 We now move on to the next item on business. Yes, point of order from Mike Rumbles. 3.1A, this says a bill shall an introduction be accompanied by a written statement signed by the Presiding Officer which shall a indicate whether or not in the Presiding Officer's view the provisions of the bill would be in the legislative competence of the Parliament. Presiding Officer, we are all aware that during the recess the Scottish Government published its draft bill on another referendum aiming to the breakup of the United Kingdom. This draft bill, if it were introduced as a bill, is universally recognised as being outwith the competence of this Scottish Parliament. In such an unprecedented case, the standing orders are silent as to the effect of the Presiding Officer's written confirmation that the bill would lie outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament. I am sure that it would be immensely helpful to all members of the Scottish Parliament to be aware of the effect—I stress the word the effect—of such a ruling by the Presiding Officer. For instance, would the effect be for such a bill to proceed through its stages to a vote if it was presented, or would it be referred immediately to the Supreme Court for a ruling? Your guidance on this matter would be extremely helpful. I thank the member for advance notice of the point of order. Rule 9.3.1 states that a bill on introduction shall be accompanied by a written statement which indicates whether or not, in my view, the provisions of the bill would be within the legislative competence of the Parliament. Where I consider any of the provisions to be outwith our competence, I must provide reasons for that view. If I am off the view that a bill is outwith competence, it can still be introduced and parliamentary scrutiny would proceed on that basis. Let me make it clear. I provide this advice to help members and the public to understand the process, but I am not and will not express a view on any specific bill before it is introduced. The competence of any bill passed by the Parliament can be challenged by the law officers in the four-week period before the bill is submitted for royal assent. Ultimately, any challenge taken after that period would be for the courts to determine. The next item of business is a debate on motion number 2077, in the name of Angela Constance, on building a fairer Scotland. It takes all of us. I call on Angela Constance to speak to you and move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to open this debate today on a fairer Scotland and on the action plan that was published earlier this month. I am sure that the whole chamber will support the central contention in today's motion that it genuinely takes all of us to build a fairer Scotland. I very much look forward to debating with colleagues across this chamber about how we can work together to achieve this. In terms of where we are and what we have already delivered, there is indeed much to be upbeat and optimistic about. A few examples would be that Scotland outperforms the UK on youth employment and women's employment. Over 25,000 people have started a modern apprenticeship in each of the last five years. We have the second highest proportion of employees paid the living wage or more at 80.5 per cent, just behind the south-east of England at 81.6 per cent. The number of Scots-based accredited living wage employers is now 595. Of course, there is still much more to do around one in six people in this country who are still living in poverty. In-work poverty has been increasing, with more than half 58 per cent of the working-age adult population who live in poverty are living in households where someone is in work. I am somewhat disappointed that the Conservative amendment today has overlooked the key aspect of poverty, one that is made worse by cuts to working welfare over the past six years. That is why the fairer Scotland action plan is so important. It features 50 concrete actions that the Government will take in this parliamentary term to alleviate poverty and tackle inequality. The plan makes clear our ambition for a fair, smart and inclusive Scotland by 2030, where everyone can feel at home, where poverty rates are amongst the lowest in Europe and where there is a genuine equality of opportunity for everyone. We know that the Government cannot deliver this ambition on its own. It does indeed take all of us to build a fairer Scotland. That is why we place such emphasis on working closely with people and communities, with businesses and employers, with the third sector and with public bodies to learn from best practice and to drive change. All of us here in this chamber today will need to play our part 2. I very much welcome the ideas, the innovation and indeed the challenge that the chamber will no doubt offer in the course of this debate and other debates in the months and years ahead. I am pleased that the plan has been warmly welcomed by stakeholders. Alistair Pringle, director of the equality and human rights commission in Scotland, called the plan a bold vision for a fairer Scotland and made clear that the EHRC will play its full part in making the plan's ambition a reality. Sarah Jackson, chief executive of working families, described the action plan as a great step forward for fair work in Scotland. Dr Sally Witcher OBE, chief executive of Inclusion Scotland, said that there is much to be welcomed in the plan that could have a positive impact on disabled people's lives, but she added that the challenge now is to transform paper commitments into reality in order to achieve the reduction in inequality and poverty that all of us want to see. While the action plan is important in itself, it is delivering on the action that counts. That is why we have committed to a progress report in 2019 to set out where we are doing well and where we could do better. However, I recognise that the Labour amendment has asked for annual reporting and reflected on the importance of the fairer Scotland action plan. I am willing to accept us. We know that delivering on our ambition will not be easy, but if we succeed, we will all benefit, because a fairer country is good for everyone. The international evidence is clear that income inequality undermines educational opportunity, restricts skills development and reduces social mobility. It also limits growth too, because, according to the OECD, rising income inequality between 1990 and 2010 reduced UK economic growth by 9 per cent. We know that poverty has massive costs for all Governments. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that the cost of poverty to the UK public purse is £78 billion each year. That implies that the cost to Scotland is in the region between £6 billion and £7 billion. Of course, there are many different ways to consider the cost of poverty, and those estimates do not include some of the wider costs to society. What is clear from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation research is that we spend a significant amount of money making up for the damage that poverty does to people's lives. While the UK Government might think that it is smart to cut £12 billion from its welfare budget, in the long run, that decision is likely to backfire with increasing costs from higher levels of poverty and, indeed, weaker economic growth because of widening inequality. In contrast, we in Scotland have a specific ambition to reduce poverty and, through our inclusive growth policies, share the proceeds of growth more widely. If we can do that, Scotland will not only have a stronger economy but a stronger society too. The Fairer Scotland action plan contains 50 actions that are ambitious, affordable and achievable. It is based on what we heard from 7,000 people who took part in 200 Fairer Scotland conversations from Dumfries to Stornoway. The plan does not include actions that we would like to take but cannot because of power to do so reserved. It is not an exhaustive list of actions covering everything that the Scottish Government is already doing. I note that the Conservatives had suggested in their amendment that there is not enough about racial discrimination in the plan. I want to reassure Mr Tomkins that this Government is absolutely determined to advance race equality in Scotland, and our race equality framework has been developed specifically to address the barriers that prevent people from minority ethnic communities from realising their potential. Implementing the framework is, I am pleased to say, a key element of the Fairer Scotland action plan. The plan sets out the key actions that we will take in this parliamentary term, but it also sets out our commitment to take long-term action to change our society and make it a fairer and more equal place to live. As politicians, we know that it takes courage not to just go for the quick wins but to focus on the long term. Building a fairer Scotland is inevitably going to be a long-term effort, and it will mean that all of us across political parties will need to work together to achieve it. I want to focus in particular on one theme in the action plan, which is bringing about an end to child poverty, which absolutely is a long-term challenge. However, it is a challenge that we are committed to doing absolutely everything within our power, and our eyes are very firmly on the ambition to eradicate child poverty. Poverty for anyone, whether they have children or not, whether they are young or old, means waking up every day facing insecurity, uncertainty and absolutely impossible decisions about money. It means facing marginalisation and even discrimination simply because of your financial situation. It can have long-term impacts on your prospects and the places that you live in. Poverty for children can have effects that last a lifetime, and that is why it is so important to act now. The plan contains a range of actions to do just that, increasing childcare provision, tackling the poverty premium, delivering on the baby box of essential basic supplies and addressing the attainment gap. The child poverty bill that I will be bringing forward in this parliamentary year sets out our ambition. We have already consulted on new 2030 targets to make significant reductions in child poverty, and we will provide more detail about our plans in the coming months. Again, I note that the Conservative amendment says that any poverty indicator must include some measurement of household costs. On that, I absolutely agree, because that is why our child poverty targets and our other poverty measurements take housing costs into account as they are one of the major costs that are faced by low-income households. Our targets are actually more ambitious than the 2020 targets that were scrapped by the UK Government precisely because they do that. I am very grateful to the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention. Do I understand it correctly, cabinet minister, that the Scottish Government agrees with the Scottish Conservatives that poverty cannot, meaningfully, be measured by reference to income alone, but that costs must be taken into account as well as income? I am somewhat disappointed that Mr Tomkins has not appreciated that underpin in our current child poverty strategy and our current measurements of poverty that we already include housing costs. In our consultation on the child poverty bill that we are going forward with, again, we lay that out, because, while poverty indicators and poverty measurements that are before housing costs can be useful in terms of international comparators, we absolutely agree with the point and have put in practice the point that you have to include household costs. To demonstrate that, one of the reasons that child poverty in Scotland, while too high, is lower than the UK is because of our investment in affordable housing. I am glad that the Conservatives have caught up with the position of this Government. It is somewhat sad that the UK Tory Government does not recognise this point about affordable housing and how that has to be part of a measurement. Fundamentally, it does not recognise that, more than anything else, income drives poverty or the lack of income drives poverty. That is where we have a fundamental disagreement with the UK Government, because in scrapping those statutory income targets that are less ambitious than the ones that we are proposing, I believe that the UK Government has tried to sweep child poverty under the carpet. I am also disappointed and at times quite disgusted in the way in which it characterised poverty by ignoring income. It tends to focus on other aspects of poverty to try and imply that there is something about poverty that is about a lifestyle choice. We have to recognise and stand firm that we cannot have an anti-poverty strategy that does not recognise the importance of income. Before I close, I want to focus quickly on three key actions to tackle poverty more generally. The first action in the Fairer Scotland action plan is to introduce a new social economic duty on public authorities in 2017. Scotland will be the first and the only part of the UK to have such a duty. The social economic duty was a dormant part of the UK equality act, a piece of the act that Theresa May refused to introduce. Scotland, now that we have the powers, will indeed introduce the social economic duty, because ensuring that public bodies take account, place utmost priority on tackling social disadvantage and to take that seriously when they are making all major decisions, all major strategic decisions and decisions about resources is one that we believe is fundamentally important. I will be consulting on the detail about how we go about that and how we do that shortly. The Scottish Government, I want to ensure chamber, will itself be bound by the duty and we intend to be a model of absolute best practice. Secondly, we will introduce a new £29 million innovation fund, including £12.5 million from the European social fund. We know that many of the best ideas come from communities and the third sector. Over the next two years, the new programme will enable them to design, test and deliver innovative approaches to reduce poverty and tackle inequality. We will also provide start-up funding for three new organisations across Scotland, modelled on the poverty truth commission. The commission has been very successful in getting the voices of people who have experienced poverty, lived experience of poverty, into the national debate, and now we need to help us to continue at a local level too. We have already agreed to fund the Dundee partnership to take one commission forward locally. In conclusion, I want to invite everyone in this chamber to help Scotland to become a fairer, more prosperous and cohesive country. We know that a fairer Scotland is a country that builds on the assets of its people and communities. It is a country that gives everyone a chance to achieve their potential and to live long, healthy and fulfilling lives. Above all, it is a country that we are all proud to call home. It does take all of us to build a fairer Scotland. I pledge to play my part and look forward to working with colleagues across the chamber to do so. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I invite all members to press their request-to-speak buttons if they wish to participate. I call Adam Tomkins to open for the Conservatives. We support the Government's motion today. We agree that poverty must be reduced. We agree that this will require Government to work with business and the third sector and, indeed, with opposition parties, that the attainment gap must be tackled, that mental healthcare must be improved and that housing should be affordable and warm. Our amendment today, which I formally move, removes not one word from the Government motion but seeks to add to it. Because, on those benches, we consider that the Government, for all its efforts, will not achieve a fairer Scotland unless it is willing to take on challenges that it has thus far rather shied away from. I want to draw attention in those remarks, in particular, to three areas where we think that too little is said in the fairer Scotland action plan—employment, racial and religious intolerance—which the cabinet secretary referred to in her remarks a few moments ago—and decentralisation and local empowerment. First, we consider that, in a fairer Scotland, the employment growth rate would not lag badly behind that of every other nation and region in the United Kingdom. Likewise, in a fairer Scotland, the employment rate would be going up as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom and not down as it is here under the SNP. The figures on that are alarming, Presiding Officer. The employment growth rate in Scotland is lower than the north-east of England, the north-west of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. London has an employment growth rate that dwarfs Scotland and the east-midlands of England. Hardly the most affluent part of the country has a growth rate three times Scotland. Jobs growth for women in employment in Scotland is also poor. Since 2007, female employment has grown by only 5 per cent in Scotland, compared with more than 10 per cent in the UK as a whole. The gender pay gap is also wider in Scotland than it is elsewhere in the UK. Is that a fairer Scotland, a more inclusive Scotland? Compare that with the Conservatives' record in government. Since 2010, unemployment in the United Kingdom has fallen by 30 per cent and long-term unemployment by 35 per cent. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits has fallen to its lowest level since 1975. There are now more than 31.8 million people in work in Britain, more than ever before and up by nearly 3 million since 2010. There are more disabled people in work today. 360,000 people with a disability have found work in Britain in the last two years who were not previously in employment. There are more women in work in Britain now than ever before and fully three quarters of this growth in employment in Britain since 2010 has been in full-time work. 95 per cent of it is in full-time work or in self-employment. I am grateful to Mr Tomkins. I wonder if he would recognise that women's employment in Scotland is consistently within the top five in Europe. I wonder if he would also recognise the fact that the pay gap, while persistent and we still have much work to do to tackle it, has fallen in Scotland and is lower in Scotland than it is across the UK. The figures are approximately 9.4 per cent pay gap for the UK. In Scotland it is around something like 7.4 per cent. Would he also recognise that, in terms of the last labour market statistics that we realised, that we had the biggest quarterly increase in employment on record and that employment across the piece is now over 50,000 above our pre-recession income? Mr Tomkins. I am very happy to recognise all those facts, but this is hardly the first time that from those benches we have raised the problem. I am sure that the cabinet secretary would agree that it is a problem that the employment growth rate in Scotland is woefully poor in comparison with every other region and nation of the United Kingdom, yet we never hear a response from the Scottish Government about what it proposes to do to tackle the poor employment growth rate that Scotland suffers from. It is not just about fairness, it is about tackling poverty itself. As the Joseph Rantry Foundation so clearly said in the same document that the cabinet secretary quoted from earlier, for those who can, work represents the best route out of poverty, and that is exactly what we on these benches believe. Let me finish the point about employment and I will certainly give way. Why are things so much worse in Scotland than they are in the rest of the UK? Has it perhaps got something to do with the fog of uncertainty hanging over the Scottish economy as a result of the SNP's endless campaigning on separation? Has it perhaps got something to do with Skills Development Scotland, a Scottish Government quango having its budget cut by more than £25 million since 2011? Has it perhaps got something to do with the low number of apprenticeships in the Scottish economy? There are twice as many per head of population in England as there are here in Scotland, or has it perhaps got something to do with the 152,000 college places that the SNP has cut, de-skilling the Scottish workforce at a time when employers are crying out for precisely the opposite? Just last week, the Scottish Chamber of Commerce talked about the urgent need to grow Scotland's productivity and reported that businesses are saying that there are significant opportunities to grow employment in Scotland, not least in the digital sector. I am happy to give way to the minister. Thank you very much. Will Mr Tomkins recognise the following things? First of all, Joseph Rowntree, and he and I have had this conversation before. Joseph Rowntree pointed to the importance of work, pointed to the importance of well-paid, properly-rewarded fair work, which is part of our fair work agreement and framework. Will he recognise that any fog of uncertainty that may exist is actually a fog of uncertainty caused by Brexit and particularly caused by his Government at Westminster's failure, utter failure, to point to any route that we might collectively take out of that? Will he also recognise that we have the gold standard in apprenticeship programmes because our apprenticeships are linked to employment unlike those that are run by the Westminster Government? Mr Tomkins, the idea that the problems in the Scottish economy, which are not shared by the rest of the United Kingdom, are caused because of the decision of 17.5 million British people to leave the European Union and not caused by the SNP's endless banging on about independence is, frankly, for the birds. I thought that the minister was capable of better than that. If the SNP needs to be doing more to address work and worklessness in Scotland, so too in our amendment, and the Cabinet Secretary was good enough to recognise that in her remarks a few moments ago, we considered that there should be more said in the fairer Scotland action plan about race and religion. We all know that the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and the Minister for Social Security have made gender equality a high priority. They are right to have done so, but not at the expense of race and religion, which, in comparison with gender, are all too often brushed under the carpet in Scotland. In July, it was reported that a study funded by the Scottish Government found that the Jewish community in Scotland feels increasingly isolated and fearful. It is becoming more common for Scotland's Jews to keep their Jewishness secret. I declare an interest, Presiding Officer, and that my wife and our four children are Jewish. Many of the hundreds of Israelis in Scotland hide their nationality and do not speak Hebrew in public. Numerous respondents have told Schodjek, the Scottish Council for Jewish Communities, that they have stopped attending synagogue because of fear of antisemitism, that they have been the victims of anti-Semitic jokes or social media posts, or that they have felt victimised for being Jewish. Angela Constance said at the time that the report was published that she would give full consideration to it, and I welcome that. Where in the fairer Scotland action plan is there any reference to it? The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, while they are supportive of the fairer Scotland agenda, wrote to me last week to record their concern that, of the 50 actions outlined in the plan, only one is centred on race equality, and even that commitment to implement the race equality framework for Scotland is simply a reheating or repetition of a commitment that was already made last March. The third area where we think that much more needs to be done in order to create a genuinely fairer Scotland is decentralisation. As the leader of Glasgow City Council urged in the Times newspaper on Friday, Scotland's cities are crying out for greater devolution in order to allow them to grow their local economies. This is happening in England, it's happening elsewhere in the world, it's happening in the Netherlands, in Germany, in France, in Canada and Australia, but not here in Scotland. The minister is the cabinet secretary for communities and social security and ecologies. Since the election and her appointment to that position, we've had several important debates in this chamber on government motions concerned with the social security and equality aspects of her brief, but we've had nothing, no government time on communities, which speaks volumes, I fear, for just how little the SNP cares about localism and communities and about devolution within Scotland. A fairer Scotland would be a radically more decentralised country. I'm afraid I'm running out of time because of the length of the interventions that I've already taken. In a fairer Scotland, our cities wouldn't be failing even to play catch-up with Manchester or Birmingham, they'd be leading the way, blazing a fresh trail of local empowerment. The leaders of our cities recognise this potential. They are straining at the leash to foster growth, to create employment and to make Scotland cities more attractive places to do business from the bottom up. They want to take decisions and set the strategy at a local level to help their communities to prosper, but they also recognise that, as drivers of the national economy, our cities risk falling behind their UK equivalents, which have benefited from a targeted programme of devolution and decentralisation since 2010. Where there is clarity and consensus on the decentralisation agenda in England, there is only uncertainty in Scotland. This, council leaders argue, threatens to exacerbate the emerging gap between Scotland's cities and UK counterparts. I've talked about three things that the S&P are not doing that they would need to do to create a fairer Scotland, but there are also some things that I think the S&P are doing that they should stop. They should abandon their plans to make Scotland the highest taxed part of the UK. They should repeal their hated and illegal named persons legislation and replace it with a crisis family fund, providing tailored support to those with the most complex needs. They should reverse the dismal slide in standards in our schools. They should address the shameful fact that a lower proportion of students from our most deprived communities go to universities than is the case in England. In England, it's one child in five. From the most deprived communities in Scotland, it's one child in 10. Just today, fresh statistics show that bursary support for students in Scotland has been almost halved. How does that contribute to a fairer Scotland? The S&P should reverse the 20 per cent cut in last year's budget in drug and alcohol funding, a cut that it implemented despite the fact that 2015 saw the highest number of drugs related deaths in Scotland on record, more than double the figure for 2005. More than anything else, the S&P must, as a matter of urgency, address the fact that growth in the Scottish economy persistently lags behind the UK as a whole. In the last year, the UK economy grew by more than 2 per cent Scotland's by only 0.7 per cent. If only they'd focused on those tasks, rather than cyber-rattling about an unwanted, divisive and unnecessary second independence referendum, Scotland really would have the chance of being a fairer country. Alex Rowley, a token for Labour. Thanks, Presiding Officer. Moving the Labour amendment today, can I first of all welcome the fairer Scotland action plan and say that, while we have concerns over emissions from the plan and the questions over the way it is to be delivered and funded, the general direction is something that we will support. Our amendment therefore is aimed at being supportive and I hope demonstrates Scottish Labour's wish to work with the Government to do all within the powers of this Parliament to tackle the unacceptable levels of low-income and deep-rooted deprivation and inequality that exist in 21st century Scotland. The 50-point action plan will not on its own be able to eradicate poverty but, if delivered, will make a big difference for tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals in Scottish families. That's why we believe that this Parliament should take ownership of this plan and receive regular feedback on progress being made and be able to scrutinise and debate that progress. This afternoon, I listened carefully to what Adam Tomkins had to say, and I conclude that not only do the Scottish Tories have a rather simplistic view of the causes of poverty, but more they are in complete denial about their role in increasing the levels of poverty in Scotland over the past six years. The inhumane bedroom tax, the flawed welfare reforms, the sanctions regime and the failure to invest in our economy are all contributors to the rising levels of poverty since 2010. Today, the Scottish Tories could join the consensus in this Parliament and condemn the Westminster Tory Government's decision to scrap the child poverty targets introduced by the last Labour Government, but they won't. Let us also be clear that austerity is a key driver of economic failure and deepening inequality in our country. If the Scottish Tories are serious about addressing the big issues, I suggest that they oppose any further welfare reforms that will drive more and more people into poverty and campaign for an end to the failed austerity policies of their Government and Westminster that has increased debt and driven down living standards for millions of working people. To the SNP, I say that we must stand up against austerity not just in words but in actions. Let us have an honest discussion about how we fund public services. The failure to scrap the council tax is just one example of a failure of our Government in Edinburgh to find a more fair way of funding public services. It is a failure that has cost tens of thousands of jobs, while vital community services buckle under the sustained cuts to our communities. I say that the first big test of the Government's intention to implement the plan will be its budget to be published later this year. If it has been widely reported, the biggest losers from that budget will be local communities through austerity cuts to local public services, then, believe me, inequality will continue to grow in Scotland. Even at this stage, I would appeal to the finance secretary to get round the table with other parties in this Parliament and have an open discussion on how we can stop the most severe cuts to public services and how we can build a new public service reform partnership so that all levels of Government are joined up together in addressing the major challenges facing our communities in 21st century Scotland. Actions speak louder than words and we need action to invest and regenerate our economies at the local, regional and national level. The action plan takes all of us to build a fairer Scotland—a point that the minister, cabinet secretary, has made—and one that is true. However, let me say that it takes political leadership, strong political leadership and a willingness to be bold. In Scotland, we spend billions of pounds within the private sector on procurement of goods and services. Let us say that we will use the procurement of goods and services to build a new social and economic partnership in every region of Scotland that will deliver local labour agreements, local skills programmes and an apprenticeship programme in every local authority area of Scotland—a national house-building programme that, with local delivery plans to address the unacceptable housing crisis that we have in our country, will deliver local jobs, skills and apprenticeships. We are making progress on the living wage, but not at the pace that we need to do if we are to increase incomes by the levels that we must to tackle poverty in Scotland. We must use the procurement as a tool and we must commit to ending zero air contracts and the growing use of employment agency practices up and down the country. Let us commit to ending the scourge of fuel poverty, not just with words but with a clear national plan, setting out measurable targets year on year and linking to regional economic strategies with a clear target for jobs, skills and apprenticeships. Joined up government, bold leadership and a knowledge that we must build new partnerships and new understanding with all levels of government as equals, with business and industry, with the dynamic Scottish third sector and with community-based action plans, the length and breadth of our country. I look forward to reading the responses to the social