 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 1T701, in the name of Patrick Harvie, on social enterprises working to tackle child poverty. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Can I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons now? I call on Patrick Harvie to open the debate. Mr Harvie, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I thank those colleagues who have added their names to this motion opportunity to debate this. In a quack of parliamentary timetabling, we might rehearse some of the same arguments that we had yesterday in the debate on the social enterprise world forum, which was brought in government time. I wanted to bring this motion to do two things. First, to raise awareness among members of the work that one particular smallish social enterprise in the south side of Glasgow is doing a parallel exchange, but also the wider application that their work might have throughout Scotland, the potential for it to be rolled out. Secondly, the other purpose of the debate is to place that issue and that work into the wider context that we are all tragically familiar with about the scale and impact of child poverty in Scotland and the way in which the work of a parallel exchange can engage with that. First of all, what are they? They are a relatively new emerging social enterprise that is dedicated to school uniform reuse, recognising that school uniforms are a costly part of school life, both in financial terms and in environmental terms. We see the large amount of material that is used for a very short time before ending up a landfill. In seeking ways to reduce both the financial and environmental costs, they are also seeking to ensure access to high-quality uniforms for everybody in the schools that they work with. They are working in partnership with particular schools, working their way across Glasgow. First of all, in the south side, they are looking to develop services that collect, sort, clean, sell and redistribute school uniforms and do so in a way that ensures access to clothing that is compliant with each individual school's uniform policy. Since the start of this year, they have been working initially with four schools from their base at Shollins arcade. They have engaged with parents at parent teacher evenings, as well as organised collections and begun their series of uniform sales. All that is informing how they will seek to work with more schools in the future. They have secured support from Firstport and from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology's Climate Business Accelerator programme. They are investing and testing the development of the concept of their work and, hopefully, as I say, it will be rolled out more widely. Since I drafted the motion, some of the statistics have changed. They have now processed nearly 4,000 garments, so you can add one more flight to the carbon equivalent saving that has been mentioned in the motion. They have held a number of big sales, mega sales, they call them, over the summer, which attracted families from right across the south side. They have had good feedback on the accessibility of their service, the low price and the high quality that they are able to provide and the knowledge that that is good in environmental terms. They are also launching a free uniform package in particular to a relatively small number at first, but a number of foster children and asylum seekers and refugee families. They expect demand for that new service to grow. I gather that, this week, they are also looking to move to a new larger premises. This is clearly an opportunity that has potential. I hope that what a parallel exchange are learning about providing the service could be replicated and reproduced around Scotland as well. In referring to the debate that we had yesterday, there were a number of projects, not just those that I mentioned but those that a number of members mentioned. Social enterprise has a really good knack of joining up the social, environmental and economic priorities together. That response to the financial and environmental costs of school uniforms is only one part of the wider work that needs to go on to address the costs that are involved in accessing what should be free to all their basic education. Child poverty action group and Glasgow City Council, for example, have worked well on the wider issues of the cost of the school day, addressing the costs that are involved not just in clothing but in travelling to school, school food, school trips, after-school activities and much more. The need to identify ways of minimising those costs to reduce the pressure on family budgets to make sure that all young people can gain access to the opportunities that education has to offer them, regardless of their family income. Just this month, CPAG and NHS Health Scotland have launched a toolkit to support the action on child poverty in schools. I also want to draw attention to the report from the Education and Skills Committee of this Parliament, which has brought forward some useful recommendations around surveying education authorities to establish the extent of charges for in-school activities, the impact of that on low-income families, and identifying ways to reduce the excessively expensive or unnecessary parts of school uniform that really should not be required and create unnecessary cost burdens on families. The context in which all of that sits is, of course, the level of child poverty that exists in our society. The child poverty action group, as members right across the chamber will know, has worked hard to make sure that we are challenging the status quo. Scotland already has a higher rate of child poverty than much of Europe, and it is likely to rise in coming years with the Institute for Festival Studies, for example, projecting that UK-wide child poverty could rise to exceed one in three children in the coming years unless the UK Government does change policies. Poverty wages, which are still permitted under UK minimum wage law, continue, and the inadequacy of our social security