 i ni'n gweld bod chi mor iaith gweithio eu clywbeth hynny, allan i gael ei haterion i'r bwysig ffantastig yn y 11 yng Nghymru Cymru, i fyfnwysgol iawn i'r ffynolistau ac allan i fyfnwysgol iawn i'r edrych yn fyr dessaug yn Halladau Ffryd Ddais. Rwy'n viwch i'n dda o'r ffyrdd oedd y ples, efo Algen, south Dumfries, i ddweud o'rquébit yn y ffrif, ond o'r ffrif, ac oeddaeth i gael ei dda i ddechrau I commend you all for that. It must have been a long day and I hope you've enjoyed it. Today's competition has been organised in partnership with the English-speaking Union and Education Scotland and I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone involved from both of those organisations for their efforts in making this annual event the success that it is. The qualitative debate seems to improve year on year and I'm sure our 11th competition will be the best of the lots so no pressure on contributors today. The chamber, as you'll be aware, has witnessed many debates over the years since its establishment from the very consensual and sometimes fairly mundane and pedestrian debates to pretty heated and impassioned debates about matters of real import to the people of Scotland but no matter the kind of debate we're having, I think successful debate or share one important quality and that's a willingness to listen and to engage constructively with their opponents. So a tip for me, not that I'm the greatest debate in the world, far from it, but simply turning up the volume is not, in my view, a winning strategy in any debate. I'm sure many of you would share that observation. To quote the South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, don't raise your voice, improve your argument. I think those are wise words. So with its unique pairing up of school pupils with university students, these championships offer a valuable opportunity for pupils to hone their debating skills and also an opportunity for students to do likewise, as well as to develop coaching and mentoring skills. More than that, I hope it allows all participants to simply enjoy themselves, to enjoy debate and to enjoy themselves here in the Scottish Parliament this evening. On behalf of my parliamentary colleagues, can I once again welcome you to our wonderful building here? I am pleased to say that we're also joined today by the Scottish Government's Minister for International Development and Europe, Alistair Allan MSP, and I would like to ask him to come forward to the podium and say a few words. Thank you, Alistair. Thank you very much, Andy. Some of you have clearly discovered that we have a tradition or some of us do in this chamber of hammering our desks in front of us. We have the advantage over the House of Commons that not only do we all have a chair but we all have a desk in front of us as well. It is slightly strange for me to be standing here because I don't think I've ever faced the Parliament looking in this direction and it is quite daunting. I think that a number of parliaments around the world here speak from our own seat. It's strange to be looking this day, but I'm delighted that you're here today and you've taken the opportunity to mark the final of the 2017 St Andrews Day debating tournament. St Andrews Day provides us with a great opportunity to celebrate Scotland's culture, to celebrate our communities and our values. It is, of course, also simply an opportunity for the nation to enjoy itself, so I hope that you have had the chance to do that in the course of this competition. I don't think that it may have seemed at times. Through debate, we can consider the world around us by thinking about different arguments, engaging with opposing views, exploring new ideas and doing so in a spirit of collaboration and friendship. As we all progress through this competition and into the challenges of your careers and lives ahead, I encourage you all to continue to use what I hope are, and I'm sure are, the great debating skills that you've all demonstrated here today to help you to make your own positive difference in your lives ahead. I would like to close to thank the team at the English-speaking Union for organising today's tournament and colleagues at the Scottish Parliament for hosting the event. I have, myself, very happy memories of the English-speaking Union and their schools, public speaking and debating competitions from my time at Selkirk High School. Specifically, I have very happy memories of the 1986 competition, and I take this belated opportunity to thank our coach, Mr Slater, our English teacher. Can I also, more importantly, wish you all a happy St Andrew's Day, last year on the new Landrysh Gwylwyr, and also take the opportunity to wish you all good luck in this competition? 2018 is going to be the year of young people for Scotland, so today's event is a great way to celebrate both St Andrew's Day and the coming year ahead. Again, I wish you all the very best in the competition ahead, and I look forward to hearing a great debate tonight. Thank you very much, minister. Before I introduce the finalists, I'd like to introduce the judges. Chairing the judging panel will be Richard Wilkins. Do you want to stand up, Richard, so that everyone can see you? Richard is a long history of debating having won the John Smith University's Mace with Edinburgh University in 1999. In 2000, he founded the ASC junior's debating competition, and from 2004 to 2006, he coached the Scottish schools debating team. His current job is within the First Minister's policy team for the Scottish Government. Alex is managing director of public relations and public affairs company Orbit communications, a trustee of the English speaking union, and also a board member of the European movement in Scotland. He's a lifetime follower of the Scottish rugby team, I'm told, and secretary of the Liberty and Fp Rugby Club, so he must be in a fairly good mood about that just now. Next, I'd like to introduce Gabriella Lease, a student at the University of Edinburgh. She's currently at the university's debating union schools convener, and has judged at Edinburgh University's schools competition and Edinburgh junior's final. She was also an Edinburgh cup. Breaking judge and has broken at Bogwall Trinity Women's Scottish Mace Championships of Poland and the school's champion of Poland. For those in the know, to break means that you are in the top tier of judges, so well done, Gabriella. Also joining the panel, we have Connor Kear, who currently studies at the University of Dundee. In the four years since he's been judging schools competitions, he's been to more places than the proclaimers can name in letters to America, he claims. Connor's been judging the ESU Scotland for the past three years and has judged the final of the Scottish schools Mace for the past two years, and has very kindly run the tab for the whole tournament today. There's an under-a-day debate that encourages pupils to join the judging panel for all the debates held throughout this event, so I'm delighted to welcome Aiden Shields from Craigmount High School as the last member of our judging panel. I'd like now to congratulate and introduce the four teams that have made it to the final. The first team are Lluca del Pippo from Perth High School and Rue Ferguson from St Andrews University and will be known as Perth Ferguson. Welcome. Next, we have Doar Shabir and High School of Glasgow and Mark Wilson from University of Edinburgh, who will be known as HSOG Wilson. We also have Duncan Riddle from Queensbury High School and Robin Lawrence from University of Glasgow and will be known as Queensbury Lawrence. Finally, we have Amy Baxter from Clifton Hall School and Henry Vecal from University of Edinburgh, who will be known as Clifton Vecal. Before we begin, I'd like to outline the format of the debate. I will call on the first proposition to speak, and they have five minutes. I will then call on the first opposition speaker to speak, and they also have five minutes, and this is repeated for each speaker. During those eight speeches, I will verbally announce when your first minute is up, and that will indicate that points of information are now permitted. I will also verbally indicate when you have entered your last of the five minutes, in which no more points of information will be allowed. When you are five minutes up, I will ask you to wind up if you have not already wound up. The clocks are in the chambers here, you will be able to see your timings, and again we will be asked to wind up very promptly. So please do use the clocks in the chamber for references. Those will be timing you, and I'd ask all speakers also to present from their current position. After the final speech for the opposition, I'll ask the judges to retire to make their decision, and at this point we'll open the debate up to the floor for 30 minutes. I hope that everyone possible will participate in the floor debate. We've only got 30 minutes and many, many speakers that won't be possible for everyone to contribute, and there will be an award for the best contribution from the floor. The motion for today's final is that this house believes that individuals have a right to a basic income, regardless of capacity or willingness to work. So now on to the final, and I wish you all the best of luck. I would like to call the first speaker from Perth Ferguson to open the debate as the first proposition speaker. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we, the Scottish Government, are already in the process of trialling universal basic income in council areas across Scotland. What we propose is that we, A, continue to do this in order to determine an appropriate amount. We're thinking kind of like around the national living wage. Everyone will be entitled to this after they leave school at the age of 18. In my speech, I'm going to cover automation, the consequences of automation and how our proposal effectively deals with those consequences. Automation, this is a phrase that is often, you know, like kind of an automated response ironically from economists when we kind of ask what we're going to see in the future in the world of economics. We see that jobs are going to be lost. This is the overwhelming response. Jobs are going to be lost and will continue to be so. Why? We're seeing not just hammered robots that just hammer out cars cutting manufacturing jobs anymore. We're seeing near-sentient beings with intelligent artificial intelligence, replacing care workers, nurses, who knows, maybe even judges and ministers. The point of this is that we will see jobs cut on a massive scale. Why? A, you're going to reduce labour costs. Oh, sorry, I'll take your point now. If automation meaningfully threatens society, why not just ban it? Sorry? Why not ban automation? Because we think that, no, it's like an economic force. You're not going to be able to ban it. If you ban it here, other countries will do it and you'll see capital flight and that's just generally bad for the economy and we'll actually create more in employment. We see that our proposal stands. First of all, the reason why companies do this is, A, it reduces labour costs because AI can be mass produced. B, you can cheaply mass produce because of economies of stale and say's law in economics, companies will benefit from mass production of artificial intelligence and through artificial intelligence. And C, a robot can't sue a company. A robot doesn't have rights. They can make them work 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year and it will not have any qualms about it. It is a robot. It is artificial intelligence. So when we look at the impact of this on the opposition side of the house, we see it is an oligopoly. That