 Unig o ran ymgyrch, ac mae'r ddisgwm yw'r ddisgwm, Fynghor i'r cyflaenol, 11340, oedd yn amdano'r rhai Cyn Macintosh, yn ystafell, yn rhoi'r ddau i'r cyflaenol. OXFAM's report and campaign. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I invite those members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request to speak with Martins now or as soon as possible. Mr McIntosh, if you are ready, you have seven minutes to open the debate, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have always thought, like many members here, I have always thought of myself as a progressive politician. I was brought up in the expectation that progress, economic, social or political, was not just desirable but almost inevitable that, with our advances in science and technology, so our society would advance in mutual prosperity, understanding and tolerance. I have not lost my optimism that we can make it so, but the evidence from the last 30 or 40 years has provided a salutary reminder that we have to choose to make it so. Yes, we are a far wealthier nation and measured in material goods, TVs, mobile phones, cars, we have clearly prospered, but on so many other measurements, the gap between rich and poor between the haves and the have-nots has actually increased. Audit Scotland, for example, has pointed out that our overall life expectancy has increased over the last decade, but that the better off have benefited most. The difference in average life expectancy between women living in the least deprived areas compared to the most deprived areas has risen from around six and a half years to around seven and a half years. Similarly, the overall death rate from cancer has fallen by 12 per cent between 2001 and 2011, but again the gap between the most and the least deprived areas has widened. It is not just with our health that we have failed to make progress in tackling inequality. We are proud to have one of the most equitable education systems in the developed world, and yet the findings of the OECD report in 2007 still hold true that who you are in Scotland is far more important than what school you attend so far as achievement is concerned. This report and this new campaign from Oxfam, Even It Up, Time to End Extreme Inequality, is a powerful and welcome reminder of the task before us. In fact, it offers some consolation in that we are clearly not alone here in Scotland, but it is not the consolation that you might want to hear. As the report points out, seven out of 10 people on the planet now live in countries where economic inequality is worse than it was 30 years ago. The report is full of evidence and research that fascinates and horrifies, but which I also hope potentially inspires us to action too. To quote just one example, you may be familiar with the line, we are all in this together. It turns out that, as a statement of fact, those words are more wide of the mark than even I suspected. Oxfam highlighted that, since the start of the financial crisis, the number of billionaires in the world has more than doubled. Here we are knee-deep in austerity, trying to do what we can to mitigate the impact of the welfare cuts, and yet, with every day, the obscenely rich are getting obscenely richer. As a sobering contrast, how many of us read the report from the Trussell Trust earlier this week, which revealed that the number of Scots turning to food banks in the last year has also more than doubled. I cannot do justice to the many juxtapositions between rich and poor, which are illuminated in this report, but the key point is simply that such inequality is offensive and morally repugnant, but it is damaging to us all. It is damaging to poverty reduction, stifled social mobility, undermines economic growth, and holds us back in the fight against climate change, and it compounds one of the most long-seated inequalities of all—that between men and women. I believe that many of us have taken encouragement from the new First Minister's implementation of a 50-50 approach to gender balance at Cabinet level. As I reminded members just last week, just as we slap each other on the back for our commitment to progressivism, the pay gap between men and women in this country is widening again. If we are not constantly aware of the hill that we are trying to climb, we will slip backwards. Extreme inequality reveals itself in many destructive ways, from poor health and illiteracy to levels of violence. However, I want to return, as the Oxfam report does, to the central issue of economic inequality. The global scale of the problem suggests that we need to take action at a global level. Earlier this year, Oxfam and others reported that the combined wealth of the 85 richest people in the world is the same as the poorest half of the world's population—approximately 3.5 billion people. One answer, as suggested by economists such as Thomas Piketty and others, is a wealth tax. Oxfam, for example, has calculated that a tax of 1.5 per cent on the wealth of the world's billionaires would raise £74 billion, enough to get every child into school and deliver health services in the poorest 49 countries. However, while supporting those global initiatives, I think that we should look closer to home. It is also the case that three families in Scotland own more wealth than the poorest 20 per cent of Scots put together, or in another statistic, also quoted by ministers, fewer than 500 people own more than half the land in Scotland. We have a land reform bill coming before this session. Do we not need to ask ourselves how we can use that piece of legislation to tackle this particular inequality? Poverty wages are clearly central to this issue, and I doubt that I have to convince anyone in this debate about the importance of implementing the living wage, but what are we doing about wage differentials? We cannot address extreme inequality if we only help those at the bottom. We need to look at the gap between what those at the top earn and what those same people pay their employees. When I proposed