system as a safety net against poverty is getting worse, with welfare reform as a major driver of recent increases in child poverty. We need to look also at the devolved aspects of the social security system and the opportunity to go further than we have so far. Members will be aware of the Give Me Five campaign, the coalition of organisations campaigning on child poverty, looking for a top-up of £5 per week on child benefit. We believe that the Scottish Government should be using its powers, and the most recent legislation on social security gives the Government a duty to consider that action. We will continue to make the case for the opportunity to use that power to lift 30,000 children out of poverty, but also to increase the incomes of families across Scotland, including those who are just above the poverty line. Now that the Scottish Government has committed to introducing an income supplement for low-income families, I know that the One in Five campaign is committed to continuing to make the pressure to make the case that that income supplement comes in the form of a child benefit top-up. Let me finish by returning to a parallel exchange and relating some of the experience of Isi Eriksson, the founding director. The families who have used our service over the summer have given us really good feedback. The most important thing is that there is no one single reason why someone comes to a service like ours. For some, it is because it is all they can afford. For others, it is because we are working in partnership with the school and they support that community involvement. For others, it is because they want to recognise the huge levels of waste that are involved and that they want to do their bit to support the environment. I think that social enterprise does have a huge opportunity to do much more on the issues of child poverty, both prevention and alleviation of child poverty. Government also needs to play its part at every level, UK, Scottish and local. I look forward to the debate and the minister's comments. I would like to thank Patrick Harvie for bringing forward that motion about social enterprises working to tackle child poverty. That provides us with an opportunity to highlight the work of organisations such as a parallel exchange that is operating across different constituencies in Scotland to alleviate the burden on low-income families. It also provides us with the opportunity to engage with and examine a fundamental issue, which is child poverty. Work done by social enterprises and charities is pivotal and it changes lives. That work can be amplified by effective and ambitious legislation such as the Child Poverty Act passed here in the Scottish Parliament last year. As Patrick Harvie has highlighted, a parallel exchange works with schools to encourage re-use of clothing based in Glasgow. It sells good quality second-hand school uniforms at a low cost, with many items costing only £2.50. That innovative idea is not only good for the environment, but it crucially takes some of the financial pressure off of parents as their children start in the new school year. I would like to thank all those who are involved in a parallel exchange from the founder, Izzie Erickson, to her hardworking colleagues and all the volunteers for their dedicated work. I am sure that it is this dedication that has turned the start-up into a success so quickly. I stated in the motion, within the first five months, amazingly, uniform re-use saved the equivalent of four return flights from Edinburgh to New York. I am very pleased to say that a parallel exchange has also just started working directly with Blair Dardee primary school. It is a school within my constituency of Glasgow, Annie's land. Furthermore, that enterprise has provided families right across Glasgow with affordable school uniforms. Transformational change comes when the work done by charities and social enterprises is echoed by decisions made in government and in Parliament, where we share the ambition of the eradication of inequality. It is our collective duty here in the chamber to tackle inequality and to stand up for what is right. If we put effective policy and strong legislation in place, which I believe that we are doing, we can amplify that collective effort across the parties and we can accelerate change. From the SNP point of view, we have made it clear that our priority is creating an equitable society, and that means that those born into economic disadvantage are provided with support to rightly move them to a level playing field. We believe that the reduction of poverty is about upholding human rights. Beyond that, we believe that that makes sense for all of us. Fewer people living in poverty equates to a better-for-forming economy and a more prosperous nation. The Child Poverty Act shows how Scotland is leading the United Kingdom in tackling child poverty. In March of this year, the Scottish Government released the first delivery plan relating to the legislation. It is called Every Child, Every Chance. One of the initiatives of the delivery plan is the school clothing grant for £100 per child per year towards school uniform costs through the new national entitlement scheme. An additional million pounds of Scottish Government funding to the fair food fund has also been given to tackle food insecurity outside of term time. 150,000 of that will go to cash for kids to help community organisations support children over the school holidays with activities and access to meals. Collaboration with social enterprises directly improves the lives of children now. Crucially, what all of this means is that children and their futures are, as they should be, being prioritised and protected. Together with social enterprises, we here can work to reduce child poverty and give every child every chance for the best start in life. I would like to begin by joining Patrick Harvie in congratulating his local social enterprise apparel exchange on the work that it does. I would also like to take the opportunity to highlight the work of Greeningore bridge, a social enterprise