is to say a small number of companies controlling an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of capital within the economy and having huge amounts of influence compared to your normal consumer in what determines market forces. Now, because this happens because you're reducing labour costs and because of your rapid investment in AI as companies start to make more and more profit from not paying workers' robots. As a result of this, people are going to become a lot poorer. We're going to see job loss, obviously. We're going to see declining opportunity to work. We're going to see a very centralised and very minute amount of people actually working and able to work as most of the job market becomes automated by robots or artificial intelligence. We also see that mortgage payments go unpaid. This tackles your single mother who needs to work all the hours that God sends them to provide for three children. This is the type of person that is going to be affecting because most of the jobs in society will become automated over time. Only on our side of the house do we see that those people are protected from poverty. What you've just outlined there for us is people who do not have the capacity to find a job in the current labour market. You're not outlining the people, mentioning the motion who are not even willing to work. Okay, when we talk about the people who aren't actually willing to work, we see that it still stands because we don't, at the same time, we can actually relate it to the right to life. Even if they're not willing to work to the point of where they're actually going to starve, we see that they still have the right to life under the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, it is our responsibility as a Government to make sure that they have enough income to live a decent life. When we ask economists what's going to happen because of this, we get the response like, look, this is going to be worse than the Great Depression in terms of mass unemployment and poverty. This isn't just speculative, this isn't just an assertion. We're seeing this from Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, and we're also seeing it from Thomas Peckarty, who's not the head of the IMF, but he's still a very esteemed economist, so the point kind of still stands. We propose a UBI in solution to this. We see that this will create a fiscal multiplier, this will increase economic growth, boost job growth as we see economic growth rising. We also see that it will allow people to have a say in what happens in the market, not just the minority with jobs. We also concede that there will still be jobs available. It will allow people to live while seeking retraining. It can go into the job market that is still not on automated, so it will allow them to live while they seek retraining if they so wish. Thirdly, it will create a financial and social equality by giving everyone enough to live on. We will see a drastic improvement on the Gini coefficient in Scotland. The trade-off is essentially, even if we accept that this policy will create debt in the short run, it will prevent the mass poverty that is derived from unemployment that is created by automation, and we think that that is more important than anything that the Opposition can provide us with tonight. I beg you to propose. Thank you very much indeed and for keeping to time. Remind all speakers that there are clocks here, you can time yourself. I'd very much now like to call the first speaker from HSOG Wilson to respond as the first Opposition speaker. Five minutes. Ladies and gentlemen and esteemed chair. Today, I'm proud to open the case for side opposition for the motion. This House believes that all citizens have a right to universal basic income, regardless of capacity or willingness to work. First, I'd like to offer some rebuttal and to take some issue with some points made by opening government. One thing that I found that he was mentioning in his speech is the fact that human beings have a basic right to life, which we totally agree with and recognise on-site opposition. However, what we see is that what the Government is obliged to do, what people are entitled to, is do basic human rights and the means to be able to access them if they do not have the capacity to. The part of this motion is that you have a right for universal basic income if you do not have the capacity to. We agree that the Government's responsibility is to give you the means to be able to do things that would allow you to have things such as food, shelter and basic human needs. However, we feel that once the Government gives you this thing, if you are willing to take it or not, it is your responsibility. For example, if the Government provides all citizens with a job, point to the example of a place such as India. In places of rural India, people have been guaranteed for the job for the Government. If they take it or not, that is their decision. That is their willingness. However, from that, the Government is not entitled to provide them with things that would allow them to be able to sustain living if they have not decided to take the means that are already provided to them. I want to my substantive case, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to outline that this motion is about if we believe that it is a human right or not. We could support the motion otherwise. We could support basic income otherwise. However, we do not think that it is a right that everyone is entitled to. Ladies and gentlemen, one of the main cases that I would like to outline in my substantive case of my speech is the idea of taxation and how that will impact taxation on consumers who participate in the labour market. Ladies and gentlemen, on-site opposition, we liken taxation to theft. As a member of society, I do not choose whether I want to give taxation or not. You might argue that I have chosen to be in society and I have not chosen to be in society. In a democracy, my vote does only count if I am breaking a tie. In the grand scale of things, my vote is insignificant so that I do not contribute to the democratic running of the society. In that way, paying tax is not my option. To pay tax as it can just a sec, to pay tax as a Government, I have agreed that I have to work. I have to provide my labour to the Government in order to pay tax. We are more than happy to have 0 per cent taxation and borrow all the money. We are more than happy to have 0 per cent taxation and borrow all the money needed. However, I think that that is an extremely harmful thing to say that you would borrow all the money because I think that that does not work on many different levels because of the idea that it introduces a lot of debt. As a society, we already accept that transfer payments do occur. To fund state education, for example, we have taxation. For me to pay to the Government, as I have said, I have accepted that I have to provide my labour. Therefore, the money that I provide to the Government is the equivalent to my labour. For example, if we introduce an incentive, like a universal basic income for all, that means that I may have to work an extra hour to provide this in transfer payments to the Government. The only justification, ladies and gentlemen, for me to pay tax, for me to engage in transfer payments is if we are protecting a more fundamental right. For example, some people's lives are at risk. That means that I am justified and I will give my income, and that is something that we agree on as a society. However, the marginal benefits from this are very little because basically what I have to do is I have to work in order to allow other people to have the luxury of not working. Essentially, that is taking my labour and giving it to others in the society. Ladies and gentlemen, what does this do to my labour? Essentially, it devalues it. We say that this is akin to theft, because I have accepted that I have to be willing to work. I have the capacity to work and I then have to decide that I am willing to work. To then have that acceptance that agreement that I have made with society is exploited by the concept that there is a sector of society that is able to not work and still get a universal basic income, we think is ludicrous. As I have already outlined, the basic human right is not actually to an income. The basic human right is to things like food, education, shelter, clothing. The basic human rights, the Government, as I have said, is only obliged to provide the means to that. People are not willing to take that means, but that is their responsibility. Therefore, I am not liable to provide that by selling my labour to the Government, so it is devalued for me and it becomes meaningless. Can I now call the second proposition from Perth Ferguson to the debate? Imagine a world where artificial intelligence replaces swathes of human vocations. Imagine a world where your neighbour, your community and your family solely see the deflation of their living standards. Imagine a world where mass unemployment and poverty are the norm. That is a world that you need not imagine. If we continue to abdicate responsibility, that is reality that we face. What we are proposing on proposition on the Government's side, ladies and gentlemen, is that we harness the benefits of artificial intelligence, the wealth that it brings, to bring a better tomorrow. I have a couple of points. First of all, I will tell you how we can harness the technological change for that better tomorrow that I was talking about. I think that I will talk about why we should not fear technological progress but we should embrace it, and finally I will talk about the trade-offs, but first of all I will talk about some rebuttal. The point that we got from the last speaker in a very good speech said to you, but what about the people who are not willing to work? We say A, that is their decision, especially if it is unrewarding. Lots of jobs are terrible. If they are completely replaceable, they have cruel management and dire pay. That is a fair trade-off that you are reasonable in your position to make. As I will talk about later, we are one of the wealthiest nations on earth and we are going to get richer because of artificial intelligence. Costs are going to go down when we automate things, but the trade-off of that, no thank you, is going to be that there is going to be a higher amount of unemployment. We propose taking the money that we get from the savings that we will make and the reductions of costs and giving that to the people who need it so that they can live a fulfilling life. How do we do that? We tell you first of all that we can harness that technological change because we live in a society with a couple of problems. We say that we, in our society today, have too many people living in school conditions. We say A, because our welfare provisions are not designed for the long-term, they are designed for a short-term stop-gap, but since so many jobs, even things like legal work, clerical work, jobs that are considered, accountancy work, jobs that are traditionally considered, middle management jobs, can now be automated. We say at that point that when those people go into mass and employment they might not be able to find jobs to replace them, especially if they are of a middle age. We say B, a lot of jobs today are not compensated and should be compensated. If you think of that single mother who is looking after her children and she is stretched while she is on tax credits or universal credit, while the rich see their taxes fall and their profits increase, we say that she should be fairly compensated for her work. How do we address such problems and why should we not fear