just such a measure using the procurement bill to minimise wage ratios between the highest and lowest paid, the then Deputy First Minister spoke very warmly about such an approach, then properly asked colleagues to vote against it. I am not going to pretend that there are easy answers to any of those complex issues, but the point is that we could take a different approach. Here in Scotland, for example, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance has imposed a wage freeze or a 1 per cent cap on public sector workers for each of the last four years, yet our university principals enjoyed a median increase of more than 4 per cent on salaries already approaching or exceeding £1.25 million. I need to point out that those are the same publicly funded institutions that are currently employing staff on zero-hours contracts. The Equality Trust has estimated that none of the large companies bidding for public services contracts paid their chief executives less than 59 times UK median earnings. We are using public money not to reduce inequality but to increase it. Is it really the case that we wish to see one rule for the rich and another for the rest of us? That is not about envy, it is not about suppressing ambition or capping aspiration, it is not even about blame, it is about balance and reasonableness, it is about ending exploitation, it is simply recognising that our communal and individual wellbeing, our communal and individual prosperity depends on taking action to reduce inequality. We like to portray ourselves as a progressive country, but if we are truly to become the progressive beacon we want to be, it needs more than warm words and good intentions. I could not wish for a more timely occasion to hold this member's debate than on the day that the Government outlines its programme for business, because Oxfam has highlighted a programme that we can all sign up to. Here is a vision for Scotland that can unite us across party lines that can unite civic Scotland, business Scotland, trade unions, churches and voluntary organisations. Presiding Officer, now is the time to end extreme inequality in Scotland. Thank you very much, and I now call on Nigel Dawn to be followed by Jackie Baillie. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and as ever, I would like to welcome Ken Macintosh's contribution in bringing this debate before us this evening. I would also like to register that in the time that is available to any of us, we can hardly do any more than scratch the surface on this, but I would also like to commend Ken Macintosh for the way that he put his motion together, because I think he actually laid it out for the wonderful answer to a method of writing an essay, you know, you just actually lay it out in such a way you know where you're going, because he clearly brought forward that poverty is itself a barrier to poverty reduction, it does hurt everybody, the solutions involve closing tax loopholes, they involve progressive taxation, the implementation of the living wage, universal free public services, universal social protection, and recognising the importance of women's rights, and one might add children's rights as well. If I may go to each of those in turn, I'd like to start first of all by recognising that economic growth by its nature tends to favour those who have put their own money into it simply because it is the richest who have the capital, and it's usually the capital that derives the benefit first. Secondly, because the benefits of any economic growth go to those who are themselves already socially advantaged, because that's where they put themselves, it tends to go to men in societies around the world and in the UK as well, and it goes to those who are better off because they are in a better position to put themselves in the right place. Poverty is its own barrier, and we've also had a demonstration of that, I think, within the last week or two, with the calculation done that demonstrates that those who are poor and do not have credit or bank account facilities actually pay another £1,200 a year for the services which they receive simply because they're not able to pay for them on credit or by direct debit through a bank. Another example of the situation where poverty actually generates itself and it's enormously difficult to get out of it. Poverty, of course, generates poor health, low self-esteem, low ambition and is a self-fulfilling failure. Now, we also live in times where we know that inequality hurts everybody. This feels a bit like a rerun of a debate which I think we had about three weeks ago, and I took the opportunity of pointing members in the direction of that wonderful book, The Spirit Level, which I don't actually have with me this evening again. I do need to just encourage everybody to read it because it demonstrates that less unequal societies or more equal societies, everybody benefits. If I can just give an example, a more equal society will have a lower crime rate, which means that those who are wealthy on paying taxes will actually have to pay less in to the justice system. Of course, not only does that reduce the amount of tax that the taxpayer has to pay, but prevention is also better than cure, and it's actually cheaper than it has done that way. But then we come to the issue of tax loopholes, and this is where I think, again, Ken Macintosh got it right, some of this could be dealt with locally. Some of it requires international action. I think the Oxfam report suggests that the international community is losing $156 billion per year because people can put their money into tax havens. That's an enormous sum of money, but it's not going to be moved out of tax havens until we, as a globe, actually decide to do something about that. That's totally out with any national government. It requires collective judgment across the world, and it is unfortunately extremely unlikely to happen, but who knows. If we don't ask for it, if we don't work towards it, it's certainly never going to happen. Progressive taxations