in my own region. It collects good-quality second-hand school uniform from local residents and provides an exchange service where it can contribute a small donation or nothing at all so long as the clothes go to a good home. Not only does their work reduce carbon, water and waste footprints, it means more money in the pockets of local families. It is absolutely clear that social enterprises play an important role in our communities, helping the vulnerable and inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs, and it is vital that we support their development. I am going to go slightly off-peace now because I have a young 16-year-old by the name of Alex in my office this week on work experience from school. I asked him what he thought about child poverty, and he wrote me some words, so I am actually going to use that for my speech today. So this comes from a young 16-year-old boy, and this is what he said. It makes me think that it is time to step back and take a look at ourselves in this chamber. For too long, parties have played political football with this issue, cheering on when someone else is perceived to commit a foul. The nuance and detail from a complex issue has been removed, an issue that simply cannot be solved through ideological policies or simply increased spending. We need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture around poverty. Many different factors such as mental health, lack of family structure and falling education standards have been overlooked and left to the side while the situation continues to deteriorate. Poverty looks like the school pupil who must work a part-time job to help provide for his or her family. Poverty looks like the single mum who, despite being in work, still cannot earn enough to feed her children. Poverty can simply be a lonely pensioner who can only afford to heat one room in his or her house. Presiding Officer, all parties have tried to tackle poverty in flawed ways, looking at a narrow view of what poverty is and failing to see that it does not just affect individuals but entire communities. Too often there is a lack of communication between services, with multiple organisations visiting the same family without ever talking to each other or really touching upon what led them there, managing or even just containing families without offering them a chance to improve their lives. Government after government has simply spent more and more money to try and fix child poverty through the welfare state and more money pumped into schools in the hope that it will pay off, yet it has not worked. Child poverty in Scotland has been on the rise since 2007, when 200,000 children were in poverty, and that number is expected to reach 400,000 by 2027. Meanwhile, a stream of legislation has been introduced at great cost and with little effect. What those proposals fail to tackle are driving factors of poverty, such as broken family structure. Those tax and spend policies have failed us consistently and repeatedly. They have failed to decrease the attainment gap in Scotland and have failed to give adequate incomes to those in poverty. Even with high employment across the UK, 220,000 Scottish children will not receive nutritious meals this week as their parents do not have the time or wage to create a proper meal. A happy home life, working parents, a proper diet and a robust education are the things that provide a solid foundation for solving child poverty. That is something that starts in our communities. It starts in the classroom, not in a food bank. By tackling the drivers of poverty, not the symptoms, we can fix this issue for good. Presiding Officer, it is time that we as a Parliament do what is right for the people of Scotland and focus instead on long-term solutions. By reinforcing the quality of service provided by teachers, employment specialists and mental health professionals, we can prevent the cycle of children growing up in hungry families for good. I have not changed a word. Deputy Presiding Officer, I would like to start by congratulating Patrick Harvie in securing the debate on tonight's motion. As Patrick Harvie said, this is a long time for debates on social enterprise to come along, and we get two in a row. In a lot of ways, this is a very good debate, because what it does is it gives a practical example of a social enterprise working in Glasgow. It looks at a particular issue, the air address in school uniforms and links it to tackling child poverty. It is a very focused debate, and therefore a very useful debate that has fallen on from yesterday afternoon. As Patrick Harvie said, the work of a parallel exchange in Scotland has been excellent. I am glad to hear that more progress has been made since he submitted the motion. Provision of school uniforms is a big issue for low-income families, particularly as some uniforms are uniquely designed and therefore boosts the cost or increases the cost beyond £130 quoted in the motion. That puts a lot of families in a very difficult position, so I am having to go into debt. I am not even able to afford school uniforms. The social enterprise, organised by a parallel exchange, ensures the redistribution of school uniforms, not only ensures that people are able to acquire school uniforms at a lower cost, but, as Patrick Harvie pointed out, it is more environmentally friendly. It is an excellent piece of work. Patrick Harvie is also right to comment on the work of the child poverty action group, which has done so much over a long period of years to highlight issues around child poverty and also work on school uniforms. I think that there are some important issues that have to be addressed with more than 200,000 children in Scotland in child poverty. That is a massive issue for the Parliament. The motion is right to look at the effect that the UK Tory Government's welfare cuts have had. There is no doubt that those policies have pushed more families into poverty and more kids into child poverty. It has a direct impact on vulnerable families. Therefore, politicians and Governments—I say that to the