technological change? We are not luddites on government, we are not afraid of progress and we will not be cloutowed by billionaires or oligarchs. If each and every single one of you had the financial resources to create promise, you would also ignore the warnings and take their sweet rich apple from the Silicon Valley garden of Eden, and we certainly would do that if it requires pretending to be it. Why do we get richer? We say A, as I talked about with my partner, things like economies of scale. When I buy a coffee machine and I make one coffee—this is the economic example, sorry to bore you all—but when I have one coffee, that is a relatively high cost because I have had to invest a lot of money buying that coffee machine. If I make hundreds of coffees and I only need one machine and little inputs, the average cost of that cup goes down. That is the principle of artificial intelligence. When I make something in masses, the costs are reduced. When we are talking about things such as courier delivery services and Amazon are looking at things such as drones, we say that because the costs fall, we are going to have this mass unemployment. There are millions and millions of people who work in the courier industry. At the point where they are all replaced by drones and the costs are much cheaper, we say that the prices of things will go down because they no longer have to pay the cost of the drivers who are having to drive out those deliveries. All they have to do is programme it into a machine. At the point where we tax those things and we get the revenues back, we are likely to be able to redistribute it. We say that technology is much quicker than we are. You do not have to train a robot for 21 years of your life. It does not get hangovers. It does not need eight hours of sleep per night. It does not need to be an annoying student like me. You can make it work 24 hours a day. We simply cannot compete against objects and machines that are able to do those sorts of tasks. That is the trade-off that we face, ladies and gentlemen. Do we want to work for artificial intelligence or do we want technology to work for us? I have already told you throughout my speech that there are too many people in our society when we can clearly afford to look after them, to protect them, to get them a decent standard of life that are left in the fringes and the margins of our society. We say that we take hold of the advantages. We do not see technology as something that we should be afraid of but as something that we should harness and benefit to our own gain. In the short term, if there are some costs, if our deficit has to increase slightly, if our national debt, which is going up anyway, increases another couple percentage points, we say that we are willing to wait, we are willing to make people's lives better and we are proud to be in the Government's side. Thank you very much. We were all born into states arbitrarily and at every stage in our life, those states make decisions that fundamentally affect the kind of choices that we make. At no point do we get to meaningfully consent into those systems. We did not decide that we were born. There was no contract to sign at any point that said, yes, I want to be Scottish or British or American. At no point do you get as an individual to decide if the laws of those states apply to you. So you may get to vote in an election but unless there's a very close tie, your vote isn't going to determine whether or not those laws apply to you. We say as a result, all states operate as dictators onto their individuals and must be deeply careful about the kinds of policies they enact. Some framing in this debate. First, this is that this House believes debate about whether or not universal income or basic income is itself a right regardless of willingness. This is not a debate about whether or not basic income would be strategically useful to solve some of society's problems or who we think it's a good policy idea. I'm sorry opening government but you've already lost this debate. Second, we're happy to support a world in which the Government provides you access to a job, a useful job, hopefully, but one which allows you to generate revenue, a living wage and coheres to the basic standards of society. Allowing you to access all of your basic and fundamental rights like freedom, like education and like food but which requires you to be willing to work in order to access those things. We're happy if you don't have capacity for you as an individual to not be required to work. I think that's reasonable. Fundamentally then, why are we winning this debate? First, why Potter's outline to you is that the act of taxation itself commands a theft upon the individual. Why? Because in order to acquire money as a person you have to work to get that revenue. And when the state taxes that revenue, they command your labour in that way. Given that you don't consent to that state, what that state has effectively done is taken the work that you have done required you to work more and in addition to not allowing, not allowing you the choice to work which regards on either side of the house, they've taken the money you've generated as revenue from that. So what this looks like then is a redistribution of money of work from people who are willing to work to people who are unwilling to work. We think this is fundamentally unjustified and means that basic income is not a right because in order for something to be a right you have to not reasonably be able to find alternative mechanism for achieving that. What do I mean by this? I know that this is in part separate to the taxation of theft argument. So if the state itself is able to provide me with a mechanism for achieving a right by virtue of providing me with a job then I have the capacity to access that right. So a right in and of itself is the ability of the individual to make a demand upon the government and upon society that something be provided for them. We say in many circumstances that fundamental right looks like something like food or education without which you would die. That's a very fundamental right that the government should definitely provide. In those circumstances, taxation is justified and acceptable because that's a more fundamental concern than the compensation that you're being robbed of. So, for instance, if I had to mug someone, which is effectively what the government is doing, in order to save someone's life, that might be morally devious, but it is acceptable. It's not acceptable in circumstances where the other person has the capacity to choose to live but choose to neglect that alternative. We say that that's a reasonable alternative because the government's provided you a job that is safe, that pays a living wage, then it's unreasonable for you to command the labour of another individual. Take that POI. Without healthcare, without education, without welfare benefits, we wouldn't allow ourselves to self-actualise as individuals. How can taxation be theft? It is theft. Sometimes theft is justified if that means saving someone's life. It's not justified if that person could choose to live through a very reasonable alternative. It's very reasonable for someone if a job that is safe and that pays a decent wage is available to them. If that's true, it's unreasonable for them to assume and take money from you in order to be alive. But if that alternative doesn't exist, we think that's justified. What that means, then, is that we think all income, all welfare that's provided by the state, should be means tested because then it represents a more reasonable and meaningful justification of why that taxation will be provided. So, let's say, for instance, that you believe that food is a right and it is. If that's true, then the government has the requirement that you have reasonable access to that food. But it doesn't have to ensure that you get it regardless of circumstance. If you choose not to work, you're not guaranteed that right because you've been provided a meaningful route to accessing that right. So, the right itself is food, but you didn't get a right to specifically one particular mechanism of achieving that outcome. So, if the government is able to provide you with multiple means through which to access an end, the end here being food, and the means that's been provided through the avenue of a job, then there's no burden on the state to provide you that to you regardless of if you choose the very reasonable avenue of accessing that right. And that means that basic income in and of itself is not a right, even if opening government believes that some circumstances that is may strategically be useful. Proud to oppose. Thank you very much to both teams. Can I ask the first speaker from Queensfrey Lawrence to open the case for the closing proposition team? Five minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, today I'll be presenting to you the philosophical case for this motion, proving to you that the opposition is defending a viewpoint which effectively proposes where we replace benefits with the death penalty. Firstly, I'd like to pose a question. Why do we work? The common answer is because we have to if we want to eat, but can we see that this is becoming increasingly unnecessary? Under the status quo, most jobs are slowly becoming, as the opening government has said, unnecessary, because machines can do those jobs and do them better. Therefore, we are working because we feel that we have to, because society says that we have to, not for any logical reason. Instead of working because they have to turn a living, they should be doing what they want. They should be doing charitable work, arts, raising children—all valid ways of spending their time. Instead, they are being forced to work because they have to and for no other reason. Work is not the meaning of life, and it is currently the sole purpose of our life because it is necessary for us to live. One minute. What we are claiming is that the consequences for not working are so unjust that we should not be imposing it. In general, we can all agree that the punishment should be appropriate to a crime committed. People should be treated fairly as basic justice. The general purpose of punishment is to fix problems and to right wrongs. In this case, not working is not causing harm to anyone else. You are not inflicting damage or pain on anyone else. It is simply a choice. Therefore, these people should not be punished. What are the consequences of not working? In a world in which there are no benefits and there is no system in place for people who do not work to have a living, the consequences are starvation for the lack of money, the inability to feed family, eventually death, along with that social shame because society does not accept that not working is a possible option. It is a choice. They are also forced to give up in the dreams because they have no money or the ability to pursue them. Bring us a sense of long-term purpose. Certainly, but that purpose can be achieved in other ways. For example, charitable work, doing good things with your life that actually benefits society more than simply doing a job that a computer could do better than you just because you feel you have to. Let's say what would happen if some people or a lot of people stopped working. People who did not need to work stopped working. As has already been stated, some people would have to pay tax to support them. However, the people who are not working are then freed up to do useful things with their life. Like I have said, raised kids do charity work, build a community, things like that. Currently, those things are not considered as work. The only reason that they are not considered as work is because they do not create money. However, they are still offering a service, benefiting society and doing good things. It is just that there is no money in it so that those are not valid options currently for someone to live. In this world that we see, it is feasible for someone to do this as they are living, quite rightly, and still make a living of it. At best, the opposition is punishing so-called thieves, people who are stealing from the other people at work hard, with conditions that are effectively worse than prison, worse than anything that we would inflict on any criminal in this country, worse than a murderer. At worst, we are punishing good people for doing good things. We are punishing mothers, fathers and people who are doing charity work. People who are only all they want to do in life is to help people. We are punishing them with something that is effectively comparable to the death penalty, something that would only ever be justifiable for someone who committed the worst crime possible, the worst crime imaginable. Does not want to spend your days doing repetitive work that you have no passion for or wanting to do charity work, wanting to raise a family, wanting to help people with your life? Does that really constitute that crime? Thank you very much indeed. I would now like to call the first speaker from Clifton Vehicle to open the case for the closing opposition team. Five minutes. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and members of the House. One of the Government's duty is to protect its people's right to work. That is because we can recognise the benefits of work to humans, that perhaps civilians capable of work will not recognise. Instead of encouraging robots and the optimisation of industries and economies, we protect people's jobs and recognise the benefits that people working bring to them. Today, I am going to be talking about how people should have a right to work, and that the Government should be protecting this right to work. First of all, I would like to talk about the third opposition's speech. First of all, they talked about how we are effectively punishing people who do not want to be working. First of all, we think that, as a Government, we are doing something for the good of these people, by encouraging them to be in work. We are actually benefiting them. I am going to bring you those explicit benefits later on in my speech. We think that saying that we are punishing them and forcing them into the death penalty is untrue. We think that people, if they physically cannot work, we give them benefits and we help them that way. We are not sentencing anybody to death by being opposed to this motion. Something that we are doing is following our duty as a Government to help people. I think that we follow that as I am going to prove. No, thank you, in my speech. Secondly, they brought us all these alternatives to work that people are going to actively engage in when their motion passes, apparently. First of all, we think that we can recognise things like charity work and raising children, and we think that it is important that we do that. We force companies to pay mothers' maternity leave and fathers' paternity leave. We think that the Government can enable these jobs to be recognised. We can create more non-profit jobs for them working in it. We are totally in support of that because we think that they are benefiting society. However, we think that we are opposed to people simply sitting around their house having no purpose in their life. We think that that is what we are talking about in this debate today. On to my point about how is the Government's duty to ultimately protect the right to work. We think that work itself is like innate to the human experience. It is a part intrinsically of who we are and what we do as people. Why is that true? We think that, mentally, as humans, we feel like a need to be helping community and helping other people. We think that we feel a real sense of justice and fairness when we actually involve ourselves in doing things for the better of other people. Secondly, we think that it fulfills people. We think that it gives people a purpose to their life. When they are 70 years old and look back at all the people that they helped being a lawyer or as a doctor, we think that that gives them a genuine purpose to their life. We think that it is really important that people have this fulfilment in their life. Thirdly, we think that it keeps people engaged with society. You have to physically engage with other humans when you are in a job. Fourthly, we think that work counteracts the human tendencies to slip into this world of pleasure. If what you say is true and people have this natural desire to help people, to help the community and stuff like that, how can you say that, as soon as they stop working, they are just going to sit around all day and do nothing? We think that the human mind ultimately thinks in the short term. It goes to things like, oh, today I want to go to see that film in the movie. In the long term, it is the Government's duty to make sure that those people are doing the absolute most beneficial thing they can with their time on this planet. Let's talk about the impacts on their side of the house that this motion was passed on the group of people who slip out of work and do not do anything fulfilling with their time. We think that they ultimately feel empty at the end of the day. They do not feel like they have a purpose. They are not helping anybody and they are not doing anything to change anybody else's life. They ultimately withdraw from society. There is literally no need to get out of bed in the morning. We think that, without work, the majority of society will be choosing not to work, because it is a human nature to choose activities of pleasure over work. Fair enough, you do not want to get up at six in the morning, no thank you, to go to your job. You would rather lay in bed at 12. How do we think that, as a Government, we recognise that there are so many more benefits to the human mind in engaging with work? I am going to bring you those now. One minute. Let's talk about the problems with universal basic income. First, we think that it allows these corporations to get away with turning all those jobs into the jobs of robots. We think that the end goal of companies is to replace human workers with machinery. We think that they buy workers off and the workers themselves will not be complaining about the fact that their jobs are being taken. We think that that is a very bad thing, and we do not support it under our side of the house. Secondly, we think that universal basic income facilitates people's ability to engage with their short-term wants and needs. They can spend the whole day in the house if they so want, because the Government is paying them to do so. We think that, even if people are doing things that they think will make them happy, such as watching movies or drinking or just eating food, we think that people are not actively engaging with other people, not engaging with society, and they are not fulfilling what the purpose of the planet is. We think that that ultimately has huge harms for them in the long term. Ultimately, we think that it is the Government's duty to provide a protection of their jobs and their work, because we think that work brings them very good benefits, very big benefits in the long term. We think that the Government's duty is to ultimately protect that right and create laws against the creation of robots or replacing the workers. We think that that is a very bad thing. Thank you for listening. I have never been prouder to oppose that. Thank you. I now call on the second speaker from Queensfrey Lawrence to conclude the case for the proposition. Five minutes. Honourable friends in the chamber distinguish strangers. It seems to me that it does not need said that you ought not to punish an individual beyond that which their behaviour has warranted. In a system that values tradition over progress, in a system that favours the interests of capital over the interests of humanity, in a system of capitalism, people are punished every day for one simple transgression, that of existing as a member of the working class in modern-age Britain. Where everything OG tells you is true becomes true. I think that we provide you uniquely in closing government a principle justification for why this is necessary. OO tells you that tax is theft and that the only thing that can justify theft is protecting rights. I'll respond that even if it were, no thievery should ever engender the sorts of punishment we leverage against those who choose not to work. OO says that we don't consent to the state, but we also don't consent to a system of capitalism, a system that tells us our domestic labour, our management of community, our raising children, our volunteering, isn't meaningful labour, but our presiding over trust funds is. OO tells us that we have a duty to help people work. I agree that we have a duty to help people work. I think that we have a duty to help people find that work which they do meaningful, that which gives them benefits in their own lives. They want to say that they can claim our benefits without any of the harms that we supposedly engender, but that buys into a mischaracterisation of people. When they tell us that people will stand around and be lazy, not do anything with their lives, I think that that belies a fundamental flaw in their argument. I think that they treat humankind as if we are wandering around, meaningless, aimless, in search of a purpose that the Government needs to provide us. However, I think that their second point tells us exactly why that is not true. I think that they say that people do gain benefits from working. I think that we can see that people will gain these benefits from working even if it is not work that is forced, even if it is work that is undertaken willingly, because eventually people will find the need to do something. No person can ever sit around and be complacent, happy with their lives if they are not doing anything meaningful. I would tell you that even if they did, none of the principle has been challenged, it would still stand that even if all the things they told you about people being short termists and lazy were true, nothing could possibly justify the consequences that we leverage against those who choose to engage in those activities. The analogy that we have provided is that even if you commit theft, we do not punish you with conditions that are worse than that with which we treat people who choose not to work under the status quo. We think that there are principles of justice at play here. I think that that is the most important thing in this debate. When CO tells you that people are short termists, the Government should decide how my time is best spent, and then decide that my time is best spent at a call centre rather than helping my family, rather than helping my community, I tell you that the Government has made the wrong decision. I tell you that the Government ought not to hold the kind of control over our lives that OOs say they do unless it is justified, unless we are helping people. I think that Duncan Wins this debate for one broad reason. He is able to tell you why, regardless of consequence, regardless of any benefits that may or may not be derived from working, from not working. Any punishment that we leverage against people who choose not to is unjustifiable, at least under the way that we are proceeding under the status quo. Mark Ruskell will take you before I move on. Theft is not justified if you have access to a good, decent job that the Government provides you