 Well, good afternoon everyone. My name is Elaine Smith and as Deputy Presiding Officer I'm delighted to welcome you here to the Scottish Parliament and the 8th annual St Andrews Day debate. Today's debate and of course the wider competition that preceded it have been organised in partnership with Education Scotland and the English speaking union. Sorry, could you all take a seat? Apologies, I usually sit down and everyone sits down. I want to start by expressing my thanks to everyone involved from both of those organisations for their hard work and efforts which culminate in today's event. Today you're in the debating chamber that usually serves as the place where our devolved legislation is enacted and it can be a challenge at times I have to say presiding over the proceedings in this chamber. Sometimes the debates are passionate, sometimes they're controversial and sometimes consensus even breaks out with all sides agreeing that a piece of legislation is too important for part of political division. Whatever the debate the parliamentarians are professionals and so the bar is set high here in our seat of Parliament. So there's a high standard set but I've always been very impressed with the extremely high standard of debating demonstrated by the finalists in this competition and who knows maybe we have some future MSPs and ministers here amongst you today. In fact only last week during a debate in this chamber Jackie Baillie recalled a visit to a school where she met a schoolboy who is now the newly appointed Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment Marco Biajie MSP and in the same debate the First Minister spoke of another Government Minister Homs Aeus of MSP who recalled that the first time he met her was when she visited his modern studies class so I've got high hopes for some of you who are here today. The unique style that the St Andrew's Day debate offers in its pairing of students from our schools and universities is clearly a successful formula since the contest continues to go from strength to strength and I was reliably informed just before starting that this year is in fact the best ever. The Scottish Parliament is always pleased to host this competition as it not only affords the opportunity for students and pupils to debate in the chamber but it also provides us with an appropriate way of marking St Andrew's Day. Patience Saints are a tradition which comes from Orthodox and Christian churches and Saints often become the patrons of places where they were born or had been active or where relics remain and St Andrew's Relics are in St Mary's Cathedral here in Edinburgh and this also provides Scotland with a special link to Amalfi in Italy and Patras in Greece where two theatres named after the saint also hold his relics. There are many St Andrew's Day societies worldwide and these were set up originally as self-help organisations for Scots who'd fallen in hard times and they now form a network of Scots who are all united under the saltire cross of St Andrew and they give Scotland a European and worldwide dimension and include societies in places such as Bermuda and Washington DC and closer to home more and more of our Scottish towns and cities are using St Andrew's Day as a platform to launch winter festivals and celebrations to get us all through the cold dreach winter months and today of course as we look outside we can see the cold and dreach weather has started already however in here it's a lot brighter as the chamber floor has been given over to some of Scotland's most talented young debaters. I wish your finalists the very best of luck and also good luck to everyone who'll be taking part in the open debate which I'll come to a bit later and finally I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to everyone in the galleries, friends, classmates, teachers and family and to those watching live on Glow TV in classrooms around the country. I hope you enjoy this afternoon's debate and I hope you enjoy your visit to your Scottish Parliament. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now before I introduce the finalists I would like to introduce to you our panel of judges. Chairing the judging panel will be Alec Orr. I don't know if you'd like to just stand up Alec or introduce yourself. Thank you. Alec's the managing director of Orbit Communications, a public relations and public affairs consultancy. He's a member of the National Executive Committee of the Scottish National Party and he's a board member of the European Movement and vice chairman of ESU Scotland. We also have with us Adam Bernstein, president of the Scottish Students Debating Council. Adam is spoken in the finals of multiple national competitions and is a third year politics student at the University of Edinburgh. We also have with us Ian McGill, who is the Conservative candidate for Edinburgh Central in the forthcoming Westminster elections, as well as campaigning in local issues in the Lothian region. He's also a director of the Harmony Employment Agency, which specialise in the social care sector. Also with us today is Robin Harper. Robin was a teacher of modern studies for some 37 years prior to his election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, where he not only became the first Scottish Green Party MSP but he was also the first UK Green Parliamentarian. Since I was elected in 1999, we were colleagues at that time. Robin is a former president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts and is now chairman of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Welcome. I have one more judge, last but not least, to introduce to you. The St Andrew's Day debate encourages pupils to join the judging panel and panels for all the debates held throughout this event. I'm absolutely delighted that today we can welcome Victoria Groom of Mearns Castle High School in Newton Mearns Glasgow as the last member of our panel of judges. Just a wee bit more information about Victoria. She's an ESU junior's debating competition champion and, as well as a prominent school debater, she's actively involved with the work of Amnesty International. We now move on to congratulate and introduce the four teams that have made it through today to the final this evening. They are David McRaeith from Edinburgh University and Ailey McRaeith from Aberdeen Grammar School and they will be known as Aberdeen McRaeith. Welcome. We also have Chris Edgar from Glasgow University and Luke Lannaress, I hope I've got that pronunciation right, from St Andrew's and St Bride's school and will be known as St Andrew's and St Bride's Edgar. We now have Joe Dyer from Strathclyde University and Martin Monaghan from Hindland secondary school and they will be known as Hindland Dyer. Finally, we have Alex Dawn from St Andrew's University and Peter Hurston from Linlithgow academy and that team will be known as Linlithgow Dawn. Before we begin, I would like to outline the format of the debate. I'll call on the first proposition to speak and they will have seven minutes. I'll then call on the first opposition speaker to speak and they will also have seven minutes and that is repeated with each of the speakers thereafter. During the eight speeches, I will verbally announce when the first minute is up, hopefully, and that will indicate that points of information are now permitted. I'll rely on my colleagues to make sure that we do that when the first minute is up. I will also verbally indicate then when you've entered your last minute and at that point no more points of information will be allowed. When you're seven minutes are up, I'll ask you to wind up and if you continue further, I'll ask again for you to wind up after 30 seconds. I'm not sure if I meant to cut you off cold but I'm sure you will all stick to the timings because as you might know my role as deputy presiding officer, I'm tasked with keeping the members of the Scottish Parliament to time when they're speaking in the chamber. I'm not very keen on cutting them off but sometimes there's no other option if we're running out of time but I trust that this debate will be conducted with everyone keeping to their times. Please use the clocks round the chamber for reference because these will be timing you so you can use those. After the final speech for the opposition, I'm going to ask our panel of judges to retire to make their decision and at that point I'm going to open up the debate to the floor for 20 minutes. I hope that as many people as possible will be able to participate in the floor debate because there's going to be an award for the best contribution from the floor so there's some motivation there for you to try and contribute at that point. The motion today is, this house believes that governments should prioritise economically productive public spending over humanities and the arts when deciding budgets. On to the final and I wish you all the best of luck. The first speaker is the, so I want to call the first speaker from Aberdein McRaeith to open the debate as the first proposition, please. Across much of the north of England and many areas of Scotland, there are thousands of people living in communities with poor job prospects, poor housing, low educational opportunities and a genuine feeling of disconnect from the central government. Ladies and gentlemen, chairperson, in a world of debating, we are lucky to have the luxury of being able to talk about abstract terms about value to individuals of culture and art. However, we think that the reality is that what people in tough circumstances will care about is important services which are fundamental to their lives and how they live those lives. Given that the case that we bring in opening is given that all governments have to prioritise scarce resources, we think that they should do it in a way that gives them great benefit and resources to this particular group in society and to society in general. Today, my speaker will be talking about the role of the state in this model and why it is the state's duty to prioritise economically productive public spending over humanities and arts degrees. First, mechanism. We are not advocating a complete cutting of arts in humanities. Under this motion, we are likely to see substantially more spending on economically productive things. We would define those as things like structures, things like creating business incentives, like the education system and building homes. We think that you are looking at the types of things, types of investments where you can measure the costs of them and where you can also measure the benefits of them in a way that you can't always do with arts and humanities. No thanks. Insofar as we are talking about your burden and a proportional shift, what number or percentage of spending currently on arts would be going towards infrastructure projects? We do not think that is the majority part of this debate. We do not think that we need to give you certain numbers. We think that it would just be that you would see a substantial more amount being spent on economic spending and less spent on arts and humanities. We do not think that the actual number is of significance. We do not think that that is important. What we will show you today is why it is more important for the Government to prioritise spending in order to benefit those who need it most. First, let us look at the role of the state. First, we think that the state has always inherently restricted resources to spend things on. We think that the states will always have to make decisions between what to fund and what they do not fund. Within the opportunity cost to everything that the state decides to fund, we think that there is always something that the state will not be able to fund or will not be able to fund to the same extent as other things. Given that the state is a collective entity which, through the use of force, takes money from people through taxes to be used on public spending, we think that the state should implement some sort of funding structure that lowers the effect of opportunity costs as much as possible. We think that that is the role of the state. We think that that is a really important part of analysis. Given that, in what ways do you minimise effects of opportunity costs? First, we think that the Government should prioritise spending that delivers benefit to the largest majority of people possible. We think that why does economically productive spending fall under this? A, we think that it has the objective