Tory benches—have to take responsibility for that. There is also a Scottish Parliament responsibility. Patrick Harvie mentioned the Give Me Five campaign. That is a campaign that is focused on the last Scottish budget on increasing child benefit by £5. I am sure that that will be a campaign that will feature again in the forthcoming Scottish budget. There is a responsibility on all arms of Government in order to take action to address those issues. In terms of social enterprises, they are more ethical and they can therefore provide the conditions that will help to tackle child poverty. One of the statistics that came out in the debate yesterday was that 72 per cent of people employed in social enterprises are paid the real living wage. That makes a big impact, particularly somewhere in Glasgow, where 150,000 people are not paid the real living wage. That makes a contribution to addressing child poverty. Patrick Harvie's debate this evening has addressed some important issues. It is given as a good practical example, but there are also wider political issues that all parliaments need to address if we want to be serious about tackling child poverty. I call Angela Constance to talk about Alison Harris, who is the last speaker in the open debate. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, want to congratulate Mr Harvie on securing this debate. It is particularly timely, given that the Social Enterprise World Forum has come home to Scotland this week. It is an opportunity to showcase everything that is marvellous about the social enterprise movement in Scotland, both in terms of its contribution to an economy and tackling poverty and inequality. It was also acknowledged in the Government-led debate yesterday that local-led social enterprises can reach and support families who are struggling in a dignified manner. Although social enterprises do not exist to let government at any level off the hook, they do bring something to the solution and certainly add more than a bit of magic. Ultimately, I believe that it is core that poverty is a lack of income and that it is ultimately a political issue. On a positive note, this Parliament has a united ambition to end child poverty. We have all signed up to ambitious statutory targets to end child poverty by 2030. Of course, the contribution of social enterprise is reflected in the child poverty delivery plan that the cabinet secretary will take forward. Of course, the challenge for us all will be to ensure that, with the delivery of the plan and in future plans, the actions in it are well evidenced and will have maximum impact on reducing child poverty. Mr Haveray is also absolutely factually correct to point to the evidence that UK welfare reforms are driving more children and a million more children across the UK into poverty by the end of this decade. For the purpose of this debate, I wanted to focus on two social enterprises in my constituency. I started up and led by fabulous women who, like a parallel exchange, are helping children to access school uniforms and other provisions and other supports. I also took the opportunity to invite the new cabinet secretary to my constituency to see for herself the invaluable work done by Kids Equal and the West Lothian School Uniform Bank. The West Lothian School Uniform Bank was set up in 2015 and has gone from strength to strength. The aim of the School Uniform Bank is to provide brand new school uniforms to children and families who are experiencing financial hardship but also to supply warm coats, shoes and other equipment that are required for the school days such as school bags, pencils, cases and so on. There has been a marked rise in the number of referrals from May 2017 to August 2018, and now there are more than 428 referrals. That has increased by more than 50 per cent from last year. Noticably, more than 50 per cent of referrals come from families who are in work and make up the largest percentage on grouping of cases. Alarminally, only 78 out of the 428 referrals received were eligible for the school uniform grant from the local council. It has to be said that West Lothian Council, to their credit, gave parents £120 in the form of a school uniform grant. Eligible parents are the highest in Scotland, but that is a one-off yearly payment offered to people in receipt of particular benefits or whose income does not succeed £16,000. The School Uniform Bank says that, although that is generous, many children grow a lot between August and Christmas and outgrow the school uniform that has been purchased. As Patrick Harvie says, the average cost of a school uniform is certainly in excess of £100. Kiziko is also an award winning social enterprise-based in West Lothian, with a shop in Bathgy and a shop, and Livingston is set up for families who want to buy high-quality, pre-loved children's clothes, toys and equipment at an affordable price. They are environmentally friendly and reuse, recycle and upcycle over five tonnes of goods every month, which would otherwise be sent to landfill. They have also set up a range of other community support projects and the kids start bags, which is a nice complementary handcrafted bag of everyday essential items, not just for newborns but for young children. They have very much complements and bills on the baby box. I just want to end by putting on record my thanks and appreciation to Tracy Murder, the founder of Kiziko and to the women who set up the West Lothian School Uniform Bank, Kirstyn and Moira Shemmelt, Rachael Anand, Mary Hartness, Vera Tens, Rebecca Summers and Collette Moran for everything that they are doing for West Lothian Waynes and helping families to put clothes on the backs of their children. You will get used to my wavy pen at some point to Ms Constance. I too would like to thank Patrick Harvie for bringing this member's business to the chamber this evening. I also echo the sentiments of those who have spoken in the chamber by congratulating Aparell Exchange and the work that they do in Glasgow. It is a heartening thought now that the new school year is underway, with all the excitement that it brings for pupils, that the summer pop-up shops across Glasgow have made the transition for many families in that area easier and more affordable. The concept surrounding those pop-up shops is an excellent idea on many levels. Apart from the recycling element that the Aparell Exchange has described as diverting—well, I have got it down here as 2,100 garments, but I did hear that it has obviously increased from disposal on landfill—we also have this unique service that allows parents to have access to school uniforms. This motion made me think back to my mum telling me about her school days, where my grandmother would make due and mend, and a uniform would actually last you for the whole school year. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that we all remember starting school and your skirt was maybe touching your ankles and your blazer took you until you were leaving school before it actually fitted. If I compare that with today, we are living in a much more disposable culture where there is not the same tendency to make due and mend. We tend to throw away—and I think possibly without appreciating the effect that this has on landfill sites and the costs associated with this. I think that it is an excellent idea that parents can access initiatives like this for school clothing. We accept that uniforms do cost money, especially when you take into account families that have more than one child at school, and putting uniform aside, families also have additional costs for their obligatory school shoes and school bags that they have to purchase. I would like to see social enterprises running those types of pop-up shops in conjunction with schools and private enterprises to help parents and families throughout the whole of Scotland as a whole. As much as members' business offers a chance to highlight the work of social enterprise, the key point remains that, as elected representatives, we have to ensure that the framework is intact for tackling child poverty. The Scottish Government's target to reduce this figure to 10 per cent by 2030 is commendable, and I am pleased that this Parliament is dedicated to an ambitious target. Poverty in the attainment gap needs constant attention and tackle with a multi-faceting and joined-up approach. As part of that monitoring, in summer 2017, the Scottish ministers tasked a body of persons with providing advice on the reduction of poverty and inequality in Scotland. Subsequently, the Scottish Parliament enacted the Child Poverty Scotland Bill to establish a poverty and inequality commission, with functions relating to child poverty targets described in that bill. It would promote efficiency, effectiveness and economy in the exercise of public functions for the two functions to be combined and delivered by a single body. Article 2.2 of the order expands the functions of the commissions accordingly. However, as my colleague Adam Tomkins said during his contribution to the stage 3 poverty Scotland bill, we cannot successfully tackle child poverty by thinking of our income alone. We must also think about education, the employment prospects of families and parents and guardians and the range of other issues. That is why we welcome the more broad-brush, holistic and universal approach to an anti-proverty strategy. Before I end my speech this evening, let me briefly acknowledge social enterprise in the wider community and congratulate all those involved for their time, commitment and efforts. Deputy Presiding Officer, I welcome this member's debate this evening, and I wholeheartedly support all of my colleagues in their endeavours to reduce child poverty in Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Like so many other speakers this evening, I am also really pleased to be able to, during what others have already spoken about, what coincidentally is the same week as Scotland is welcoming the world to 1,400 delegates from around the world to celebrate social enterprises and what is the 10th anniversary of the social enterprise world forum. It is apt that we recognise this week the work of a parallel exchange, which Patrick Harvey outlined is delivering a much-needed service that tackles the cost of school uniform, not just in terms of the monetary cost, but also as he spoke about the cost to the environment regarding additional landfill. So often, as is the case, a social enterprise joins up the dots on a challenge and generates a solution. I certainly enjoyed hearing from Angela Constance, who did so much work on this issue anywhere around child poverty and social enterprise, and would absolutely be delighted to come to our constituency and visit kids and co. Also, while I am getting the chance to speak about social enterprise, maybe we would just like to plug one in my constituency. Maybe not technically a social enterprise, but delivering a lot of work—similar work to what we have heard about this evening. It is bigger as women kind who do so much work to ensure that people who are struggling get the support that they need in that discreet and dignified way that we know needs to happen more and more often. Certainly, as the mother of two wee boys of my own, I know just how quickly kids grow out of their school clothes and the ever-increasing growing pile of school jerseys that I have piling up waiting for my youngest son to be able to use them when he goes to school. As so often is the case for the second sibling, they do not get their own new stuff, they get their hand me down from their older brother or sister. Certainly, that ability where you do not have a brother or sister or that ability to be able to easily go out and buy your own school uniforms or replace school uniforms, I know how lucky I am to be able to go out and do that and to make sure that my boys have the ability to take fully part in the opportunities available to them, that that is not available to every child. I think that that is undoubtedly why we are all passionately speaking about the need to ensure that every child has their own fair chance to flourish and