that provides you with a living wage and a good standard of living. Theft is justified insofar as it prevents people languishing in a system whereby they can work many hours a week and still not have enough money to feed their families. I think that it is perfectly fine to tax people to provide this. I also think that it is perfectly fine to tax people to provide benefits to people who choose not to work. I think that it should be taken into consideration in this debate that we do not treat people who commit murder the same way that we treat people who choose not to work. I think that we can all see in this chamber which of those transgressions is the bigger problem, which has blighted society more. I think that insofar as we treat people worse who have chosen not to work, who have chosen to put their time and energy into other projects, which I have told you they will. I think that that is unjustifiable. I think that if you value our common humanity, if you value people's ability to pursue their own versions of the good life, I think that you have to propose. Thank you very much. I now call on the final speaker from Clifton Vehicle to conclude the case for the Opposition. What we need to prove in this debate is the intrinsic value of work and why that is something so innate that it is a right that we have to afford to all members of society even over the rights that they have presented on proposition. I think that we do this uniquely in closing opposition. What is this debate about? I think that we need to clarify what rights are actually afforded on both sides and indeed what even services are applied on both sides because it's gotten a bit confusing. We are happy to provide unemployment payments to those unable to work as we do in the status quo. Nobody is starving because they can't work on either side of the house. We're also happy to expand those services so people who work in low level jobs and can't make ends meet have some additional money so they aren't starving on that end. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. I think Scotland has already taken reasonable steps towards that end as have all states with the ability and the reasonable stance that that should be done. We are also happy though to ensure that jobs exist and recognize that's a key difference between our side of the house and theirs. They recognize the inevitability they say of jobs disappearing and embrace that future. We stand however on a future in which jobs are provided to everyone as a choice they can have. I think we can do this in three ways. First we can instigate regulations as we see working in Japan where there are strict rules as to what sorts of labor can and cannot be automated. We are fine saying that some industries simply can't be automated and we won't allow innovation in that end to occur. Secondly we are happy funding public works projects like those brought about by FDR in which large populations are put to work on the large and visual accomplishments like bridges like roads that have direct value society and that fill them with meaningful work. Even if they prove that everyone at McDonald's loses the job we're happy to offer them another job on our side of the house where they can actually find the fulfillment they want so desperately or they can really provide something that requires that sort of collective action that only the government can motivate with the wages that it provides. Thirdly though we would say that some jobs like carers and teachers will always be done better by humans and this offers a deep fulfillment to the people doing them. I do not see a future in which these things are automated because the human interaction is something so pivotal in these roles that it won't go away. We're happy standing on that as well. A few brief points of rebuttal and then one summary point on the value of work. The first idea we get from closing is this idea that you can do other things like charity or raising children and thus add value to society. No thank you. We would tell you first of all that we enable those things in the status quo via maternity leave and via government funded nonprofits that let people profit from the service that they do give. We're happy expanding that as well and providing jobs that are actually meaningful like I've talked about with public works projects. We think that's quite a good thing. But the second response here is that short-term incentives we would tell you corrupt people's ability to make meaningful choices about what they actually want to do because you get trapped in the cycle of an action insofar as in the short term it always seems more pleasurable more immediately sort of like a nice thing to not work to do something that I want to do today to watch TV to not have to do something that I don't want but that traps you in a cycle in which you're meaningfully precluded from working in the future because you lose skills as the economy moves away from you because on their side of the house now there simply aren't any more jobs left so if I want to work in the future that choice is no longer afforded to me opening. Going to create jobs through the government truly this is going to tax you know of course tax money does this not just go against what you've just said in opening? Okay well I think providing a job we're saying is a right as fundamental as meets the burden they said was required to tax so I don't think that's a knife we're fine with that. Okay third response to this I think in the long term people will want to accomplish things and this deals with the argument about people wanting to do charity but they're stopping themselves in the short term that's the meaningful problem you get caught in this cycle you're not going to be able to meaningfully do it because on their side of the house you don't force them any meaningful way to actually engage with that. Second point of rebuttal is this idea this punishes those who don't choose to work. Recognize that not working when you're enable when you're able to work represents a fundamental assault on society it's a refusal to create value and provide for your fellow citizens. We would tell you that this is akin to murder in some sense and so far as I've stated that my individual preference is not to work outwey everybody else's ability to have a road to have the value I'm adding to society we are fine if it truly is a punishment to punish it in that way but secondly we would just tell you that this isn't a punishment to the same extent that they're saying because there's still a social safety net they're still enjoying the rights of a society that provides with them roads to drive on and bridges to interact with I think this is just fine on our side of the house we really aren't sentencing them to death as they say final point of summary the right to work we would tell you that it's intrinsic to the human psyche to a long-term one one minute chairs want the ability to work we tell you this comes from an evident evolutionary urge to provide for yourself in your community the sense of accomplishment this affords and the constant narrative that they talk about with capitalism instructs you and tells you that you only have value in supply as you in so far as you provide labour to society but we tell you that this also counteracts our most basic urges in the short term towards inaction towards pleasure towards complacency the sorts of things that incentivize us always in the beginning to make that choice not to work that traps us in that cycle from which it'll be very hard to explain so recognize that the short term choice that they're enabling on their side of the house is necessarily coercing your future self and its ability to find the sort of fulfilment that we think is so important that's why we'd say the right to have that choice to work is the more fundamental right in this debate than the right to choose not to work because it's something you're never going to be able to get back and it's something that leads you to an endless path of despair and unhappiness when you remove that from them we stand on our side very proud to protect that long-term right protect the right for people to access that sense of meaningful fulfilment and recognize that that's something they can never do when they embrace a future that lacks jobs they'll ask the choice to work both sides of the house to private people of some level of choice we simply think work is the more innate and the more fulfilling choice to have thank you very much indeed and i'd like to thank very very much all eight speakers for their contributions to the debate if i could now ask the judges to leave us to deliberate on what will be i think a very difficult decision for you all and please come back to the chamber in 25 minutes we now move on to the floor debate the floor debate will last for 30 minutes i'll invite speakers from the floor to raise points in relationship to the motion and the debate or to points you have just heard if you wish to speak please raise your hand preferably wave it about as well now if i select you if i select you you should wait this is important please wait for the red light to come on on your microphone then stand please tell the chamber your name in the name of your school before you raise your point this is important to wait for the red light to come on so we can capture your contribution it's also extremely important since we have a prize for the best floor speech of the evening and i need to identify winners so if i don't know who you are you will not be the winner please limit your contributions to a maximum of one minute and if there's time i may ask the teams to respond or contribute points from the floor so if i can open up the floor debate a very good waving hand just at the back by the corridor i'll take it if anyone if no one worked then they won't get pensions at the end of their careers or what would be and if so what would the government mean what would the government be doing with that money that is being kept thank you we'll let the government respond to that if we have time on the end there in the third row yes hello i'm Fraser McDonald from Perth high school and tonight i accuse the government of falling for a cleverly disguised capitalist plot this motion will massively increase the genie coefficient as it will allow a small one percent to completely dominate the ownership of the labour markets this is a capitalist plot to keep the poor poor while giving them just enough money to spend on commodities sold by the one percent and then that will make the one percent further richer and then we hear that the government won't actually tax these rich people so they're borrowing money to give to poor people to make the rich richer this is a plot please oppose thank you very much indeed at the end of the row here yes you okay um so i think it's a shame that the assertion that taxation is as fast as i could have your name in school oh sorry christopher fleming um dundee university that or university sorry sorry um so i think it's a shame that the assertion that taxation is fast was not challenged a bit more in the debate um so like even if um like people are giving a living wage as you say like the surplus value that they get um of our labour is still extracted by like the capitalist owners of businesses like who inherited their wealth through like systems of exploitation it's very rare that rich people actually do make all of their wealth um from scratch so if we're going down an ideological route um you could also say that property is theft as well by this token i think that um taxation as a form of redistribution of wealth um from the capitalist class to the poorest in society is