also mentioned, of course, that's got to be a good thing. I do think that it's interesting that there is already research suggesting that progressive taxation is not of itself necessarily the whole answer. It's actually how you redistribute the wealth within a society that may be a better discriminator, so we need to be just slightly careful on that. Comment has also been made about the living wage that's come up under this afternoon in the Government's programme. I think that we've got the message. I think that we understand that the living wage, because it defines the minimum standard of a sensible life, must be what we should be trying to pay. I still despair when people tell me that we can do it when it tends to come unfortunate from the Labour Party. You seem to ignore the fact that Glasgow City Council, Labour Party run, lawyers tell you you can't actually do it in law. I just wish we could get past that and actually have a sensible debate, please. Perhaps Nigel Dawn, Presiding Officer, could then be explained to the chamber how Renfrewshire council managed to do it. It would be very interesting, but I think what Hugh Henry has to do is ask Renfrew kids who can't show why they think it was lawful because other people plain lead out. I am not a lawyer, I can't tell you that it can't happen, but I am very aware of the fact that a lot of sensible lawyers have said you can't impose it. Who is to judge? Universal free public services, of course, why do they matter? We had Ruth Davidson go back over this this afternoon. Why does she, why do the Tories not yet understand if you don't go that route, you force people to make judgments that they don't want to make, they actually make bad judgments. I'm conscious that I'm being asked to wind up, so let me do so by just recognising that this is a timely debate. Some of it we can do locally, and I think what we've heard this afternoon encourages us to believe that this Government wants to go in that direction. We have to recognise some of it, requires global scale, I'm not even complaining about independence at this point, requires an effort right across the globe, which will only be galvanised when people across the globe are galvanised to do it, thank you. Thank you very much. I now call on Jackie Baillie to be followed by Alex Johnson. Thank you Presiding Officer. Can I start by congratulating Ken Macintosh on securing time for this debate and for his contribution to the chamber this evening? I very much welcome Oxfam's report, even at uptime to end extreme inequality. It's clear to everyone in this chamber that inequality is, as Barack Obama calls it, the defining challenge of our time. Global inequality has been on the rise for decades. Even in developed countries with high levels of wealth redistribution, like the UK, income inequality is persistently high. It's also clear that politicians at every level of government have a part to play in the elimination of poverty and inequality. I want to turn to the Scottish Government, because I believe that it already has powers to take substantial action. In childcare, in housing, in education, in healthcare, all those powers are available now. As has been much commented on today, the transformational childcare change is only to be delivered in an independent Scotland, which we are suddenly able to do now. I welcome that, but I think that we can do that across a range of other policy areas, and I think that we should work together to do so. Nicola Sturgeon declared in her inaugural speech as First Minister that it would be her personal mission to tackle poverty and inequality. I believe that that is a view that all members of this chamber share, so let's work together to deliver that. The Scottish Government will be judged on the basis of its actions, not its words. Let me review some of its actions since 2007, because there are 6,000 fewer beds in Scotland's hospitals. There are 4,000 fewer teachers, 140,000 fewer college places. All of those contribute to tackling poverty and inequality. 70,000 public sector jobs have been lost since 2008. The Scottish Government has stripped £1 billion away from local anti-poverty work since 2007. We know that the council tax freeze is underfunded, leaving local government to bear the brunt of public spending cuts and forcing them to cut services. Meanwhile, the cost of living and, in particular, the cost of childcare in Scotland is rapidly on the rise. Since 2008, the cost of a basket of essential goods has risen by 28 per cent. Childcare costs have risen by 27 per cent since 2010 alone. At the same time, we know that wages aren't keeping pace with inflation, and the minimum wage is indeed more than a pound behind the living wage at £7.85. However, nearly 300,000 people in Scotland in poverty are working. Half of poor children in Scotland have a parent in work, so in-work poverty is a persistent and growing problem, and we need to address it. Committing to a living wage, expanding educational opportunities, increasing the provision of childcare, making it affordable and flexible, all those steps are things that the Scottish Government has well within its power today to tackle and tackle in-work poverty and inequality. On the living wage, I said this afternoon that we had five opportunities in this year alone to support the living wage—five times the Government said no. I do think that we have the power to do something about that now. I welcome the proposal set out today by the First Minister, but we had the opportunity to legislate. We had the opportunity to help 400,000 low-paid workers—64 per cent—of who are women. I remember that debate about the procurement bill, when we talked about equal pay audits. We talked about zero-hours contracts. All dismissed by the Government, all voted down. Talk is cheap, Presiding Officer. It's action that counts. I noticed reference in the motion from Ken Macintosh to progressive taxation. If we are to believe the press reports coming from the Smith commission, income tax looks like it might