measurable returns that we have already talked about. We think that it is possible to assess the cost of that and the benefit of that. We think that it is difficult to do that with arts and humanities because they are so subjective. We think that, therefore, it only has benefit for a select amount of people. We think that the benefits are to a broad number of society. We think that economically productive spending has much more benefits in return for the taxpayer. We think that generally this kind of spending benefits a substantial amount of people. We think that that is important. Secondly, we think that the state has to provide services that would be difficult to fund without it. Things such as infrastructure are extremely hard to be provided for by companies of less resources than the Government does. We think that that is much more difficult. We think that equally, ladies and gentlemen, it is harmful to hand these responsibilities to private sectors because they often don't get the benefits of these services back to the taxpayer, which we think is an important part of this debate. We think that even though we recognise that arts requires funding, we think that people have more capacity to fund this for areas to flourish within communities and organisations. We bring in the example that lots of art galleries have rich patrons that they can go to for funds. We think that things like that are much more likely under arts and humanities areas. Finally, in the wild arts do provide benefits in terms of things like self-reflection, we think that at the end of the day, Government should be able to prioritise physical resources which allow people to function. We think that this is fundamental. We think that even if you have some Government spending, we think that people with resources are better able to achieve that art through economically productive spending, because we think that that brings that resources and it brings the Government's ability to fund arts better. Secondly, why will this be perceived as misallocations? Why perceive misallocations so that the arts can be damaging to these arts and humanities subjects? I think that this is the second part of analysis that I'm going to bring. Firstly, we think that there are certain things about art, certain things that appeal to different people. We think that the value of an art is subjective. We think that, for example, if you're a white male living in the US, you'll get comparatively less benefit from a display of African American culture than a black person is going to. We think that that's much more likely. Secondly, general perception... Apologies, I'll give you a bit of extra time. I shouted final minute and it wasn't. Secondly, perception that art is quite an elitist thing. To some extent, based on reality, we think that, for example, things like opera are much more likely to be seen as an opera-classing to do historically associated with people going to see them having a lot of wealth. I'll take closing. Considering that opera is well funded by the high ticket prices that you currently talk about, why is this debate not about art which would otherwise disappear with the lack of funding and it is certainly not about high-brow art well funded by million-pound paintings? Firstly, we think that under our model, we're not advocating complete cuts to these arts because they're still going to be funding available for these arts. We don't think it's the case that these arts are going to disappear. We think that they're still going to be in stress, particularly from people from opera-class backgrounds which might advocate these arts such as art, we think that's much more likely. We think that it's much more important at the end of the day to prioritise things like product spending than to spend money preventing arts from disappearing. We think that at the end of the day, it's still much more important to prioritise things like infrastructure and education. We think that because of this and because of how people scrutinise how their tax money is being spent, because we recognise that when you're borrowing, when you're taking lots of money off individuals, they're going to see how that money is being spent. We think that if there's a perception that money is being taken away from your benefit and put towards an elitist area, we think that this creates resentment, especially if it's economically tough times. If people are living through a recession, if people are struggling to cope with living costs, et cetera, they're not going to feel particularly good and particularly happy with their government. If their government is then going and spending money on things that are seen as for people's pleasure or are not seen as having as much benefit as things like economic incentives and spending money on education. We think that this reduces public support for the arts, which we think is fundamental towards the arts areas in general. We think that it's much better to take a substantial more amount of money to be spent on economic spending rather than creating a negative outlook on arts and humanity subjects, which is much more likely under the other side of the house. We think that a failure to divert spending is often damaging to arts subjects as well. We believe that it's fundamental, and it is the fundamental duty of the state to be able to prioritise public spending in order to seek the economic benefits to individuals, especially in difficult economic times, and it's for those reasons that we are very proud to stand in proposition. Thank you very much. I gave a little bit of extra time because of the interruption. I now call on the first speaker from St Andrews and St Bride's Edgar to respond as the first Opposition speaker. Seven minutes, please. Thank you, chairperson. Let us be clear. What we on the Opposition are arguing in favour of is not a reduction in the current spending on economic policies. What we are arguing in favour of is the status quo. We are not saying that we want increased funding for the humanitarian arts, humanitarian and arts, etc. What we want is to reject this motion that economy-based policies should be prioritised. A few points of rebuttal. You talk of improving people's life. Proposition would have you believe that to improve someone's life it has to be with cold hard money. We on the Opposition would like to argue that you can actually gain some of this through the arts and humanitarian prospects. It is also about enrichment and a cultural growth within a society. We disagree with the propositions motion that funding should be taken from policies, the arts, etc. Instead placed in economy-based policies. Our first key points, ladies and gentlemen, is quite simply, money is not everything. I am not saying that we should go full-scale butan, but I am not sure if you are familiar with butans, recent development where they have ditched gross domestic products as their main indicator of development and it is now gross national happiness. We are not arguing anything like this extreme, but what we are saying is there is more to a person than cold hard cash. It is about the enrichment of a society, a cultural growth and the minuscule increase that average person here in Britain would actually experience from these. It is not really sufficient compared to the happiness that would be received from these humanity arts. We are saying that it should be continued to be received. We are saying that it should be continued to be received and not put second fiddle to economy-based policies. Another point of rebuttal is that I would like to clarify that just as propositions say that they do not want to cut funding for humanity and arts, etc. We are not saying that we are going to be cutting economic policies, but we are still going to have infrastructure projects, we are still going to have these growth, but we are also going to have more focus on these humanity aspects. Now, a key point, no thank you, a key point of the propositions debate was the elite opera arts area. We would like you to ask yourselves what arts would we not have if the propositions motion had already been put in place? It is these arts that the operas would still have because the elitist groups, those of the upper class with the money would still be able to fund them themselves. Ironically, it is also them, I will take you in a second, it is also them who would benefit from the economic growth. It would be a minuscule increase and, if any, in the average Britain's first or wallet, it would be those at the top of the engineering businesses etc that would actually receive the benefit of the economic policies that they would like to prioritise. If people are getting richer, the argument is that they can then afford the new products of art that even if they have to pay for, that would be minor and they can now afford them because they are now spending more on economic productivity. I disagree with the argument there because people, again, are people going to get richer? Who is it that is going to get richer? That is what we are saying. We are saying that it is the people at the top who would actually benefit greatly from this prioritisation of economic policies. It is the people that own the companies. It is the people that actually make the big profit, not those who are on a £7 minimum wage to go and build. The engineering projects are ship building. It is those at the top of the butt and I would also like to say that one of our main arguments is also that so far we have centred on elitist and upper class arts like opera, etc. But the arts and humanity projects that Government funds often help the lower class people for example London gangs, etc. Get them off the street. You see graffiti artists, you look around Glasgow today and the Commonwealth Games, there was a great project on not all the walls, you have the side of the buildings. What would have once been considered graffiti art is now a cultural part of Glasgow. You have seen tourists taking pictures with it, you have seen it was a talking point social media, not right now, thank you. All over, this is the sort of project that we want the Government not to put to the side to prioritise the economy based on policies, but we want to see a growth of this culture within Scotland, within Glasgow. We want the other cities, you see projects like even the post box been painted gold after the Olympics, that was a very cultural thing that the Government brought into place and it sort of enriched our society. It helped us celebrate the success of Britain, and it is no thank you, and a great sporting event that we helped to hold. We think that Government funding should be used efficiently, not right now, thank you. I think we can all agree in that, but as I have shown it is those at the top that benefit from the economic gains of prioritising those policies. Government, we think that they should be helping those who actually need to help. If they do help graffiti artists, get them off the street, off the crime, that is saving money within the police force, saving money within court cases, that is a few trivial examples, but they are excellent examples of how we would be using money efficiently by actually helping those who need it. If we help those who are already making money, they do not need as much help as those at the bottom if we want to grow as a society. That is not an efficient spending of money within a country. If the proposition had their way, they would no longer have musicians and artists coming from lower class because there is no longer the sort of market incentive for it. The Government providing money gives them the opportunity to embrace these arts, and it develops them as some people who might get caught up in crime, might get caught up in petty crimes especially, such as shoplifting etc, are allowed to develop their own natural talents. It might not be, it helps those who are not the most academic in society. It helps those who have other extracurricular talents, and it helps them to develop. When you have those who have academic abilities, they already help to grow the country to grow both economically and as a society and a spiritual growth. That is why we in the proposition believe because we are helping those who do not have such academic talents, but they have other talents by embracing those and actually allowing them to help our country grow spiritually and also economically. We believe that the motion should be opposed. Many thanks. Can I now call