justified and that worker shouldn't be expected to be wage slaves um so my question is um do you think it's fair to expect people to work when the vast majority of the wealth that they create is taken from them and given to the top one percent in society thank you very much uh the person just at the yes you if you could stand up and sorry in front of you um no sorry sorry with the glasses on yes thanks your name and i'm brige what's from Perth high school i direct this point to the closing opposition you said that those who choose not to work withdraw from society and sit in their house doing nothing however when the alternative is an overpaid and overworked an underpaid and overworked career and that could be easier easier and more efficiently done with robots do you blame their demotivation to our partake in work thank you very much very enthusiastic waiver here just at the corridor please stand up name and school university okay i'm archie mclannan from kinross high school and i am saying i do think people should be should work as well as the fact that it does provide them with motivation it also humans are like primates which are naturally social creatures so if they just sit in their house all day with no social interaction it is entirely possible that they could eventually even just go mad from a lack of social interaction as well as the fact that some people might just be unwilling to work because they're just generally lazy which is unfair on the people who are willing to work thank you very much we have quite a few waving hands could i make sure we have some gender balance here i'd like some girls and women as well in this debate not to be dominated by males uh uh all wave our hands i'm not quite sure don't worry don't worry we'll be on top of this very very shortly just to just to just to let you know in terms of the order order order in terms of the lighting you might be interested to know ah here we are these these are of course new lights in the chamber they were replaced this past summer because the previous lamps were metal halide lamps which are going to be outlawed by the eu in the next two or three years so there was only one supplier left making them and hence we have these beautiful lights i think this is their first failure we'll make sure this doesn't happen again right back to the open debate and i'd like to call the i was going to call you in the polo shot yes please stand up a name yes indeed oh yes hello uh my name's james ford from the university of dundee i'll be taking a slightly different point from my comrade over there so we hear a lot in this debate with the notable exception of the proposition whip about these different like right systems right so you say like variously that people have like a right to work a right to food a right to life like that taxation is theft which implies like property rights but i think it's a shame that there's no real analysis on like first of all what a right is secondly like why the state has a duty to enforce rights thirdly like where rights come from and fourthly like how on earth we should weigh them against each other like like there's virtually no analysis on this in the entire floor um now specifically extending that like to uh opening government right like you say that taxation is theft which implies a right to property but then you say that people have a right to food which implies like fundamentally that property rights will be violated and that the state has a duty to do this like how on earth is there some kind of coherence right system that can contain both of these and if there is could you please justify it to the house thank you very much uh the person just in from the canros high school pupil yes you yep stand up name rebecca close from st joseph's college in britain we live in ameratoxie we earn what we get i direct this to the government who seem to be willing to just hand out cash that we don't have in an already stretched society to people who as as you define in the motion aren't don't have the capacity to work but just are not willing to work why should we give money why should we give things to people that just cannot be bothered they are not willing they don't have the motivation or the willingness to work thank you very much second from the corridor there yes indeed thank you one of the main proposition points was the using machines instead of humans but we're already doing this with mass production the problem that both of these forms is that they need to be repaired they can break and it will cost them more money to fix it or even replace them and it'll cost even more with ai like they were highlighting how will they tackle this i'm charlie grant from denny high school thank you very much back left way at the corner thank you hello i'm david mclean from our ladies high school i hear a lot of talk about automation and if we actually look at car marx he's here he talks a lot about automation and that's how we're going to go forward so i don't really see how it's a bad thing because as the proposition like said it makes things cheaper so we can actually have a fairer society because we won't actually really need to pay for anything because we are not paying anyone to make it thank you very much could people please be very clear and speak loudly with their name and school or university that will help us second in from the corridor third down with the glasses yes yes if you could stand up please yeah beth and charmers from bears then academy i was interested by the idea that the willingness in caps is safe to work so capability so um yeah so we're both sides of accepted capability but i think both the capability and well and there's a more integrated than that because you people keep mentioning people who cannot be bothered but surely this demoralisation and this willing this sense of disenfranchisement presumably from a previous job that was treated them probably unfairly um is something that prevents people from capability doing their job and i was wondering where both houses um both sides draw their line between willingness and capability thank you very much indeed the waving hand second row from the back in the white shirts okay so this question is kind of directed name please oh sorry daniel gadsby from high school of glasgow and this question is directed to really all the sides and it's the fact that we live in a society today where we are rapidly being faced with the choice maybe not tomorrow maybe not in a month but it will come eventually where we must decide are we going to stop the proceed the proceeding of technology are we going to try and um you know like face it off and like develop as it goes on or are we going to forge a new society which is different since the dawn of time man's need to work has been his meaning in life is this what we are going to do for the rest of time or will we need to change to changing world that we're in and also just quickly to the government or sorry to opposition and that's the fact that when you face someone with an opportunity to keep themselves alive and i feel like and they don't take it i feel like that's similar to in a hunger strike that if they don't take the food then that's their fault that they die and take the job and don't take the job and it's your fault that you fail i don't think that's fair thank you very much indeed i hope the proposition of the opposition are listening to this contribution i'll give them an opportunity to come in and respond to some of them in a few moments third seat from the row from the back yes you thank you just wait till your red light's on name okay my name's albrey agab and i'm from hermage academy so universal basic income or even capitalism uh states that i owe you something just because i exist just because i breathe don't you think that um that capitalism would be the more morally just justifiable alternative which is that which states that i may not like you or um disagree with you on a lot of things but if i give you a product or a service that you want um if i don't give you a product or service that you want i'll starve don't you think that uh voluntary exchange is more um morally justifiable than forced redistribution thank you very much indeed uh at the back there yes you with the red light excellent thank you please stand up and name friendly whiteford denny high school uh i noted from first and second opposition that they were making a little point that uh your vote does not count and that you are a slave to the government but they failed to see that like you can be the government you can be the change in your country and if if nobody votes then we have no government to be a slave to we have no overarching power over our lives it's a fairly shaky argument and to be fair in my opinion slightly selfish thank you very much we have a lot of people wanting to speak this is fantastic uh just uh forth in yes just name that's great abio can't say from st joseph's uh college uh just for the government side if there are so many people that need this um um state income then where is this money gonna come from who who are we gonna be left attacked of so many people need this money and would it not be better to spend this money um you know and you know people who are not capable of working should we not invest that money making it more able for these people to work instead of throwing up money to people who say they can't work or not willing to work thank you very much here just to in from the from the gangway yes just wait to your red lights on excellent my name is fergus duggan i'm from path high school my point is direct towards the government the government have tried to skirt around the issue of those choosing not to work and even when they have lightly acknowledged the issue they have given the illusion that all those choosing not to work are pursuing charitable artistic familial and domestic pursuits that add to society while undoubtedly this may occur it ignores the choice fuelled by the majority of people who are choosing not to work and that is just sheer laziness it also ignores the fact that many people are choosing not to work because they don't need to in 2008 according to the irs almost 3000 millionaires claimed job jobless benefits and the economy is driven by work whether that is one person with dozens of robots under them or dozens with dozens of people with dozens of robots under them their income tax bat and duty etc fund those who choose not to work what happens when only one person is left working do they have to fund the other 60 million people in the UK i beg you to oppose thank you very much i'll take another couple of open speakers and then i'll ask for one contribution from the proposition and the opposition enthusiastic waving hand here thank you what i have heard today oh sorry uh jorgen cabel st andrews university what i have heard today is not an advocacy for universal basic income but advocacy for a further increase of a means tested benefits if a man has the will but not the capacity then of course they should be helped however if a man has the capacity but that lacks the will then where does our duty to help that person come from if i halfway through my high school or university exams decided i no longer wanted to work but i demanded the same grade as those who studied hard then you would rightly be annoyed because i have not put the work in but i was gaining my i was gaining my grade on the basis of the work of others why should other people's studies or other people's work and money benefit me when i have made the conscious choice not to study supporting universal basic income of a means tested system for those most deserving and those who most needed encourages