be devolved. On that basis, can I ask the minister to respond in her closing remarks? Will the SNP support progressive taxation? Will they support a 50-pence top rate of income tax from the richest people to help the poorest? Presiding Officer, I will finish with one of my favourite quotes from Professor Joe Stiglitz, on which he stated, "...inequality is not inevitable. It is not like the weather, something that just happens to us. It is not the result of the laws of nature or the laws of economics. Rather, it is something that we create by our policies, by what we do." I couldn't agree more. There is no greater ambition in my view for government than delivering social justice and ending inequality, and I challenge this Government to work with us to do so." Alex Johnstone, to be followed by Hugh Henry. I am not entirely sure that Jackie Baillie did not just miss the point of this debate. I know that the message that she delivered is consistent, and that she has taken the view that she has expressed regularly in this Parliament. To take this debate in the context of Scotland alone or Britain alone is to misunderstand the objective that we are discussing. We need to look at this internationally and see where that puts us as a nation in relation to what is going on in the rest of the world. First of all, there are many in this Parliament who assume that equality is a key element of what we would wish to achieve. However, I have equal respect for those who put family first, those who put their community first and those who perhaps put their country first. As a consequence, the idea of equality is perhaps something that those individuals, particularly in some of the more impoverished countries in the world, cannot afford to consider when their priority is to look after their own and make their own way in very difficult circumstances. If we are to achieve our objective of cutting the extreme difference in income that exists in the wealthiest countries in the world and the most impoverished, then we have to consider what the impact of that is likely to be here in this country. It is undeniable that, while we have spent generations striving to increase the quality of life for us, ourselves as individuals, to increase average incomes within our own country, that for every part of our share of the world's resources that we have consumed over and above the average then someone somewhere has had to have less so that we can have more. The impact that that has had in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is massive and we have to accept that if we are determined to maintain our high standards of living then somebody else will have to carry the can. As a result of those pressures, but not only those pressures, we have a Government in Westminster today which, prior to its election, made a key commitment that it would exceed the required 0.7 per cent of national income going into international aid when it took off us. In fact, the latest figures that we have are that 0.72 per cent of national income—that is £11.4 billion a year—are now going into international aid. That makes Britain the second-highest contributor in absolute terms and the fifth-highest contributor in the world in terms of share of gross national income. If we look at how the reaction to that in our own country has happened, we will see that there are many who will criticise this Government for having taken that decisive step. When we see by-elections take place and parties such as the UK Independence Party competing to win seats in Parliament, we see our Government being attacked and criticised for having set that target and stuck to it during its time in government. I am very grateful to Alex Johnson for taking part in the debate and for flagging up the issue of global inequality. I will ask him to reflect on the report. The report does not just talk about global inequality. That is the inequality between nations, but on extreme inequality within nations. That is the main focus. In other words, not just the difference between the wealth of Britain and that of sub-Saharan Africa, but the differences between the wealthiest in Britain and the poorest in Britain, the difference between the wealthiest in sub-Saharan Africa and the poorest in sub-Saharan Africa. I have got 35 seconds to cover it. I accept that there are key issues that we need to address even within our own country, but we have seen under this Government a situation arise where we now have the top 1 per cent of earners paying 30 per cent of all income tax. We see the top 5 per cent of earners paying 50 per cent of all income tax. Looking through the recommendations, and as I come to a close, I have to say that there is perhaps a key difference in understanding which I must address. That is where demands are made for taxes to be placed on wealth. I have said in this chamber before that I am a good old fashioned capitalist. I think that we should tax growth in wealth, we should tax income, but taxing wealth is a dangerous place to go. The purpose of wealth is to ensure that that is properly invested so that we can have economic growth, we can have fair trade around the world and we can use our wealth to invest and create jobs in countries where that will benefit people as well as here in this country. The appropriate use of wealth is to invest with it, to consume wealth by taxing it to pay costs on the current account, to shrink wealth, to shrink economies and to shrink ambition. With that said, I understand the objectives in that report, but you will understand if I take a slightly different view of some of the objectives and how they might be achieved. I congratulate Ken Macintosh on his eloquent and passionate statement about why we need to do something to tackle the obvious inequality that exists both in this country and throughout the world. I do not disagree with Nigel Don. I think that global action is required by large companies and by Governments. It is a sobering and shocking fact that Oxfam has outlined that, in 2013, seven