the second proposition speaker from Aberdeen McRaeith to give their views. I believe that is David McRaeith. Thank you. We do not contend, Madam Chairperson, that art often is valuable for individuals. Our contention on opening government today is that if you are a single mother struggling to feed your family, wondering about how you are going to get to the food bank and two jobs, your ability to appreciate a play or a poem is probably significantly less than someone with greater resources. We think fundamentally government it's a necessary condition for government to be able to improve people's livelihoods before they can often achieve this art. We think not only do you get better art on our side, but you get people that are better able to achieve it. Today I'm going to be looking at how art's funding actually works under the status quo. We think that it tends to be elite bodies of often white men that decide what kind of art they want, how we actually get better art if you care about art under our side. First of all, lots of points of rebuttal. Alex Dawn stands up and appoints information and says this isn't a debate about highbrow art. So we think, ladies and gentlemen, that a vast majority of the art that's currently found is things like Royal Opera, museums in central London and stuff like that. We're saying we're quite happy for that funding to be cut under our side and actually give some money to people like in the north of England or in Scotland that are struggling and stuff like that. We think it very much is a debate about that sort of art, but we'll also talk about minority art in a bit. Secondly, we hear that money isn't everything, so here's the thing. First of all, it's true that art often contains some benefits. We think that government is often a poor actor to understand what those benefits are because they are often subjective. What government should do is prioritise spending that it can say definitely will have a tangible effect. This is what Ailey brings you and isn't responded to. So at the point in which he says, this is the economic benefit from a certain policy. I have a tangible amount of money and that money will not be wasted on this by producing some weird form of modern art like a blank canvas on a wall that no one understands, ladies and gentlemen. We think it's much more easier to get tangible benefits when you use economic criteria as a basis. Also the introduction that I gave you as well that often some form of resources are a necessary condition for appreciating art. Secondly, what we hear is that often art helps minority groups and people in economically deprived conditions. First of all, note that in that case art is a reactive form of help for these people. It would probably be better if we didn't have gang violence to address in these communities in the first place but you're probably more likely to get if you give job opportunities and better schooling to these communities. We think rather than just helping them to construct a poem about their troubles after that. We think that's better mode to help this out. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, we think that if it's Government efficiency that they are concerned about as the First Speaker brings, then it is this cost benefit analysis you should be making your decisions on, not subjective criteria on what is good art and what makes benefits to an individual. On to, no, on to the first point then. We think that up can't just defend for you today some abstract arts funding in which only minority groups are helped. We think that they have to defend what art funding currently is under the status quo. So note a few things about how art funding works at the moment. Firstly, it's done by art bodies for example like the British Film Council or like Art Scotland or I don't know what the actual and creative Scotland I think it is actually is the name. Second of all, note that these bodies are not particularly transparent and don't have a lot of accountability. A lot of their decisions are made behind closed doors with a certain kind of criteria which is subscribed to bodies and organisations. Finally, also note that they tend to be populated by quite wealthy people like often from the dominant white group and that is the overarching makeup of these bodies. What is the effect of this? First of all, because art is subjective what these people will tend to do is fund art that they themselves view as productive and good. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that you have as much funding of the kind of community art that they want to talk about although we can see there is some. The majority of the art you fund are things like museums in central London like symphony orchestras and stuff like that. Often people, often forms of art that people can't be related to. Second of all, as we've just said, they tend to be in geographically concentrated areas like central London, like Edinburgh and Scotland and not in more remote areas when people are often even worse off and find it harder to get that art. Finally, we think it's quite harmful because finally a lot of these bodies are on inflated salarades. We think a lot of arts organisations have very wealthy patrons and go to expensive dinners so there probably is some slack in some room whereby these funding bodies could divert funds elsewhere and have more arts funding. Ladies and gentlemen, what do we think happens under R? Here we go. Why do we think we get better funding under other R side? What this motion will do, I'll take you in a minute Alex, what this motion does is sends out a message to arts bodies that they can no longer reliably rely on governments for funding and they must assume a more popular basis and a more community-engaged approach for their funding. Go. Felly it isn't about giving either all the money to arts or all the money to the poor. Can we get some analysis as to why this abstract infrastructure project will bring any meaningful benefits as opposed to the very tangible cultural benefits that derive from art in all regions of consumption? One, often large infrastructure projects help wide geographical areas like the HS2 project, for example will help most of the west coast of England. Secondly, ladies and gentlemen, even if it doesn't help your specific geographic area because they provide a return for government, that return can then be redistributed to other areas. If you are in a specific art gallery built in one community which you can't get access to because you live in the highlands of Scotland it provides no benefit for you and has no red redistributive goal. There's your comparative, Alex. So now they have to appeal to more popular forms of funding. What does this do? Firstly, we don't mind if art becomes more democratic and has to appeal more to popular opinion. Why? Because if they say that people get benefits from art and like help gets self-realisation and identity from art, you probably want art that appeals to the majority of people so the majority of people can get this benefit from art. Why do you get this under this model? Because art bodies, in order to get funding from the majority of people if they can't get that from government, will have to attract the majority of people through things like entrance fares and stuff like that. Second of all, we think that minority art really is good for those communities. You have much more of an incentive to get smaller, like we still think that can be supported when minority groups really care about that art. We don't think that we have a complete eradication of minority art. But finally, ladies and gentlemen, funding bodies now make more an effort to go into communities and ask what kind of art that they want. Ask what kind of art they want to achieve, because that way people are a lot more likely to attend that art and it has a lot more popular appeal. So you don't just still get art, you get better art that is genuinely more engaging in people and successful art is no longer determined by strict criteria set by funding bodies that is some sort of high-class thing that is done by government. Ladies and gentlemen, ultimately we get people with more resources that are better able to appreciate art and art that is better under our side. I'm very proud to propose. Thank you very much. Can I now ask the second Opposition speaker from St Andrew's and St Bride's Edgar to speak. I think it's Chris Edgar. Okay, thank you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at a couple of things. First of all, I'm going to look at the conception of what the good life is that we sort of get out of opening government and why it's better on our side of the house. And second of all, I'm going to look at 40 art, which is where this debate is today and explain why we deal with that better on our side of the house. Their characterisation is completely wrong I'll deal with that in turn. First of all, look at the case that we get out of opening government. First of all, they tell us that you just can't appreciate any art if you're struggling a bit economically. We have a couple of responses. First of all, it's not entirely clear why that's true. We think, look, on our side of the house we still provide a base level of social security. We stop people falling into derelict poverty. It's not clear why the happiness you get on government side of the house from being slightly less in poverty is necessarily greater happiness than what we bring you through art. We think that if anything, it's like a reprieve from whatever terrible situation you might find yourself in to have the option on our side of the house to have that little bit of happiness in your life. We think that's probably beneficial on our side of the house. No. Second of all, look, we bring you a really good characterisation from the leader of the opposition when he tells you that this has community benefits in specific circumstances in terms of dealing with gang violence. The response is just to say, well, no, we'd rather stop gang violence. Well, yes, we'd rather stop it too. It's not that easy. Gang violence will still continue to exist to some extent on your side of the house, so we need some sort of mechanism for dealing with it when it does occur. We provide a very good characterisation of how you might do that. Moreover, art in and of itself provides a prevention mechanism in which you have people who've escaped from the gang culture, who can convey it in some sort of artistic context to convince people that this is not the route to go down. We think that's beneficial. We need a better response. Maybe Joe will do that. Second of all, they tell us, look, they tell us that we have to defend art funding as it is under the status quo and he gives us a lot of reasons why the current body that decides who gives art is really corrupt and rubbish. So we tell you, no, we chose to defend the level of art's funding as it is in proportion to the level aimed at economic growth. We're quite happy to say that we'll reform the institutions that decide where this art goes if they really are as corrupt as you say, if they really are as white-centric as you say, we will do it better. We'll have a better characterisation. Finally, he tells us, for a minute and a half towards the end of his speech, that what he wants is better art. His characterisation of better art appeals to a majority of people. We don't think art is a democratic concept where the more people say, this looks nice means that's better art. We don't think that's reasonable. Art affects you specifically as an individual. We don't think it's legitimate just to say because in the UK most people are white that art that's aimed at white people is better than art that's aimed at Bangladeshis because there's hardly any Bangladeshis so obviously that's not good art in the UK. We don't think that's reasonable. Recognise the types of people that we're talking about, the types of art that does not have a funding. I'll come on more to this in a second. Recognise the alternative source of funding that they offer you as donations from random old rich people. I'm sorry, these are the white people that you're talking about, the old conservative white people that buy into the exact type of art that David says he doesn't want in his side of the house. Let's move on to some substantive material. First of all, let's look at the conception of what a good life is, what a better society is and what's better on our side of the house. Ultimately proper