laziness sloth onus and ultimately the destruction of the state as we know it thank you thank you very much i'm trying to take in people who haven't spoken so if you wouldn't mind i can't quite remember who has spoken but people who have spoken already please don't put your hand up because we have a lot of people who'd like to speak at the back there second row from the back yes indeed red lights on thanks name i'm mila stretch of itch from hindland secondary and my point is directed at the government they just keep saying that people should start a family to fill this void where work would be and i just i don't understand why it's ethical to have kids just for the sake of having kids you know it's like one that's artificial intelligence takes over it's our existence as a race is just going to become completely pointless we're not contributing anything to the earth and global warming is already that's us having a negative impact so why don't we just die out as a race if artificial intelligence thank you very much indeed and the last contribution before i bring in the proposition in opposition just for a couple of are you just twiddling your hair or are you putting your hand up i think you're just twiddling your hair here please yep yep indeed yep wait for your red light to go on thank you um name uh andre bore also from university of dundee following my colleagues here um i was quite shocked that um an assumption was left pretty much unchallenged and that is that artificial intelligence is fundamentally good i'm quite shocked because the reason what is actually going on with artificial intelligence right now is the creation of weapons of destruction currently you've got in the us um they're already starting to develop swarms of drones that are functioning with artificial intelligence um i don't understand how artificial intelligence can be a sense of progress and how this can actually be good for us so i'm a bit amazed at the opposition didn't challenge it enough and that the government the proposition government actually supported this because i think it's really scary and i'm just amazed it was just left hanging thank you very much i'd like now to give the opportunity to the proposers and opposers to make some contributions to what they've heard yes please the first proposer perth ferguson just to address what you just said there we're not saying that automation is inherently a good thing we're just saying in modern go book capitalism it's inevitable and this is the best way of staving off the effects and also i accuse frays mcdonald of using a personal view of mine that i wrote in an article a while ago against me though and i revised that view and i beg you not to fall from my communist ploys and also we heard a lot about taxation we're talking about who we're going to be taxing well i think it was the at the third middle row that said like look if there's only going to be one person left out of 60 million or 60 billion um are we going to be taxing them to is that i say yes because they've got the wealth concentrated in those hands so that's who's going to pay for it and we also heard this idea of theft now if anyone who knows me will tell you like i completely disregard the view that taxation is theft however it's like we don't think it's theft you know we're providing at the point of which companies need people to buy their products they're going to want to pay tax to give money to people to spend on their products so yeah i think that addresses that windy thank you very much anyone from the opposition would like to respond to anything they've heard please yep stand hello everyone uh clearly a group of bright young intelligent minds um i think broadly the argument from proposition and i i'd sort of heard this criticism a few times right which is that um it's not in fact true for whatever reason the taxation is theft i'm of the opinion that it is i think the question more realistically is not on the more reasonable criticism is not is it or is it not theft but is that theft justified so the mere fact that you're stealing something from someone and you know i happen to be relatively left wing but the mere fact that you're stealing something from someone um doesn't necessarily mean that that threat in and of itself is is itself intrinsically problematic right so you can steal for good reasons you know robin heard of whatever um so i think more realistically though like like taxation is itself theft and the reason why that's true is because uh i don't think it's true that you immediately consent to society or to the state um at the point at which state chooses to impose a policy upon you your capacity to resist that is genuinely relatively limited i mean i heard something about being the change you want to be in the world i think the capacities of the individual or even large social movements relative to the capacities of the state is really limited thank you very much indeed uh we have uh 13 minutes left and they open 12 minutes left in the open debate plenty opportunity for people uh to come in please keep your hands up and wave uh thoroughly i you have contributed already uh yes right at the back there you've not contributed yet have you i'm freddie bang denny high school sorry your name freddie bang thank you bang yeah um the proposition said um just now ai is inevitable and and they also said that ai is the best thing now i'm assuming that they mean it's not a good thing but it's the best option that we currently have but having employing ai into work would change the way the world works as we know it we'd have to create new laws to work for robots and it would be quite a moral grey area because if you want to think that oh robots aren't like people but if you start making them work then you have to be like okay are there any laws in for if i have to get broken and if it's ai that means that it's it's a self aware it's a self thinking machine which means that that machine might suddenly think um well i want to get paid for this because if it's a self aware machine it means it makes its own decisions so i was just wondering if they could say anything about that thank you very much those waving their hands some of you put your hands down green here second from the back red lights on name hi i'm eve dixon bachelor from hindland secondary school this is to the government what is the purpose of school exam qualifications and university degrees if we don't need them because we don't need to work i'm sure most of the room can agree with me here that all through school we're told that all these things are supposed to build towards our career prospects but tell me what is the point if we have no career and there's no incentive for us at the end to get these things i would like a response to that question in due course person here in the second row name thank you my name is grant mac and i'm from standra's university um presenting officer i'm going to do something which you might not like but um i'm going to quote former prime minister margaret thatcher who who once said the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money and the idea of universal basic income is that someone is going to have to pay for it and the truth is that is that if the wealthy are going to pay 80 90 tax they're going to leave the country this is going to shrink the tax base and it means that there will be no money for the poorest in society i think the best way to help the poorest in society is to ensure that they have a job and to ensure that they keep the fruits of their own labour i think it's unethical for the state to take vast swathes of people's money while it's right and fair that people pay a portion of their income to the state to pay for things like free tuition, free healthcare it's not right that the state takes all their money i think it's ethical and right for people to keep as much to keep as much of their own money as possible while at the same time recognising that you can improve society without giving all your money to the state thank you very much second row at the back there yes red light on thank you Lucy Crawford working saying Clifton Hall so i agree with closing opposition that in the short term everyone starts low in a business or company and they build up so and they might start low and not have a very good job and not much money but by building up they will get better so by having the free income they won't even get started thank you very much indeed uh speaker here you haven't contributed yet have you you have well just wait until we can maybe yep up at the back second row from the back please yes that's indeed your red lights on Vincent Green in Glasgow university union speaker the global porn no matter which system and the which they reside live in a system of dictatorship dictatorship known as no alternatives shackle why cap thought that was unjustly acquired all because of a state that makes it a wasteland and calls it peace they do so because they don't have no incentive nor the capacity to be providing jobs for people the question of how for mr Henry Vico from closing opposition then is where are these magical jobs going to come from thank you very much indeed plenty opportunities still for five more contributions or so a little wavy hand here just by the corridor yes if you could just yep please stand up and then the broad red light thank you name hello my name is ross graham from queensbury high school what we've witnessed in this debate is two visions for the future i think the proposition have clearly shown a very positive vision in the future and how we can support everyone and how we can support them in raising families and doing china work generally good things however the opposition has talked about rightful deaths and how if people choose not to work then they choose not to get supported or be a part of a community i think it is absolutely abhorrent if we allowed this negative vision on future to win this debate and it urges to support the proposition thank you very much indeed i have a contribution just behind that last speaker yes stand up red light name thank you uh ross brawn berson cadwy it's just to uh make the point that now that uh as governments say that we would now pay everybody our universal income could this possibly lead to um a slippery slope of complacency where we now start to bring in charges for things um somebody brought up we we have free tuition we have free healthcare we're very lucky to uh to have that in scotland and in the rest of the UK could this possibly lead if we introduced this policy uh widespread this possibly lead to um a reduction of this because it could this lead to mass charges within the nhs you know we could all then afford to pay for it and some people could be uh it could end up our regressive system the poorest would then have to pay more um do you think this could possibly happen thank you very much uh second row from the back your hands up just wait for the red light thank you name yeah xanam your Edinburgh university debating society um if i would try to be funny and it might sound like a bit of a tangent this is a parliament that's meant to encourage diversity and support so i just want to call out this process for only having one female judge i think that is unacceptable thank you very much that might have been a point of order uh at the back there back row thank you name hi there i'm Keira Maguire i'm from Holy Cross in Hamilton okay up the ml3 anyway so uh we've been postulated tonight with a sort of a i armageddon where humanity is going to be filtered out and that actually we've looked at other estimate it's uh while i've been sitting here and i've been thinking you know there's postulation of