security consultation currently under way, because, as the poverty aligns, we must open up the processes to the experiences of those who live in poverty, and I say that we should build a national consensus against poverty and for action to eradicate it. One of the responses is from the child poverty action group in Scotland, and they call for a top-up on child benefit of £5 a week, which they say is projected to reduce child poverty in Scotland by 12 per cent, meaning that 30,000 fewer children in poverty than would otherwise be the case. As the Children and Young People's Commissioner's Office has stated, child hunger has been linked with depression, suicidal thoughts and late adolescence and early adulthood. Is it not a national disgrace that children in Scotland go regularly hungry in 2016? We have the opportunity to bring together all aspects of Scottish Government, Scottish business, Scottish industry, Scottish civic society and Scottish people to galvanise against poverty, an action plan against poverty, to let us show the leadership required and build consensus and build a task force that is required to, once and all, for all, beat poverty in Scotland. I very much welcome the Government motions commitment to achieving a fairer Scotland, a commitment that I am sure we all share. The motion welcomes the publication of the fairer Scotland action plan and it proposes a number of actions that are very welcome indeed, the proposed return of a socio-economic duty, the restoration of housing benefit for young people aged 18-21 and the new poverty and inequality commission are all important steps, but I cannot help but feel that the omission of tax is a glaring one. Unless we use new powers over tax to achieve some redistribution of income, wealth and life chances, those 50 measures, worthy and welcome though they are, will not lead to the fairer Scotland that the Scottish Government aspires to. Of course, tax changes alone will not fix poverty and inequality, but for progressive rate change not to make the Scottish Government's top 50 is a new kind of tax dodging from the Scottish Government. The only two of the top 50 fairness actions relating to tax refer to changes to council tax rebates. Those are welcome, but Naomi Eisenstadt told Nicola Sturgeon to be bold on tax reform and the commission on local tax reform told us that the present council tax system must end. The Scottish Green Party's tax plans in the election were clear and credible. They suggested ending the regressive and outdated council tax and replacing it with a modern property tax in local control, which would mean that the majority of households would pay less. That is a plan that would make housing more affordable and raise more money for public services. Our income tax plans would have reduced Scotland's inequality four times more than the Scottish Government's changes last year and raised more money for public services while leaving everyone earning below the median income paying less in tax. Taken together, those tax changes would shift tax from income to wealth, and the Scottish Government's own figures show that wealth inequality is dramatically more skewed compared with the distribution of income. It is time to see progressive tax changes as part of the plan for a fairer Scotland. That is why I am seeking to amend the motion to call for progressive taxation of income and wealth. I would now like to move on to discuss social security. Two decades of UK welfare reform has warped our social security system, in some cases fostering insecurity and actively undermining people's welfare. The system is too often not a springboard into social and economic inclusion. It is looking less like a safety net and often looks like a system for bullying people into low-paid insecure employment. Scottish Greens were the only party to stand on a manifesto that promised to stop sanctions operating through devolved employment programmes. Thousands of people agreed, and I am very pleased that the SNP Government has listened and taken action. Ending sanctions is part of a broader direction of travel towards the Scottish Green Party's preferred approach to social security, a universal basic income. That is a transformational idea, where all citizens would be paid a basic unconditional income enough to meet everyone's basic needs. Because everyone receives the citizens' income, it would remove the stigma of benefits and promote solidarity. Women in particular would benefit from a citizens' income. The late Scottish economist Professor Ailsa Mackay was a lifelong advocate. She made it clear that a citizens' income would recognise the diverse role of women as wives, mothers, carers and workers. The Scotland Act doesn't devolve sufficient powers to deliver a universal basic income. To make that a reality, perhaps we would require independence or, at the very least, a sea change in the UK benefits system. However, we can make some movement towards it in the way that people apply for the new benefits. I welcome the pledge to undertake targeted benefit uptake work to help people to claim the benefits that they are entitled to. To better understand the barriers that prevent people from claiming benefits, but more radical action is needed to ensure that those who need benefits actually get them. Universal basic income would not require a traditional benefits application, and it would be paid automatically to all citizens. We can mirror that in the new Scottish social security system. Whenever someone applies for an individual benefit, they could be automatically considered for all other benefits for which they might be eligible. Given the inherent complexity of the benefits system, the onus to make a benefit claim should not necessarily be on the individual, particularly when that individual may be stressed, vulnerable and unwell out of work. The Scottish Government should consider that approach if it is serious about doing more to ensure that people claim the benefits that they are entitled to, which was one of the independent poverty advisers' challenges. Very effective measures to raise awareness of benefit entitlement and help people to apply for benefits already exist—the healthier, wealthier children initiative chief among them. I was glad to have the Scottish Government's commitment to rolling out the healthier, wealthier children project in response to my call to the Cabinet Secretary for Health. That is a poverty reduction strategy that is proven to work. It puts money in the pockets of pregnant women and new families just when they need it most. Trustee to front-line NHS workers, such as midwives and health visitors, are ideally placed to refer vulnerable women and families to high-quality local money advice services. Of course, they need the resources and the capacity to enable them to do so. That is why I am seeking to amend the motion today to recognise the importance of projects such as healthier, wealthier children in working towards the ffader Scotland that we all want to see. I very much welcome the Scottish Government's aim to achieve a ffader Scotland and its 50 fairness actions, but they are only a start. Devolution has entered a new phase. The Scottish Parliament has more powers than ever before—greater powers over income tax and to start building a new Scottish social security system—a system that we can be proud of. Having argued for those powers, we will not be credible as a Parliament unless we have serious and open-minded discussions about how we use them. It is now time for Parliament to seriously discuss a more progressive system of income and wealth taxation to achieve that ffader Scotland. I will be pleased to support the Government's motion today and to support the Labour amendment, while there is content in the Conservative amendment that I agree with, particularly in ensuring that a ffader Scotland has to look at issues that perhaps have not received the attention that it deserves and the fact that we need to move to a more decentralized country with greater devolution to its cities. I am somewhat astonished to read Adam Tompkins' assertion that puts that addiction, family breakdown and worklessness is underlying causes of poverty. I suggest to Mr Tompkins—perhaps he will agree with me—that addiction, family breakdown and even worklessness are sometimes the effects of poverty. We now move to the open speeches of the six minutes please, and I call on George Adam to be followed by Annie Wells. I am glad to be speaking during this debate, because once again it gives me an opportunity to come at this from a very personal and local perspective. Something that I no doubt many of you will be surprised about. One of the things that I want to bring up and address is some of the things that Mr Tompkins said when he was talking about disabled people with disabilities and going to work. He was in the committee when Mr Bill Scott from Inclusion Scotland stated that 48 per cent of those in poverty are disabled people, and all that in the back of six years of Tory welfare reform and a Tory Government Westminster. I will take absolutely no lessons on where we are going forward from anyone in the Conservative benches, but, as I said, I will go back to personal and local perspective. During my time as Paisley's MSP, I have discussed the fact that my constituency can be used as a template for the rest of Scotland. On one hand, you have people getting on with their lives and are able to achieve their many life dreams and goals, but, like many other communities in Scotland, there are those struggling day-to-day with on-going challenges of poverty. As the cabinet secretary Angela Constance said, one in six are living in poverty. We all know that the Scottish index of multiple deprivation figures indicates that parts of Ferguson Park are amongst the most deprived in Scotland, but that is not the complete story of that community or of Paisley. For the past 20 years, Stacey and I have lived in Seatill Road in the east end of our town. According to the recent SIMD figures, the very street that we live on is an area of deprivation. David McCartney, my constituency office manager, is two streets away and is regarded as living in poverty. We have stayed in those areas for the same number of years, and that is not the Seatill we recognise. The same figures state that parts of Ferguson Park are the worst areas of deprivation in Scotland. My family is originally from Ferguson, and I am proud of my roots. However, what I am trying to say is that those indicators and statistics are low-helpful, useful and helpful as a target resource and do not define us as communities. What we do and what we strive to achieve is what makes the community and creates the opportunity to change it for the better. That is why I welcome the Scottish Government's Fair Scotland action plan. It is the Government's first response to the Fair Scotland conversation and backs its ambitions for a fair, smart and inclusive Scotland that will offer equality of opportunity for everyone. I believe that equality of opportunity is a good starting point for us all in this chamber. However, the Government alone cannot achieve that. It needs to be all of us nationally, locally and regardless of political standards. Communities need to embrace that. As I have mentioned earlier, poverty is not inevitable, regardless of who you are and where you live, but there are still too many of our people being left behind. It is our job to ensure that they receive the support that they require and do not be lost to us. We need to tackle what is known as the poverty premium, the fact that many lower-income households often pay higher prices for basic necessities such as gas, electricity and banking. Finding a banker or post office in a local street now is becoming more and more difficult. It is the individuals that we are talking about who are the people who actually need to get a banker or a building society in their street. I study by citizens advice Scotland found that utility companies are breeding poverty by charging poorer people more for their services. More than a quarter, 27 per cent of poor people use costly prepayment energy metres, often costing more than £100 per month. Comparison, only 12 per cent of middle earners and 1 per cent of high earners use these metres. 47 per cent of people on low incomes use more expensive pays-you-go mobile phones compared with 31 per cent of middle-income earners and 9 per cent of high income earners. While the Scottish Government is committed to tackling the poverty premium, many of the powers to fully address this are still held by the UK Government, such as the cost of utilities, including energy and telecoms. Once again, we are left in the need for further powers. The Scottish Parliament needs to address these issues fully. Even with that added challenge, as always, the Scottish Government is trying to find ways to address this, it is already protecting our communities by ensuring that £100 million is spent mitigating against the worst excesses of the Tory Westminster Government. Although that is helpful, every pound spent in mitigation measures ensures that we obviously have a pound less to spend on boosting the economy, encouraging jobs, job creation and, most important, getting people out of poverty. The Scottish Government is doing all that it can to reduce the poverty premium. Some of the action that is set out in the fairer Scotland action plan, one of its goals is to work towards Scotland being a good food nation where people have access to affordable, healthy and nutritious food in a dignified way. A recent event that I attended with the Scottish Poverty Alliance, there was much concern about how we could ensure that our populace did not get themselves into uncontrollable spiral of debt. The Scottish Government's financial health check service for people on low incomes is welcomed. Helping those on low incomes make the most of their money to secure the best energy tariffs and offer access to bank accounts. It is also important that the Scottish Government is working with partners to ensure that Scotland's people get the advice that they need at the time that they need it. The Scottish Government wants to change deep-seated, multi-generational deprivation, poverty and inequalities. Is that challenging? Yes. Is that ambition also a long-term goal that we all must buy into? However, it is the right thing to do. Let me take you back to the beginning of my speech and talk about areas such as Seathill, Ferguson and Paisley. Those problems are deep-seated and have been like that for generations. We must use that opportunity to draw a line in the sand and say no more. It is not acceptable for us to have people in the same street as us who are living in poverty unable to access the support that they need or to get the opportunity to achieve their dreams and aspirations. We all come into this world in the same way, and no matter who we are or where we live, we are all heading towards the same inevitable end. Let's work together to make sure that the bit in the middle, life itself, can be an opportunity for all Scots to achieve all their dreams and aspirations. Annie Wells, to be followed by Jenny Gilruth. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Reading through the Scottish Government's extensive dossier, I think that we can agree that behind the buzzwords and bluster there is a genuine desire to tackle poverty, inequality and social deprivation in Scotland. No one questions us, but I do question the Scottish Government's focus on the commitment to the task. How on earth can the Scottish Government fix the problems that routinely highlights when it so routinely points the finger at the UK Government and distracts us all from the new welfare and employment service powers that it now holds? Repeatedly quoting that Scotland is only getting 15 per cent of the benefit budget is absolute nonsense when the Scottish Government has the ability to top up any reserve benefit that it sees fit. How can the Scottish Government instigate any kind of economic growth, inclusive or not, in the midst of the uncertainty that it has created over the draft referendum bill? It seems rather odd that the minister would note in her foreword the uncertainty caused by Scotland coming out of the EU as a barrier to economic growth, but not Scotland leaving the UK, a union that is worth four times as much to Scotland's export market and three times as much to Scotland's public finances as our membership of the EU. Of course, I want to see a fairer Scotland. I represent Glasgow, one of the most deprived parts of Scotland, but let's get real about it and what is generally going on, the benefits of people of Scotland. Let's look at the areas that create greater equality of opportunity as laid out by the Scottish Government. That is early years and childcare policy, education, health, affordable housing and improving wages and working conditions. Has the Scottish Government excelled in any of those areas so far? No. It has changed its mind at least at the last minute with regard to childcare, finally listening to our calls for a flexible system, allowing parents to choose their own childminders and nurseries. A welcome policy change, but one that took far too long. It should also mimic another of our policies if it truly wants to tackle poverty at the childhood level. That is to extend childcare provision to a higher percentage of two-year-olds, which under its current plan will only cover just 27 per cent, as well as introduce a number of disadvantaged one-year-olds. In education, the SNP has failed to decrease the attainment gap and raised standards in schools. The SSLN report released this year gave a shocking assessment on failing humanist standards with a proportion of primary 4 pupils meeting most of the expected standards and maths, fallen by 10 per cent between 2011 and 2015. Scotland's most disadvantaged children are now four times less likely to go to university than those from wealthy areas. A figure nearly double that of England. At college level, we have seen the number of college places slashed by over 152,000 since 2007. In health, which the SNP has overseen since 2007, there has actually been a reduction in NHS funding by 1 per cent in real terms, despite an increase in England by 6 per cent between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Let's look at affordable housing also. Although housing has been devolved since 1999, the SNP has held office since 2007, and the SNP-led Government has failed to meet its original 2011 manifesto target of building more than 6,000 new socially rented houses a year. By 2015-16, the figure had dropped to less than 3,500 in the year. Housing conditions are not up to standard with around 74,000 households in Scotland suffering from overcrowding and 11 per cent are affected by dampness or condensation. Do the Scottish Tory party accept any responsibility whatsoever for the failed austerity policy that you have been supporting for the past six years? I think that what we will find is that we are looking now at the welfare powers and employment powers that are coming to the Scottish Government. We, as a party, have had to manage what the Labour Government and Westminster left us to deal with. At the moment, we are talking about the welfare powers that are coming to Scotland. 35 per cent of households are currently living in full poverty. Finally, on to job creation, as a Joseph Rowntree report on poverty highlighted, and as my colleague Adam Tomkins pointed out, the best route out of poverty is work. When it comes to job creation, Scotland is currently the worst-performing part of the UK. In fact, it is 8.5 per cent behind the rest of the UK. For young women aged between 18 to 24, the number of those working has fallen by over 4 per cent, while across the UK it has increased by nearly 3 per cent. When we talk about fairness and wages, I want to ask the Scottish Government why it is at the gender pay gap here in Scotland as the highest of the whole of the UK at nearly £11,000, compared with the UK average of just under £9,000. We can sit here today and blame the UK Government for all Scotland's woes and paint a new utopian future in an SNP-led Scotland, but let us be frank, the SNP's record in government is less than great when it comes to tackling poverty, inequality and social deprivation. Education, health, housing and the economy fall short of the standards that we should expect, while the SNP becomes distracted once again by independence. Scottish people do not want to see 100 pages of spin, bluster and empty promises. The Scottish people want to see a Scottish Government that can deliver. Jenny Gilruth should be followed by Pauline McNeill. Wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity. The four founding principles of this Parliament are a thread of fairness interlinking each, but Scotland is not always a fair country. A couple of weeks ago, my head of office was arranging a meeting on my behalf with a local business. On hearing my name, the site manager remarked to her, oh, it's a she. Does she know she will have to wear safety boots and a high-vis jacket? Sexism, alive and well in 2016. Fairness was important to me as a child because I am the eldest of three girls. Everything had to be fair in our house, or at least seemed to be if you asked my sisters. At school, I was taught and indeed I went on to teach myself about fairness in modern studies, about inequality, about injustice, about how societal structures don't always allow people to get on, those from ethnic minority communities, those with disabilities, those from the poorest households, women. I remember a newspaper article handed out in our class. It was about a group of Conservative MPs in the late 1990s, just after Blair and his so-called babes had swept to power. Even despite the historical increase in female representation under Labour, at the time, only 18 per cent of all MPs were women. The article spoke of the behaviour of some of the Conservative MPs. When the newly elected Labour women rose to speak, they would hiss, they would make noises, they would use their hands to pretend that they had female body parts. I can see it now as clear as day. The boys in my class were in hysterics. None of the girls laughed. The first point in the Fairer Scotland action plan commits the Government, councils and public bodies to a socio-economic duty. That will require public bodies to assess the impact of policy and service changes on tackling poverty. It will make our councils more accountable. We need local authorities to be fully cognisant about just how crucial fairness is. It cuts across the Government's agenda in education, for example. If you look across the water to Fife, you will find 19 secondary schools with three women as head teachers in a secondary population that is 60 per cent female. My own school in St Andrews has never had a female head teacher. That is 2016. I am therefore delighted that the Government will look to make the most of the connection between this duty and those on equality and human rights and will place a similar duty on education authorities to deliver. The action plan further commits the Government to a new mental health strategy to be published later this year and to an investment of £150 million over the next five years. I know that the minister's appointment has been broadly welcomed and that it evidences a serious commitment to mental health provision. In the response to the mental health strategy consultation, SAMH called for the standard for headchip for new head teachers to include a specific commitment to a whole-school approach to improving health and wellbeing. I would very much support SAMH in that request. Indeed, you will know that I have previously raised mental health education in this chamber as a member's debate. We know that poor mental health is linked to deprivation. Figures published by ISD Scotland last year showed that those from Scotland's poorest areas are more than three times as likely to be treated for mental health illness than their richer counterparts. The Government must therefore make sure that the dots are joined when it comes to mental health education. The mental health strategy is vital to the fairness agenda, but I believe that it would be totally remiss if it fails to mention curriculum content. I know that the cabinet secretary will be familiar with the big green curriculum for excellence folder. I therefore strongly encourage her to seek assurances from the new minister for mental health that the strategy works to join curriculum content in the health and wellbeing curriculum area to the new national mental health strategy. Number 25 in the Fairer Scotland action plan is the introduction of a bill to establish domestic abuse as a specific offence. The bill is part of the equally safe strategy, which will be brought forward by the end of this year. I recently met Fife Women's Aid in my constituency. It worked tirelessly to support women and families who suffer from the direct effects of domestic abuse. Its children and young people service runs a school holiday programme. Its befriending service matches up service users to volunteers, giving them support at doctors appointments, for example. It also provides an in-house independent advocacy service. And yet 129 women and 120 children have accessed refuge in Fife over the past 12 months alone. In the same period, Fife Women's Aid received 374 requests for refuge. Despite the vital service delivered by Fife Women's Aid, they now find themselves in the unenviable position of having to compete with other organisations for funding. That is because Fife Council have established a homeless sector public social partnership. The manager and one of the trustees shared their serious concerns with me that they will now be at risk of missing out on crucial funding. Can I implore the cabinet secretary today to look at how the Government can work with local authorities to guarantee funding for women's aid organisations? The establishment of an advisory council on women and girls will allow the Government to tackle workplace inequality. The council will celebrate the advances that have already been made such as the positive progress around women's representation in public life. Look at this Parliament, look at our First Minister, look at my predecessor in this place who sat in your seat formally. There are reasons to be cheerful for Scotland's girls. In education, we aspire to get it right for every child. The Government's fairness agenda is the next step on that journey to rectify inequality in our local communities, to empower individuals to be part of that change, to ensure that all local authorities are democratic, accountable and fair to all the people that they serve. If this Parliament is to achieve anything in the five-year term, it must make progress in challenging poverty and inequality. I suggest that it must be the kind of change that is generational. The appointment of Naomi Eisenstadt has to be commended, I believe, by the Scottish Government, in my opinion, with a game changer, because she continues to point out the important relationship between poverty and inequality. In a round-table discussion that I chaired last week, she emphasised this point where she said that poverty and inequality are not necessarily the same thing, and that we need to be careful when reducing one does not have a negative effect on someone else. She talked about capital inequality being the biggest inequality, and that has certainly drove home to me. The obvious example of that is that parents, or people who own property and pass it on to their children, give their children the ability to take higher risks in life, whether it is going into business, or knowing that at some point in their life that they will inherit something that many people do not, for example if their parents rent their homes in their rented sector. She also talks about the no-wrong-door principle, and I have not read through all of the document that I confess, but I would like to think that that principle is contained within the document, because I think that she is right about this. Wherever the system applies itself that when you are trying to change your career or do better in your life, there should be no door that you knock that should be the wrong one, and I think that that is the kind of system that we should try to create. Of course, like everyone else, I welcome the fairer Scotland action plan. There are obviously emissions, which have been addressed by Adam Tomkins and others about the black minority ethnic community in particular. I am pleased that the Government has accepted the Labour amendment, because I think that as we progress this, there needs to be more specific and ambitious action, particularly on job progression. I would like to see to some stage some reference to an exit plan for food banks. I want to address in my remarks this afternoon a section of the report on young people and decent work. Again, Naomi Eisenstadt talks about the age group of 16 to 24. I accept that Annie Wells is right about the importance of early years, but what she says that this age group merits more attention than it is currently getting, because it is that stage in your life that you are beginning to become an adult and make decisions in your life. Recommendation 38 is the one that I read through in more depth than anything else, when it talks about an equal chance in life, and rightly so. A few issues that I would like to throw into the debate. The first is on the question of private tuition in schools, and I have been asking the education minister some questions about that. The Sutton Trust in a report released last month has called it the hidden secret of British education. Admittedly, there isn't a great deal of reference to Scotland, although there is some. Given pupils who receive private tuition are more likely to come from better off families, we need to ensure that private tuition does not make inequality worse. There are some facts here that privately educated students are twice as likely to receive private tuition as say educated pupils, and according to estimates, poorer students, as you would expect, are less likely to receive private tuition. The point is that, if you believe that it is important, we are all sitting in the same exams, and because of the concentration on closing the attainment gap, I think that it is something that the Government needs to address. I would like to commend many schools across Scotland to, in particular, the Casimill High School and John Paul academy, who have put quite a bit of resource into out-of-school and weekend schools to provide that additional support that children need to get through their exams and provide that level of equality. Obviously, it is accepted that the focus of what young people should do in their lives should be broader than university and accepting that, of course, we need to do more to get people from poorer backgrounds into university. The gender gap has been talked about this afternoon. Apprenticeships are an important aspect of the strategy, but they should not increase or reinforce inequalities. Some evidence suggests that that gap is already increasing, and the negative elements of the system continue to be set in motion as the Scottish modern apprenticeships, the flagship training programme for school leavers, rely on public funds, sets the beginning of occupational segregation, with young people focusing on traditional gender roles. That cannot only move towards a long-term effect on the workforce if we do not start to turn this around. In engineering being the perfect example, there are just so few women in engineering, it is really quite shocking. Men in Scotland can expect a percentage wage increase of over 20 per cent on a modern apprenticeship qualification, but women in Scotland can expect less than half. I also wanted to talk about recommendation 37, which is the industry experience. I think that this is a very important concept, one that I wholeheartedly support. I think that 1,000 in industry places across Scotland is quite woeful, and I would like to see the Government's return in the annual progress report to give us a report on that. In my closing 30 seconds, I just wanted to mention the issue of young people between 16 and 25. I think that there is fairness in the travel arrangements, so we know that if you are an apprentice, you earn £3.40, if you are under 18, you earn £4 as a national minimum wage. However, 16-year-olds pay the full adult fare in public transport. Many of them are still at school, hardly anything will be working. I really think that this is an area that the Government needs to look at, because giving young people that level of independence to get out of the house, whether