 Gwelch yn fawr, everyone. My name is Linda Fabiani and as deputy Presiding Officer it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the Scottish Parliament and to the grand final of the 2016 Donald Dure memorial debating tournament. I'm really happy to see some of my MSP colleagues here. This evening we have Willie Rennie and Mark McDonald who are on the judging panel. We have Jenny Ruth, Jamie Hepburn, Liam Kerr, Edward Mountain. If I haven't missed any MSP colleagues, please feel free to say point of order and correct me. Point of order, Gail Ross is also here. Welcome. You should have let me know this, Gail. I myself have been very privileged to have been here since 1999, so I knew Donald Dewer. It is a particular pleasure to be chairing this event for the first time in my new role as Deputy Presiding Officer. I have often heard it said that the Dewer debate is a highlight in this Parliament's calendar. Having presided over proceedings in this chamber throughout this week, I am really looking forward to hearing the arguments and ideas of our younger speakers this evening. It is great to see our member seats filled with school pupils. You are all very, very welcome. There were 128 teams representing schools from around our country who set out on the road to Holyrood in November last year. 256 pupils for 104 schools entered, and that is more schools than took part in previous years. This year there were 32 first round heats, 16 second round heats and four semifinals. Those have been whittled down to the four very talented teams who will be competing in this evening's grand final. So congratulations to all the finalists who I will introduce shortly and to the other four schools who will also take up seats on the chamber floor. They will have the opportunity to participate in the open floor debates during the course of the tournament. The competition itself is organised by the Law Society of Scotland, and I thank you to everyone at the society for all of their hard work and effort in this regard. I would also like to thank the tournament sponsors, Hodder Gibson publishers and the Glasgow Bar Association for their much-valued support. Donald Dewar was Scotland's first First Minister of this Parliament, and Donald died far too early. The tournament was set up and dedicated to Donald's memory. Donald Dewar was a student of history and law, and he practised as a solicitor in between periods of serving as a member of the House of Commons, where he represented seats in Aberdeen and then Glasgow. He was a member of the Glasgow Dialectic Society and was a frequent participant in its debates, alongside his contemporaries, many of whom moved into high-profile jobs in politics, law and the media. Donald retained his passion for debating right through his political career in the House of Commons and in the early days of this Parliament. In his first speech in what was then our new Scottish Parliament, Donald said, today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic Parliament, a voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future. It is fitting that, occupying the seats of our Parliamentarians tonight, are those who are potentially future lawmakers, politicians and lawyers. It is also fitting that this chamber continues to reverberate to the sound of a new generation of debaters through this annual competition. I certainly hope that this experience has a positive and lasting effect on your future. Finally, joining us in the public gallery tonight are many, many proud parents, classmates and teachers. You are very, very welcome and it is wonderful to see all of you here. I hope that you enjoy your evening here at Holyrood. I wish all of the finalists the very best of luck. It was not luck that got you here, it was talent. I wish you luck tonight and I hope that you all have a very enjoyable evening here in your Parliament. Thank you very much. Let's get down to business. Before we begin, I would like to congratulate the four schools that have made it to the final. They are the Royal High School, Braes High School, St Morris High School and Nairn Academy. I would now like to outline the format of the debate. I will call on the first proposition speaker to speak. They have six minutes. I will then call on the first opposition speaker to speak. They also have six minutes. That is repeated for the second proposition and the second opposition speaker before we open the debate to the floor. During those four speeches, I will verbally announce when the first minute is up. That will indicate that interventions are now permitted. I will also verbally indicate when you have entered your last minute. At this point, no interventions will be taken. When your six minutes is up, I will ask you to wind up. If you continue further, I will ask again for you to wind up after 30 seconds. Please remember that I am well experienced in keeping my fellow MSPs to time. There are plenty of clocks around the chamber, so there are no excuses, and I would expect our debaters to observe their time limits. The debate will then be opened up to the floor for a further 15 minutes before we hear the reply speeches from the opposition and proposition. Those reply speeches should last no more than three minutes. There will be no interventions, and I will verbally announce when you have entered into your last minute. I would encourage as many of you as possible to participate in the floor debate. Bear in mind that the judges will award a £50 book voucher to the best speaker from the floor over the course of the night. I would also like to remind the teams that it is entirely your choice if you choose to answer any points raised during the floor debate, and please be aware that your performance will not be judged in the floor debate. The motion for debate is that this house supports the right to be forgotten online. Our presiding judge is John Dye, former chairman of the English-speaking union in Scotland. John is joined by Mark McDonald MSP and Willie Rennie MSP, along with Irene McGrath, who is chair of the Scottish Schools International Debating Council, and John Carson, former English teacher and debate coach at Craigmount High School in Edinburgh. They have won this tournament three times. May I now ask Bray's High School and Nairn Academy to leave the debating chamber through the door at the back, and we will commence with the first debate. I would like to call on Laura Wood from Royal High School to open the debate as the first proposition speaker. Imagine living in a world where everything about you is documented online for everyone to see forever. Imagine living in a world where Google remembers more about your life than you do. Imagine living in a world where you are haunted by your past mistakes at every turn. Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Presiding Officer, Honourable Judges, fellow debaters. For the purposes of this debate, we define it as a right as a fundamental human entitlement open to all, regardless of any defining characteristic. We define forgotten as to lose the remembrance of and online as anything related to the internet, including social media sites and search engines. We support the fundamental principle of an individual's right to not be remembered online. We believe that if we are represented online in any way, we should be able to exercise the right to remove that information from the internet as and when we wish. We do acknowledge that, if that motion was carried out, there would be practicalities surrounding its enforcement. However, we wish to make clear that nowhere in that motion is there a mention of the practicality of introducing and enforcing the right to be forgotten. No, thank you. When Sir Tim Burners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989, the world was irreversibly changed for the better and it is hard to imagine living without it. However, the devil is in the detail and the internet has a dark side too. We on proposition believe that without the right to be forgotten, we and the information about us are ripe for exploitation, online predators proliferate and our futures can be seriously jeopardised. My colleague Sarah will later touch on the legal implications of this motion. Our fundamental right to privacy is being constantly violated beneath our very noses and we cannot even smell the rat. The internet megaliths such as Facebook and Google diligently inform us that it is for our own good. They watch our every move to improve our browsing experience, to streamline our advertising and to send us better products, but in reality our every keystroke is monitored and filed, traded and exchanged. Our online lives, our browsing history, our iPhone location, our health and fitness data, they all come under scrutiny. It is these companies and security agencies and governments who wish to continue the status quo because they can benefit from our information, financially or otherwise. If we ask the internet experts, the programmers and investigative journalists, they have the insight to routinely mask their internet activity by using encrypted browsers. Those experts are anxious about what the future of the web may hold if we are not granted the right to online anonymity. Through whose hands does our property, our personal information pass? It is not just big businesses with ulterior motives, it is individuals with criminal intent, even pedophiles. It is not only pedophiles and criminals that are interested in this. It is also companies that wish to refresh their image online and look better. As I have already stated, many big companies exploit the information about us that is available online. I would like to talk you through a scenario. A pupil takes part in a national debating competition. Their school wants to celebrate this success, so up goes their name and a photograph on the school website. The predator now knows which school this pupil goes to and where they will be at the close of each school day. Where predators may have lighted at school gates in the past, they now linger on school websites. A simple online search leads to the social media profiles of this pupil and it is extremely hard to say where this will stop. Although this is a particularly chilling example, it would be naïve of the opposition to suggest that this could not happen. We cannot ignore the fact that the internet allows us to put up information, but if it goes on to the internet, we need to be aware that it is there on the internet for anyone to see. Of course, we are aware that our information is available on the internet for everyone to see, but what we are trying to say is that if we no longer wish it to be present on the internet, we should be allowed to remove it. Offline in real life, we are the masters of our own identity. We can control what we look like, what we say and how we act. One minute. Online, however, we are left at the mercy of others and how they choose to portray us, lies, untruths, factual inaccuracies, the all-fueal, salacious gossip and ignorant comments over which we have no control. Almost half of hiring managers admit that the decision to hire somebody is swayed by their online profiles. No longer are there handshakes or genuine first impressions, we are relying on the portrayal of our friends and acquaintances. If that is not a terrifying prospect, I do not know what is. If we do not pass that motion, there will no longer be a need to imagine. We will be living in a world where everything about us is documented online forever. We will be living in a world where Google remembers more about our lives than we do. We will be living in a world where we are haunted by our past mistakes at every turn. Ladies and gentlemen, for the reasons that I have stated and Sarah will go on to express, we beg you to propose that motion. I now call in Adam McGurr from St Maurice's High School to respond as the first Opposition Speaker. Good evening, esteemed judges, deputy presiding officer, ladies and gentlemen. I would first like to state that we are on the Opposition except the propositions definition of the motion. As first Opposition Speaker, I wish to open the case from two main standpoints. First of all, censorship, and second of all, a conflict of interest. My colleague Mr Hansen will then further develop the case for the Opposition from three main standpoints. First of all, accountability. Second of all, morality. Third of all, practicality. However, let me indulge in some rebuttal. The first Opposition Speaker stated that we should ignore practicalities as they are not stated in the motion. However, we on the Opposition believe that they are simply too important to forget as the cost and time implications are very, very important, which my colleague will further state. Even if we were to concede that such a concept is desirable, its practical implications render it unworkable. To quote George Orwell, threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen. That, ladies and gentlemen, leads me on to my first point. Censorship is a complicated issue. However, everyone must temper sympathy and horror at any perceived infringement of human rights in relation to that motion. That law's squeaky clean exterior cannot be allowed to deceive us. In fact, we could see censorship of massive parts of the web and the restriction on our freedom of information. Although removing that information from a search engine supposedly renders it forgotten, the law forgets the startling exponential growth of the internet. In our definition of the motion that it was for individuals, that would be personal information, not large facts that would hinder the public's knowledge of what is going on in the world. As my partner will go on to state, even if you put personal information on social media sites, it is still