creating a universally acceptable um social wage that would require from the working population of 12 hour working week so unless uh the opposition can prove to us that uh you know we're going to have a terminator situation here uh we don't think that uh making ai do all the work for us is necessarily a bad thing and it was also postulated that you know we have to come up with laws to come up with what's acceptable for robots to do we feel as long as that they're serving the interests of the people and not a benign few i'm not too worried about studies feelings thanks guys thank you very much i want to allow the proposers and the seconders members from one of the teams who has not spoken in this open debate so that would be clifton beacole or queensville launch to come in at the end so just get ready for your for your final contribution in response i was going to take the blue blazer just second row from the back yes thank you name Cameron round clifton hall school proposition do you seriously believe that someone with a work ethic should be expected to pay for somebody with that one thank you useful question please note proposers uh opposers and the corridor here just at the end of the row yes red light on name please um lucas reynoso from edinburgh university i was just wondering what we can define willingness as and willingness is defined as quality of being prepared to do something readiness and that suggests to me an ability and so an ability to be willing so i was wondering if there's kind of a choice if there's really a choice because people due to the system due to the unfair system might be victims as well because of the lack of access to opportunities so they might be frustrated there must be apathy because they know that with the current system they won't progress so it's true that there's less incentive for the economy if you can't live without subsidy and you don't need to work and it's true that it's not convenient for the economy but the state should always remember that they have a duty to protect all its citizens even if they don't have the ability to be willingness to have to be willing and even regardless of automatisation debate or AI and that's yes thank you very much i have two enthusiastic contributors here who are already contributed but they're very enthusiastic so i proposed to let them in first name again please i'm further in the point of the government here from the opposition sorry do you expect to live in some sort of utopian society where robots replace all workers i disagree with this i think that there are going to be jobs they'll just be different jobs i think as we go on new jobs are developing making these machinery working on these machinery and i think that nurses all of these ethical you know human contact jobs are still going to be there there are plenty of opportunities for people to work and it all comes down to the point of willingness if people have the willingness to work they should work thank you very much and next year red light thank you name again abio can't say from st joseph's college i think i can speak for everyone all the school students here when i say no one wants to study exams it's not fun knowing that i have to work means that i have i have the ambition to be the best that i can be if i know that i don't need qualifications and i don't need an education i won't need i won't want one because i have an income that means i don't have to work but what i'm trying to ask is encoding when we're talking about artificial intelligence is who do you expect to engineer this artificial intelligence if you have a society of people who are not willing to work because they know that there's no point of working because they already have an income thank you very much i'd like now to the opportunity for clifton vehicle and quince free to make a very brief contribution to any of the points you've made who'd like to if you don't want to you don't need to thank you quince free laurance so i think the points that i want to address that's been raised and indeed was just raised is what is the purpose of university why it will it work if it's not aiming you in a particular direction i want to address that because it makes me a little bit sad i think that there is an intrinsic value in study there is an intrinsic value in going to university and doing things independent of your ability to really please independent of whether that will allow you to get a job in the future i think you should all bear that in mind going forward and i really hope you do you all seem very intelligent um it'd be a waste not to thank you very much indeed brief 15 20 seconds please sure um so i think the question about the definition of willingness including a lack of opportunity was a good one i think in particular i would say the key comparison to the debate is actually that government removes the opportunity to work entirely by embracing a future that lacks work well at least we provide some meaningful work and indeed expand that in so far as your work now can have some sort of direct and visual impact on society bridges roads whatever i think that choice is inherently preserved on ours and i think that's more important thank you very much indeed so that concludes the open debate indeed that concludes the debate all together so thanks very much all of you for your contributions for participating so strongly we've heard some powerful views in this topic some arguments that i haven't heard before some quite persuasive arguments and so as the judges i hope are i see them there coming forward to take up their seats i want to applaud you all and commend you all for the work you've done today it's an awful lot of work to go through three heats and a final we've done a splendid amount of work very much very much impressed indeed so if you give yourselves all a round of applause so we're now going to announce the winners of the 2017 st Andrew's day debating championship final if i could invite the minister come up and join me here and so when i call your name please join me and alex or trustee of the english speaking union on the chamber floor to receive your prize and we'll also take a photograph before you move back to your seat so first of all i'd like to announce the first prize for the best contribution from the floor i want first of all to issue a commendation not the main prize but a runner-up if you like that's for Evie Dixon bachelor for a very well crafted contribution i think quite on the spontaneous very much engaging with the debate as it's happened but this evening the first prize for the best contribution from the floor goes to rebecca if you wouldn't mind coming forward please thank you very much well done the second prize goes to the best pupil judge of the day and that is adan sheils from craig mount high school well done congratulations if you don't stand for a photo many thanks the next prize which will be presented by minister allister allen goes to the best university speaker of the day and that is robin laurance from the university of glasgow excellent the final where are we robin yes the final prize goes to the best school speaker of the day and that's duncan riddle from queens ferry high school so now gives me great pleasure to invite the minister to after a very tough final i think to present the winner of the runner-up of the 2017 st. Andrews day debate in championship and that goes to Emma baxter and henry vehicle from clifton vehicle and finally it gives me great pleasure to announce the winner of the 2017 st. Andrews day debating championship is door ship beer and mark wilson from hsog wilson so thank you very much indeed to the judges that can't have been terribly easy i'm sure you had fantastic deliberations we don't know what went on behind closed doors but thank you very much for all your very hard work today and thanks also to the minister for joining us for saying a few words and for also helping me in giving the prizes out today i'd like now to finish off by inviting susanne ensum on behalf of the english speaking union scotland to say a few words andy whiteman msp minister everyone here you've heard a lot of people speaking today a lot of speeches and people who are far far more gifted at speaking than i am so i'm not going to keep you very long it's been a long day but there are some thank yous that i would like to say days like this don't don't just happen by accident there's a lot of time and effort and hard work that goes into them and there's various people and institutions that i would like a big thank you to so first of all i would like to thank our sponsors and funders the scotish parliament who have hosted us so well here today and indeed for the previous 10 years as well we are enormously grateful to be able to have this event here i would like to thank the scotish government for supporting this event for funding this event and the effort that that they put into it so i'd also like to say thank you to andy whiteman for for chairing and thank you to dr allen for being here as well i'd like to thank our panel of judges for the final richard welkins gabriella leis conacare adan shill's and alex ore but i'd also of course like to thank all of the people who judged um earlier in the day and all of the rounds which was invaluable uh there were pupil judges there were student judges there were teachers and there were the others who i like to think of as lifelong debaters um who also contributed enormously today and indeed to the competitions that we have um throughout the year um i'd like to thank uh the chairs and the timekeepers um during the debates earlier i'd like to say an enormous thank you to conor um for running the tab for us it's not an easy job he was amazingly calm we were extremely grateful and again that's actually not just helping on the day but helping in advance as well i'd like to thank all of the students here i'm very aware that many of you have exams starting either already started or starting next week so i'd like to say good luck in your exams and thank you for taking the time to to be here today and indeed again for for student support for our programs throughout the year i'd like to say an enormous thank you to the schools and when i say the schools i mean the pupils who are here are supporters chairs timekeepers speakers the teachers the parents everyone from the schools who who participate in these programs this these are these programs are for you but they could not happen without you um finally i'd just like to say a couple of individual thank yous to some people who've worked extremely hard on this so i would like to thank in seril from the Government i would like to thank um Lindsay Davey Charlotte a Nordlander Douglas Miller from the Parliament i'd like to thank the ESU staff and trustees and in particular i'd like to thank Jess Anderson who i'm afraid is not here today but put an enormous amount of work into this event and i'd like to say on behalf of the ESU and also personally um for for the help this week a massive thank you to Simon Christie who um very much took up the reins at the last minute and has been amazingly hardworking all week all weekend and indeed today um thank you for coming we hope that uh i hope that i will be able to say that i can slip forward to seeing you all next year but for now i wish you um a very good evening and a safe journey home thank you thank you very much uh Suzanne we're not quite finished i just want to finally pay my personal thanks to Anne uh and Stephen my two clerks are for the debate here and can i now invite uh Suzanne uh dr allen the minister the judges and all the winners to come forward to the well here for a group photograph all right sorry yes