 The next item of business today is the member's business debate on motion number 13952, in the name of James Dornan, on step change debt charities action plan on problem debt. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons now. I would also ask guests leaving the gallery to note that this Parliament is still in session and please do so quietly. I want to start off by thanking those colleagues who signed the motion and those who are speaking in this important debate on personal debt problems. I would also like to pay tribute to step change debt charity for its hugely successful work in the area of personal debt crisis and for its assistance in preparing for this debate. I am sure that other members have been beneficiaries of the excellent research provided by the charities' public affairs officer, Mr James Stewart and Gillian Thomson, a trustee who are present in the gallery today. I want to thank all his colleagues for the help that they have given us. Step change is the largest provider of free independent debt advice and managed debt solutions in the United Kingdom. Last year they helped 16,000 people, a figure that has almost doubled since 2012. They boast an impressive stat that 97 per cent of their clients who enter statutory debt repayment solutions successfully pay off their debt. That is the highest of all debt providers in Scotland. That is a commendable feat and one that has helped to alleviate untold stress on many families and individuals in all our constituencies. That is achieved by providing their clients with a tailored and detailed financial plan that reassures both the client and creditor with affordable repayments. That undoubtedly brings hope to those who once felt hopeless. In cash terms, debt change helped their clients to pay off £30 million of debt in Scotland last year. I recently visited their Scottish headquarters in Boddwell Street and was granted permission from the clients to sit in some telephone consultations. The conversations between clients and advisers raised a number of issues. The first was that, despite the Tory Government's assertion that indebtedness is an issue for, in their words, the unemployed and the effectless, step change's research demonstrates that this is clearly not the case. Around one-third of clients are in full-time employment and another 30 per cent are unemployed and the remaining 40 per cent are those who have retired or students, carers and those in part-time employment. The adviser I was attached to, Michelle Robertson, shared with me two calls that particularly stick in my mind. The first were two doctors, GPs, who had £36,000 of payday loan debts across 27 different individual loans. These clients are not low-wage earners, they are not unemployed or sick or in firm. They are a well-paid couple who still find themselves dragged into the debt trap. That highlights how anyone can be caught in a spiral of misery. The other call that I was told of was much more concerning. A gentleman had taken out a payday loan of £60 over a three-day period. After missing the first repayment date, interest in charges escalated and, by the time he contacted step change, his debt was £3,500. By the time step change was able to put a hold on it, it was £5,000. That is just wrong. It is morally wrong, economically wrong and, in my view, it should be legally wrong to charge such exorbitant levels of interest. Step change has conducted regarding the effects of the proposed Tory tax credit reforms, so that currently 17 per cent of step change's clients who have three or more children are running a budget deficit. If those horrendous reforms are carried through, that figure shall take an astonishing leap to 90 per cent, with an average loss of £231 per month. That clearly demonstrates beyond doubt the importance of tax credits and assisting families to simply make ends meet. Without playing political games, I do want to say that the sooner this Parliament has the power to create its own tax credit system, the better for everyone affected by it. What is also extremely worrying is that step changer is seeing the make-up-of-client's debt shift from credit card debt to arrears and essential bills. In 2008, the average debt of a step change client was £25,000. The good news is that this has fallen to £14,000. However, now that debt is comprised mainly of rent arrears, council tax arrears and utility bill debt, both in the socially-rented accommodation and the private rented sector. A accruing debt has now come from buying things that it would like but could do without, to having to fall into debt to stay in your home and keep your utilities on. While there is clearly still a huge debt problem in Scotland, it is widely recognised that the efforts of the Scottish Government have assisted in providing help to those with debts. Scotland is the only statutory debt arrangement scheme in the UK, and it is a six-week breathing space that freezes interest rates and charges to allow a manageable and sensible debt repayment schedule. That is not available to clients in any other part of the United Kingdom, and we should be proud that we are leading the way. I not only commend the sterling work that step change does but acknowledge the many successful outcomes that James and his colleagues have reached for their clients. Their action plan outlines how this Parliament can help to ensure that Scotland