open to everyone who accesses such sites and you should be aware of that. That regards cache-aid versions and web archives, which means that the same piece of information can be duplicated and stored in an immense amount of places. Let me ask you this. How far do we go before privacy becomes censorship? On a more important note, however, in the interests of public safety and counter-terrorism, surely the right to know is much more important than the right to be forgotten. The same criteria that should determine the accuracy and relevance of content has led to problems, as my colleague will further mention. Moreover, we risk creating an inequality and the ability to access information. The US would never introduce privacy laws as they contradict the First Amendment. That could lead to different experiences of the internet depending on the country you live in, meaning that the internet is no longer this global platform, so the ideals of it have been fatally undermined. To conclude my first point, can we truly implement the right to be forgotten online without removing every version of a piece of content? We cannot. On to my second point. The right to be forgotten must not subswm the right to know or remember. We now go back to the old saying that there are two sides to every story. It is quite simple, really. One person may want a piece of content removed, whereas another is not. Those wishing to remove content need to remember that free speech and free media are functional rights of any self-respecting democracy, regardless of whether people say good things or bad things. Content can be set in a historical context, and that would be much more advantageous to those involved, as online information surely is more reliable than human memory. If the individual finds that information that is present online about them harmful to them, it is surely only acceptable that they are able to have that information removed. Maeddon y Deputy Presiding Officer, that is the thing. If it is on the internet, it is free to everyone. That is a functional human right. Those accessing the information are truly within the rights to do so—for example, employers—and should they see that one picture of that boisterous night out seven years ago, they know that time can change people and the choices they make. However, we on the Opposition acknowledge that striking that balance between the right to forget and the right to remember is very difficult, and my colleague will further mention that. To conclude, the right to be forgotten online will only lead to mass censorship, and it is actually flawed as the information is still available in a cash-aid version or indeed another country. We must remember that information that is dated and set in context is arguably more reliable than memory, and we all have a right to online content. However, overall, we risk a potential restriction on the foundational rights of a democratic and civilised society. We on the Opposition cannot support a concept that cannot be truly implemented. Therefore, we seek to oppose that motion. I now invite Sarah Gardner, the second proposition speaker, to give us her views. You can find just about anything online. Name it, give me five seconds and good wi-fi, and I will be able to find and tell you some basic things about whatever it is that you have asked me to research. It is pretty amazing when you think about it, yet the deeper you look, the more uncomfortable this cornucopia of information becomes. Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Presiding Officer, honourable dudges, fellow debaters. My colleague Laura has already spoken of some of the kind of effects that public information can have on the lives of individuals. I shall now go on to expand on the fine line between the right to privacy and freedom of information, how the internet responds to the right to be forgotten, and the impact of this right on society. I shall prove why the right to be forgotten online should undoubtedly be supported, as it is something important to the lives of many, and it is something that we should all be entitled to. However, I would first like to start with a bit of a battle. The Opposition believes that if we put something on the internet, we should know that it cannot be taken off and accept that. However, it is in just knowledgeable and uninformed teenagers and adults who put information online. How many times have you seen a Facebook post of a new parent showing off their newborn baby? They may upload details such as a date and time of birth, full name and weight. It was not the child who chose to put up this information about them, so why should they and others be able to remove information like this from public domain? The Opposition is also concerned that the freedom of information may be compromised should the right to be forgotten online be widely available, and to give them due credit, the balance between the privacy of an individual and the freedom of information is a delicate one, yet one that is more important to each of our lives than many of us realise. Obviously, Laura and I believe that the freedom of information is essential in the modern world. We are in no way arguing that public information should be hidden away, masked from the eyes of the public, leaving the world with only a small percentage of the facts. We are instead supporting the fundamental right that we as humans have to keep some things to ourselves. To give an example, if, as for the number of hard to tag—yes, please—if you are keeping it to yourself, then why put it on the internet and first place? As I already said and as Laura already said, it is not only you who puts up personal information. A school website or a parent may put this things up, and if you do not want it there, why should not you have the right to be able to keep it private? No, thank you. To give an example, if, as for the number of hard to tag patients treated in the past year, the NHS is obliged to be forthcoming with accurate information, however, it would withhold any personal information such as names and addresses, thus adhering to the Human Rights Act. Article 8 of this states that everyone has the right to respect for private life. The act was passed in the late 1990s, some of you prior to the flurry and bombardment of social media that exists in the world today. However, if a person is entitled to the right of privacy in their own lives offline to choose and control what stays personal and what is made public, then why should not this be the same online? Laura has mentioned that the internet is different to real life, a melting pot of different opinions and facts, mingling an amaze of strings of profiles, websites and blogs. It may be more difficult to get the same level of security with the internet, but the principle itself is the same. The right to have privacy and be forgotten is something that we as individuals should be entitled to. Yes, please. Deputy Presiding Officer, we go back to that point that me and my colleague were stating earlier. Once it is on the internet, it is probably not ever going to come back. The thing is, if it is out there, you should be aware of the consequences. I will actually come on to this, as the right to be forgotten was actually an act already passed by the European Union in 2014, and Google itself has adapted its software to give the users the right to request removal of search results for queries. That is already in place and is already working online to give people an ability to take things offline that they find are too personal to be made public. No, thank you. A year after that was implemented, Google had received hundreds of thousands of requests, covering almost a million links that were seen to be irrelevant, outdated or otherwise inappropriate. Clearly, those vast numbers show that the right to privacy and the ability to be forgotten online is something that is clearly important to many, and the fact that it has already been in use for two years shows that it is something that can work. Cases of removed links have ranged from removing information about false accusations—something that may come up when searching a name after a job interview—and it can also establish a safer online environment for children by removing full names and addresses. Ladies and gentlemen, if scores of people and large corporations also feel that the right to be forgotten online is important, then surely it is something that all should be entitled to. Think to the amount of times that you have seen an unflattering photo of yourself. Maybe it is just on a friend's camera or phone, or maybe they have put it on the internet for all to see. I am sure that you can relate to that feeling that you get when you know that something is public without your permission. If you are anything like me, you will try to do whatever it takes to get that photo deleted. I, for one, am not above stealing my sister's phone in order to remove whatever ugly photo it is that she has taken of me. However, imagine if this scenario was more extreme—something a lot more personal and public than just a tweet of a silly photo. Less than a month ago, a teenage girl committed suicide by jumping in front of a train in Paris. The incident itself is heartbreaking enough, yet what makes it worse is that her death was livestreamed on a social media site to more than 1,000 viewers. This video is still being watched like Saturday Night entertainment, yet the right to be forgotten online would allow the family to move past this tragedy, knowing that their daughter's death is no longer being replayed by strangers. Therefore, for a safer life both on and offline and for the internet to become a place where we feel secure, we beg you to support the motion. Thank you, Sarah. I now call Paul Hansen, second Opposition speaker to speak. As second speaker for the Opposition, I wish to further develop the case that my colleague Mr McGurr has previously made. I intend to do this through three main standpoints—accountability, morality and, finally, practicality. However, first of all, some revertal from myself. I cannot quite believe what I am hearing from the proposition team this evening. If you put the information on the internet in the first place, then you must accept that it is there for anyone to see, so you must take responsibility online and act sensibly. They say that it is a right to be forgotten, but you cannot have a right without a solid bedrock for it to rest upon, otherwise it will be nothing but dysfunctional. The proposition said that this is, for individual cases, not large pieces of information. But who is it up to to pick and choose what is appropriate for review? Finally, the point that they continuously make about schools is invalid, as schools ask for your permission and checks are rigorous and thorough. Let us look at the thorny issue of accountability. We are all human and we all make mistakes. But should our mistakes be removed from the internet or remain there to learn from? If you are on the web, then you acknowledge that every tweet you make or Facebook post you like is there for all the world to see, and there really is no shawl of privacy online. The minute—no—the second we engage in social media, we accept that we actively give up our right to privacy. We all know that. That is why there are age restrictions on such sites. Furthermore, we live in a society where we rely heavily on websites and social media to access information on a daily basis, whether it is to read a review of a nearby restaurant or do background checks on the person that we are meeting at that restaurant, just to make sure that it is good-looking as their Tinder photo suggests. Let's face it, folks. We've all been there. However, with the right to be forgotten online, already implemented in the EU, it could be difficult to find out who it is exactly you are meeting online. Let me give you an example of a removal request that was approved. A man requested the removal of a link to a news summary of a local magistrat's decision that included the man's guilty verdict, and that was made inaccessible. As my colleague has mentioned, it is impossible to strike a balance between the right to remember and the right to forget. My second point is that we must consider the moral implications of this legislation. My colleague has already raised the issue that the systems used to either approve or deny applications are not operated by machines but rather faceless bureaucrats who decide whether or not a case is just cause for removal. Applications are made to Google and many other search engines that operate as private bodies and are not obliged to adhere to the same principles as a public body would. Thus, we surrender control to those organisations. Let us remember that this process is a case by case basis and each individual case needs to be reviewed. Therefore, the right to be forgotten online is decided by an unknown, unaccountable body. How do we know that this right is being implemented fairly and does not compromise the rights of others? That brings me on to my final point of this evening. All of us must take into consideration the practicalities—or impracticalities, should I say—of the right to be forgotten online. Many questions remain. How much will this cost, and more importantly, who will pay for it? How many people will need to be employed to create this potentially sinister workforce? Let me ask you this. Why is it even called the right to be forgotten when one can never truly make other people forget? Overall, it is perfectly safe to assume that the right to be forgotten online is an unwanted intrusion that will stifle free speech. There is no possible means of deleting all links to content, and it is preposterous to think that people in the US and other countries