out of 10 people lived in countries where economic inequality is worse than 30 years ago. Just think of it, Presiding Officer. Look at the technological advances that have been made in the world in 30 years. My children and grandchildren laugh at me when I reflect on how the world has changed even in my working life. When I left IBM to commence a career in teaching, I went into a school that was the same as schools right throughout the country where computers did not exist, where mobile phones were not within anyone's horizon. We have progressed so much as a human race, but at the same time we can cast our eyes around the world and look at the sheer extremes of inequality, poverty and deprivation. Many of the things that we in this country take for granted in the run-up to Christmas, the commercial and consumer goods that we will want to exchange with one another, to remind everyone to have a happy Christmas and for those of our religious nature to reflect on the religious significance of that. We very rarely take time to reflect that many of those goods are produced by child labour and squalid conditions being paid poverty wages. We forget very easily the hundreds of women workers and child workers in fact who died in Bangladesh and in the clothing factories there. We forget the squalor that many people in factories throughout the world are working in to give us something that we now, as I said, take for granted. So inequality has deepened, inequality has become worse and we see that when comparing country to country and society to society, but even within countries there is shocking inequality. I said in a previous debate that John Wilson sponsored last week when I worked as a welfare rights officer. It was in communities where the stark consequences of government action were all too obvious. One of the things that we neglect at our peril is that much of what happens is the result of conscious decisions by individuals and politicians to make things happen in the way that they do. Again, it is a shocking fact that, in 24th century Scotland, one of my councils, the Renfrewshire Council, has had to set up a commission on tackling poverty. Why should any council in this country have to look at something like that with all the material wealth that is surrounding us and yet I am no different from anyone else in this Parliament? I can look within my constituency and find communities just a few miles from each other, looking at Brookfield and comparing it to Linwood, where all the statistics of poverty and deprivation are sharply contrasted. In some parts of Scotland, they are even worse than they are in those two communities. It then becomes a matter of political will. The point that I would make to Nigel Don is that politicians are all too keen to hide behind the advice of lawyers when it suits them. What Renfrewshire Council did was a matter of political will. Renfrewshire Council used its scarce resources to say that we want our contractors to pay the living wage, and the consequence of that was that Renfrewshire Council had to compensate the contractors through their contracts just in the same way as the Scottish Government could do with its contractors if it had the political will to do it. So let's not hide behind lawyers, let's not hide behind weasel words, let's say that there are issues that we can resolve if we have the will to do so. I would like to add my thanks to Ken Mackintosh for securing debating time on that important issue. In doing so, we must consider the many deeply upsetting facts surrounding the global issue of extreme income inequality, which greatly hinders the aim to reduce and end world poverty on a global scale, as described in the Oxfam report, even up time to end extreme inequality. Poverty is a condition that is defined in terms of income. According to threshold set by the World Bank, about half the world's population is currently living in a state of poverty. Of that, the level set for extreme poverty is an income level of 1.25 US dollars or 80 pence a day, and according to recent studies, roughly 1.3 billion people fall into this category. Of that staggering number, three quarters are children. Extreme poverty is a blanket term that involves a lack of decent dependable access to basic amenities such as food, clean water, shelter, healthcare and education. Every year, it is estimated that 2 million children die from preventable diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia because they lack access to basic medical treatment. Since Oxfam published the report just under a month ago on battling poverty via addressing the extreme inequality, over half a million people have died of hunger or hunger-related causes alone. Malnutrition and its associated effects is the number one cause of death in the developing world, killing more than HIV, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Studies by the Pew Research Centre found that deepening income inequality is considered to be the main threat to economic and social progress and is therefore a top priority when working towards poverty reduction. What the trend shows is that not only are nations of the wealth being increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few and therefore away from the wider public, but a great majority of the income and wealth is being held by just the top 0.1 per cent of the population. As poverty impacts the lives of half the global population, the number of billionaires in the world, as Ken Macintosh mentioned, has grown now to over 1,600 and increased to 200 since last year according to Forbes. The effects of income inequality on a population are well known. Countries with large and widening income inequality have higher incidents of drug use, crime, mental illness, infant mortality and the lower life expectancy overall. Extreme wealth inequality is also linked to limiting women's abilities to succeed economically and repressing women's rights socially. Already a major problem in countries with high rates of poverty. However, the