concern purely with monetary outcomes and they think that if they can really calculate age and cold and if they get a few extra numbers then necessarily your life is better. It's not clear why this is the only metric. The only reason they give us that this is better is because you can calculate it. The only reason they don't seem to value art is because it's quite hard to work out how good it is. We don't think that's good enough. We think it's probably important that people do have some form of happiness in their life that doesn't come purely through economic growth. We think that's probably a harmful conception to try and pedal. We think ultimately we have a more holistic society. We enrich people's lives in a way that a little bit of extra economic growth on their side of the house just doesn't do it on comparative. On our side we have an extensive for example free museums that he knocks to say this is an example of the majoritarianism that's prevalent in art. We think no that's probably a good thing even on itself. We're happy to take that burden and defend all the free museums that you have in London. We think that's a really good thing. We would oppose attempts to significantly curtail this by reducing funding or introducing entrance fees. We think that would be a bad idea that they necessarily would presumably have to defend on their side of the house. Recognise that they have some sort of educational value at the point at which you can see and some instances like touch these objects and derive some sort of educational cultural appreciation that you couldn't get through strict textbooks. It also creates some sort of sense of national pride and national identity. Recognise London's position as a cultural home of like Europe for example is like really important in terms of the sort of pride that we feel about ourselves in a country. Recognise also that this extent mitigates some of the economic harms that are necessary as a result of our preference. Given that we bring in tourism and stuff as a result of this. Moving on to the really important part of our case, the effect that this has on minority art. We have two aspects of this. We think first of all, public funding allows minority artists to shape their own identity and to have art that wouldn't have existed otherwise. We think that this has a promotional aspect given that this facilitates a pride in your own culture as opposed to a state where elite art is still available because there's a market for it but no other art exists. It's a conception that this is the only sort of art that is a legitimate for you to enjoy. Why is this true? Because look, it costs X amount to produce a play no matter who the target audience is. The difference is, under their side of the house elites can still continue to pay for it because they can afford higher entrance fees and the majority of art can still afford because they can have lots of people. Minorities don't have either of these. They don't have the rich elites and they don't have the pure numbers. We still think that they deserve some cultural heritage too. They deserve the ability to express art forms as well. Ultimately, the absence of art for you that you get as a necessary result of their policy. I'll take closing if you want. No, David, on you go. You have more widespread benefits society through infrastructure projects that have a tangible return to everyone in that society. Because look, the return you're getting to everybody is so infinitesimally small that it's not making a significant as difference particularly dangerous vulnerable groups on our side of the house. We provide a massive benefit to a specific group of people. We think that's far more tangible than anything that you claim to bring on your side of the house. Ultimately, this is a more substantial harm and we solve for it. Crucially, we think that this also provides minority groups an ability to control their own message in a society where mainstream artists are consistently and effectively appropriating minority culture through their own forms of art. It's beneficial to have a counter narrative to this at the point of which you can present an integrity filled, accurate conception of what your own art is. We think that's far better on our side of the house. So look, this is what you've got to weigh up. The difference is under their side of the house all they have is the elite art, the snobbish art, the majoritarian art. If you recognise that art has some sort of value we don't think we should deny that to minority cultures who are most vulnerable who most need this, who most need the expression of their identity purely on the grounds that they work out some economic resources that are presumably almost as hard to measure on their side of the house. Oppose the motion. Thank you, and thank you to both our teams. Can I now ask the First Speaker from Hindland Dyer to open the case for the closing proposition team, please? Okay, so there's three questions on this debate. Firstly, comparatively, which per pound of spending impacts me as an individual more? Economic productivity or a painting or a play? Secondly, under which system does the economic spending that you are doing reach more people and reach vulnerable people? Thirdly, if I have time, although it's slightly less important, does art get better? Before I deal with those three things, Chris, at the end of his speech there he tries to tell us that what's really good about spending on art is that it leads to tourism and that leads to economic productivity. No, no, he doesn't get those types of art like economically productive art. We get those types of art and he isn't allowed to claim them for his side of the house. That would be economically productive and that's the prop. Secondly, he says that it's really bad because minorities are screwed over because they can't access art in the same way. The problem here is that minorities probably don't have much of an input over art as it is currently funded under the status quo because they make up a minority of the state-funded art councils. It's very unclear why individuals who are the state funding that art will necessarily care about those kinds of minorities. Secondly, that's non-comparative. Also minorities don't have the same amount of economic life choices as white people do. Insofar as minorities are disadvantaged under each side of the house, the question of this debate becomes under which method do we best help them? Benefits of economic spending versus the benefits of art to the individual. I told that, ultimately, that proposition stood up here and said that money solves everything. No, it doesn't, but money is extraordinarily important to the way that you live your life. The comparative that we're having here is the increased prospect that I have a job versus a plethora of free plays, free art, free museums and whatever under which is going to give me more individual benefits. Here are four benefits of just having more money and having higher economic productivity. The first thing to say is that money often gives you the ability to spend on things that you enjoy, which you derive a huge amount of happiness for. Opposite, if you stood up and said yes, there are other really important things, no, no. The ability for me to go out and to do the things that I enjoy is hugely important and you are necessarily taking that away because you are spending it on art. It's not consumerist to say that, it's not just having stuff in the vacuous sense, it's having the amount of money to go out and live your life in the way that you choose. Secondly, having money opens up choices to you. It opens up the ability to do things that these guys are so caring about, such as expanding your life choices. It's far more difficult for me to do other non-consumerist things that aren't related to money if I have to take the day off work. I need to have money in order to do those kinds of life enriching things that these guys are talking about, otherwise I'm going to be too poor to do it because I'm never going to have that time off work. Thirdly, we suggest that it often gives you a great amount of purpose to your life. The idea of knowing that you have earned that money yourself, that you have gone out and you have worked hard because the Government has actually spent on that, spent on you effectively, the impact that I get from that compared to the impact that I get from seeing a painting or seeing a good play is obviously tremendously more important because I feel much more unreft within myself and I feel as though I have done a good job. Fourthly, it provides you with the ability to care for those who are close to you and who you love. I can't spread the benefit of seeing a play on a painting to my children or to my family but I can, insofar as my Government spends that money that it would have done on providing me with a job, no thanks. That's far much more tangible. That's going to give those individuals in my life far much more impact insofar as my state cares for them. Let's then look at the comparative. I'm going to take them on at their highest. I'm going to assume that there's going to be tonnes of R under their world. Even at their highest, the problem is that often your enjoyment of that R why is that? Even if it opens up your life to a whole new perspective presumably in order to enact those changes to your life, you're going to need money to do that. It changes your very conception of what the world is but if I have no money to enact those changes that I want to do then how am I going to actually create those changes? If a painting or a play inspires me to change who I am, I often need money to enact those kinds of changes that I want to make in my life. Secondly, even just the benefit that you get from R in itself is very short term. Why? Because it is a distraction from the real life that you have when you go home and you realise that you are underpaid and that you don't have a job and that your school children don't have as good enough school uniforms as the school children in the same neighbourhood as you. Even if you get some kind of utility and pleasure from that that is obviously going to be very short term. That's going to be at best a distraction from the problems that you have in your life. That's why money and economic productivity is relatively important compared to that. Most important, why is it that our kind of spending affects more people than art? The first thing to realise is that we are still going to have the arts budget. We are still going to have the welfare budget. Let's be clear, the arts budget is huge. We spend more on arts than we do on foreign aid. It is a huge amount of money. It is illegitimate for them to stand up and say, yes, we would still have lots of welfare. The contention is that we would obviously have much more spending on welfare. In order for this debate to function you have to realise that there is a comparative that exists. But why is it then that economic spending trickles to more people than art does, for two reasons. Firstly, the multiplier effect. Every pound that the Government spends on economic spending such as roads or jobs the pound that I get from my wage I then go and spend in a shop. That shopkeeper then spends. Everyone all along the way is being taxed. That then means that the implications no thanks per pound of economic spending is far more reaching than the impact of seeing a painting or seeing a play stay standing. That then means that Governments have duties to help the maximum number of individuals and your formula to do that with economic spending. That's economically illiterate in that the multiplier effect still happens if that money is going into the artistic sector in the same way that it was going into infrastructure. That money is not seized by greedy arts who then bury it in fields. They do the exact same purchasing pattern on roads or employees of infrastructure projects but, as well, the money is reinvested. You're in your final minutes. No, because when you spend money on art you aren't paying someone a wage to do a job who then can also go out and spend. It's not the case that you necessarily... You don't get the same multiplier effect than if you just gave someone a new job because now those people have extra money to spend into the economy. More importantly, how does it affect the vulnerable? This is really important and the poor. To help out the poor, to help out women and to help out ethnic minorities