continues to help those with debt problems. I recommend all members in the chamber to read it. I urge all members to contact step change and see how they can help you in your constituencies. Their research is thorough and detailed to a constituency level, which is very helpful in getting a feel for the local situation. None of our constituencies are free from personal debt. Step change reaches out to all our communities and provides vital help, and for that, it should be strongly commended and supported. We now turn to the open debate speeches of four minutes. I call Ken Macintosh to be followed by Gavin Brown. I thank my colleague James Dornan for bringing forward today's debate. I think that a particularly timely moment for the debate is the run-up to Christmas. Many families should be looking forward with some sense of anticipation and excitement, but the gross materialism that is so typical of Christmas these days means that it is a time of anxiety and dread. Many families will simply be asking themselves, how do I get through this? How will I survive Christmas? Of course, we know the answer. They will turn to loans, debt and credit cards and everything else increasing this problem. I also thank step change not just for bringing forward the briefing and for the help for today's debate but for the work that it does in helping people across Scotland and across the UK. I had caused to refer three constituents in one family to step change just two weeks ago. This is a family—three working adults, I may add, and mother and two young adults in their 20s—all of them in work. All of them in work. The mother had a permanent job for some time, low-paid. The two sons were in and out of work. What had happened in the last couple of months is that one of the sons had two part-time jobs and he lost both of them. The other son lost his part-time job. The effect on the family was catastrophic. The difficulty of the family had been in and out of work for several years. They fell into council tax debt in 2010 and were in and out of council tax debt in the rears and other council debt for five years now, constantly being threatened with court action and reaching arrangement schemes. They were faced with court action this week. The council has tried to arrange a payment plan in the middle of rearranging a payment plan, but often what happens in such situations is that the payment plan is one that is unaffordable to them and so it is not manageable and it creates another crisis. Those are very difficult issues. There is no doubt about it, but it points to the sort of help that step-changer is highlighting here. Very small savings to give people the resilience to survive, plus financial advice and support to see them through. Difficult issues but step-changer are pointing the way through. I am not sure how typical this family is, but I do think that it is untypical. I was conscious of the fact that James Dornan said that those are not unemployed, not feckless irresponsible people. They are often families and I would also make the point that I do not want to replay the tax credits argument either, but we have the powers here to make a difference, so let us use those powers. It will help some of those people. There is also another group that is a generational issue. A lot of the people in the growing problem of debt are young. I think that two quarters of between 25 and 35-year-olds are anxious about the current debt compared to about a third for those over 65. I want to just, if I can just mention my constituency, because I have sent the statistics by step-change and it is quite worrying. Eastwood clients had the highest average debt in Scotland—23,500 per person—the highest in Scotland. Over a third were in the rears of the council tax, such as the constituents that I saw. 15 per cent of clients had a payday loan, with an average balance of just under £2,000. I noticed that that was growing every single year, increasing every year, and a quarter had renter years. You can only surmise as to why that might be the case. I imagine that it is linked to the fact that Eastwood is a relatively prosperous area. I believe that, with higher incomes, you can borrow more money, so you get into deeper debt. However, it shows that the problem is across the board. If I can very briefly turn to some of the things that we can do, financial education is vital. One in five people cannot even read a bank statement, so financial education is vital. Social advertising from the Government—I admit that it is difficult—we can spend thousands or perhaps tens of thousands, or, as longer, we are spending millions of tens of millions, but it is something that we can do. A breathing space that we have been talking about that the Government has introduced, I asked the minister, Mr Ewing, earlier this year, what his position was in extending the six-week breathing space—the moratorium on diligence—under the debt-arrangement scheme. At the time, he said that it currently can be extended in prescribed circumstances, but he had no plans to further extension it. I would ask him whether he is looking at this because it is clearly very helpful to lift that threat from people in their moment of crisis. However, the most important conclusion from step change and the most important recommendation is that £1,000 in savings would protect 50,000 households in Scotland from problem debt. There