most devastating aspect of economic inequality is a self-perpetuating problem. As long as those in control of the ability to influence or set policy, the poor are prevented from lifting themselves above the poverty threshold, is at this point where other nations must intercede on behalf of the oppressed. I do welcome the contribution of the UK Government to poverty reduction overseas. Steps that this Scottish Government can take to address this issue would be to continue working to end severe economic inequality both in Scotland and where possible in other nations. This must involve wealth creation and redistributive policies in the knowledge that there is an imbalance in earning potential. In the interests of fairness, our Government must work to address this. According to data collected by the quality trust between 2011-12 and the following year, the annual income of the poorest 10 per cent in Scotland, over half a million people dropped by 8 per cent, while the wealthiest 10 per cent saw an increase in income of 3 per cent. The poor are getting poorer, while the rich are getting richer. Within the UK, the richest 10 per cent earned 27 times more than the lowest 10 per cent, and tens of thousands of people in Scotland now rely, as we know, on food banks. Are we to believe, unequivocably, that the wealthiest members of society are really working 27 times harder than the poorest? Is this Government's responsibility to all the people of Scotland, particularly the majority, to ensure our employment practices, tax and economic policies over which we do have control, promote fairness? Globally, as Scotland continues to increase its participation, working to reduce world poverty via decreasing economic inequality, we will improve the future outlook of millions of people currently stuck in a state of extreme poverty. Extreme wealth comes at the price of extreme poverty, and to end one requires ending the other. I sincerely hope that this Government will take on board the recommendations outlined in the Oxfam report and will, to the best of its abilities, continue to develop policies to combat poverty, both in Scotland and overseas. Thank you very much and good evening, Presiding Officer. It is a pleasure to speak on the Oxfam report, even it up, time to end extreme inequality. I thank Macintosh for securing this debate today. Oxfam estimates that the richest 85 people worldwide own as much as poorer half of their world population. This is a frightening figure and a dramatic way of illustrating the extreme inequality. Economic equality prevents those living in poverty and obtaining access to basic needs like food, clean water education and health care in addition to lack of opportunities to enable them to improve their quality of life. The report looks at the increases in inequality within countries as we see them. Poverty, the poorest struggling to get by while their neighbours prosper. Across the world, seven out of ten people live in countries where the gap between rich and poor is greater than it was 30 years ago. Now I accept that some people will earn more than others, but economic inequality means people do not have the equality of opportunity, a fair chance to have a better future. It is of vital importance that the poorer in society have enough. The report highlights that in 2014 the UK top 100 executives took home 131 times as much as their average employees. Yet only 15 of these companies have committed to paying their employees a living wage. This is quite shameful. One way in which to tackle this economic inequality as seen in Scotland specifically in Glasgow would be to address the high unemployment rates in many ethnic minority communities and acting upon the solutions to facilitate more employment and if necessary education for these citizens. In the census of 2011, unemployment is higher for Africans at 22 percent, Caribbean at 16 percent and Asians at 11 percent compared to the indigenous white community at 8 percent. Unemployment numbers are higher in constituencies like Glasgow. For example, African community has 32 percent while the white indigenous community population has 11 percent. That's a difference of 21 percent unemployment, a horrendous figure and I think that we talk about overseas, let's talk about what's happening in Scotland. These employment inequalities are facilitated by similar facts, lack of education, insufficient housing, health care. This is not a level of quality that the Scottish Government aspires to or does it. I had spoken this afternoon, I had a question from the minister in regards to issues regarding housing issues, particularly for people who are overcrowded. The minister had suggested that everything is reasonable and everything is going on okay. I had suggested for the minister to come and visit my constituencies to some of these families to see exactly what poverty actually means, what overcrowding actually means, what it means to be in a family where you have no opportunities to homework, to have a social life, to have a private life. These are the families who actually suffer the injustice. These are the families that suffer lack of opportunities and I once again invite the minister to come and visit some of these families to give her a first-hand experience of what it is really like on the ground to try and reverse the trends that people are facing today in Glasgow, thank you very much. I would also like to congratulate Ken Macintosh on bringing this debate to the chamber. It may have been him or someone said that it was appropriate on the day where the Scottish Government laid out our programme for government. I think that the very central programme for government was about reducing inequalities in Scotland. Ken Macintosh, Hugh Henry, Kenneth Gibson and Alex Johnson have mentioned about the global economic inequalities and I concur with a lot of what was said in that and that Scotland and this Government will always play a part in trying to tackle global inequalities as well as we see it because we know as