if your goal is to be economically productive. Why? Because it's not economically productive to have them out of work. Your economy will grow if you have more women, more poor people on welfare into work. That necessarily means that there's always the economic incentive to have these people out into work. That's why it reaches more people. That's why it reaches formal people in the minority art that they tell us about. Why? Because these people don't visit art galleries. They're too concerned about what they have in front of their plates for their families. Insofar as we provide something that's far more reaching, that affects vulnerable people far more, and there's a far bigger multiplier effect to fight the fact that Alex called me economically out of it. The individual impacts, I love you too, of the actual benefits compared to the individual benefits of just seeing a play is far bigger, so for those reasons we propose. Thank you, Jo. I would now like to call the first speaker from Linlith Godddon to open the case for the closing opposition team, please. Thank you very much, Madam Presiding Officer. Ladies and gentlemen, proposition noble judges. Before I start, I think that we should all reflect that we should be proud to be living a country, Scotland, the UK or our national heroes and treasures, are the artists, are the writers, are the playwrights, are the drawers and illustrators rather than military generals and politicians and millionaire chief executives. We have a proud history of art and entertainment in this country and we should be proud of that collectively. I will start on my substantial case. I would like to make a few points of rebuttal. The proposition said that people get richer, the Government spending on economics, and therefore buy and fund more art. But measuring the economic distribution that comes from this policy is very uncertain. Even if certain people, wealthy people from these policies, it is unclear whether they will actually spend it on art. What is guaranteed outcome of side proposition is making art cheaper than hypothetically making certain individuals richer. This makes art more accessible to those who may not always get art. My proposition is to say that we want to save people who are on the brink of extreme poverty. We agree that this is a noble aim to save people who are on the brink of extreme poverty. But we do not think that this is a debate about giving all our money to the poor or all our money to the art. This is a debate about funding that currently exists. That funding is not enough to fund a £50 billion HS2 high-speed line which is probably going to be over budget in a schedule about like the Scottish Parliament building. Side proposition is to say that any art that turns a profit can be claimed by government cause as good. No, thank you. I'm only a school debater but it doesn't seem fair to claim that art that makes any profit as proposition benefit our burden isn't just to defend art that loses lots of cash. Finally, in opposition we say this, bring your children to the play. Bring your children to that gallery. Let everyone experience and enjoy art for what it truly is. I'll let me get on to my substantive case. No, thank you. What outcomes should the state pursue? Not just finance. Not just economic growth. It's not just about money, money, money all the time. It's not just about power either. We admit it should not be exclusively about high-brow elite arts such as the opera and fine paintings and sodobies in London. We are reasonable and pragmatic. We agree that it should be about art in communities. Our main interest is about providing the most efficient balance between policy and spending. This aims to create an equal, just, cultural and industrious nation. We call this outcome cultural capital and a detailed analysis of outcome in this policy is what will bring you to that. No, thank you. Why art? Why is art in particular, especially vulnerable? Government support is art is crucial if we want art to prosper and survive. The market economy we live in is not perfect and is in particularly cruel to artists. Why is it difficult for these people? There's a narrow market. There's not much room to grow. Ability is not perfect of securing success. You may have to wait to achieve this. While you're waiting to achieve success, you need support to grow. The arts council funding, for instance, or scholarships to art schools, bursary for projects and community funds are all good ways to support the arts. No, thank you. These are needed for people because the arts are seen as a very unpopular sector of the economy at the moment because it's seen as very difficult to break into. Both government support where you can get artists and writers into their professions and start making money. All these artists are working very efficiently for very little money at creating beautiful products. Paintings, plays, things that inspire everyone. No, thank you. This is important because it's comparatively cheap, much cheaper than HS2, for instance, as incredible cultural value. Most importantly, this is crucial. It would die without public support, without government intervention and spending. There's no market alternative to maintain these arts and to maintain this critical mass across a nation. What I want to focus on now is art and support communities that the Government is talking about so much. We agree that there are areas of institutional poverty, no thank you, in the UK. For example, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow even. There is a need there for drama classes and support for the arts. Community centres, unfortunately, do not have the capital to maintain artistic projects. Without government support there is a very cost-efficient thing that adds value to their lives. If you are getting engaged with arts, no thank you, you are a better standard of living, a better quality of life, a more enjoyable life, and it adds to the human experience. Also, no thank you. They now never get an opportunity to participate or thrive in this crucial thing, no thank you, in art, if they do not get the money from government. Final minute. Of all the vulnerabilities in this microeconomy, artists are not rich. They need support. It is a microeconomy. I am now going to scratch you when this goes wrong. Let's look at America, for instance. There is no national funding for state-based across the 50 states. What we can see here, therefore, is extreme economic disparities in the artistic availability in America's poorest communities. For example, in New York state, it provides funding for artistic opportunities in poorest urban communities, such as writing workshops, drama projects, and funding for extra-criclimb activities in schools. As a consequence, FASA, which is a drama school artistic college, taken a much larger group of students from deprived backgrounds. Compared to that same, that state, they do not provide that funding and children in deprived areas do not get the same access to art. A cycle of cultural deficit happens, therefore. To sum up, I hope that you understand the contribution that art can make to the economy and how government spending is crucial to maintaining the arts. Thank you very much for listening. I hope that you side with Opposition. Thank you very much. I am now going to call on the second speaker from Heinlein Dyer to conclude the case for the proposition. I work out that that must be Martin Monaghan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'll start with the question, but first a couple of facts. One million people in Scotland live in poverty. That's one in every five people. Now I'll ask you this. How many of those are reaping the benefits of funding paintings? How many of those have had their lives improved by painting post boxes gold? Our argument is based on basic utilitarianism. That is the belief that policies should be made based on the happiness of the majority of people. I'll bring up a point that's not been largely discussed so far. Take any one type of art and the majority of people in the country will not really be interested in it. Why should we be funding this? If people have more money because of investing in the economy, then they can afford to choose to spend money on this art that they make a personal judgment on. One minute. Which brings me to my next point. Forcing people to pay to see art as a way of regulating it and making sure that it is art which people actually enjoy. There's the way you get your happiness benefit from art. Even if you give people a bit more money, the problem is people from minority cultures can't afford to fund their own art because there isn't enough cross subsidisation from other people. You're denying specific groups of people access to art that brings them direct happiness. We're not denying them. We're not actually proposing that they invest money in these minorities so that money is generated in their local economy and they have money to spend on art as they choose. The state has a basic responsibility to look after the welfare of its citizens. Art does not come under that bracket. If you're really under that bracket you could include art because that does look after the welfare of the citizens. It improves the life of the citizens and improves the standard of living. That's completely subjective. As we've discussed already, art is a subjective concept that doesn't vastly improve the welfare of the country as a whole of a population. I'll talk about the multiplier effect. If you give a fibre to a rich person i.e. the way that it's being discussed in this debate through subsidising art so that old elites people don't have to subsidise it that has hardly any economic impact. However, if you give a fibre to someone on minimum wage, someone struggling to feed themselves they'll go out into their local economy and spend that money. That's spent in their shops. The shop spends it on more food and that's been taxed at every step along the way. That generates revenue so that you can invest more in these economies and you have a great cycle generating money for the economy. Over time that greatly strengthens the economy of the country and you may not have to make the choice between art and investing in the economy later on down the line. That's what's known as the multiplier effect. Now, why does economic spending go to the vulnerable more than art? Being economically productive means you always have an incentive to get poor women and ethnic minorities into work because that's what leads to higher GDP. Compare it with art. The vulnerable don't care about anything other than having money. I say that on a basic term of course they need to feed themselves and everything but the bottom line is they need money to do so. Lastly, there's no real way to measure the benefits of art. If you invest in your economy to back that up you can prove why a certain policy is doing well. How happy do you realistically think you're going to be if you're living in a country where the only form of art is aimed towards people who aren't you and you have no expression of your own art? Do you not think you derive some sort of happiness from that? Of course you do but we're not going to cut spending altogether because we're cutting the investment of it. As we've said already investing in the local economies means that people can spend on art as they choose to. A majority of people will not support any one type of given art so giving them or allowing them more money to spend on the art will mean it's supported more by grassroots ways and not top down government based on what some people decide that it's good art. As I said there's no way to measure the benefits of art I mean how do you scale the happiness that's created by subsidising paintings, subsidising plays you can't put it on the table you can't get figures from it whereas economically you can you can see what's beneficial and what's not. The impact of having more money is you can spend it on what you want to as we've already outlined. If the art is that good that it's bringing happiness to ethnic minorities and people that it really means something to then that means they can spend it on that and as we've said the grassroots keeps the art going. Important art will be kept alive by that. It's people's choices what they want to spend on art it comes basically to to say average person want to be subsidising a play no they probably don't. Yes sorry. You say there's no viable way to measure the impact of