices in the country, where prices in Fraserborough have soared by 139 per cent, where house prices in Aberdeen are 24 per cent higher than the Scottish average and 33 per cent higher in the shire, the government puts up council tax on our properties in Banzita H. Now I understand that this is a convenient narrative to describe, as I've seen so many do in this chamber in the last three weeks, including the First Minister this morning, that those in properties at H are wealthy or the better off, but in the north-east that is not necessarily the case. Those are families who have worked hard and gone without to afford to live where they do, often suffering job losses during the current crisis, or facing hardship due to the farm payments fiasco. Being hammered yet again whilst they struggle to afford houses, they can no longer even sell due to the land and buildings transaction tax. Now where is the fairness in the lack of investment in infrastructure? The A90 is not fit for purposes of a single carriageway, and as was pointed out yesterday, Peter Head and the Broch remain the furthest towns from a railway station in the country. Not for the north-eastern new borders railway and Airdrie Bathgate loop, not for us and new M74 or the A8 to M8 upgrade. That is not fairness. That is exploitation. We are the forgotten region. Now I said earlier that people crave their voice being heard and they have sent down Ross Thompson, Alex Johnson, Alex Burnett, Peter Chapman and I to get that voice heard. I say to the people of the north-east that we will be your voice. To pernumbra the Aberdeen foye, the third sector facing budget cuts due to our underfunded councils coping bravely with the job losses up there, we will be your voice. To our universities who have announced staffing cuts due to funding shortfalls in the Aberdeenshire colleges, who have seen a 22 per cent decrease in students due to a populist but misguided fees policy, we will be your voice. To the businesses struggling as the oil price crisis filters into all sectors who demand a comprehensive review of rates, we will be your voice. And again to the people, the individuals, the families struggling through, desperate to keep the state out of their business whether it is taking yet more money in income tax, council tax, land and buildings transaction tax or simply wanting a party to continue to oppose the named person scheme, we will be your voice. Adam Tomkins made the point that by failing to pass on the lifting of the tax threshold, it will be even more difficult to recruit teachers and nurses. This is a massive issue in the north-east and will remain so as a direct function of this government's decisions. I am persuaded by the point made by Annie Wells who said that it was no longer acceptable to blame the UK Government. That is never more apparent than in the Scottish Government decisions in the north-east. Christina McKelvie constantly said, we want to, we want to. Well, do it then. You have been in government for nine years. Stop blaming, start doing. Let me close by asking the House to support the amendment proposed by Adam Tomkins to this motion. That amendment inserts that the social security system should help those who want to work to find employment through on-going support and commit to building 50,000 affordable homes. That is absolutely what this Parliament should be doing. Is there really any MSP in this House who will stand before the people and vote against that amendment with such laudable aims? I am absolutely persuaded from the contributions today that the way to create a fair of Scotland is to remember that people, not governments, make the best choices about their money, their families and their communities. Graham Simpson talked about centralisation and the hallmark of this Parliament. Maria Evans said, we have started decentralisation. Good, not before time. If I may shamelessly paraphrase, big centralised government is not the solution to our problems. Big centralised government is the problem. The way to create a fair and prosperous Scotland in which people flourish is to trust them. End this rampant centralisation. Empower communities and people as the motion craves. Create fairness in our tax system, our welfare and our communities, and that will deliver a stronger and fairer Scotland. I call on Kevin Stewart to wind up the debate. Around 10 minutes please, minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I welcome you and your colleagues to your post, and I also welcome all of the front bench teams on their appointments. Presiding Officer, I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this crucial topic in the chamber. The Scottish Government is fully committed to our vision of a fairer and more prosperous Scotland, where people are healthier, happier and are treated with respect, and where opportunities, wealth and power are spread more equally. We have heard some thoughtful contributions in the chamber today, and some a little less thoughtful it has to be said. I look forward to working constructively together to deliver the fairer Scotland that I am certain all members want to see. I have listened with interest to what colleagues across the chamber have talked about today, and I will come back to some of their points in more detail. There is one thing that I would like to be clear on. Tackling poverty remains a key priority for this Government, and we will do all that we can within the powers that we have to continue to address and reduce the deep-seated inequalities that unfortunately still exist in our society. Let me turn to some of the first speeches that we heard today. Claire Hawley will make an excellent representative for Glasgow, rather than Glenn. One of the points that she made about fairness is that this Government will continue to pay nurses and midwives in training bursaries, which I think is extremely important for our health service, which will always remain free at the point of delivery. Maurice Corry talked of the Armed Forces Covenant, and it is something that I have dealt with as a constituency MSP on a regular basis. I have to say that some things do annoy me. I wish that the Ministry of Defence would put more into helping folk with mental health difficulties when they leave the armed forces. I am sure that we can maybe work together in that front. However, I am also happy that in various areas throughout Scotland, in Citizens Advice Bureau, we have folk who are helping to ensure that the armed forces covenant is lived up to. Unfortunately, as I say, the MODs are sometimes the ones who are failing and not the public services here in Scotland. Monica Lennon talked of Kirsty. I thought that that was extremely well thought-out speech. I hope that we can work across this chamber to ensure that we eradicate poverty. Gail Ross talked of the Toshrey family, and I am sure that all in this chamber wish them very well indeed. To Carolyn, I thank you very much for your fundraising efforts. I am sure that that will be appreciated by many people right across the country. Finally—no, not finally, I beg your pardon—Marie Evans talked about the Grassic