not just the few that have the means to be able to do so. That is why Patrick Harvie is absolutely right to contextualise this incredible work of a parallel exchange within that wider problem in that we are trying to tackle child poverty and that it is not just the role of social enterprises to tackle this unfairness but Governments as well. Again, Angela Constance was right to point out that social enterprises should never let Government off the hook. It is right that we do what we can as a Government, and that is why in March this year we published our first tackling child poverty delivery plan, setting out the concrete action that we will take in the period up to 2022 in order to make strong progress to a better future. The plan is structured around the three drivers of child poverty reduction, increasing incomes from working earnings, reducing household costs and maximising incomes from social security and benefits in kind. It also outlines action to help children who are living in poverty now to improve their lives and outcomes and to avoid them becoming the parents of the next generation that grow up in poverty. Even in the short time since its publication, our plan has already started to deliver real and tangible change. Of significance to the debate tonight, members will already be aware that we have established a new £100 national minimum school clothing grant, beginning in the 2018-19 academic year. Estimated to benefit over 120,000 families this year alone, which will mean that, for the first time, all eligible families, regardless of where they live, will have access to the same minimum level of financial support for school clothing. In line with that, we also know that providing uniforms is only one part of the challenge that faces parents in meeting the cost of the school day. We recognise the work of the child poverty action group and others to voice the reality-facing parents and children across Scotland. That is why we are supporting them to continue their work with the schools and authorities to promote awareness of the financial barriers that pupils from low-income families face at school, the ways in which those barriers prevent full participation and can undermine achievement and the practical steps that can be taken by schools and others to reduce and remove them. That is also why, in our programme for government, we have committed an additional £2 million worth of funding to step up work to tackle food insecurity among children in Scotland. We will work with COSLA local authorities, the third sector, social enterprises and other stakeholders to build the momentum, trial new approaches and develop a clear plan of action for the future to eradicate holiday hunger. Working together is so often what is necessary to find the solution to some of the problems that are existing and showing themselves to be prevalent across the country. All that work and all that effort from social enterprise and from the Government supported by the Parliament, Patrick Harvie is right to point out that the UK welfare reforms are pushing more children into poverty. Although I absolutely appreciated Michelle Ballantyne's words, that were in many ways correct, I think that she and her party would need to do well to be able themselves to step out and look in at just what the impact of the UK welfare cuts have meant to families around Scotland. Annual welfare spending will be cut by almost £4 billion in Scotland by 2020. If the Scottish Government's projections show that if we took no action cuts and an on-going austerity could lead to more than one in three children living in poverty across Scotland by 2030, those statistics have taken £4 billion worth out of social security, meaning that if the Scottish Government did nothing, meaning that one in three children would be living in poverty by 2030, all of that together shows that no social enterprise could cope with the impact of that. That is why it is important that we recognise that it is not just the work of social enterprises to plug that gap. Scottish Government needs to do what it can with the powers that it has at its disposal to try and mitigate as best it can. The UK Government and Michelle Ballantyne and her party need to understand just the impact of her party's actions that are having on families across the country. If we get that recognition, if we get that realisation, then we can start to have the long-term impact on poverty that Michelle Ballantyne's intern spoke about, which is so necessary for our country. Yesterday, we spoke about rebalancing the economy and how we can rebalance that economy through the use of social enterprises, about the value that we attach to human capacity and creativity and the talents that we have across our country. I think that a parallel exchange shows that creativity, innovation and ability to reach out and connect with a community to tackle some of the entrenched problems that they are facing to be resilient enough to cope with them within themselves. If we empower more of our communities to do the same, then we can have the impact that we want to seek. However, it needs everybody to take and play their part. The Scottish Government is well up for trying to do what it can and in straining every sinew to make sure that we have the ability to say with confidence that every child in this country is born to be able to take up the opportunities that are rightfully theirs and to make sure that this country can be the best place in which we can grow up. However, we need to have the powers enabled to do that, or we need at least to have the partnership and the recognition from the UK Government that their welfare reforms are damaging those opportunities for children for too many children across the country. However, until that moment, we will continue to work in partnership with social enterprise, support their innovation and creativity to ensure that every child has their fair chance to flourish. I congratulate Patrick Harvie for bringing in that motion for debate. Thank you. That concludes the debate and I close this meeting.