art but would you not agree that those who are taken off the street because of these street art projects the productivity they bring to the country knows who are no longer hindering our prison systems because they're not getting involved in gang violence that are benefitting from these government art projects do you not think the productivity increase in the country is a viable way to measure the impact of art? Art doesn't stop gang violence you don't fund art and then suddenly you've got no people killing each other anymore it doesn't work like that Lastly the money gives people a sense of purpose and that is fundamental to their happiness If people have a sense of purpose of going out to work having an incentive to do so and then reaping the benefits of that being lifting themselves out of poverty that is surely more beneficial to their happiness than simply giving them something to look at in a museum So for the reasons of Draw to a close please People have more money to spend in their economy The art being based on who wants to see it we believe that you should support this motion Thank you Martin and that brings us to our final speaker who I have worked out is Alex Dawn from the Lithgow Dawn to conclude the case for the Opposition Please It's an absolute pleasure to be speaking here this evening on St Andrew's Day nonetheless representing the eponymous institution whose relics were so heartlessly stolen by the churches you listed from our once grand cathedral and it's been a pleasure to speak with Peter and I think a lot of what Peter said has been to be honest ignored and I think a lot of what we brought in opposition still stands In today's speech I'm going to be looking at the extension we've heard and meaningfully engaged with the most complex parts of their contribution look at the comparative the opening government draws and show why the vulnerability and fragility of the art sector is so fundamental to any discussion and about the impact art has not just on minorities but generally and why its occupation by a money delete is not the status quo but the outcome that would follow this policy So Joe brings us a two part development on exactly what happens here He gives us a kind of agimonia comparative the idea of a good life or a good sense of happiness that can perhaps derive from art or perhaps derive from capital and asks us to compare them and he talks about economic multipliers So I thought it was telling on the first that Joe's substantial point of analysis is that upon returning from art you were forced to return to the reality that you're poor and you're having a difficult time and this we think in proposition is unpleasant than realising that there are moments of brilliance and beauty and excitement and then having that as highs rather than one consistent appreciation of the lows the most nuanced interpretation of Joe's point is that we would always want people to be consistently averaged rather than have experience of something that might be better than the status quo because the status quo then becomes intolerable we don't think this is how psychology works we don't think that after going for a great night out I then have the blues for three days because nothing could quite compare to those dance moves at 2am I just reflect that that was a pleasant experience that life is difficult, that work is hard and get on with it the idea that the poor as have been characterised by the proposition are just perpetually miserable hate their lives, hate themselves but do nothing to change because they just don't have sufficient agency or intelligence is clearly misrepresentative and we don't think that to claim that you then isolate those benefits to the father for example or the mother is accurate you can bring your children along you can get them engaged the availability of community projects, community art is likely in their school for example to have someone funded by the local council providing a drama class that would otherwise be the case in terms of the hegemonia we don't buy it now the economic multiplier has straightened me a little I think it is very strange to claim that capital invested in projects and contractors is distinct from capital invested in artistic we think that it is obviously true that people spend money in similar ways that money is very rarely removed from the economy it's perpetually in circulation at its most nuance I think we could maybe say that money would be available to arts generally or perhaps those contractors have specific benefits to the wider community we think for one these contractors are usually unlike how government framed it private people licensed by the government that does not mean that they are private sector they are contractors licensed from the government and so generally aren't from these most deprived areas you're talking about so the money that you pay them to build whatever particular outcome you're looking for is then usually taken in terms of salary and investment out of the area that you're hoping to improve more importantly we think on the comparative institution of domestic arts which then stays within that community and provides a counter narrative to some of the frustrating elements at the very bottom of society as has been articulated is a much better outcome we don't think the extension was particularly persuasive I'll give Joe a chance to respond my point wasn't that art makes you miserable Alex my point was that on the comparative it is far more beneficial to go home to be more productive, more fruitful world in which you have more money we agree that utopia is probably better than poverty we've not contested that we just don't see how government have articulated a meaningful solution to the most fundamental problems that they constantly dump on opposition we appreciate this debate is nuanced and we think it's a fantastic debate but it is not our job to say that we would rather have a play than people not being poor we just think that the money available to arts is not sufficient if removed entirely to fix all the issues you're hoping to address and specifically would then if taken never regenerate a domestic arts industry all the reasons I'm going to go on to in just a second why? because of the analysis we heard in the extension about why art is uniquely vulnerable why is this? for one it is not a meritocracy in the most absolute sense upon reaching a certain level of technical skill your ability to succeed is conditioned on fashion on luck on people ultimately thinking that your paintings are in vogue people thinking your plays are popular you don't have the same ability to secure success as you do in other industries than you do in art it means that it is very difficult to sustain yourself consistently as an artist if you have any friends who are artists if you have any friends who are studying in art schools they will hear nothing but the frustrations of economic difficulty they rely on the government to nurture these people in the formative stages of their career because if that funding was not available they would not be able to subsist as artists what does this mean? it means that the critical mass of creative figures within the local and broader national community begins to diminish over time so even if we do get this funding as articulated which they hope to come from the wealthy you never get the same groundswell of support for the arts among these most vulnerable communities and the specifically perverse impact of the government case is that there is still a demand for art but that demand under their model is predominantly localised to the money to the people who have the capital to amuse their interests which means that probably opera tickets go up a little ballet becomes a little more expensive but the royal college will maintain its traditions the most elite forms of entertainment will be provided for because there is a market and people have the capital to pay for it what there is not is an alternative to the funding that is currently used to maintain an availability of art for all classes most importantly and perniciously the only people who are then capable of indulging in arts as a degree or indulging in arts as an option are people with independent finance people with rich parents people who can do an art degree on their gap year and then sit in their studio darling and the attic of their family and churn out mediocre tat because they have a capital to do so indulgently what happens in government is the funding that allowed the same artistic spirits in the very poor sections of society to indulge those same excesses disappears and they are forced by the same pressure to try and get a job to try and succeed they can't tell their family they can't tell their parents that I want to be an artist they might have justified that as an option or the only artistic presence that might have established it as a norm has disappeared which means that you don't just get the stuff that opening talked about to some extent about how there might be more ballet and less available art but we do get a lot of wealthy people dominating their own sphere which increasingly segregates from the broader community we also then see that as a permanent effect with all the analysis that was unresponded to from my partner about why we look at America where there is this kind of case study of distinct funding offering distinct results or deficit of culture in incredibly vulnerable areas which means that nothing can be done to fix it from the ground up without infinitely more money than it would have been to just maintain that momentum building something is a lot more expensive than maintaining something it is for all these reasons and for Peter's excellent speech that we are very proud to stand in opposition in favour of maintaining art as a valuable entity that should be available to all and not letting it slip into the classist relegation of an oligarchy who would continue to have their own dull art perpetuated and infant item I beg you to oppose so thank you very much can I thank all of our eight speakers for their contributions to the debate can I apologise again to Ailey in the opening for getting the time slightly wrong I did do that once to a Government minister so you're in good company and I think you dealt with it better perhaps can I now ask the judges the Government ministers remain nameless can I now ask our judges to leave to deliberate on what I do know the decision I was a judge a few years ago so I know how difficult it is please return in 20 minutes okay so we'll now move on to the floor debate this is going to last for the 20 minutes and I'm going to invite speakers from the floor to raise points in relation to the debate and also in relation to the points that you've heard if you want to speak then please raise your hand if you want to speak please raise your hand if selected if you could wait for the red light to come on either in front of you or somewhere near you if you're sharing desks and if you could tell the chamber your name and the name of your school or university before you raise your point that's very important because I need to identify a winner so I need to know who you are if there's time I might ask to respond or contribute to points from the floor debate but I think there may not be time for that so remember there's a prize for the best floor speech of the evening and I'm now going to open the debate to the floor so go first of all to the young man just right in front of me here three rows back yep if you could tell us your name and give us your point please my name is Jack Borg I'm from St Lanarksh so the idea that we have is when you have the money taken from the arts and what that does to the creative sectors what that can do I think it could virtually destroy the whole what I would say is our perception of art because our perception of it is the idea of places like East London cultured people and what it does is it takes if you know what I mean it takes it off the street it takes it off the street off the general I don't want to say the lower escalons of society but it will take it up and it will make it more of a hybrid idea and I think that this could be incredibly worrying for society as I think I can't remember what speaker said this but Scotland is a country which is proud to have its heroes as artists and writers people who have things to say and express themselves rather than just people who sat on boards with big fat salaries I think and