could freely access sites that are unavailable to EU citizens. Therefore, shattering the strong unilateral connection that we have with the world, thanks to the internet. It begs the question, Deputy Presiding Officer, who's right is it to decide what is forgotten online, and who does not deserve to remember? Hence, for all the reasons previously mentioned, we seek to oppose this motion. Thank you, Paul. Thank you to all the speakers. I will now open the debate to the floor, and the floor debate will last for 15 minutes. I will invite speakers from the floor to raise points in relation to the debate. If you wish to speak, please remain in your seat and raise your hand. If selected, you should wait for the red light to come on on your microphone, like this one here. You should stand, tell the chamber your name and the name of your school before you raise your point. To my MSP colleagues, I don't want to see any of your hands raised. You do enough talking in here. Contributions should be short, and again I would ask my colleagues to listen to that instruction and see how well it's taken. Teams can choose to respond to the point, but their performance is not judged against the response. Teams can simply concentrate on constructing their reply speech, which is marked. There will be a prize of a £50 book token, as I said earlier, for the best floor speech of the night. May I ask our timekeeper to start the clock, please, for 15 minutes and invite hands raised? Can I tell you if I don't see one, I'll just pick somebody? Straight ahead of me, the young gentleman with the white shirt. Good evening, members of the chamber. I am Matthew McVeighan, I am from the Young Academy. I would just like to put a point across to the proposition. Ms Wood, you mentioned that online predators can access information, say, from schools that put information on. However, there is a letter sent home for consent, if going on. For example, this trip, all four members of the people who have come with us were given consent letters. Those were signed and also asked if photos could go online. I forgot to turn my microphone on. The gentleman right behind the first speaker. Alex from Vorall High School. That goes back to the point that Laura made about it being other people who can put things online. Friends, acquaintances, parents, and consent letters are your parents who sign them, not you. If you have not put something up, surely you should have the right to take it down. All right. We have a real shortage of young ladies. Aha. I head slightly to my right, the young lady with the red tie. Good evening, everyone. I would like to ask the question to the proposition side. As you previously stated, criminals and paedophiles may use social media and things that we have posted to find people. However, did you not take into consideration that it can also be used to find the criminals? Social media has opened a door for the police to find people in investigations for things like murders. Thank you. May I ask what your name is, please? Amy Hyslop from Brace High School. We have some people over on the left here with two lads with the nice green blazers sitting together, so the one on my left first and then the next door neighbour. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a point to the proposition again, although it's a point that's not really being brought up. I think that it was touched on by the opposition. You're talking about the right to be forgotten, but surely such a right could become severely counterintuitive with people choosing to abuse it. It may be an attempt to silence dangerous ideas during the reign of a dictator, or as a means for criminals to remove potential evidence of wrongdoings in this attempt to evade the law. Can I have your name, please? Thank you, Chris, and young man beside you. Thank you, Joseph Burns in Talysus College. It's a point to the proposition just to say that throughout history people have reconstructed their image for both personal and political gain. A prime example, of course, being the current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, who has reconstructed his image in the eyes of his own public in an attempt to make himself appear a prescient and generous politician—something that we know he is not. I would ask the proposition by allowing individuals to modify their online image as presented by both themselves and others. Is it not simply opening up a new and more easily accessible medium by which people may abuse power? The young lady is straight behind. Thank you, Sarah Lennon in Talysus College. The point that I would like to make is towards the proposition. I would like to make my point about social networking and education. As it has been mentioned, many businesses and universities have admitted to looking up the profiles online of many applicants. I shall say that there are many things online that we are not exactly proud of, for example that photo from 2010 that makes you look slightly psychotic. However, I would seriously doubt that something a lone incident such as that will make much of a difference in your application. However, there are slightly more serious things that might be shown online, such as, for example, all those nights that you went out drinking underage and those clubs that you went into with your fortune ID. Those are things that are not exactly mentioned on a UCAS application or your CV—something that can be easily hidden from that but cannot be hidden from your online profile. Instead of being this model citizen that you paint yourself to be, you are actually somebody who could be slightly unreliable. What university or business is going to spend, for example, in the case of applying for medicine, £200,000 on an individual who may not complete their course due to going out at night drunk or showing up to lecturers completely unable to concentrate due to their hangover? Thank you. With your name and your school, please. My name is Julie Muller. I am from the Rohe. In remodel to that point, the universities do not take in—you do not have your degree and your diploma online. You cannot modify that. The universities send it up when you apply for, say, medical school, so the point that you are making is not necessarily true, because it is not online. They have got it in paper and you cannot modify that. Gentleman, you have quite short sleeves. I am a cloud from St Aloysius College. My point is the proposition. The proposition made the point that, by deleting personal information that is embarrassing, it could be good for the person. That can be counterintuitive, because, as we have seen in the recent court case in England of celebrities' personal lives, that can go back to haunt them by making people more eager to go and find that information and have a negative effect. Thank you. I have had a lot of comments with propositions, so Sarah will respond. Can I just start from— To reply to your comment, I think that having people's personal lives taken offline and choosing to make them private should not necessarily make it more dangerous for them online. If someone wants to hide something away and lock it away in a safe, that does not necessarily make people more likely to want to go and attack that safe, because I made it safe. To address the point that was made about university applications, a university application will not show the full spectrum of what a person is like in their personality. Whether they have done mean things offline or online, it can still be hidden. Being online just makes it easier to find. The way that Google allows people to take things off the internet to have the right to be forgotten is only for specific reasons. Only a small percentage of those are taken off, rather than something that would not be—if only if it harms the person, rather than if it were to be irrelevant. The young man to my left. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My name is Adam McElroy. I am from St Maurice's High School. For me, I think that this issue lies in the shadow of perhaps a bigger issue, the old traditional battle between big businesses and individuals. If you think about the amount of information online and the amount of information that businesses have to manipulate your decisions, to force adverts your way to almost socially condition you, to buy their goods or to take their service, it is almost, in my opinion, immoral. I think that we, as young people, have the opportunity to define a generation and to take control away from those big businesses and put it back into the hands of elected and accountable officials in the state. Fundamentally, this motion lies at the heart of it, because it is about what information we as individuals are allowed to say, hang on a minute, we get control over that and we can take them out of the public light if we want to, away from the hands and clutches of the big businesses. Like I said, I think that this is a defining moment for us and it can be a defining motion for our generation as well. Thank you very much. Young ladies, straight in front with the red tie. Hello, my name is Natasha Watson. I am from Bruce's High School. I would like to give a comment towards the proposition. In recent events, are you aware that terrorists have been using social media to spread messages to each other? By giving them the right to forget, we are letting them get away without being arrested by leaving no trace behind after they have deleted any account or any information about themselves. Young ladies, slightly to my left, with the lovely purple uniform. Carrie Cusack from St Peter's Apostle is for the opposition. You mentioned earlier how it might not work very well if it was from different countries having different amount of information, but in the recent court case in England it was blocked, but here it wasn't, and we were able to get the information and it worked fine. Is it wondering how that would work for the other ones? Yes, the chap is just up to my left. I'll still lock her at St Alice's College. The opposition has mentioned how a freedom of speech and free universal access to the internet are important factors of a free and democratic society, but surely they agree that personal privacy, especially on the internet, where so much of your personal data is online, is just as important to a free and democratic society and so must also be protected. Young gentlemen, to my right. Thanks, I'm Ross Whitty Hunter from the Royal High School. I've got a question for the opposition. The second opposition mentioned that leaving things on the internet would allow you to learn from your mistakes, but surely the original purpose of the internet was not to learn from mistakes, but it was to fulfil the wishes of users of the internet that wouldn't want mistakes in the first place. Paul, you would like to respond? Yes, our whole point was that we don't make the mistakes and put them on the internet in the first place. I'll go back to the man's point here. It was on top of my mind. We have a right to protect our social media accounts. When we use those, you are mentioning that it is an essential part of democracy to have our freedom of speech recognised, but surely our freedom of speech should be used sensibly. What we are putting on the internet, we should always make sure that it is responsible and mature. An example of a young girl who recently posted a video online of her having her head shaved as punishment from her parents. The video received a lot of backlash and had thousands of shares. A week later, I think that she committed suicide. However, how can that be deemed acceptable as she was deprived of the right to be forgotten online and it ended up leading to extreme circumstances? Young man to my left. Hello, I am Yw Enthneddon from Wraith High School. I have a point for the proposition. How do you suggest that if motion would come into effect, then I have felt like you touched on it in your speech? Yes, Sarah. We believe that the motion supports the right to be forgotten online, but we did not touch on the practicalities for that. We feel that we did not need to cover that as we were simply talking about the fundamental right that we have to privacy, which is in the Human Rights Act 2020, rather than how that would come about. Well, quickly to my left. It is just that many would say that the internet is our gift to future generations never before we've seen such a compilation of historical evidence from everyday life. To allow the desecration of a historical monument would be seen as important. Why should we allow people to remove evidence from this? Yes, and we shall end, I think. Our last speaker was also our first contributor in the floor speeches. It was just a point in response to what you had said about the girl having her head shaved as a punishment from her parents. Although that is, and I'm pretty sure that everybody in the chamber will agree with me, a devastating thing. If I may flip it on its head and bring back to the shaving of heads for cancer research UK and for various different other points, charities rather, that was something that was used as a fundraiser. That can be remembered. If employers go on and see that, they will see that people have made this effort to try and do some good for the future of other people. Three, two, one, and our 15 minutes is up. Thank you all very, very much for your contributions, and I would now ask Adam McGurr to reply on behalf of the Opposition. Adam, you have three minutes. Good evening once again. I esteem judges, Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen. We believe that tonight the Opposition has proved that such a motion is actually flawed. We believe that implication of the motion is actually not possible. I wish to focus on two points of clash that I noticed in