to go to school, go to college or meet their friends, has a big impact on their lives. I would like to see the Government address that particular point for 16 and 24-year-olds. Tom Arthur, followed by Graham Simpson. I would like to begin by commending the Government on tabling this debate and welcome the publication of the Fairer Scotland action plan. The scope of the document is impressive, reflecting the breadth and depth of the views of the thousands of people who participated in the Fairer Scotland conversation. The wide-ranging nature of the action plan also reflects the scale of the Government's ambition and the nature of the challenges that we face in building a fairer Scotland. In the ministerial forward, the cabinet secretary states that we do not expect to fix things within the five years of a parliamentary term. We are not looking for quick winds, but genuine cultural change and societal change. I believe that that is absolutely the correct approach. No nation can affect the transformational change that we aspire to in the course of one parliamentary session. If we are to succeed and we must, it is going to take all of us in this place and beyond to work constructively and in a manner worthy of the objective of creating a fairer Scotland. I think that each of us in this chamber could prepare remarks on how any one of the proposed 50 fairness actions for the parliamentary term would benefit each and every one of our constituents. One only need to refer to a few of those measures to get a sense of the work proposed and, indeed, already on their way, be it the delivery of 50,000 warm and affordable homes, the Scottish baby box, a bill to establish domestic abuse at a specific offence, delivery of 100 per cent superfast broadband access by 2021, there is going to be support for disabled people to stand in next year's council elections through the access to elected office fund and a huge expansion in early learning and childcare entitlement. The review and reform of gender recognition law for people who identify as transgender or intersex builds an equal marriage in making Scotland one of the best places in the world to live if you are LGBTI. The full implementation of the recommendations from the commission on widening access is one of the many steps being taken to ensure equity in education and new support to help older people claim the financial support that they are entitled to is to be welcomed. Along with the other measures outlined in this action plan, the programme demonstrates that this Government is getting on with the job of building a fairer Scotland. My only regret is that, rather than having the powers in this Parliament to go further, we have to divert resources to mitigate the effects of UK Government cuts, and we must now also contend with the uncertainty and disruption inflicted upon us from the Brexit debacle. However, it is right and proper that this Scottish Government does all that it practically can within the existing constitutional arrangements. Further, in setting out a vision of a fairer Scotland, it has begun the process of establishing the values that will inform the use of current and any future powers held by this Parliament. It is on that fundamental subject of values to which I would now like to turn to. In doing so, I would like to consider the values that are underpinning the new social security powers, because nothing shows the measure of society and how it treats its most vulnerable. In a new future for social security in Scotland, published shortly before the last election, the then Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil wrote that, the principles set out in that document would apply equally to a future where the Scottish Parliament has full control over social security. Two of the principles in particular I regard as particularly significant in the setting of values is that social security is an investment in the people of Scotland and respect for the dignity of individuals is at the heart of everything that we do. I raise those two principles in particular because I believe that they capture an important aspect of what we mean when we speak of a fairer Scotland. But in articulating our vision of a fairer Scotland, it is also important to state what is not part of that vision. For too long, we have been subjected to an agenda from a UK Government that has sought to stigmatise and frankly dehumanise those who have needed support. Be it the bedroom tax or reassessment regimes that claimants have been subjected to, the message from the UK Government has been that, if you need help, you are a burden. Agreed just as those measures are, the proposal to limit tax credits to the first two children along with the rape clause demonstrates that the UK Government's conception of fairness is not one that would be recognised by any civilised or progressive person. The big society has been abandoned in favour of a return to the view that there is no such thing as society. The bleak and draconian approach of the UK Government underscores the need for our Scottish Government and this Parliament to continue to take a radically different approach. We have the opportunity to define what sort of society we speak for this and future generations. The term fairness has been, in public discourse, often used interchangeably with other familiar terms such as social justice, equality, equality of opportunity and equity. For me, all of those terms capture different nuances and aspects of an ancient and universal concept. That whatever the variance in our attributes and genetic predispositions, we are all endowed with a sense of dignity and I need to be valued and to belong. When we recognise and embody this principle, it serves as a check and my all-too-prevalent propensity for politicians and decision makers to regard problems in abstract and technocratic terms, where human beings are reduced to inputs and an economic calculation. Martin Luther King, perhaps, put it best when he spoke of the need to move from being a thing oriented society to a person oriented society. Systems and processes are, of course, vital. Values are fundamental. It takes more than a veil of ignorance to prevent a veil of tears. As we set out to create a fairer Scotland, let us build it together upon a foundation that recognises our shared humanity, but we all deserve to be treated with dignity and that through mutual support and solidarity, we will all benefit and prosper. Graham Simpson, to be followed by Ben Macpherson. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Government officers throughout the world are stuffed with weighty reports, outlining strategies for this or that. We have another one now, the 100-page epic fairer Scotland action plan. It might have been fairer on all of us, just to call it the SNP failures on poverty dossier. This is a party that has been in government for nearly 10 years but does not want to accept that anything that is wrong, anything that is not been fixed, is their fault. With their constant obsession with independence, they have dragged Scotland down, held us back, held us back and let down. Let down, Mr Stevenson, the very people that this report suggests will now have to wait until 2030 before their lives are anything approaching fair. Debates like this remind me why I am in politics. Politicians have been debating fairness and equality for all my life and long before, and I am much older than I would like to be. Here we are again today after decades and decades of failure from parties in Scotland who have just taken the votes of the poor for granted, first Labour and now the SNP. Alex Rowley was quite wrong to suggest that poverty only began in 2010. So what is fairness? Some argue that only by achieving equality can we achieve fairness, but that's both simplistic and wrong. We could all be more equal but be worse off on average. What we should be trying to achieve is not a more equal society but a society where the lives of those who are worse off is constantly improving. I want to focus on two areas ably covered by Annie Wells, housing and education. Why do we still have sink estates in our major cities? Why in a so-called progressive country do we put up with this? On housing there's been a wholesale failure to kickstart house building and make it a national infrastructure priority? That represents a massive social and economic cost. House building is down 40% since the SNP came to power in 2007. Private sector house building is down 44% and public sector down by 18%. The SNP are failing on housing conditions. Around 74,000 households in Scotland suffer from overcrowding and 11% are affected by dampness or condensation. Compliance with the Scottish housing quality standard remains poor. 45% fail to achieve the standard. 30% fail to hit the energy efficiency criterion. Those are shaming statistics and yet, according to Shelter Scotland, there are 27,000 empty homes in Scotland. What a waste. The SNP are letting Scotland down on fuel poverty. 35% of households are currently in fuel poverty, up from the 2007 level of 25%. That compares to 15% of households across the UK as a whole. 9.5% of households are currently in extreme fuel poverty conditions. The SNP are failing Scotland on energy efficiency and have cut the fuel poverty energy efficiency budget by 13.2%. However, I do welcome a commitment to tackle the fuel poverty premium. That was mentioned by George Adam. It remains the case that there is only one energy company offering gas and electricity to consumers with no standing charge. It cannot be right. On education, there has been a failure to decrease the attainment gap and raise standards in schools. That risks a lost generation. Standards in schools are declining, as Annie Wells said. From 2007 to 2015, the percentage of primary four pupils performing well or very well in numeracy dropped from 77% to 66%, and the percentage of primary seven pupils performing well or very well in numeracy fell from 72 to 66%. Scotland's poorest children are missing out on university. Students from the most advantaged areas are four times more likely to go to university than those from the least advantaged areas. That compares to three times for Wales and Northern Ireland and 2.4 times for England. The SNP have slashed the number of college places by over 152,000 since 2007. I will make one final point, and it is this. If we want to do any of the things that are necessary to help the disadvantaged, we need a successful economy. We do not do that by making Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK, and we do not do it by continuing to hold the threat of another independence referendum over the heads of ordinary citizens and the very businesses that could create the wealth that we need. Presiding Officer, if we want fairness, we have to start by admitting the failures that are blaming others. We simply will not do that. I said to everyone that we have a wee bit time in hand. It is very typical when we do not have time in hand and all your speeches run over, and today everyone has been very punctilious. There is a little time in hand if you want to intervene rather than shout at each other from your respective seats. I now call Ben Macpherson to be followed by Elaine Smith. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I warmly welcome the action plan from the Scottish Government with a broad agenda to change the law, to allocate and distribute resources and to shift consciousness, social attitudes and affect social change in order to build a fairer Scotland. It is an action plan with bold proposals across a range in terms of creating a fair Scotland for all, ending child poverty, a strong start for young people, fairer working lives and other aspects of our society and our economy. Fifty actions to give meaning to sometimes nebulous words like fairness, phrases like social justice, terms and values like equality, things that we should all aim for as a democracy and as a society. However, if we want to deliver those values and aims, we need to have firm plans and actions, and that is exactly what that action plan does. Around all the different areas, from democracy and participation, to equality of opportunity, from rights and protection, to equal recognition and appreciation for what individuals do in our society and our economy—I will come back to that later if I have time. Also, support and provision for those in need, using the new powers coming to this Parliament around social security to create a system that is better, based in dignity and respect in order to be able to support those in need in times of need. What has been apparent through most of the discussion in this debate so far is that there is a sense of unified purpose that a fairer Scotland is something that is desired. There has been a welcoming of the 50 recommendations. Some would like to see more recommendations, some would like to see things go further. Even on the Opposition Benches and the Conservative Party, there has not been criticism of an individual aspect of the 50-point plan. What has been disappointing is a staggering lack of context around the position that Scotland is in right now from the social and economic change and the policies of those who have managed, in the majority of those decades, the Scottish economy. However, I do not want to blame others either. I want to focus on the 50 excellent proposals in this plan. Also, I want to recognise the spirit of the plan. The debate today is not only about the content of that action plan but also about the spirit that it takes all of us—business, industry, public sector, third sector and people—individually and collectively. I would like to touch on some of the action points and how they relate to that spirit, but also how they relate to my constituency and the wider messages that can begin from that. Action 5 talks about tackling the poverty premium and making affordable credit more easily available and using areas across Government to create greater financial inclusion in 2017. On that, I would really like to highlight the Castle Community Bank as an example of community and business using initiative and working together to have a positive impact on the common good and on areas around financial inclusion. The Community Bank is a merger of credit unions that aims to give financial accessibility to everyone. It is a social enterprise and has been created by someone who, Reverend Dian May, used to work in the commercial banking sector, using his expertise to create a community bank to enhance the availability of credit unions. That is a perfect example of how that action plan relates to real impacts on the ground. People who are taking initiative on the ground. The Castle Community Bank is a fantastic example of that, and I will write to the cabinet secretary to give her more detail on that in the coming days. There is another commitment, number 7, on targeting 1 per cent of council budgets to participatory budgeting. Right now, in its seventh year in Leith, Leith decides that it is happening. There are people in my constituency who are voting on the merits of community projects, allowing community interaction in order to decide where public funds are allocated. That is an example of how that action plan is relevant, and Leith decides as a perfect example of how greater indeed. I agree that we need to see much more empowerment and community budgeting as one part of that, but 1 per cent of council budgets is going down and down and down. Does he not agree that we need to try and work together in here to stop the cuts to local community services and public services? In the plan, there is a commitment from the Scottish Government around the local taxation and the manifesto commitment that there was to increase the taxation of those who are in the top bands of the council tax arrangement. That will gather extra funding for local government. The 3 per cent variation as part of the SNP manifesto will create greater funds for local government and, of course, from the higher banding, there will be more available funds for education. Moving on from Leith decides and participatory budgeting, the commitment to make Scotland a good food nation in trying to create opportunities for communities to have access to affordable, healthy and nutritious food in a dignified way. I welcome the fair food fund and, indeed, that is making a difference in my constituency. There has already been investment from the Scottish Government in projects such as crops and pots, which do great work on Leith links, granting community gardeners who are taking bits of unused local authority land and creating great community gardens in which local communities come together and not only share food at the end of that process but also share a sense of community and beyond that. That is an example of how actions, clear actions from this plan, are making a difference right now and they can continue to make a difference as we take this plan forward. Lastly, because I am aware of time, commitment number 42 around the living wage, if we, of course, do not have control over the minimum wage in Scotland, but next week, living wage week, is another opportunity for us all in the spirit of action number 42 in the plan to help to raise awareness of the living wage and encourage as many employers in our communities to pay the living wage. That greater payment for all, recognising the commitment of all to the economy, is something that will be of mutual benefit, and I am delighted to see the Government supporting that enthusiastically in this plan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome the Scottish Government debate today, because there can be no doubt that inequality, poverty and deprivation are the causes of many problems in our communities and tackling those issues is the most important thing, in my opinion, that we can do as parliamentarians. In particular, child poverty in a country as well off of Scotland is simply shocking. Many children living in poverty are in households where at least one parent is working. Many of those families are suffering from fuel poverty and relying on food banks, and many do not even have a house. 