the more developed countries appear to become, the wider the gap is between the rich and the poor and at the moment the UK sits at 28th of the 34 OECD countries and that is something that we should all reflect on. However, there are some things that are improving here in Scotland. For the first time since records began, full-time weekly earnings in Scotland are now higher than they have been and higher than those in the rest of the UK. Real earnings have risen in Scotland since it is the first time annual increase since 2008 and compares to a real-terms reduction across the rest of the UK. I am not hailing that as that it is okay for the rest of the UK. I absolutely understand that there is inequalities across the UK, but since 1999 the Scottish gender pay gap has decreased by 7.7 percentage points but that is still far too high and absolutely I accept that. The number of living wage accrediting employers and we have heard a lot about the living wage in Scotland has tripled since April this year and that thanks to the poverty alliances living wage accreditation initiative which has been funded by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government fully supports the living wage campaign, advocates the living wage and recognises the real benefits that a living wage can make to the lives of lower-paid workers in Scotland. However, as the economy grows, we see more and more women are moving into work and this month's labour market statistics show that women's employment rate is now 71.2 per cent, 10 per centage points higher than when records began in 1992. In work, as many members have said here, should be a route out of poverty but we know that women predominate in low-paid jobs and are more at risk of in-work poverty than men. Part-time working by women has increased by 97,000 since 2008 and under-employment rates for women continue to rise despite two years of economic growth. So, while women should be benefiting from the level of the growth that we are seeing, it is clear that many are not. The Scottish Government is taking action. Through implementing our women's enterprise framework, more women have been supported to start up their own businesses and this can be a flexible employment solution for women who have caring responsibilities. Increasing early learning and childcare eligibility to 600 hours for three and four and two-year-olds in work-less households will also help more women to enter and sustain work. We are growing the capacity to increase that to 30 hours a week should we be elected again in 2016. It falls short of what we said in the white paper and what we could do with independence but what we are doing is what we can with the powers that we have. We have increased to 600 hours and that is going to almost double in future in increasing capacity to cope with it. In helping women to enter work, we have to address the challenges of occupational segregation and equal pay that impacts so many women. Otherwise, there is a risk that women will still remain in poverty. By implementing the recommendations of the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce, we hope to see a real shift in the gender balance in skills training and in further and higher education. We want more young women entering non-traditional roles, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math-related careers. From the next academic year, colleges and universities will be required to report on work to tackle gender imbalance in courses. Career options and choices are often made early, so it is key that we ensure that young people receive unbiased advice from an early age and teachers and parents have a crucial role to play in that. Early today, the First Minister published the programme for government, continuing the Government's commitment to our central purpose around sustainable economic growth and setting out key priorities to provide fair work, for example, through our commitment to pay the living wage and increased funding to the poverty alliance to grow the number of accredited living wage employers, to focus on school attainment and university access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds and to support the increased childcare and free school meals. All of those are designed to reduce intergenerational poverty and tackle inequality. The programme for government emphasises our commitment to empower communities by handing over decisions on key issues to them and to make government open and accessible through public participation in the decisions that we make that affect them. We have committed to poverty-proofing all of our new policies and legislation through the use of poverty impact assessments whenever we make a change. The Scottish Government, as the First Minister said today, will appoint an independent adviser on poverty and inequality, to hold public events with the First Minister, to raise the reality of living in poverty, to make recommendations to the Government and how collectively we should respond, and, importantly, to hold the Government to account on its performance. With all of that, we know that poverty levels are increasing in Scotland because of UK Government policies. We are aware that £6 billion could come out of the Scottish economy by 2015-16. Tomorrow, Jackie Baillie commented on the Smith commission and, earlier on, when I asked a question, Jackie Baillie said, wait till the commission publishes. I will give her the same answer to the question that she raised to me about the Smith commission. However, the Smith commission will report tomorrow. The Scottish Government has made our case for full powers over tax and welfare to help us to tackle the scourge of poverty and inequality. It is a case backed by many of our stakeholders. The Scottish Government is committed to working collaboratively with the people and communities throughout Scotland to reduce and bring an end to inequalities and to use the words of the Oxfam report to even it up. That is what we intend to do with our programme for government.