are so many things that we are doing currently that we could build on. I draw the minister's attention to the I Save Credit Union, Renfusure, the Savvy Savers in South Lanarkshire and the Future Savers scheme in Glasgow, all based on credit unions, supported by our councils that usually give pupils' nests £110 to start a scheme, and it gets them in good habits, hopefully for the rest of their life. That is the sort of initiative that could really make a difference. It is something that the Government could support, perhaps underwriting with a loan guarantee scheme. I would ask the Government to look at it. I would end by congratulating Mr Dornan yet again on bringing today's important debate. Many thanks. I now call Gavin Brown to be followed by Sandra White. Presiding Officer, thank you. I also start by congratulating James Dornan on securing this debate and on raising an important issue, and I think highlighting an excellent report that is conducted by step change. I would say at the outset though that if we are serious about doing something to help families across the country, our time is far better served, discussing the excellent report instead of making partisan and political remarks. I hope that the minister will focus his speech on the report and what we can do instead of making partisan remarks. The report covers a range of areas, but it also comes up with six excellent solutions, all of which require further investigation and two of which I want to focus on in the course of my remarks. Ken Macintosh is right to say that this time of year is a particular challenge for families. No time of year is easy, of course, but Christmas presents a particular challenge, which is a good reason for having the debate now. The problem, which is already widespread with 3 million people across the UK, could potentially grow as the years go by, with the challenges that we face in the global economy, Euro difficulties being delayed but not resolved. However, the biggest challenge of all, and one that I have to say I genuinely fear, is that at some point, whether that is next year, the year after or the year after, interest rates will go up. Interest rates can hardly come down, they have been at half a per cent, they have become effectively normalised at half a per cent, but when interest rates go up, whether that is to 1 per cent or 2 per cent, that will cause a whole new generation of problems for tens of thousands of families across the country. So now is the time to put in the hard yards the big effort in a cross-party, cross-national basis to try and make sure that we get on the right path as soon as we possibly can. Presiding Officer, the two issues in particular, which I think the issue raised that I want to focus on are this. One of the solutions from step change, focused on pages primarily 10 and 11 of the report, is calling for a review of affordable credit, trying to seek far better alternatives to the high interest credit that those on low incomes generally face. We read in a previous step change report that 29 per cent of total debt is on credit cards, which have some of the highest APRs and rates. This will not be an easy challenge to review, because typically the more money somebody has, the better prospect they will get, the lower credit terms they will get, the less money they have and particularly those who need it most will get the highest and most challenging credit terms. It is not easy, but I have to say that I was particularly impressed by the good shepherd project in Australia, which the report highlights. A microfinance programme, which pools a range of charitable government and financial services support and funding, provides different low-income loans and grants to suit different circumstances and provides available mainstream banks and high-street outlets locally. It appears to have been a big success in Australia. I know little about it other than what is in the report, but it strikes me as perhaps a very good starting point to try and help people not just in Scotland but across the UK as a whole. The second point, which I think was particularly strong in the report, is the idea that we need a pretty big expansion of free debt advice. There are very good charities out there. Step change do a particularly good job. There are government schemes too, Presiding Officer, but with 3 million people across the UK being in serious debt problems at the moment, we need to do much more. The people that we are currently reaching are those who are best placed to sort their problems out. The ones that I worry about most are the ones that do not come to debt charities, the ones that literally put their heads in their hands and allow their stress to grow. With every week or month that passes in that situation, it becomes more difficult to resolve the problems and the debts rack up in a sometimes frightening way in the way that James Dorran talked about in his second example. Presiding Officer, getting debt advice in a more innovative way so that we start to reach the people that currently, quite simply, are not being reached seems to be something that we need to look at pretty urgently. I would ask the minister to address both of those points so that he has time in his closing remarks. I also thank James Dorran for bringing this issue to the chamber today. There is no doubt by the evidence that we have seen in the papers