tonight's debate. First of all, the moral implications of this motion and also the practical implications of this motion. First of all, Deputy Presiding Officer, the moral implications. The proposition stated that it is down to the individual to choose whether to remove a piece of content or not. Whilst they stated that sometimes it is not the fault that such content finds its way onto the web, I believe that there was a point also mentioned by the gentleman over there of schools taking photographs. Of course, as it has been said, will our school anyway definitely issue a letter asking for permission, whether he wishes to take a photograph or not. We, on the Opposition, believe that the internet, of course, is a great thing. It allows international connection to loved ones and buying a new shut in seconds. However, it is also a predator. We, on the Opposition, believe that the use of the internet is a case of individual responsibility. As my colleague stated, the second that you commit to social media, you almost forfeit the right to privacy. That picture or post can be stored in such a large amount of places. Unfortunately, due to that, problems can arise. Yet the individual must be aware of the power of social media and therefore the consequences. On to the second point of clash, which was the practical implications of the motion. It was stated by the proposition that the practical implications of the motion can be forgotten—an intentional pun. Let's define what we mean by practicalities. The cost and time implications are among the most important. Should every version of content be removed, the amount of money that is needed to do such a thing would be massive. Moreover, the time taken to do that research into the number of cases would also be very long. We have to ask ourselves this, ladies and gentlemen. Is it really a worthwhile endeavour? As I mentioned, human memory, although it can fade over time, will never abolish such thoughts. Therefore, can we truly implement a right to be forgotten? Of course, I go back to George Orwell. Do we introduce the thought please? For the reasons that I have stated and for the reasons that my colleague Mr Hanson has stated, we seek and also hope that you will seek to oppose tonight's motion. Thank you, Adam. I now ask Laura Wood to reply for the proposition. You have three minutes, Laura. Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Presiding Officer, honourable judges, fellow debaters. This evening, the motion supports the right to be forgotten online has been debated. You have heard from side opposition that the right to know is more important than the right to be forgotten. However, I will highlight to you the main points of clash in this debate and demonstrate that we, side proposition, have proven conclusively that the right to be forgotten online is thoroughly deserved. I would like to start by saying that the opposition actually accepted our definition of the right to be forgotten, including the fact that the practicalities were in no way part of the motion. Therefore, their points about the practicalities cannot be seen as relevant. The opposition also posed us with a question, who's right is it that our information is removed from the internet? I'm going to answer it. What we have consistently said throughout this debate is that it is the right of the individual who, on many occasions, will not have complete control over the information concerning them. As they said, the right to know is more important than the right to be forgotten, but what if that knowledge is of extreme privacy to that individual, such as health data or their location tracked by a phone? That is definitely not for the world to know, so it is most definitely down to the individual as to which information about them is present online. As well as this, article 8 of the Human Rights Act states that we all have the right to have our private lives respected. The opposition mentioned a conflict of interest on the internet. Everything that we post or that is present about us is free to everyone, but, as we have said, what if that individual has not given permission? Indeed, it may be from a boisterous night out seven years ago, but what if that impedes their future? The opposition also mentioned that the guilty verdict of a man was removed from the internet at his request, but Google's ability to remove unwanted links from search engines is actually policed, and they only remove around 40 to 60 per cent of the requested links. Andy Warhol once said that we would all be famous for 15 minutes, but what if we turned this on its head? What if I told you, ladies and gentlemen, that for only 15 minutes you could be anonymous? We beg you to propose that motion. I would like to thank both teams and all those who contributed to this debate. We have heard some very interesting contributions, and I hope that you all enjoyed participating. We will now have a short break and please speak to one of our events assistants should you wish to make use of the facilities. During the break, could I please ask the speakers from Royal High School and St Maurice's High School to move back to their seats in the row behind and we can then welcome back Brays High School and Nairn Academy for the second debate. Please may I ask everyone to be seated ready to commence absolutely promptly at 7.45 pm. Welcome back. Before we start the second debate, I would like to remind everyone of the motion. This house supports the right to be forgotten online. I would call Ross Heenan from Brays High School to open the second debate as the first proposition speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, judges and deputy presiding officer, my name is Ross Heenan and this is Andrew Bucking, and today we will be supporting the motion. This house supports the right to be forgotten online. As the first speaker of the proposition, it falls to me to define the motion. Firstly, under current European law, the right to be forgotten online is defined as a following. People have the right to ask for personal information for your moved and this applies as long as information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive. Those are not my words but the words of the European Parliament, which this year in April approved tougher laws to support a right to be forgotten online. We are not for one minute claiming that we should delete knowledge of historic events or criminal convictions or vital information. This is about ordinary people like you and I, having the right to decide what information is shared about them online. We side proposition agree that it is almost impossible to resolve the issue entirely, but what we need to be clear on is that the motion builds a foundation for a better future. It is also vital that we make clear the difference between being forgotten and being remembered. We are not asking people to wipe their minds and we are well aware that things will always be remembered, but this is about taking the internet to task about what it allows to remain. Tonight, I will be exploring our human right to privacy, the dangers of having information available at the touch of a button and the advancement of technology and content found online. My partner Andrew will extend this argument further and explore the need for balance and drive down into the complexities of the issue and how it affects us. I will start off with privacy. Let us begin with the question, the question, why is it a right to be forgotten online? It may seem like a glib answer, but the matter of fact is that it is our human right. Article 8 of the human rights act, not me, not Andrew, states that everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. I think that the last word of that sentence is what is important, correspondence, because for me that covers the internet as we use it to communicate. Deputy Presiding Officer, I do believe that that right is caveated by the idea that this right should not be extended to those who pose a risk to national security. How can you prove by allowing people, any people, to remove things from the internet that they do not pose a risk to our national security? It seems that we are letting people remove anything from the internet, as what is already in the law prevents it. It says that the people who—let me just find it—if it is likely to impede against if it is irrelevant or if it is dangerous to the public, it is not allowed to be erased from online. That is what has been passed in the European Parliament, and it is the law and it is the fact. People who are dangerous or criminal will not be allowed to take things offline. So, gone are the days of writing letters and filling out forms and waiting in the bank queue to apply for a credit card. All of this now happens online, and just because we embrace that social development does not mean that a right to privacy should be eroded. Every single person in this room listening to what I am saying can relate to this. We all have aspects of our life that we want to keep private. The job that we apply for that we did not get, the blank loan that we were rejected for, the relationships that have crumbled. For Andrew and I, the refusal to accept a right to be forgotten online—no thank you—is a slap in the face for not only our right to privacy but also our basic rights as a human being. Embracing the right to be forgotten allows us to build a ffader future where the human right to privacy is paramount. Deputy Presiding Officer, how can you equate a brighter future with one that sends us our own history? Sorry, can you repeat that at that last line? Deputy Presiding Officer, how can you equate a future that is better for all of us with one that helps us to send us our own history? What allows us to send our own history? As I have already talked about the law, the law, the data protective directive, which is passed in the EU, says this exactly. Data that is granted in accordance with article 89, insofar the right to erasure, is likely to impede the achievements of the objectives of archiving of public interests, scientific, historic or statistical research purposes. I have made a bit of a meal of that there but what it means is that anything historic, anything scientific will not be allowed to be taken off the internet. You could argue that it is dangerous to allow all information to remain on the internet. We are entering into an age where our lives, particularly young people's lives, are publicised online for everyone to see. Ask any young person, vulnerable or otherwise, if they engage with social media on any level and I think you know what the answer would be. However, that does not just impact the most vulnerable, it impacts all of us, because whether we like it or not, we all live online. If information remains online and people have no control over whether it is deleted or removed, then it opens the floodgates for dangerous people, Governments or organisations, no thank you, to use that information against us. More information even allows profiling. Can you imagine what Hitler would have done if he had had access to years' worth of Facebook pages? To conclude, privacy is a fundamental human right recognised by the UN. An age of rapid advancements in technology and media has quickly become one of the most important human rights of the modern age, serving not only to protect us from unwelcome onlookers but also to allow us to believe in and associate with whatever we choose without fear of discrimination or judgment. However, as the world around us continues to advance at such an alarming rate, it goes increasingly difficult to protect this right, with the rapid advancement of the internet and the plethora of activities in our caters to, our basic right to privacy is threatened now more than it has ever been. Our lives are documented not on paper but in the tap of buttons on a keyboard. However, we still retain the most fundamental of rights, the right to privacy regardless. The right to be forgotten is not an article to allow propaganda to be spread and to crush free speeches that the Opposition would have you believe. No, the right to be forgotten is simply an attempt to protect and uphold our right to privacy, allowing us to ask for that which to concerns of to be removed from the internet. I urge you to support the motion. Thank you. Thank you, Ross. We will now have Caitlin Sherratt from Nairn Academy to respond as the first Opposition speaker. Six minutes, Caitlin. Ladies and gentlemen, judges, Deputy Presiding Officer, Andy Warhol told us in 1968 that we'd all be world famous for 15 minutes. Little did he know how accurate that claim would be some 50 years later. The internet, and particularly social media, have afforded us a platform where every detail of our invariably trivial lives can be published for all the world to see. Fame, or sadly infamy, authored by our own hand, well, be careful what you wish for, Mr Heenan proposes that this House supports the right to be forgotten online, but I'm afraid I must challenge his interpretation of tonight's motion. He assures us that his right to online amnesia will only be an option for Joe Public. It will not be a route for the rich, famous and powerful. While I wish I could share his innocent optimism, it will be our melancholy pleasure to highlight to him the legal impossibility of such a vague wish. As the Opposition will illustrate, censorship, because that's what the proposition is proposing, whether it cares to admit it or not, is like death and marriage, not something that you can enter into lightly. I contend that tonight's motion only offers a right to those who wish to manipulate and suppress the past, not just their own past, but our past as well. Mr Heenan's right to be forgotten online is a naïvly understandable wish. He