the people that I was relating to laterally they're the sort of people that I for the banking crisis in 2008 but that's a irrelevant matter but I don't see how taking that money into infrastructure it only has a marginal benefits compared to the absolute devastation because in the creative sectors so I just simply think it's not worth it many thanks and I'll go up to the right at the back please if you could tell us your name and your skill Sam Thompson in Stumfries academy I think there are three main things that most people in Scotland are concerned about and I don't think it's going to be art I think the three main things that people in Scotland are going to be concerned about are education the health system and people and those that aren't able to actually feed their families and those who are maybe out of employment I think the thing is most people aren't saying oh have you seen the art gallery it's not in a very good condition it's not got the latest pieces of arts in it people are concerned that they're not able to feed their family people are concerned that even though they have jobs they've still got to go to a food bank so should this money not go back in where we can use this money to help people to help people and bring them out of poverty it shouldn't go to the arts because it will only have a small effect people don't have people don't have a large affection towards people who are sort of in the lower rung of society I'm going to be bothered that they can take their children along to a free you know play they're going to be concerned that one they're not getting fed and two maybe they don't get any Christmas presents and that other families possibly judge them because they are working and still go to a food bank people shouldn't have to do that if you're in employment you should be able to afford to run your family you shouldn't have to go to a food bank and we shouldn't be saying oh the health system needs far more money and education it doesn't have enough funding the funding should be in place it shouldn't be going to the arts it should be going to redeveloping Scotland and become a better country thank you Sam at the back on my left-hand side please hi, Gregor Ramos Woodmill High School this question is more aimed at opposition and you frequently claim that money is a less important factor sorry, not less important it's a factor as it's not a main factor it's important as other factors you've mentioned in such as happiness but wouldn't you agree that in today's society money is a much more important factor than say happiness I mean money is just you need it to survive in today's society thank you thank you and we'll go to young women at the back here straight in front of me, yes hi, I'm Ranganna from James Gillespie and let me first talk about you said that we have to make Scotland a better country do you think cutting down funding for art will make Scotland a better country when the diversity that we get from art is what makes us really rich the diversity we get from art and how everyone is truly represented and how everyone can express their freedom and the right of expression is what we get through art so if we cut down on art and spending on art don't you think it's cutting down on the freedom of expression and how everyone can express themselves and truly feel joy thank you to the back here yes, right to the back please thank you hi, I'm Oliver Bond from Mark College I don't think people quite understand how much Scotland this is more for against the proposition because people don't quite understand how much money we actually get from art art is all around us without art we wouldn't have cartoons we wouldn't have clothes, design would be non-existent and this building we are sitting in right now would not exist we get money from the tax that the Government puts on it we get money from tourism even things like the aerospace tax which they pay which they tax people coming out leaving the country without art we would be losing billions every year even things like the Kelpis just recently built but already a major tourist hotspot where would we actually be without art society would not have developed into the great wonder it is today we would not have the pyramids we wouldn't have art galleries in central Glasgow what has the proposition got to say to that thank you but I'm afraid we didn't quite catch your name could you just tell us again your name sorry Oliver Bond thank you okay so right at the back here please do I speak into it? Duncan Crowe I'm here with I'm sorry you have to say that again never do with speaking in it Duncan Crowe so this is an idea a bit out of left field but given art is quite a complex idea when we're debating about it it might be sensible to think of this in terms of another metaphor for the political communication and imagine for a moment if we live in a world in which people don't have tongues at birth so you are allocated to tongues by some means of either private or public funding let's then run through the debate again in this world so first proposition say well don't worry we have private people sometimes funding tongues you know some rich people die some white people will die and they will decide to allocate tongues to sound people and they're not obviously point out they might not necessarily allocate tongues to everyone to some of the most vulnerable people and then second proposition say well you know what some people poor people might value having a pound on their pocket more than having a tongue this might well be true but if it is true it's really really sad at the point where art is still part of the system by which we build our sense of identity we engage in a kind of civic communication project if we have entire groups of people that are cut out of that means of communication by virtue of the fact that they don't have people from those communities representing them creating art that expresses how they see themselves and how they see their identity not only do we have people alienated that conversation because as Alex points out some people feel that conversation no longer represents them but it also means that we just get a lower quality of communication we get less ideas in the discourse we get less perspectives on how to see the world so in other words if you think it would be a bad idea to just leave the private sector to randomly allocate tongues to people you probably also think it's a bad idea to leave the private sector to randomly allocate what is the means of political communication cheers thank you and front tier please yes a phasor from Heinlein secondary it's great as art is I would much rather be able to have a job I can't go down to the art galleries and eat that Salvador dali I'm pretty sure I would get into a lot of trouble for that I can't say I'm a little sister down to the library and be like yeah you can go eat that book I would much rather have the money spent on something that would boost the economy and I'd much rather be able to self sustain and have food than go and see the Lion King thank you very much young women at the back here please yep yourself me sorry me okay you go first and then I'll go to I think bring up a quick I'm sorry I need your name in your school sorry Elizabeth Groom for Mayans castle just a quick point to the proposition about the Glasgow school of art museum that had the awful catastrophe of the fire and we see that it was government funded to fix and renovate it and we see that because of art funding this was grey architecture which does help to find Scotland too it does actually educate people so you can actually then go and have art as a career and also it attracts tons of tourists to the area so under potts model are we going to like stop funding and would we have just left the Glasgow art school to derelict thank you and next to holly rocks where I would in my high school many of the identified areas of risk that have been identified this evening such as foreign aid and poverty are actually supported and backed by the arts the arts don't mutually exclude anyone and in fact are in support of the needy three examples of this art is normally the first thing to go when funding is cut anywhere so why is it fair that these same people who are reaping the benefits of the welfare state when times get slightly tough are allowed to return to and demoralise the profession by using it to save themselves what is busking on the streets I ask you when you see people playing guitar and in fact receiving money to help themselves at a sticky situation my second example would be children in need the needy and in fact foreign aid reap the benefits of art we have filmmakers, producers, directors, actors, singers putting their plethora of talent to help foreign aid not to help themselves none of the money from children in need actually goes back to these talented individuals and my third example would be projects where actually the arts haven't been funded by the government projects like the Mary Leishman award where they go out and fundraise all year to have a high enough income that they can actually give grants to people from working class backgrounds who don't have enough to pay for things like instruments or transports to art galleries projects like these aren't actually already funded by the government showing that there are already things that are perpetrating themselves and as it is, as are at risk enough that they have to do this without help from the government these projects will fail to exist thank you many thanks okay, this is getting hard because we're going to run out of time so young man at the end here please hi, I'm Ethan Martin from Lynn Lithgow academy Peter from the opposition mentioned Manchester Newcastle Glasgow as cities that suffer a lot of social deprivation surely that's a good argument for making cuts somewhere and wanting to provide some sort of funds to help those cities develop if you look at Liverpool it received 840 million pounds in EU regional development funding during its 2000 to 2006 budget and as a result of that funding Liverpool's GDP in terms in comparison with the European national average went up from 70% in 1994 to 80% in 2012 now I'm not saying Liverpool is perfect of course it's not there's still lots of social deprivation but because that regional development funding helps the city centre and the docks improve massively if we were to recreate that in many cities not just in Scotland like Glasgow and Dundee but in other cities in north of England like Manchester in Newcastle and Leeds then it would surely have and it surely would have a great positive effect and it is probably best if you're having to make cuts somewhere in order to pay for that funding I'd prefer those cuts to come from the arts rather than the health service or education or the police thank you very much I can only take a couple more speakers actually to keep to under a minute if I call you right at the front here please hi I'm Daniel and I'm from Queensbury high school and all I'd like to say is that in the modern world the arts cannot exempt itself from the competitive society that we have it cannot exempt itself from the free market that we have and it cannot exempt itself from the power of those markets if it's not sustaining itself it's not the duty of the taxpayers or the governments to fund it more it's the duty of itself to realise that if the public don't like it or if the public don't like a particular art it is subjective and it cannot exempt itself from the modern society very thanks can we have the microphone please for this young woman thank you Anna Morton from Whitburn academy George Orwell's 1984 demonstrates a model of a world without art cutting art funding is the first step towards this imagine your home, your workplace even this place without art sculptures, paintings etc would you really like to live in a world without colour or art I know I wouldn't whilst it's important to fund schools without art there would be no school like nothing to look out to study without no poems to study which I am in English right now and enjoying very much movies to learn from there would be no creativity no arts means nothing to study or learn from it means taking towards dystopia thank you okay just here with the red lanyard please can we have the microphone thank you kindred willow I would like to pick up on a point that the opposition made many of our national heroes are artists however what we neglected to take into account is