that have been given and also by the contributions from other MSPs that people are increasingly finding it difficult to manage. As Ken Macintosh had said with the Christmas period coming up, he had these huge advertising campaigns aimed at parents for children. It is obvious that people get into debt and find it very difficult to get back out of it again. I congratulate Step Change and the other organisations that provide help and advice during a very difficult period for many, many people. Like James Dorran and I have visited Step Change, it is in my constituency in the Glasgow city centre. I am very impressed by how it is handled there. The first thing that I did twice is that I spoke to the staff, because I am always conscious of the fact that, in some cases, it is based on how many calls you take and how quickly you alleviate the calls that come in. What impressed me was the fact that people took their time over those calls. I was also allowed to listen in and to the clients' heads, to some of the issues that were raised there. One particular one sticks in my mind where they phoned a person back who had to go out and get their mobile phone charged up. They phoned them while they were out with their mobile phone to give them advice as quickly as possible so that they could go down and sort something out. I was very impressed by what was offered through Step Change and the debt change. I really hope that they continue to provide that advice. Like Ken Macintosh, many people believe that my constituency in Glasgow-Kelvin is a very affluent constituency. It is in certain parts, but we also have problems. I want to give you a couple of figures that will probably surprise people when they think of the Glasgow-Kelvin constituency. In Kelvin, more than one third of my constituencies were in rears with a rent. 17 per cent had electricity and built rears. 41 per cent of clients had council tax rears, and 16 per cent had a payday loan with an average balance of £1,560. As Ken Macintosh said, if you get more money, you can afford to take out more credit cards, etc. The importance of not just this debate but the fact that we have these organisations is that it is important for this Parliament and for us to ensure that people know that these organisations exist. I think that that is a big problem, and I come on to the issue that Ken Macintosh raised. People hide their head in the sand, unfortunately, but if they were more aware that there was help out there—I think that is our job and others, the Government's job as well—to ensure that the people know that it is out there, they may contact them more timidly, and that is where the breathing space comes in. We know that we in Scotland are very lucky, and James Dornan and Ken Macintosh have also mentioned that. We have that advantage over other parts of the UK that we have in this breathing space, but it has already been mentioned that it is only six weeks. Sometimes, when people take that big step to contact organisations, they are already three or four weeks in arrears, and by the time they fall with their papers and contact various people, the interests in those debts are mounting up. I would like to ask the minister any summing up. Is there any other way that we can extend that period to nine weeks or even 12 weeks? People tend to breathe their head in the sand, and it is a great worry that people do not contact the organisations straight away. James Dornan mentioned the situation just now with the tax credits and Westminster, and I do not think that we can hide from that, Mr Roberts. It is not being political to mention that. I think that we have all got to work together in this chamber to ensure that people are aware that there is help out there for them, regardless of what the political situation is. I would like to say that we all agree that those organisations do a great job. We have to highlight and publicise them more, but perhaps we could extend the breathing space a wee bit, and I would look forward to the minister's reply in the summing up. Many thanks, and I now invite Fergus Ewing to respond to the debate minister. Seven minutes or so, please. I am delighted that James Dornan has given us the opportunity to debate the excellent work that the charity Step Change performs for people in Scotland and throughout the UK. Reference is made to the fact that Gillian Thomson of Step Change is listening to the debate, and she was the former accountant bankruptcy with whom I worked for many years. Sharon Bell, who also works with Step Change, used to be an adviser to the Scottish Government and sits at the seats up at the back in the debates that I have carried out since 2007. I want to focus on the work that Step Change has done and on its report and action plan on problem debt. I think that this is one of the best reports that I have seen for a long time, and it focuses on practical solutions to what I think is one of the most deep-seated and serious problems that is so often hidden from view in Britain. In the UK, over 2.4 million dependent children live in indebted households. Step Change pointed out that those children suffer hardship and mental distress. More than half of the children aged 10 to 17 are embarrassed because they lack the things that their peers have and nearly one in five have been bullied as a result. Step Change pointed out that personal credit debt in the UK stands