offers us carefully selective tales of innocent misunderstandings to justify his civil liberty crushing stance, because ultimately that is where this motion leads us, ladies and gentlemen, a backdoor route to a best legal confusion, or at worst the first steps to a slippery slope, to restrictions on our free speech and ultimately, as I said, the censorship of the internet. It is my pleasure to frame the Opposition tonight's motion. Yes, please. Again, you're suggesting that what we're talking about is a complete censorship of the internet, but as Ross has rightly pointed out, we are simply dealing in the facts. Indeed, article 89, part 1 of the data protection directive specifically states that stuff can only be removed from the internet so long as it does not impede the achievements of the objectives of archiving and the public interest or scientific, historical or statistical research purposes. Are you completely failing to understand the law here? Deputy Presiding Officer, again, I'd like to highlight the proposition's naivety if they think that the rich and powerful in this world will not want to take advantage of this ruling. Of course, setting out a motion like this would have to take into account that you wouldn't be able to take out historically important things. However, I would question who has the right to choose this, and clearly this opens a slippery slope. Once you let one person try this, everyone will want to go. As I said, it is my pleasure to frame the Opposition's response to tonight's motion. I will explore the complex issues surrounding the dichotomy of the right to privacy when it stands in opposition against the right of freedom of expression. My colleague Finlay Allmond will consider the impact of this motion in the context of corruption and power. Ladies and gentlemen, my task here tonight is not to persuade you that the internet is perfect the way it is—far from it. It is to convince you that the attempts of the proposition and the EU to allow citizens to forget their pasts is as impossible to manage as it is sinisterly unwelcome. I do appreciate where Mr Keenan is coming from. I'm human too. The emotional rationale that lies behind the right to be forgotten is powerful, and it is understandable. Sadly, all people on this planet have made mistakes. Will we forever be defined by that one mistake that we made that ended up in the internet or on the press? Only if we passively let it, we can shave our own footprint on the internet through Google+, and positive social media engagement. We can take ownership of our history and not be a passive victim to it. As I have already indicated, the main problem, no matter how Mr Keenan tries to rationalise it, is that the right to be forgotten is a form of censorship, despite tonight's interjections. By suppressing true information—let's be very clear—that is what we are talking about here. We are talking about the suppression of true information, not liable, not defamation, not hate speech. By supporting that, we are restricting free access to communication. Yes, please. Deputy Presiding Officer, surely the Opposition fails to consider that people are allowed to be different at different points of their lives. If I make a mistake at this age, in the future it will impede me trying to get a job, trying to get a career. People at different points of their lives are different, so to say that it's oppressing true information—it might have been true now—it won't be true when I'm 40, when I'm 50, when I'm trying to do different things. How can you say that? Deputy Presiding Officer, first of all, surely the proposition must realise that anyone trying to hide any information from themselves on the internet must surely come under some kind of censorship of the press, which is clearly against our freedom of speech. However, the main point that I'd like to address there is that in real life we do not have the option to just wipe, clean our memories. We must consider that the internet is an extension of real life, not some kind of fantasy world. We must remember that, despite what the proposition would like us to believe, we have to take accountability for our own actions no matter what age we are. Mr Heenan, I'm sure that you'll agree with me that I do not have the right to control what you remember. Similarly, I do not have the right to control what you say. For that reason, we must treat the right to be forgotten as a form of extraneous control, as I have said, as a form of censorship. Ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Presiding Officer, as I have shown you, tonight's motion is not simply about signing up to the latest EU dictate on privacy. It's not about casting up the spectre of Google as some kind of passive aggressive digital conscience. Mr Heenan wishes to be forgotten online. Tonight, I ask him and you why. The answer? We would seek to expand ourselves from history, as we have heard, if we regretted our past actions, but more worryingly if we actually had something to hide. I'm not comfortable with a control-altz elite society because it is censorship, no matter how you try to dress it up. It is a crude attempt to suppress history irrespective of your perhaps good intentions. In the hands of the corrupt, the consequences are devastating. Mr Heenan seems to have learned nothing from the lessons of history or hasn't easily forgotten how the powerful and ruthless seek to airbrush themselves from their dubious past. Please take responsibility for your actions and join me in opposing tonight's motion. Thank you, Caitlin. I now invite Andrew Buchan, second proposition speaker, to give us his views. Ladies and gentlemen, judges, Deputy Presiding Officer, my name is Andrew Buchan and it falls on me to continue the case for side proposition here this evening. Now my rebuttal will be mixed in from my speech, so I'm going to go straight into my first point, which is to talk about what can actually be forgotten online. Now, as Ross explained in his opening, in order to remove any information from the internet, it must be deemed irrelevant or unnecessary to the wider public, yet our opposition continues to argue that once something is online it must remain there unless required to be taken down for a legal reason. We simply do not believe this to be the case. People may wish something removed for moral or ethical reasons. If we look at some of the recent removal requests that were approved by Google, they included patient medical histories, intimate private photos, old threads and group conversations that ended up online. They included prominent reminders that someone was a victim of rape, assault or other criminal acts, that they were once an incidental witness to tragedy, that someone close to them, a partner or a child was murdered. Our opposition chose to focus here this evening on the extreme ideas and interpretations of this motion, which do not have a tangible bearing on the world that we exist within. No, thank you. The importance and significance of this motion lies on its impact on the everyday people like you and I. Let us not forget where this right developed from. It didn't come from the rich and famous or massive corporations trying to crush their opposition—like the opposition would have you believe. It came into place because Spaniard, Mario Gonzalez, demanded his contact information and reminders of a previous debt being removed from the internet because it was long since outdated. Senor Gonzalez was a banker who went bankrupt. Do you really think that his clients don't deserve to know that they are getting financial advice from a bankrupt? I don't think that Spaniard, Mario Gonzalez's clients deserve to know his phone number from when he tried to sell his house. Does forcing that information to remain online actually improve our society in any way, ladies and gentlemen, the simple answer? No. Of course it doesn't. It's time that we allow the past to be forgotten so that we can move forward and build for a better future. No, thank you. That moves me on to my next point about the effect that that motion has on our legal system. In the UK, we pride ourselves on our legal system on the fact that we offer everyone a fair trial and the right to prove their innocence. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. Yet online, you are guilty even once proven innocent. No, thank you. We claim to offer a fair trial that only punishes the guilty. Yet, during and even after a defendant proves their innocence, they continue to be reminded of the crime that they did not commit, having it loom over their lives. The case of actor and television presenter Matthew Kelly is quite frankly tragic. Not only did he have to face a trial by the media over accusations that he was a pedophile, even once those accusations were shown to be completely false, he was never allowed to forget this traumatic experience because the internet never forgets. Yes. Deputy Presiding Officer, I am afraid that what the speaker is proposing here is that we centre what the free press of our country is allowed to report. Whatever you say, that is what you are proposing. Not even slightly. What I am saying is that the press can say that at the time, but once he has been proven innocent, why should he continue to be reminded of something that is completely false about himself? The thing is that we are well aware on side proposition that you will remember an incident or experience like this. But as Ross said, the internet is a virus, and it means that there are constant reminders even once this aspect of your life is no longer relevant. Rather distressingly, ladies and gentlemen, if you google Matthew Kelly pedophile, the results are humiliating character assassinations. In fact, the third option under his name is a website solely dedicated to Matthew Kelly pedophile jokes. How can this man ever be allowed to move on while the internet will not let him and others forget? No, thank you. The case of Mr Kelly is not an isolated one. Many others are undergoing and continue to undergo experiences just like his. Now, it might not seem like a topical reference, and you might crawl that this happened 13 years ago, but that is our very point on side proposition. That did happen 13 years ago, but due to the internet and the lack of the right to be forgotten, he was never allowed to move on. I guess that that leads me on to my third and final point this evening, that this motion affects all of us. It affects every single person in this building. The internet is, as we mentioned, a virus. It has taken over our lives, and we seem to ignore that fact. All of you will have used the internet. You bank online, you get a passport online, you shop online, you maintain friendships online. This very event was organised online, and your information is out there whether you like it or not, but you do not have control. That is what the right to be forgotten is about, ladies and gentlemen. It is not about rewriting history like the opposition would have you believe. It is about taking control of our digital lives, whether that be the removal of an embarrassing photo posted by a friend or personal information uploaded to secure a mortgage. We do not believe such aspects of our lives must be documented for the rest of history. Ladies and gentlemen, Ross and I have both stated that the internet is a virus, and the new right is a cure. Will it fix it overnight? No, but with time, we can build a better world. That motion is not about today, ladies and gentlemen, it is about tomorrow, so I will simply need to consider what sort of world we want to leave for future generations. One where a mistake, when we were childish and foolish, haunts us for the rest of our life, or one where a mistake is just that, a moment in our life that we regret, and it is for those reasons that we urge you to support the motion. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Can I now ask Finlay Almond, second opposition speaker, to speak? Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Buckan and Mr Heenan have proposed that this house supports the right to be forgotten online, and this is sadly reflective of today's superficial society. We want the right to forget our transgressions without the burden of remembering the consequences. In short, we want all of the freedom, but none of the responsibility. As Caitlin has outlined, despite Mr Buckan's spluttering interjections, this motion leads to a world where the internet will be effectively censored. Before I go on to illustrate how this is perilously close to reality already, I would like to consider some key points of clash that are evident in tonight's debate. Both Mr Buckan and Mr Heenan unsurprisingly choose to align themselves with the poor and maligned victims of spurious internet falsehood. Their fears are natural, but this is a proposition that plays into the hands of the privileged, the powerful, the rich and the corrupt. On the opposition, we want to access to a history that is not being manipulated by invisible puppet masters who choose what we must forget. People have every right to suppress unpleasant lies, lies that are publicised about them, and this is why the UK Deformation Acts of 1952, 1996 and 2013 already exist, but this right does not extend to the compulsory forgetting of inconvenient truths. Unsurprisingly, Mr Heenan takes exception to this, but his point that this will only be used by society's victims whilst well-intentioned is about as credible as the aforementioned Senor Gonzales' attempt to balance his finances. Deputy Presiding Officer, the European Court of Justice ruling C-131-12 upheld the notion of citizens' rights to be forgotten online. Let's be honest, who wouldn't want to be able to airbrush their past? Why should a few drunken student photographs or preclude people's solemn applications to become accountants, nuns or cabinet ministers? Crucially, as we've heard, the EU didn't order that those unflattering truths had to actually be deleted. That is pretty much what we're arguing, ladies and gentlemen. Why should a past transgression, whilst we were young, while we weren't thinking straightly, be the thing that looms over us and stops us from ever being able to move on and achieve our goals and aspirations? It is completely ludicrous to suggest that what we did when we were young is a complete reflection on our life to date. Deputy Presiding Officer, the speaker has just stood up and said that the democratic will of the people of Scotland do not have a right to know about the people that they are electing to make decisions on their behalf. This EU ruling has suggested that search engines should just provide links and stop providing them. That is making facts harder, not impossible to find and certainly not forgotten. Deputy Presiding Officer, allow me to highlight the potential for the abuse of that motion. Mr Heenan and Mr Buckan have gone to great lengths to highlight that the right to be forgotten is not, we are told, a tool for the rich and the powerful to further insulate themselves in justice and truth. I direct the audience towards the recent activity of PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel, currently donating millions to a variety of court cases where people are suing mainstream media outlets, making it his mission to support the common man in their fight for privacy. What a philanthropist hero I see, you say, but his true motivation is to crush any commentary that he disagrees with. Rich person finds way to abuse power and manipulate our freedom. This is how it starts and the proposition's right to forget is how the free world changes ladies and gentlemen, not with a bang, but with an insidious, forgetful silence. Just look at the example of Robert Peston. In 2007, Google informed the BBC that when responding to search and searches it wouldn't provide a link to a 2007 blog post by BBC economics editor Robert Peston. Now this was as alarming as it was puzzling. It only mentions one person. Peter Thiel is the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent. It's not representative of the whole of society. It's one man. We're talking about millions of people across the world. Surely you can't base your argument on one man. Deputy Presiding Officer, if the speaker would allow me to continue, the example of Stan O'Neill in this blog post, he was one man who they wrote a blog post about, but he was not deleted because he asked it to be, an ordinary member of the public who left a comment on Mr Peston's blog asked for it to be removed. Surely Mr Heenan and Mr Bucking can see how this interference can be manipulated to censor legitimate reporting, add a comment, no thank you and then demand that it's forgotten. Simple, unadulterated censorship. Now I would suspect that the powerful, the 1 per cent that Mr Heenan goes on about could engage a small army of their history manipulators to preclude our right to know what happens in our world. Now, Deputy Presiding Officer, I'm sorry to have to crush the proposition with the terrible truth that bad people exist. And incredibly enough, they don't go around advertising themselves as devious and corrupt. They pretend that they're respectable and virtuous, but tonight's proposition creates a springboard for these people to create their own personal cyber history. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Catelyn and I urge all of you, sat here tonight in this bastion of Scottish democracy and civil liberty, to oppose this motion that perverts fairness and justice. No one has the right to suppress our past and it is our responsibility to live with what we have already done. If you don't want to listen to me, then listen to the words of the 12th century poet Omar Khayam, the moving finger writes and having written moves on nor all thy piety nor witch shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. I urge you to oppose tonight's motion. Thank you, Finlay, and thank you to all the speakers. Again, we've heard some very interesting views and I have to say it's the first time I've ever had to interrupt a poem by Omar Khayam. I'm once again going to open up this debate to the floor and I'd like to invite everyone to participate as before for 15 minutes. Please raise points in relation to the debate, and like before, if you wish to, please raise your hand. If selected, you should wait for the red light to come on in your microphone stand, tell the chamber your name and the name of the school before you raise your point. Short contributions—the contributions were excellent last time round. I'd like to remind teams that they can choose to answer the point, but that their performance would not be judged against their response. Teams can simply concentrate on constructing their reply, which is, of course, marked. May I ask the timekeeper to start the clock, please, and ask for anyone who would like to contribute? Young lady, to my right. I'm Harriet Swatman from the Royal High School. I'm going to make a point to the opposition. It seems to me that every single little thing that has been removed from the internet would be something that would be completely life-changing. I think that, a lot of the time, the things that have been removed from the internet are things that have been put up accidentally, now that children have a lot easier access to the internet. Even though people have private accounts, things can be taken off them and moved elsewhere by other people. Many things find their way onto the general internet accidentally, and those things should be allowed to be removed if necessary—things such as addresses and phone numbers that were put up accidentally. Young lady, just to my left. Olivia Aledys, Brace High School. I've got one for the opposition. If you're writing an application form, what do you contain in that application form? You write down your best qualities, your interests, things that define you and make you look the best that you possibly can, so that you get that job and get into that university that you've been dreaming of for years. You don't put down your negative things that might be seen as a weakness, do you? No. Why would you have that on your social media site? Why would you have that online, posted about you? That application form defines you to an absolute stranger, so why would you want them saying that you're somebody who's bad when you've made a couple silly mistakes? Why would you add that in? You want to seem the best that you possibly can, so that you get that place. Thank you. Brace, young gentleman, here to the left. Yes, it was you. It was me that made the mistake, not you. I'm sorry about that, guys. It's Calmer Cloud from St Alice's College. The opposition made the point that the powerful would benefit from this legislation, but I say as I would even the keel for the ordinary person and individual, because, as we've seen, without the ability to remove information, in America and a university where students protesting were sprayed by the police and the university is called the police on them, they spent £1 million to try and hide this information of bad publicity about this terrible event. Meanwhile, if we allow ourselves to be able to remove personal information that would benefit the individual of terrible circumstances such as reminding of people getting families and friends getting murdered, this would benefit society and make it even and do the opposite effect and make the powerful less powerful. Thank you. Young gentleman with the lovely black curly hair. We all have skeletons in our wardrobes, but not all of us are creative of both skeletons and not all of those skeletons are real. Is it not our duty as a society to allow people to destroy these untroves and lies about themselves by allowing them to forget, be anonymous and forget things on the internet? Could you give us your name and your school, please? Alex Sennachael from Rall High School. Young gentleman with the black blazer. Thank you. I'm Angus Walker-Straup from the Rall High. A couple of years ago there was a scandal as a couple of people, a lot of people signed in forms to give to charities donating small amounts of money, but those charities put those forms online and sold them to other organisations. They should be allowed to take those details down as it was not their fault that it was put up there and they did not consent to it being put there in the first place. Caitlyn, you wish to make a response? Yes, I would. Thank you. The two points that I heard there, both those cases are actually already covered with laws that we have in the UK. The gentleman over here was talking about was liable. Anyone who has liable of comments made against them can have those comments taken down. Moreover, the gentleman over here was talking about something that was actually breaking the law. In that case, any information that has been known to break the law is already able to have been taken down from the internet. That's not actually what the proposition is asking. This is something that's already basic and in place. It's the internet's bread and butter, if you will. Gentleman in the shirtsleeves, straight ahead of me. Thank you, Madam Deputy. My name is Christopher Teenan from St Aloysus College. The Opposition has made the point that the rich and powerful will take advantage of any system that is set up to remove information. However, it seems to have omitted the fact that the system that is set up currently has rules and regulations that stops them from taking advantage of those. No matter how rich and powerful they are, they cannot circumvent the rules that have been put in place. The gentleman sitting beside you and then the young lady behind Mr Rennie? I'll still walk out, St Aloysus College. I'd just like to make the point to the Opposition that they've essentially presented the right to disappear from the internet as the end of free speech and civil liberties as we know it. Surely, the proposition is only advocating a reasonable control for individuals over their own personal information and data. Do you really expect us to believe that the so-called censorship by having ownership over our own information will somehow damage our rights? Surely, that would only enforce them. Emma Mackay from Braise High School. Many decisions that people make at one age may be different from the decisions that they make years later. I'm sure that you and many others in the chamber must regret something that you have done in the past—big or small. If others could find those things online, do you feel that you should be judged for a decision that you made in the past that you now regret? Gentleman on the left, third row from the back. The Opposition. You have given many examples of how the rich and the famous could use this right to mask potential wrongdoings, but truthfully you have not countered the proposition's argument that those are not the majority of people. What about the poorer people in society? The first speaker said, a mistake will only rule your life if you let it. Ironically, this is naivety, because mistakes will damage your integrity even if it's not their fault. Do those people deserve the right to be forgotten online since you've clearly forgotten them from your speeches? I think that we'll let Caitlin seems desperate to respond quickly there. Would you like to take another few points first? Can I respond, please? Can I just come back to the point that we just had? Oh, sorry, I'll speak this way because otherwise the microphone won't pick me up. Your point there about the naivety of not letting one mistake define your life. In life, a lot of people make a lot of mistakes. It seems to me unfair that you can just make all these disappear at the flick of a wand online. It also seems to me that once you let one person, as you said, you use the example of taking one whole person down from online. To me, that seems a very dangerous proposition. Also, what you have to remember is that although the proposition said that the rich and powerful would not be able to manipulate this, what we've also got to look at is people who are looking to become rich and powerful and can cover their tracks as they go along. This is something that the proposition haven't thought of and something that I urge you to consider. Oh gosh, it's coming thick and fast now. Young lady to my left and then I have two young ladies to my right. Evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Lauren Miller and I proudly represent Brees High School. I have a question for the opposition team. On most social media sites there are certain age restrictions. Currently it is too easy to lie about your age and appear just a little bit younger than you actually are. Kids aren't aware that closing the age gap between you and them is wrong. Before you mention this, many children do so without their parents permission. Having a younger sister myself, I witness the pressure she feels to follow all of her friends in the latest social media obsession. Do you really believe that it should not be possible for a 10-year-old child—may I stress—a 10-year-old innocent child's information to be removed as he or she grows up? I am pretty sure that we are all familiar with the crazy stunts and acts that we would perform as a child in order to impress the primary school sweetheart that we decided on that morning. Two young ladies here look young ladies straight ahead of me and then the one to her left. It's actually Watson, Brees High School. Opposition, I don't think you are, I'm aware of a website on the internet. For only $2.50, you can find out every single detail about every single person in the US. Why is this still online? Why hasn't this been deleted? Why are you fighting for things like this to stay on the internet? Amy Hyslop, Brees High School. If it's okay, I would like to make a statement and then end with a question. Many companies want to protect their customers, as it is part of their contract, much like the patient doctor confidentiality a person receives when they go to a hospital. Sometimes it's not the big budget companies or criminals that we need to worry about. It is our government. A few months ago, the Government of the United States of America asked Apple industries to give them access to every single person who owns an Apple device. Now, I'm not sure if you are aware, but this is a massive break of privacy. If we are not allowed to keep certain aspects of our self-private, then we might as well let ourselves be spied on like criminals by the very people who think that they are trying to protect us. I'm going to let Finlay give a quick response. I'd like to quickly address the first point about the 10-year-old using the internet and using social media. Surely, Deputy Presiding Officer, we should be looking at parental responsibility on the internet when social media websites have clear guidelines that 10-year-olds should not be using them. What a 10-year-old does on the internet, they should not be doing, especially on social media. It is against the law. The law, and there are laws to remove these things. For the third point about Apple, I believe that the exact case was that Apple wanted access to the phone of a terrorist. They wanted access to a terrorist's phone to protect American national security. I don't understand how people can be so against stopping national security threats to make sure that more terrorist attacks don't happen. My goodness. One young gentleman in the white shirt, the young lady in front of him, three, four, five, six. That's it. Quick contributions, please. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer, Matthew McVey from Nair academy. I would just like to put one point to Ross Healan from the proposition. You mentioned that people put information, for example, from relationships online. I would just like to quote a friend of mine, and what he said was, the way you can tell a good relationship and a healthy relationship that functions well is that there is no sign of it on social media, and I'm sure you will all agree with me. Because the minute it all falls down into a thousand crumbly pieces, everybody will find out because it then has to be removed and is notified on the website, for example, Facebook. If you are going to put that on, you are running that risk of people knowing online that the relationship has fallen. It's your own responsibility, not the responsibility of the tool, so to speak. Dana Mackay, Brace High School. I would like to direct my point towards the opposition side. Are you not aware of the dangers that a picture posted on the internet can cause? Many young people have committed suicide because they couldn't handle the painful humiliation that they had been put through, such as Amanda Todd, for example. Often, this isn't the individual's fault. Surely, if somebody wants a photo to remove, they should not be denied that right. Where is numbers three and four? I would like to make a point to the opposition. In response to the point that was made about Apple, it was them asking for the access to the phone of a terrorist. What they asked for, in fact, was the ability to access the phones of everyone who owns an iPhone. If it was simply just one terrorist, that would be one thing, but it is significantly more than that. They have asked for the ability for the access to all iPhones, which is a power that no Government should ever have. Can we have your name in school, please? Christopher Teane in St Alice's, same as it was before. Well, do you know what, Christopher? I'm getting on a bit. And I'm finding it difficult to remember the names of my new MSP colleagues, never mind everyone who's just come in here tonight for the first time. Our friend is the left. And tell me your name straight away. I'll still look at St Alice's College. Deputy Presiding Officer, I'd like to give the opposition a bit of a break from the verbal onslaught that's been suffering so far, and I'd like to make a point to the proposition that, don't you think that the powers to give to personal privacy are surely to the detriment of national defence when terrorists and cyber criminals have to be tracked by law enforcement online? Would you like to respond? So, to respond to your point, you said that healthy relationships aren't on social media. But the sad thing is, not every relationship is, for a start, healthy. Equally so, people take pride in their relationships sometimes. You might have had a bad experience or your friend has, I don't know, but some people do take pride in their relationships and they want to show the world that they're in love because I guess what you're in love, you know, it's like the eye of the storm, you don't really realise what's going on. And sometimes it's not your choice if the relationship was to break up and so that's where the problem comes from is when it's not your choice and you put something on, not realising what it meant at the time and it comes back to bite you. Don't we just know it? Yes. I'm going to take Presiding Officer prerogative and allow quick contributions from the two that I accepted earlier, please. You remember who you are or who you are, whatever. Eve McLearson, I wish this college, you continue to to the opposition, you continue to state that the motion is in support of the rich and powerful, whereas it is truly supporting the weak and mistreated. An example being the case of the previously mentioned Amanda Todd, a vulnerable teen taken advantage of and bullied into her eventual suicide due to private images leaking without consent. Do you not agree that many cases like this and of course Amanda Todd's could have been avoided had they had the right to be forgotten from the internet? And our last contribution from the floor. The proposition had answered a point of information at the start of the debate, saying that any information that could be possibly incriminating in the example was national security with terrorists, couldn't, wouldn't be removed from the internet. But in the case of the young toddler who sadly died at the hands of his mother's abuse, her internet history was used as evidence in court for searches such as, can you die from a broken leg? No one would have suspected this to be like incriminating evidence at the time and had she tried to, this would have been removed from our history without any questions being asked. May I have your name in school, please? Sorry, Hazel Sloys. What is his high school? Thank you all very much for your contributions. We just seem to be heating up there, it could go on a bit longer, but we have to stick to time. I will now ask Finlay Allland to reply on behalf of the Opposition. You have three minutes, Finlay. Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, judges. I'm sure we're all aware from the last 15 minutes that our stance on tonight's motion is not that popular. But we on the Opposition do not simply argue this because it would be popular. We argue it because it is right. Tonight's motion states that this House supports to be right to be forgotten online, and it sounds simple really, it sounds eminently fair. Mr Heenan makes great capital on why we should not be forced to bear our online history with us through our lives, like some kind of digital albatross around our necks. It's a compelling notion because we all have made mistakes and we all regret our past misdeeds. But just because we can empathise with such a sentiment doesn't mean it's correct and certainly doesn't make it a right. It is my pleasure to sum up the arguments that the Opposition has made, and I would like to begin by taking issue with several flawed points in general sweeping generalisations made by our colleagues across the floor. Both Mr Buckin and Mr Heenan have contended that the EU ruling doesn't completely delete information from the internet, therefore not completely forgetting it, and I would like to take this opportunity, therefore because they have been so clearly arguing against the motion in that point, to join us across the floor in opposing tonight's motion. We are under no illusion that the proposition is advertising censorship however, but we do know that despite their direct quote of it's not about rewriting history, deleting the past and changing it is the direct definition of rewriting history. A further point of clash tonight and picked up in the floor debate is the fear that victims of liars won't be prosecuted. The proposition has made this point away as well, and it's clearly not been listening to my speech where I made great points about how there are defamation laws which already exist to get these lies removed. Surely, Deputy Presiding Officer, we must all agree that the free press is a stronghold of our free speech, and the proposition actually suggested censoring it. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Presiding Officer, if I've learned one thing from history lessons in school, it's don't trust the internet as a primary source, and if I've learned one thing from PSE lessons, and it might just be one thing, it must be that it is very careful what you put online and guards your digital history of care. Your online activity may be as indelible as a drunken stag party tattoo, but this knowledge is your right, and it is the knowledge that we must be responsible for our actions, and it's a sad reflection on modern life that we believe we have a right to exfoliate any blemish from our past. I don't expect people to be perfect, historically pure paragons of rectitude, and I don't expect online abuse and accuracy to go in challenge, but I do have a right to the protection from our state of those who would subvert our society, those who would change our history, and my right to freedom is not subject to Mr Heenan's wish to forget his past or subject to a terrorist's wish to forget their past, and for those reasons, both myself and Caitlyn urge you to oppose tonight's motion. Thank you, Finlay. I now ask Andrew Buchan to reply for the proposition. Ladies and gentlemen, judges, Deputy Presiding Officer, tonight we've heard two cases. A case on our side about the people in this room, about the general everyday people, the people that this motion actually affects, and a debate from the opposition side, which suggests that we should focus on the 1 per cent, the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent, the people who, realistically, do not have the impact on our everyday lives that they suggest they do. The opposition this evening have suggested that what this motion does is take away responsibility. That is simply not the case. Ladies and gentlemen, when we all make mistakes, I have made mistakes, my partner has made mistakes, everyone in this room will have made a mistake at some point in their life that they regret. We are not suggesting that we should not take responsibility for this action. We are suggesting that we should take responsibility for this action at the time, not 40 years down the line when an employer tries to google us. Taking responsibility does not have to be something of the future, it is something that we do in the present. The opposition have argued tonight one key point, and they have continued to hammer on at this one key point. They claim that this motion is equivalent to censorship, that all it is doing is allowing the rich and powerful a way to subvert us and lie to us. That is simply not the case. We have told you the legal standpoint behind this right. It is not about deleting history and hiding the truths of the past from the world. It is about allowing every day people the right to remove past mistakes of their past, to move past miscarriages of justice that have occurred against them and live their life and move forward in a way that allows them to achieve the goals that they set out for themselves. Our opposition in their summation speech there wanted to point out the sweeping generalisations that we on-side proposition have apparently made, but they failed to realise the fact that they are making a sweeping generalisation themselves. They are claiming that this motion only serves to allow the rich and powerful to subvert us, and that simply is not true. You have heard from the opposition all the reasons why we should ignore this issue and simply stick with the status quo. The thing is that we reject all of those reasons because they are either extreme, inhumane, overdramatic or irrelevant, and they all have something else in common. They ignore the fact that it is our responsibility to build a better world and a fairer society for future generations. Ladies and gentlemen, they claim that we should not do this because it is going to be difficult, but if you, like the opposition, lack the fight, the will or the desire, take a deep breath and remember where you are. Remember why you are here is because Donald Dewar, a man who longed for a better future for the children of Scotland with his very own Parliament, fought in order to achieve that goal. He fought so that we could be standing here today. Let's find strength in the president set out by Donald Dewar. I would like to leave you on a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. In any moment of decision, the best thing that you can do is the right thing. The next best is the wrong thing, with the worst thing that you can do being nothing at all. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not claim to offer the perfect solution, but at least we are trying to do something to solve the problems of the future, and we urge you to support the motion. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, and thank you all very much for your contributions to the debate. I must now ask the judges to adjourn and decide who will win this year's debating tournament. I would remind them that they have until 9.15 to reach this decision. I would now like to invite the rest of you—the judges aren't having any refreshments—but I'd like to invite the rest of you to join me in the garden lobby for refreshments and a chat, and we'd ask that you all be back seated in the chamber for 9.20. Could I ask those of you on the chamber floor to remain seated until you're instructed to leave by a member of the events team? Welcome back, everyone. I hope that the judges had sufficient time for their own debate and reached their conclusion. I would now like to ask the Presiding Judge, Mr John Dye, to offer his adjudication speech. John Dye. Good evening, Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Well, what an evening it's been. I'm not a stranger to judging debates and have been doing so for many years. I was reflecting tonight on something that I said last year when I was judging the UK schools public speaking final that sometimes I feel like the Simon Cowell of debating and not that I'm a multi-millionaire or that I hang out with Senita. I judge people whose talent is far better than mine ever was or could be. The same could well be said tonight, because we were given a very entertaining night's debating by all of the speakers and indeed all of the floor speakers as well. We heard about Andy Warhol actually a few times. Omar Khayam, Senor Gonzales came up, Robert Pestin, article 8, and thrown into the mix we got some relationship advice such that Mark McDonald's going home to delete all references to his marriage on Facebook. But seriously, it has been an excellent night of debating and both the debate's night really of the highest quality. It's a cliche, but sometimes cliches are true, that regardless of who wins tonight, all of the teams tonight should regard themselves as winners. To speak at such a quality of debate in the national debating chamber of the Scottish nation is no mean feat. Some of our MSPs are only learning how to do it. It really is a tremendous achievement for all of you. You've all been a credit to yourselves, your parents and your schools tonight, so well done. I always take the applause before I give the result. Unfortunately, a high-quality debate means that there's another debate takes place, which I don't enjoy so much, and that's the debate in the judges chamber. We had quite a debate tonight. It was a lengthy debate, and I was chivvied along a couple of times. It's fair to say that it was a very close decision. It was very close. I would like to thank all my fellow judges, Willie, Irene, John and Mark, for helping me to come to the decision, and it was a very difficult one. Before I announce the results, I just wanted to give everyone a bit of a flavour of things that kind of informed our decision making process. We thought about the style and the way people presented themselves, but also the substance. What were they actually saying? Not just about asserting, but also about the analysis of why—if something's wrong, tell us why it's wrong. At the end of the debate, there were arguments that were put up at the start. Were they standing, or were they being knocked down by the other side? How did people perform in their role in the debate, depending on where they were? I could go on, but we have heard that Andy Warhol said that everyone's got 15 minutes of fame, but I only have five, so I do need to press on. If the teams want individual feedback, we will be around afterwards. On to the bit that you really want to know, which is who's won. There was an individual floor speaker prize, and before I announce the results, I just want to say to everyone who I call out, just stay in your seat. You will be called up afterwards to receive your prizes. The best floor speaker tonight—we had quite a debate about that, but we decided that it was one that probably made us laugh the most. For that, that was Lauren Miller from Brays High. Congratulations to her, but again, thanks to all of the speakers tonight, because you did give us really interesting contributions and you helped the debate along. On to the main event. Second place, and then the winners. Just to reiterate, it was very, very close tonight, and all teams, regardless of where they come, should just be very proud of their contributions tonight. In second place, the judges eventually decided that second place tonight was Brays High, but in first place, in the winners of the 2016 Law Society of Scotland, Donald Dewar memorial debating competition, is Nairn Academy. Thank you very much, John. We will now hear from Lorna Jack, chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, who will deliver a vote of thanks. Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, judges and competitors, good evening. I am thrilled to be here and to witness the fascinating and frankly entertaining final of the Donald Dewar memorial debating tournament. This year is once again seen Scotland seek to hear the voices, views of young people with 16 and 17-year-olds having had the right to vote in the Scottish elections last month. Young people in Scotland now more than ever have the opportunity to shape their own future to debate critical issues facing their country and to see the impact of their contributions. It is fabulous to see so many young people participating in an event like our debating tournament now in its 18th year. It showcases an appetite for confronting complex issues and an impressive ability to apply skills and knowledge to really engage with those issues. I know that I am not alone in congratulating all our competitors throughout the tournament for being truly inspiring. Let me remind you just how tough the road has been for our competitors to reach this final tonight. Last November, 128 teams argued for and against the motion. This House believes that the internet does more harm than good. During the 32 opening heats held in schools across Scotland, in round 2, 64 teams from the opening rounds went on to debate. This House believes that compensation should be paid for the injustices of past generations. Just 16 teams then went on to compete in the semifinals in March. That was where the competitors' skills and resourcefulness were truly tested, as each team's motion was only revealed one hour prior to the debate. Our competitors were subjected to considerable time pressure in addition to not being able to use any phones, computers or books to prepare their arguments. I am sure that you will agree that reaching this final is a tremendous achievement in itself and that the four teams here this evening are more than deserving of their places. So many of you contributed to the floor debate this evening. I want to congratulate you for taking part and, in particular, our prize winner, Lauren Miller, who also made me laugh, although I was alarmed to begin with, I have to say. Every year, the floor debate seems to get livelier and we rely on you to challenge our debater, so thank you for your input. Perhaps we will see you in front of the judges in future years. It is wonderful to be able to host the final in the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament. Speaking in this chamber is a very special experience, and whether there is a right to be forgotten or not, I am sure that it is one that you will all choose to remember for a very long time. On behalf of the Law Society and all of our guests here this evening, let me thank the Deputy Presiding Officer, Linda Fabiani MSP, and everyone in the Parliament's event and education teams, particularly Graham Donoghue, Douglas Miller and Mary Hershaw, for ensuring that tonight has been such a resounding success. Thank you. Sitting in the gallery are the team's supporters whose commitment should not be underestimated, the teachers and parents of our debaters, the coaches who have challenged and supported the teams here this evening. It is your enthusiasm and hard work that has encouraged your pupils' success. I am sure that you are very proud of them tonight. Also in the gallery are our judges from earlier heats and semifinals, and without whom, put simply, we would not have a tournament. Every year we rely on over 100 volunteers to judge in the opening rounds, and this year, as indeed every year, we have seen fantastic levels of support. It is down to your commitment to play a part that we see schools able to participate year after year, and I am delighted to tell you that this year, schools in 28 of Scotland's 32 local authorities took part. That is an enormous achievement. Thank you so much for your involvement and we do hope that you have enjoyed it. Let me now turn my attention to tonight's judging panel. I certainly did not envy your task of selecting our winners from this very talented group of finalists that we have had before us. Once the event draws to a close, we would like to present you with a small token of our appreciation for the fantastic job that you have done tonight, and you will be delighted for those of you who have been here before to hear that it is not chocolates tonight. Thank you, John, Irene, John, Mark and Willie. Thank you very much. Again this year, we are fortunate to have our tournament sponsored by Hodder Gibson, the publishers. We are also most grateful to the Glasgow Bar Association for donating the second prize. I am delighted that Peter Dennis from Hodder Gibson has joined us tonight, and we will join our president, Ailey Wiseman, to present the prizes. Thank you for your continued support, which each year helps to ensure that pupils across Scotland have the opportunity to compete in this tournament. Please indulge me for a second in thanking my colleagues at the Law Society, and in particular Katie Cameron, who has very much been the leader of team debate this year. Katie has worked enthusiastically co-ordinating judges, schools, teachers and sponsors to ensure that the tournament can run and schedule. Katie, I know that you will be happy to see the months of your work come to fruition, although I am sure that you will join your colleagues, coaches and teams in looking forward to the excitement that will be the 2017 tournament after you have your well-deserved summer break. Finally, I would like to turn our attention back to our runners-up and our winners. I know that you will agree that they have faced some seriously impressive competition tonight, so you should feel especially proud of Ross and Andrew of Bray's high being the runners-up and most important, Caitlyn and Finlay, from Nearn Academy, crowned our champions this year's. Congratulations once again to you all. Our teams will be keen to be reunited with her coaches, parents and friends, so I will hand back over to the Deputy Presiding Officer to present the prizes. Thank you all to everyone who has been involved and I hope to see many of you here again next year. Thank you very much, Lorna. Of course, another thanks to all our wonderful judges for their time in this debate. We now move to the presentation of the prizes, and I am delighted to announce that all the finalists will receive a commemorative quake for their efforts, as well as a book token. Do you all know what a quake is? Yeah? Good. The winner of the best floor speech will receive a £50 book token. The runners-up and the winning team will share £500 worth of books from the educational range supplied by Hodder Gibson. The runners-up will receive the second prize of £250 towards their debating society courtesy of the Glasgow Bar Association, and the winning school will receive £1,000 towards their debating society, and, of course, they will receive the all-important tournament trophy, theirs for one year. You have to look after it very carefully. May I ask Ailey Wiseman, president of the Law Society of Scotland, and Peter Dennis, of Hodder Gibson Publishers, sponsors of the tournament, to come to the floor of the chamber for the prize giving. Please. The prize table. I hope that I get this order right. They have written it down for me very, very carefully. I hope that you guys hand out the right prizes. Can I first of all ask, please, Lauren Miller of Brays High, winner of the best floor speech, to come forward and receive that prize? Can I now invite both the Royal High School and St Maurice's High School to come forward and receive their prizes? May I now invite the runners-up, Brays High School, to come forward and receive their prizes? Can I now ask, please, for our winners near an academy to step forward and receive their prize as winners of the 2014-15 Donald Juer memorial debating tournament? Excuse me, I've just been told that I lost a year. I'm trying to stay away from my 60th birthday. There'll be a lot of people up there that'll understand that. The 2015-16 Donald Juer memorial debating tournament winner. What a wonderful smile Katelyn has there. Everybody look at Katelyn's smile. She's so happy. Thank you very much, everyone. You should all be very, very proud of your contributions this evening. Of course, as we've already heard, what an achievement to reach the final of such a prestigious competition is this. Just fantastic and well done. Everyone who took part, well done, all those who were in the final and well done, particularly the winners of our competition. Please ask those who will be staying for the official photograph to remain in the chamber and to all our other guests. May I say thank you, good night and I wish you all a safe journey home.