that all those artists were not state funded people like Robert Burns and Rennie Macintosh received no state funding that brings me on to another point many of the great pieces of art throughout history were produced by people and in periods where nothing was state funded people like castle were not state funded many of the artists of Renaissance and medieval era all had to find their own private funding and actually no reason my back can't still be the case many thanks right at the back here please thank you it was mentioned it was mentioned by the proposition that support should be given to an art that appeals to the majority of people this art being chosen by the upper class white businessmen however I'd just like to point out that out of these upper class white businessmen you could have some who would prefer a form of street art just like you could have a gang member who prefers opera this shows how you can't make a majority out of something as widespread and unique as art thank you very much just here thank you second row young man curso from lindsay academy would both sides of the debate not agree that it's almost very difficult if not impossible to decide what is actually economically productive or brings growth art centres for example employ cleaners employ receptionists these people get money they spend it in shops therefore it gets taxed at every stage as you said so it's almost impossible to actually say what is economically productive so the debate will have to accept that at one point thank you very much right at the back here please all rebond for more college again oh sorry did I already call you yes it's not a problem honestly no it's a problem because there's so many other people want to be called I do apologise I'm going to have to call someone else sorry there you go can we have the microphone thank you Matthew McMillan with Mill High School the arts brilliantly by yourself the arts as an illuminate learning they are a learning process as a society we grow as we learn everyone from all ages from primary school to high school university further on in life Scotland is one of the most leading nations for the arts we rank even high among the US all these countries an example of this happened recently was Edinburgh festival which also acts as a platform as mentioned by the team zealodon both conventional and minority artists to take a place and have their say and as I said this festival raised over £1 billion recently thank you very much I can only take one more person and please not somebody that's been called before so young women here please with the red lanyard Christina Haaston in the Lithgow Academy I'd just like to make the point that I feel the debate didn't address in that much of the UK's money that they earn or get comes from tourism and tourists come to the UK because of art, because of culture and because of historical sites and I feel that reducing the amount of money that is funded into this would therefore reduce the amount of tourists that's attracted so therefore what originally was hoped to influence and gain money would not actually work and Britain would be less well off I'd also like to add that it's a basic well not basic but it's a human right to be able to culturally enrich yourself and by failing to fund this then they're failing to if the government is providing a well for a state they're failing to they're failing to enrich the people in that if they want to be able to go to these art galleries they will not be able to because there's not enough funding given to that thank you thank you very much and I'm so sorry I couldn't take everyone and also we clearly don't have time to go back to our teams I'm afraid for any comments on that I think the judges are ready we've obviously got some strong views on the subject and so it's a shame that we didn't have more time but I was getting an indication from the back that the judges were ready because if they're not well, since the judges are not yet back I'm going to take another couple of contributions just here thank you my name's Ryan Miller I'm from St Leonard's ladies and gentlemen Madam Chair I'm quite frankly shocked that the people in this debating chamber honestly believe that art is more important than feeding families in a sense perhaps one day I will decide to oppose this motion but in this day while the statistics of people below the poverty line are one in five this motion is clearly very one sided in my opinion I believe that families should be given this money rather than this art industry thank you and a final speaker young woman if you want to stand up, I think the microphone will come on for you all right, and Holly McGoldrick Whitburn academy the arts have helped shaped the world in society as we see it today people travel all over the world to see different types of art like opera and paintings and music so if we cut funding because no one will come to see Britain's rich culture Britain has always had a rich foundation in the arts which people travel miles and miles to see if we cut funding we are putting the future of tourism and the arts in danger and we are also spoiling the memory of the arts from our past thank you very much this is growing even longer since I don't see our judges so right at the back both of you one after the other please I believe I believe my name is Liora Waddler I'm from James Tuglesby high school and I believe the proposition argument falls down on two main points one they are underestimating the power of arts but given there's limited time and that's been dealt with very well I'll move on to the second two you are overestimating the power of arts funding you're confusing destroying a large portion of arts funding with eradicating poverty in reality poverty is a huge overarching problem even with the extra funding it is not going to disappear we are not going to notice a huge difference what we are going to notice is the difference is the vast drop in cultural diversity we're lucky enough to benefit from today thank you and next to you hi Jack Richardson, James Gillespie I think the main fault that has been ignored in the propositions logic is that by taking away money from arts funding which is already at such a minimal level we're not giving people money to go out and see plays we're taking away the opportunity for them to see something unique something original something that could change their perspective on how they perceive the world what could be more important than that as a democratic society we cannot let the rights of the minorities be governed by the whims of the majority so I see no need why we can take away the right to self-expression from the minority because of the whims of a capitalist framework that has neglected to help and has failed the oppressed and downtrodden in this country thank you very much and as the judges take their seats I could take one final contribution have you spoken before sorry I think Duncan's argument very well illustrates the importance of opposition but even though we take what the propositions say at its highest level whereby they say that if we eradicate poverty that's worth getting rid of the arts you have to prove that you will eradicate poverty you have to prove that taking away all funding from the arts is going to have a meaningful and tangible benefit for the vast majority of people at the point of which the amount of money that you get from arts funding is so minuscule it's such a small amount of money that we take in comparison to HS2, which is a multi-billion-pound project we don't think that they have proved their own case that they've set themselves therefore despite the fact that we like tongues we still think that the propositions fall on their own camps and that's why you should vote opposition thank you very much for all of those contributions I think clearly the judges had a difficult time as well since they went somewhat over their allocated time in coming to a decision the quality of this debate has been absolutely fantastic and I think right through I'm extremely impressed and I want to applaud everyone for their efforts all through today and finally in this chamber and once again apologies that I couldn't call everyone who wanted to contribute at the end there so sorry right I'm just taking one moment to get this right because I don't want to call out the wrong names obviously and then I will be telling you who your winners are sorry I had also a floor speaker to choose as a winner so apologies for that so sorry slight change of plan I think I'm supposed to go down to the lectern apologies there that all got slightly confusing at the end so I'm now going to announce the winners of the 2014 fantasy debating championship final and when I call your name I'd be grateful if you could join me and Robin Harper on the chamber floor to receive your prize and we're also going to take a photograph before you move back to your seat I want to get this right right so the first prize goes to the best university speaker of the day and that is David Macrath from Edinburgh University goes to the best school speaker of the day and that is Ellie Macrath from Edinburgh University and after a very difficult decision the best contribution from the floor goes to Anna Martin from Whitburn Academy after a well fought final the runner-up of the 2014 St Andrew's Day debating championship goes to Aberdeen Macrath Ellie Macrath and the winner of the 2014 St Andrew's Day debating championship goes to Hindland Dyer I invite Stephen O'Rourke on behalf of the English speaking union to say a few words Stephen has developed a broad civil and commercial practice over 10 years at the bar he has appeared for clients in cases before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the inner and outer houses and he's also a standing junior for Scotland Stephen, could you come and say a few words please Deputy Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen after the day that I've participated in I feel vastly under-qualified to speak here an incredible display of talent and a big round of applause to all of you first of all who have participated in this day it is it is clear that the art of debate and democracy has a beating heart here in Scotland and it is very heartening to see so many of you Scotland's young people participating here so a round of applause to you it's been a very long day I think most if not all of us have been here since before nine o'clock so don't worry I'm not going to speak for very long all I want to really say is on behalf of ESU Scotland a big thank you first of all to the Scottish Parliament for hosting us and to Education Scotland for helping with the budget the panel of judges in the final this evening Alex Hor Robin Harper, Ian McGill, Adam Bernstein and Victoria Groom and all who have given their time and expertise judging the many rounds held earlier in the day I'd like to thank all the volunteers who helped chair the debates in all the committee rooms I'd like to thank the students from universities across Scotland who have contributed so much to the success of this event and most particularly again I'd like to thank the schools and you the school pupils who have travelled from near and far to participate in the event with particular thanks to all the school speakers the pupil judges and the teachers thank you to them thank you to the teachers for all of your hard work and working together with your teams in the schools it's hugely appreciated and finally for putting together what is an extremely challenging competition and day of proceedings as you can imagine here at the Parliament I'd like to thank the ESU staff for all their organisation skills and in particular although they don't want me to name them Fiona and Simon and so with that I just wish you all a safe homeward journey and here's to next year's competition before you all leave could I ask you to remain where you are for a moment because we now have winners and judges on the floor please we're going to have a few photographs before everyone leaves so we could bring winners and judges to the floor please everyone before you leave I think everyone's winners in this because you've all participated all day you've been able to take part in a debate in the Scottish Parliament and I just think everyone has made a fantastic contribution so thank you all very much and a safe journey home please listen to the events assistants who will tell you how to leave the chamber safely thank you once again