5,000 children in Scotland woke up this morning without a home of their own, which affects their mental health, their wellbeing and their attainment. The Labour Party and Government recognised the importance of ending child poverty by setting targets, which were later scrapped by the Tories. I note that the Scottish Government wants to carry the legacy of those targets on in a more ambitious way as they put it. Of course, any and all attempts to alleviate child poverty should be given support, and members on those benches will no doubt support that aim, but I feel that more clarity on the detail as soon as possible would be welcome. Overall, the Government's Affair Scotland action plan is a recognition of the problems that society faces having consulted and listened to people and communities and is an attempt to provide solutions. On a positive note at the start, I commend the Government for its work, but I will come back shortly to the bigger picture. First, I have some specific questions and comments on some of the action points. Under action point 12, there is a reference to an accessible travel framework to help disabled travellers to enjoy the same rights as everyone else. With regard to rail travel, I hope that the Government will fully consider the need for a safety train to guard on all of our trains to help to meet that particular aim. Action point 17 commits the Government to make social security fairer where we can. What I would like to know from the Government is, will that involve using the newly devolved ability to top up and create new benefits through the Scotland bill? In summing up, perhaps the Cabinet Secretary for the Minister can explain in more detail the way in which universal credit will be made fairer. Action point 23 is a commitment to concentrate over the next 12 months on promoting, sustaining and protecting breastfeeding. That is very welcome, particularly since in more deprived areas the rates are lower, but again I think that some more detail on that would be most welcome. It always strikes me as astonishing that our society seems to accept formula as the norm instead of mother's milk. It is an amazing feat of big business to boost their profits by selling women a product that is inferior in so many ways to the one that they have freely available. The Scottish Government needs to find ways to get the message out, particularly to young women in deprived areas, that their milk is a designer food for their baby and that no substitute can convey the many health and nutritional benefits that they can give their child. Breastfeeding as the norm would be a massive boost to future health and wellbeing. Overall, although I appreciate the good intentions of the fairer Scotland action plan, I feel that the actual action proposed is a bit thin on the ground and that there are many promises of further publications and legislation. Where there is specific funding promise, it is welcome, for example the increase in carers allowance, but the ambitions outlined in the plan are unlikely to be met by such promises alone, which is why we need annual progress reports. I am pleased that the Government has indicated that they will support Labour's amendment on that. The new socioeconomic duty on public bodies to take into account poverty and disadvantage when key decisions are being made is very welcome. In fact, there is an argument that every single policy should be poverty-proofed. However, implementing policies takes funding, so we need to consider where it comes from. In local government, a decade of council tax freezes left councils struggling to deliver the services that many would want to deliver to tackle poverty. Of course, the plan to increase the higher council tax bans is welcome, but it is only a small tweak and it is not the complete overhaul needed. It is not being bold on local tax reform. I suggest that, without a revaluation, changes will not be viewed as fair to all. Further, on the point that Ben Macpherson made, whilst it is difficult to argue against increased funding for attainment, councils have a legitimate concern about the centralisation of local decision making. From the Government's consultation, it seems that our communities want a fairer Morico Scotland and the minister is keen to point out that it takes all of us to build that fairer Scotland. However, like Alison Johnstone, it then seems to me to achieve those goals, this Government will need to utilise our new tax powers. Of course, one barrier to this is the impression in society that tax is somehow a bad thing. The reality is that progressive taxation is a good thing. It is our collective taxes that pay for a civilised society, caring for the elderly, educating children, providing free health services for all, ensuring the rule of law and justice, funding the armed forces, protecting the environment etc. The kind of society that we would have if all of this was left up to individuals instead of Governments does not really bear thinking about it. Interestingly, when I was considering what I wanted to say today, I thought that most people make charity donations, including donations to food banks, they pay their dues to clubs etc., and many happily contribute to local churches specifically to help the poor. Why is it that tax is seen as some kind of affliction to be suffered rather than paying your dues to society? Well, undoubtedly because Governments have either encouraged that kind of thinking, refused to ask the rich to pay a fair share for a better society or simply failed to present tax in a good light. Now, such approaches to taxation might be expected from the Tories, but they are more surprising from this Government who like to present themselves as centre left. In closing, I want to say that I believe that there is a responsibility on a good Government to make people think about what their taxes are for, to present progressive taxation in a positive way and to help to change attitudes to paying tax. The SNP used to take that approach in opposition with, for example, their penny for Scotland. I think that a target of 2030 to implement that fairer Scotland plan in full is not very ambitious for a Government a decade into office. To have a fair and more equal society, we really need redistribution and we need to use our tax powers, which would accelerate the ability to seriously tackle poverty once and for all. If this Government is serious about making different choices to Tory austerity, it should get on with using those powers that we have to do that. It is a political choice, so no more excuses. We have had the conversation, we have the powers and now we need to take the action. Christina McKelvie, followed by Alison Harris. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. We have spoken a lot this afternoon about fairness and to be fair. Fairness is an idea that is challenging to pin down, but we all know roughly what it means when we use the word in everyday context, yet it can mean everything or nothing. For most of us, our first idea of fairness was in the school playground, as we heard Jenny Gilruth speaking about in her remarks, or at home with her brothers and sisters. Nothing was ever fair in my house, I have to say. A childish, naive idea of fairness, yet absolutely at the nub of it, because fairness does not discriminate between people on the basis of their gender, their religion, their age, their ability or disability, their race or their social background. It is not the same as treating everyone exactly the same, we know that. What does fairness mean in the governance and make-up of social policy? How can we ensure that what we plan for Scotland in the new social security bill, in our poverty bill and all the other pieces of legislation that flow through this place, how can we ensure that it is fair while we can learn from current situations that we already live in? Last week, I had the opportunity to see Ken Loach's new film, I, Daniel Blake. I watched it last week with my son and it devastated both of us. It devastated the entire cinema and, as I believe, has devastating audiences across the whole of the UK. It is harsh, it is brutal, it is cruel. The unfairness of the UK benefits system is all too familiar to me and to many of my constituents, the Daniel and Daniel Blake's, who come through my door. We see it every day, the real meaning of social deprivation. Loach is not trying to put out some objective documentary. No. The film is based on interviews with real people in real situations, then portrayed in the demeaning, unhelpful and, yes, unfair treatment of a middle-aged widower who has just had a near-fatal heart attack. His doctor tells him to rest. He is not fit for work. The job centre tells him to find a job. Now, that is what I call unfair. In that film, Daniel Blake asked to be recognised as a citizen nothing more and nothing less. If we filter every piece of legislation that we do through this Parliament through a human rights prism, then we should be treating every citizen as nothing more and nothing less. That is what I call fairness. A lot, if not everyone of us in this chamber, will have seen the impact of Westminster austerity upon the lives of people in our communities and our families. I do not have to think for too long. There is a lady who suffers from extreme agrifobia, who has not been able to get out of her 10th floor flat for a year now. The job centre has told her that she is physically perfectly fit to work and to find a job. There is an elderly gentleman who has a whole-case file with a series of difficult medical problems. He has been told that he is fit for work. There is a single mother with two young children, one of whom is very disabled and needs a lot of complex medical kit at home. Because she used a small extra bedroom to keep it in, she was hit by the bedroom tax, thankfully mitigated by this Government and, hopefully, abolished very, very soon. It is not all misery, doom and gloom. Scotland's own Government, this Government, is moving to a position where it will have the power to change, really change the punitive and outdated welfare system that put in its place innovative and effective action plan for a fairer Scotland. We have heard a lot about that, and we have heard a lot about action plans and what they should do, but we have got an opportunity in this place to work together to achieve that fairer Scotland in that action plan. It really is about action. As we have heard, Alison Johnston mentioned earlier, it is great to have an action plan, but it has to take some action. I am proud to see that there are 50 concrete actions set out in the consultation and some 15 or so stakeholder groups and organisations involved in that. Those targets are ambitious and they will have a real impact. Graeme Simpson Christian McKelvie has complained a lot in this chamber and again today about things that she does not like in the benefit system. She is very good at highlighting cases. Can she tell us specifically what she would do now that this place is getting new powers? What would she do to change things? I would be absolutely delighted to move on to that in a few moments. As I said, it will take time to see the effect filter through, and I would wish to see that filter through, changing long-term assumptions and cutting through the tide of cynicism that has increased so dramatically with the Tory Government at Westminster. It is not going to be easy, I understand that. I will move on to some areas that I think are an action that the Government could take. There are three things that I would like the Scottish Government to consider on the impact of poverty. That is the impact of poverty on carers and some of the issues that I have arisen with some of the carers that I have spoken through the consultation on social security. I have raised those with the minister and she has taken those on board and hopefully we can move forward. We also need to change the rhetoric and the record of the Tory Government on child poverty. We have heard so much about that today. Those young people are not shirkers, they are not spongers, they are young people who deserve the support and the nurturing from a Government that cares about them and their future. That is one action that we could take. However, if there is something that I would personally hope the Scottish Government addresses, it is the challenge faced by those diagnosed with motor neurone disease. I have long spoken about the effects of motor neurone disease in this chamber, and not only in this chamber, but this has been a lifelong campaign for me. I would ask the Scottish Government to use that courage, the courage that the cabinet secretary spoke about in her open remarks—the courage that I believe that she has—that, when drafting the new social security bill, she thinks about fast-tracking motor neurone disease sufferers through that system, give automatic entitlement to PIP and attendance allowance, and please no continual reassessment. Imagine that, if you will, diagnosed with motor neurone disease, told that your average life expectancy is 14 months and you spend 10 of those months fighting a system to get a couple extra quid a week. We can change that, we can make a huge difference. You are talking about 340 people per year in Scotland, it is not a huge amount. I think that, together and working together, we can go with the campaign that MND Scotland has launched to this day, that let's get benefits right for people with MND. If we can get it right for people with MND, we can get it right and start getting it right for other people who depend on social security. This Scottish Government has not shucked its responsibilities. We know and understand why we need to get this right, and because we talk to the people on the front line, we know how they feel. The consultation on social security in Scotland closes this weekend, Presiding Officer, and it is providing us with a vast amount of input from individuals trying to work on the system, as well as the larger charities and lobbying bodies who will want to see change. We can do that, Presiding Officer. We will do it and with the support of our partners and our colleagues across the chamber and the commitment from everyone, we will see that fairer Scotland, not just for people with motor neurone disease, but for everyone who depends on the state to support them in times of extremity. Thank you. It's good to have time in hand for the late speakers rather than another way around, so call Alice and Harris. We're followed by James Dornan and Ms Harris. I'll give you an extra couple of minutes, if you wish. No, but they're yours for the taking. Deputy Presiding