Gibbon Centre. Leslie Mitchell, I probably should not say this, but I will, because a very small person who I will not identify used to pass that sign quite regularly and say, I want to go and see the monkeys, because the Grassic Gibbon Centre thought that there were lots of monkeys there. However, that area will do well with you as its MSP. I am pleased that you recognise the strides that we have made in terms of empowering communities. The Government is determined to ensure that we give more power to communities and build upon the community empowerment act that we have already passed. To Liam Kerr, Mark McDonald is a minister, Maureen Watt is a minister and myself is a minister. To the folk in the north-east, I say, we will be your voice in government. I would also say to Mr Kerr that, in terms of receiving more resource for the north-east of Scotland, one of the things that he could do is join us and ask the UK Government to match the Scottish Government's commitment to the Aberdeen city and Shire city deal. The Scottish Government has committed £379 million. The Westminster Government only £125 million. Join us and ask them to match our commitment to the north-east of Scotland. Beyond that, I will say to the people of Fraserborough, who were mentioned by Mr Kerr, that Minister Paul Wheelhouse will be in Fraserborough on Monday to chair the Fraserborough task force. Fergus Ewing did it previously and did it well. I am sure that Mr Wheelhouse will be equally as good. Keith Brown and Mr Wheelhouse will also be meeting representatives of the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen tomorrow. We will be your voice. I will give way to Mr Finlay. I will ask if one of the ministers, in sum and up, would address the specific issue of the £15 million that has been cut from the drugs support budget. The drugs support organisations are extremely concerned about the impact of the cut on very vulnerable people. Will the minister address that with his colleagues in government and report back to his police? One of the things that you will find is that this Government will work across the board and co-operate with one another to ensure that we tackle some of the real difficulties that we have in our society. Mr Rowley in his speech asked about the Government's poverty strategy and whether that would work right across government. I can give you that commitment, Mr Rowley, that we will be a cross-cutting Government and ensure that that poverty strategy is embedded right across our Government. If I can turn to Mr Tomkins in an usual speech, we are looking at transfer of powers and timescales, where the cabinet secretary is due to have a meeting of the joint ministerial working group on welfare shortly. The Scottish Government is committed to working with the UK Government to ensure that those transfer powers work as smoothly as possible. We want to ensure that we do the best for the people of Scotland. We welcome the Secretary of State for Scotland's commitment to work with the Scottish Government and the Parliament on that issue. However, we have to take a wee bit of a backstack and look at the realities of that. Yes, we are gaining some powers, but £15 billion of welfare spending stays with the UK Government, including most of universal credit. It would have been so much better if those powers had been transferred here so that we could have created a system that works for all. I also say that, in terms of some of the things that have come from the Conservative benches today, Mr Simpson in particular talked about why we should have gender equality, why we should have positive discrimination and why we should have 50-50 boards, because it should not be based on gender. Throughout history, gender has dictated that folk get jobs. Throughout history, men have gotten jobs because of their gender. It is now time to ensure that we have fairness in that regard and give women the opportunities that men have had right throughout history. Mr Riley asked for some assurances from the Government, as did Ms Johnson round about the warm homes bill. We will be bringing forward a warm homes bill. I know that there is cross-party support for that, and we will ensure that that happens. Beyond that, we have to step beyond this Parliament and look at some of the things that we do not control, but we can act together to try and get change in terms of regulation. It really riles me that some of the folks who are paying the highest bills in this country are the poorest folks who use card meters. I think that we should unite as a Parliament and look elsewhere and get them to change laws to ensure that there is fairness in that regard, too. Also to Mr Riley, I say that house building is happening now, and the More Homes Scotland initiative is very worthy. We will do all that we can to ensure our commitment to 50,000 affordable houses and 35,000 of those for social rent. I would gently say to the Conservatives in terms of their amendment where they talk of 100,000 houses. In the last five years, 53,000 houses were built in the private sector. In the last year, 12,000 houses were built in the private sector. Your commitment is less in what is happening at this moment in time. You want to see a reduced amount of houses in the private sector during the course of this Parliament, which I find rather strange. It is always best to check your facts before you lodge an amendment. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I want to reinforce the Government's strong record of taking action to create a fairer Scotland. We have invested £296 million over the past three years to mitigate the worst of the UK Government's welfare cuts to protect children and low-income households, but we want to go further than just mitigation. We will continue to strive for a Scotland that is fair, equal and prosperous. I commend this motion to the Parliament. I thank the minister for concluding his remarks. That takes us to decision time, and there are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that motion 282.1, in the name of Adam Tompkins, which seeks to amend motion 282 in the name of Angela Constance, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. There will therefore be a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote is as follows. Yes, 30. No, 90. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that amendment 280.2, in the name of Alec Rowley, which seeks to amend motion 280 in the name of Angela Constance, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. Members will please cast their votes now. The result of the vote is as follows. Yes, 26. No, 94. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that motion 280, in the name of Angela Constance, on taking Scotland forward, creating a fairer Scotland, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are all agreed. We are all agreed. Members should cast their votes now. Members are not agreed. We will move to a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 280, in the name of Angela Constance, is as follows. Yes, 100. No, 20. There were no abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time.