at £168 billion. Debt is not a problem in itself. Debt is necessary for some purposes in life and where it is managed and controlled and affordable and repaid. It is necessary for many purposes, buying a house and buying a car. However, when it becomes a problem, I am afraid that things become very different indeed. The problem is very often not triggered by any fault, by proflegacy. The problem is very often delivered by things that occur in life, such as losing a job and being made redundant, such as illness in a family, such as relationship breakdown. That was evident to me in the days that are somewhat in the distant past now, when I was running a small legal practice and where I routinely acted for the debtor and focused in particular on specialising and trying to preserve the family home. That experience left its mark on me as explaining and giving me an insight into the human cost, the human misery of those problems. What is the step change in the report that we are recommending? We recommend that every family should have £1,000 in savings to cover a sudden cost or income shock. There are many shocks for people who have no spare cash. The washing machine breaks down. If you have children well, you need a washing machine. Go out and buy it with a payday loan can be the start of the problems. Mr Dornan gave one example of a payday loan. It sounds like an ambitious policy, but if you read the recommendations in step change report, they go some way to saying how it can be made to work through nudging and changing behaviour, deductions and linking it to the automatic payroll pension, I believe. That would not deal with self-employed, it would not deal with people below £10,000 income, but read the report because I think that it sets out a fascinating proposal that across the parties, I hope, will receive the attention that it deserves. To ensure that all low-income households can access low-cost credit products, step change, as James Dornan pointed out, advise a huge number of people, an enormous number of people in Scotland and the UK. In a great number of cases, their advice is efficacious. In other words, it works. Of course, not everybody takes advice, as I well remember. Many people choose to ignore it, but many people do and benefit from it, and their lives change for the better substantially. We want to scale up free advice so that it reaches the 1.4 million people who urgently need it. That is why, among the reforms that we have made, we need to make debt advice mandatory in certain circumstances. That has led in turn to, I think, a greater uptake of advice. To ensure that everyone dealing with their debt problem gets the protection against interest charges, enforcement and collections that they need. We have, in Scotland, taken forward the DAS, the Debt Administration Scheme proposal. I am not sure that they have brought a counterpart in England. It works well. It provides a diligence stopper. The fear of debt action being taken, the sheriff officers coming to the door, is a huge fear. Unless one has been there or has spoken to people directly who have been affected, it is difficult to understand that, in our comfortable lives, we are unaware of the pressures. Therefore, the DAS, the Dilligence Stopper of six weeks, provides a breathing space. Three members, I think, have said that maybe that should be extended. Let me confirm that we are undertaking a policy review of all the bad-ass—that is a piece of legislation, Presiding Officer—reforms, including the moratorium period, and that will take place next year. It is the bad-ass, as I should say. For the uninitiated, it is the bankruptcy and debt advice Scotland legislation. It just trips off the tongue, does it not? We need to protect children and families for the harm of aggressive debt collection practices. I was pleased that payday loans are now subject to caps of £15 default fee in 100 per cent interest, but, for goodness me, 100 per cent interest is that the right cap? I do not think so. The first debate that we had in this session of Parliament was on that topic, and I pressed the UK Government time and time again. Firstly, they said that they were not doing anything about it. Laterally they did, but I do not think that they or the FCA have gone far enough. I see that I am into my last minute. If step change did not exist, we would have to invent them. They are a great charity. They do terrific work. Mr Macintosh's suggestion or practice of referring a constituent to step change is one that we could emulate. Maybe we could encourage MSPs and MPs to do that, because they will receive good advice. We are doing a lot in education at the moment. We have a financial health service policy that 35,000 people have benefited from. We are working on credit union availability, about which I have 18 seconds to impart. Not enough, I am afraid, perhaps another day. In Scotland there is a broader consensus that the sort of recommendations from step change in this excellent report on action plan and problem debt are things that we want to do and we want to see happen. If we do them, even only partly, we will make a tremendous difference to the lives of many in this country, which are scarred by the misery of having a problem debt issue. That concludes James Dornan's debate on step change to debt charities action plan on problem debt. I now suspend this meeting until 2.30 p.m.