Officer, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue and the document entitled, Fairer Scotland Action Plan. A document with such a worthwhile aim as everyone wants to see, a reduction in poverty and the impact of poverty. There are many ways that this audible lane can be worked towards. Some are in this document, while others are given none or very little emphasis. Deputy Presiding Officer, this is a pity because, whilst there is no silver bullet for achieving the reduction of poverty, there are some ways that can have a massive impact and I do hope that the Government will take those on board. With the general acknowledgement that the most effective way out of poverty is by steady paid employment, there is much that the SNP can do, specifically by abandoning those policies that stifle businesses, economic growth and seek to increase taxes for working families. Promoting growth, boosting well paid employment and reducing poverty is not done by making Scotland the highest tax part of the UK. It's not done by raising again the prospect of another divisive and destabilising referendum. It's not done by taking money out of the pockets of small business owners and families living in houses and bands E and F. It's not done by failing to close the largest gender pay gap in the UK. It's not done by failing to provide businesses and households with the rates—I'll just continue at the moment, please—not done by failing to provide businesses and households with the rates of superfast broadband enjoyed in other parts of the UK, with some areas a full 10 per cent less than the UK average. At this point, can I say that it is a disgrace that some businesses in Grangemouth, the industrial hub of Scotland, are having to have their broadband beamed across the forth from Clackmannan to give them anything like efficient speeds with which to grow their businesses? All those shortcomings and others of this SNP Government are damaging businesses, stifling growth and costing jobs that would do so much to lift people out of poverty. I turn now to another way that people can be helped out of poverty, education. What is the record of the SNP here? For many families, having their child gain a place at college was the ideal start for their career choice. Wait, what has the Government chosen to do? Cut the number of college places available to Scotland's youngsters by 152,000. Yes, 152,000 less chances for youngsters to get into further education. Today's statistics further emphasise the SNP's failures. Bursary support for students in Scotland has almost halved over the past five years to £66.1 million for 2015-16. So much for the strong start for all young people. They have failed in closing the attainment gap and failed in providing flexible childcare to allow parents back into work. As well as the obvious shortcomings, the document raises many questions. A national poverty and inequality commission is to be established. But what is its role in remit? Well to quote the document, details of what the commission will do is still being firmed up. That is hardly inspiring or giving confidence that the Government has a clue about its purpose other than to provide a nice sounding title giving the impression of action. In the action plan, it mentions £29 million programme to tackle poverty, but it gives no criteria of how communities can access this money. I would have welcomed more details on plans to address the problems of poverty and ill health, both physical and mental, caused by the addictions of gambling, of drugs and of alcohol misuse. We must not forget the effect that those addictions can have on the health of partners and children, as well as on relationships. Providing assistance to enable people to maintain jobs and a roof over their head, while seeking treatment for addiction, is another important aspect of stopping people from sinking into the poverty, and that is often the cause of addiction. Much more needs to be done to assist those who have served our country. Rates of homelessness and poverty amongst ex-servicemen and women are a case that needs special attention. However, in conclusion, there is much of value in the document. The contributions from individuals, businesses and the third sector have improved it greatly. However, in its next form, I do hope that the plan will recognise the shortcomings of the current one that I and my colleagues have highlighted today. I now call James Dornan, who is the last speaker in the open debate. We move on to closing speeches. That is a fair warning. Mr Dornan, you can have extra minutes if you wish, or speak more slowly if you cannot. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. As you know, I am not a big fan of speaking too much, but I will do my best. This Fairer Scotland conversation has been a perfect example of a Government that wants to create a fairer Scotland. Priorities have been set by the people of Scotland themselves, but structured by the Government and delivered in partnership by a range of professionals and dedicated people drawn from the public, private and third sectors, a conversation that is driven by the people and delivered by all sections of Scottish society. Over 17,500 people contributed through social media and many others attended public meetings from the Borders to the Islands of Scotland and demonstrated a willingness for Government to be in a more inclusive way. Before I go on to speak to some of the things that I would like to mention later on, there are a couple of things that I would like to go back to. This morning, interestingly, I had a meeting and during that meeting, it was highlighted to me that we already have a fairer Scotland and certain other parts of this island. We were talking about the refugee crisis and we were talking about some of the things that are happening in the Mediterranean, and then Cali came up. We talked about some of the refugees that have been coming here from Syria mainly. This person who works for the charity said that the difference between the way that refugees have been welcomed in Scotland compared to other areas of the islands has been stark. They have been welcomed with open arms, the organisations and local authorities, the Government, the people and the community have been overwhelming in the support for them, unfortunately not replicated all over that. I heard the old story about college places again today. If you are serious about trying to help people into work and if you are serious about making life better and fairer for people, do not look for the college places by numbers, look for them by quality. We committed ourselves to a certain amount of hours with Ketac commitment and those places will lead to jobs for many people. That would not have been the case with college places before. Yes, of course I will. I thank James Dornan for giving away. Does he accept, however, that we have a skills shortage in a whole section of the Scottish industry, in the building trades, in the care sector, and therefore we need to do more to put in regional strategies that will deliver skills and opportunities for too many young people who are being left behind? I do accept that there are gaps that have to be filled. Of course there are, I mean it would be foolish to not recognise that. However, those two things are separate things, because if what you are suggesting is that the college places, as they were, would have done what you were asking for earlier, I do not believe that that is the case. We are much more likely to get those gaps filled with the college places, as are just now, that the Government has put in place. Should there be more? Show me the money, as they say in the movies. Christine McKelvie, in a very, very good contribution, talked about the film I, Daniel Blake, which I have not seen yet, and I am scared to go unless I take my hankies with me, but talked about being unemployed and the difficulties that he has created. I was unemployed in the 80s and I have to tell you that I did not enjoy it one second. I would hate to be unemployed today. I would absolutely hate it and I would hate any of my family to be unemployed. My son Watson the building said that he was made redundant a while ago. He is working on it and has been pretty much steadily since, but for a short period of time he was not. If he was unemployed during this time, with your Government in control, I would be worried every single night, because there seems to be no thought for the impact of your decisions on the individual. You ought to be thinking much more about that than looking for an amendment that plays a game, political games, with what is a motion that you agree with. Graham Simpson talked about that, but I listened to all the Tory speakers. I joined the Scottish National Party for two reasons. One is because I wanted to create a better Scotland, and the other is because I believe in independence. However, the only party in that place that has talked about independence—independence—is every single speaker. The last speaker came up and went, bingo, bingo. Every single one of you mentioned independence, but let me tell you, just for the record, I'm with you. Independence is common. You may be worried about it, I'm really looking forward to it, and I think that it will make for a much safer Scotland. Oh, I'm happily... Time. Graham Simpson. I'm so grateful. Is the member unaware that a draft referendum bill has just been published? The people that are banging on about this are your side. James Dornan. I love that, because they say it like we're meant to go. No. Seriously, of course we support independence. What we're trying to say is that that is our core belief, but see why we believe in independence? We're getting on with the day job. You're fixated on the cause of independence. Could the member just use the expression, the member's opposite, not you, because nobody knows what you're referring to? Presiding Officer, the last time you gave me into trouble for calling him a mob, now you're giving me into trouble for calling him... I know you're capable of polishing your act. My apologies, Presiding Officer. Two areas, I use a third term of endearment in Glasgow. Two areas that I was wanting to concentrate on, but they gave me so much ammunition that I couldn't really get round to it, is both early years in education and LGBT. I think that both of those areas are ones that we have to take very seriously. I'm delighted with the role that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament has taken in making Scotland a much more fairer and inclusive place, because we have got that groundbreaking legislation put in place. We have been leading the way in that. Michael Matheson's statement, a Cabinet Secretary's statement today, in the week of the pretty disgraceful show down in Westminster, really does show that Scotland already is that fair place, although it still can be a fairer place. I'm really delighted with what has happened there. We have to make sure that in terms of education, particularly when we're still talking about LGBT, that teachers are trained appropriately, that teachers understand the difference. This is a much more fluid world. I'm an old man and I still struggle to come to grips with the terminology sometimes, but everybody has the right to live their lives as they want to live their lives. We have to make sure that the professionals that we're dealing with are aware of the changes that are made and are ready for them at all times. The early years in education, as a convener of education, I'm absolutely delighted with the commitment that the Cabinet Secretary has shown to closing the attainment gap—somebody mentioned the attainment gap earlier on, a few of you have—and, of course, the attainment gap is there, but that's why we've made it our priority. None of those things are going to happen overnight, and none of those things happen in isolation. My colleague Ben Macpherson there talked about the lack of context of your amendment and every single one of your contributions. Not one of you seem to recognise the damage that you have done, the damage that you're doing to the people of Scotland, the damage that you're doing to the future of Scotland, unless we can get some way to—we spend £300 million— £300 million. Yes, this is quite lively. Yes, Mr Tomkins. You're a very generous deputy president, so I'm grateful to the member for giving way. I'm puzzled, Mr Dornan. I wonder if the member could explain how, given that education has been devolved in its entirety since 1999, it is the United Kingdom Government's responsibility somehow that there is a growing and problematic attainment gap in education specifically in Scotland. This is the responsibility of the Scottish Government, not the responsibility of the United Kingdom, surely. Mr Dornan. I thank you for that question because that's a very, very good question, and the answer to it is quite simple. This is what I've found out, since I became convener of the education committee and the skills committee, that I've never really quite picked up on before. Attainment is not all about what you learn in the classroom. Attainment is about what you have to bring with you to the classroom when you're living in a house in poverty, when you get parents that are maybe third generation unemployed, when you don't recognise the benefits of education for themselves because their parents never benefited from it and neither did theirs. This is not starting in 1999, and it certainly never started in 2007. It's been going on for a long, long time, and I have to tell you, you might not be surprised at this. Westminster is at the core of all these problems. We are having to £300 million that we've had to spend, that we could have spent elsewhere mitigating the problems that you're giving to Scotland. So why have we got an attainment gap? Because we do not have people going to school on a level playing field or anything like a level playing field, and until such times as we've got all the powers and not 15 per cent, which you seem to think is more than adequate, then we will not be able to get it. Education does not stand in its own, and if it did, then that would be a different thing entirely. Sorry, can I ask Professor Tomkins? No, I'm going to ask you please to wind up. You've made a fair whack at it. Right, okay. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed every minute of it. What I would say to Professor Tomkins is that school does not stand in its own. School is part of society. The society that people live in determines the sort of pupil that they are when they go to school in the very early years. So do not pretend that education has been in the remit of this Government from 1999, so all the results of education are down to this Government, because it's about the society that we live in, and much of that, unfortunately, has been on your shoulders and not ours. Thank you very much, Mr Dornan. You're live in the debate. I have a list of reprobates here, Jenny Gilruth, Tom Arthur and Pauline McNeill, all of whom were in the open debate, who are not in the chamber. I have no doubt that they will send, Presiding Officer, suitable explanations as to why they're not here. You could have a point of order, please, Presiding Officer. Can I just check that reprobates are okay but mobs not? Yes, when I say everything's okay. I move on to closing speeches. I call Alison Johnson to wind up please for the Green Party to get an extra minute, eight minutes, please, Ms Johnson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In my closing contribution, I'd like to address some of the points raised in the course of the debate. I'd like to discuss measures to tackle child poverty, the importance of the role that the NHS can play in reducing poverty too, and, hopefully, with time, a fairer carers allowance system. It's clear this afternoon that there has been much consensus across the chamber on the need for more action to create a fairer Scotland. There has been much agreement. There hasn't been quite as much agreement on who's discussing independence the most, but I feel fairly certain that if one checks the official report tomorrow, the evidence will suggest that the Conservatives will win that prize this afternoon. I very much welcome the Scottish Government's proposed child poverty bill and the pledge to reinstate income targets. If those targets are met, we will have made major strides towards a fairer Scotland, but that will, of course, require change far beyond those envisaged in the 50 fairer Scotland actions. Christina McKelvie spoke of the importance of ensuring that human rights are at the centre of Scottish life and I couldn't agree more. I welcome to George Adam's comments regarding a good food nation, and the comments that Ben Macpherson made about a fair food fund. He spoke of the excellent work that is occurring in this very city with crops and pots in the Granton community garden. Elaine Smith, too, who has long been an advocate, I think that we need to heed her calls for a greater focus on breastfeeding, because child poverty and food sits at the heart of a fairer Scottish nation. A third of the people depending on food banks in this country are children. A nourished Scotland's report, living is more important than surviving, found that we don't have good data on the number of children in Scotland living with food insecurity, with food insecurity. Children who either don't have enough to eat or don't know whether they'll have enough to eat, and it shows that children as young as five have an understanding of food insecurity. This inadequate nutrition and anxiety about hunger have a profound effect on their development and ability to learn. I'm sure that we'd all agree that that is indisputed, and that we won't achieve our aims regarding attainment and closing the attainment gap without making sure that the children in our schools are not hungry. We need to be really clear that people have a right to nutritious food and to embed that principle in our legislation. The fair food fund has an important role to play, but to ensure that families are at risk of poverty, we need to make sure that those families are always able to access good food and we have to improve their incomes in order to do so. In June this year, the Scottish Government's independent working group on food poverty urged the Government to build income maximisation support into mainstream services at key points of financial pressures on households and to roll out models like healthier, wealthier children. I very much welcome that approach. One of the quickest and most effective ways that we can take children out of poverty is to use the new powers that we have to top up benefits by increasing child benefit by £5 a week. Alex Rowley referred to that in his contribution. Five pounds a week, this could lift 30,000 children out of poverty. The child poverty action group and the Scottish Greens have called for this, and so has the Government's independent working group on child poverty. We need to do that urgently, because by 2020 it is predicted that child benefit will have lost 28 per cent of its value compared to 2010. The Scottish Green Party has advocated a young carers allowance for its young people with significant caring responsibilities. I am very glad to see the Scottish Government consulting on that in the social security consultation that does, as Christina McKelvie mentioned, close this Friday. I look forward to hearing the Government's response, because there are at least 30,000 young carers in Scotland, and that may well be an underestimate. We know that caring can be very stressful. It is still undervalued by society, and young people are struggling to meet the demands of school and the needs of the person they care for can find that their own health suffers, including their mental health. I am glad to see that the Children's Commissioner is developing new research, focusing on the needs of this often overlooked group. A young carers allowance, providing direct financial support, will do a great deal to relieve the financial stress that too many young carers live with now, and it will acknowledge the value of the care that they give. I would like to speak further to the section of my motion amendment that calls for poverty reduction to be part of NHS targets. The review of NHS targets offers opportunities to be bold in our aim for our health services. With the on-going integration of health and social care, we can do more to ensure that our health service tackles inequality and disadvantage, and it is not just there to mitigate the effects of inequality and disadvantage. Many health professions have argued that the heat targets are too focused on short-term processes when we need to do more to deliver long-term change. We know that inequality is deeply linked to health outcomes, so it is time that action on poverty reduction is reflected more fully in NHS targets. Currently, no quality outcome indicators and no local delivery plan standards provide a way of measuring steps that NHS services are taking to reduce health inequalities by improving access to services, delivering more equal health outcomes or tackling poverty. Reducing health inequalities is one of the Scottish Government's stated health and social care outcomes, and I welcome that very much, but none of the Government's 23 indicators show how health and social care services will actually deliver that. That is not to say that excellent work is not being done in many of those areas, clearly it is, or that we do not have the data that we need to measure progress, but it is not often applied to long-term targets. It is clear that the NHS services can tackle poverty. The healthier, wealthier children project is a clear demonstration. It has helped to cure over £11 million in benefits for vulnerable families. Financial inclusion can be everyday business in our NHS and local services, and I am glad that NHS Health Scotland has committed to developing national referral pathways between NHS services and money advice services, but they need to be well-developed reliable referrals, not just signposting, because we know that signposting does not work well for marginalised groups and those who feel most excluded. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity today to debate how we can create a fairer Scotland, and I do hope that there will be many more such opportunities over the next four and a half years. There is clearly consensus between all parties on some of the ways forward, perhaps less on others, but whatever the different views held in different parts of the chamber, it is right that we are discussing how we use all the powers of this Parliament, which are increasingly significant towards this end. I, along with the rest of the Green Group of MSPs, look forward to contributing to this debate by showing how Holyrood can exercise its powers boldly and radically to create a better and fairer Scotland. Mark Griffin, to wind up for Labour in eight minutes, is there about space, Mr Griffin? I welcome the debate today and the publication of the Fairer Scotland action plan. It has been a well-read document in my house. I am not satisfied with our building blocks, even my 11-month-old daughter had a go at it, and you can see the results here. The Government can count on the support of this item in the chamber when it comes to concrete action to reduce poverty and inequalities. I welcome the 50 fairness actions for this time of the Parliament as a way of tackling the issues and keeping track of progress, which we believe should be in the form of an annual report to Parliament. I am glad that the Government has agreed to that. We also look forward to the details of how the plan will be funded and supported in the upcoming budget. I think that that will be crucial. I would like to concentrate my remarks on some of the individual pledges. Action 19 and 48 refer to benefit entitlement generally and benefit entitlement for older people specifically. Given that the bulk of the spend on social security is reserved and so the costs of a move towards a 100 per cent claiming rate would largely fall on reserved budgets, it makes complete sense in simple economic and budgetary terms that the Scottish Government should do all that it can to drive this as hard as possible. Aside from the economic reasons that would see millions pumped directly into local economies, there is the much more important human reason and the impact that this could have on reducing inequalities and poverty. On tax credits alone, more than 100,000 people do not claim what they are entitled to. £428 million in working tax credit and child tax credit goes unclaimed. We have called on the Government to use the newly devolved powers in the forthcoming social security bill to set a legal duty to increase awareness and uptake of social security benefits in general. That call builds on a key recommendation of the Scottish Government's poverty adviser to ensure that people claim the benefits that they are entitled to. Local authorities and third sector welfare rights organisations, already struggling with millions of pounds of cuts, deliver extensive income maximisation programmes, helping to tackle poverty and inequalities right across Scotland. However, just now, there is no statutory duty to publicise social security benefits. Publicity drives can be done by individual local authorities on an ad talk basis, but there is no responsibility to do so. Making sure in law that cash goes to the people who are entitled to it could make a huge difference to thousands of families across Scotland who are struggling and could boost local economies. As well as maximising the number of people who are entitled to social security payments to receive them, we should also look at who within the household is receiving those payments. That is mentioned briefly in action point 17, where there is a reference to considering whether split payments could be offered as a choice. Split payments for universal credit is an issue of which is of utmost importance and is something that has been raised with the Minister in the Social Security Committee and was supported by the committee in the previous session of Parliament. In gender, the Scottish Government's pledge that new powers will be founded on dignity and respect will be undermined from the outset if social security cannot be accessed equally by women. If family universal credit payments are paid to the male in the household, what then for the financial independence of women? How confident would a woman be in leaving an abusive relationship when they know that the family universal credit payments are made to their abusive partner? What will be the impact on children's wellbeing when studies repeatedly highlight the link between women's access to income and reducing child poverty? The Government should look seriously at making split payments for benefits related to children or caring to the lead carer and the remainder being split between a couple. Action point 17, that same action point, also chimes with the call from MND Scotland and other organisations that represent people with long-term conditions or a terminal illness appoint raised eloquently and admirably by Christina McKelvie. Her calling on the Scottish Government to ensure that people with motor neuron disease will be able to access certain benefits without assessment for the rest of their lives, certainly. I do not remember whether the member has read the present social security legislation, but that already gives either the department or the tribunal making the decision to make a lifetime award. It is there, and over 20 years of sitting on the DRA and PIP tribunals, we often gave lifetime awards. What needs to change? There is clearly something that needs to change since we are hearing of case studies, people giving personal testimony of having to go through a reassessment, people who are waiting so long for an award that they pass away before they even get their entitlement. That is something that is clear. It is personal testimony that maybe the member should take a look at MND Scotland's website and see the personal testimonies there and see that there is a problem that remains to be fixed. I would hope that the Government and all parties indeed would commit to looking at that and addressing that. I do not think without foundation that the MND Scotland are calling on the Government to ensure that people with motor neuron disease will be able to access certain benefits without assessment for the rest of their lives. The Government's consultation on the future of social security in Scotland is asking if some people should be automatically entitled to benefits. That could mean that people with certain conditions would receive benefits without having to go through a standard application or assessment. That would mean a reduction in red tape and costs, reducing stress for people waiting on a claim being processed and, hopefully, eliminating that terrible situation where a person waiting on the support is entitled to dies before they receive their entitlement. Craig Stockton, chief executive of MND Scotland, said that benefits are not a perk of being ill. There is a necessary payment to help people with MND to deal with the financial implications that invariably come from having such a disabling medical condition. We should recognise that and not ask people who have been given such a devastating diagnosis to go through an assessment process or even worse to go through a reassessment process when it is a rapidly progressing terminal illness. I hope that, alongside the support that the Government will take on board what Labour speakers have said today in terms of strengthening the actions that they have set out in the report and how we can improve progress through regular reporting to Parliament and ask members to support the amendment in the name of Alex Rowley. Thank you, Mr Rowlands. I will be in care to wind up the Conservatives. Ten minutes are there abouts, Mr Kerr. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Ten minutes in which the chamber is watching carefully to see whether I can resist adopting a particular stance. If I can avoid taking a robust, strong and yet opening and welcoming position in order to avoid giving George Adam a hot flush, yet, in a debate headline building affair of Scotland, it takes all of us in which the motion is fundamentally agreeable, the only stance possible is collaborative and conciliatory. As we have heard this afternoon, everyone here believes that fairness should be integral to everything that this place and this Government seek to achieve. No one would disagree that all sectors of society should work together to build a stronger, more inclusive country. No one would disagree with people's right to buy and own their own warm and affordable home, whilst recognising that many people simply cannot afford to get onto the property ladder. No one would disagree that our economy should work for everyone, to eradicate child poverty, to ensure that everyone has equal opportunity. In fact, everyone here recognises a simple truth that it is time—no, it is long overdue, perhaps nine years—for this Government to start to build a Scotland that works for everyone. I wonder what the member has to say about his Government in London scrapping key elements of the child poverty legislation, trying to sweep child poverty under the carpet by abolishing statutory income targets. Would he not accept that the cuts to child tax credits since 2010 will be a major driver in the explosion of child poverty that we will see by 2020, with 100,000 more Scottish children put into poverty as a result of his Government's actions? I do not recognise that at all and I also do not recognise, as I will come to you later in this submission, why we are harping on about the Westminster Government when we are here to debate this from the Scottish Government to talk about what the Scottish Government can and should be doing going forward. We welcome the fairer Scotland action plan and its 50 fairness actions for the current parliamentary session. Angela Constance is right in her motion when she says that it takes all of us, it will take all sectors of society to work together to build a stronger, more inclusive country. For this country to truly be fair for our ambition to truly be met with reality, we must work together for a united country is a fairer country and one that can work for all. Unfortunately, in this paper, a fairer Scotland, there is a distinct lack of the ambition and resolve needed to actually create that society. Before you even get past page 1 of the introduction, Angela Constance is already cursing the UK Government at attempts to take Scotland out of Europe, which has brought us further economic uncertainty. Please, enough of the airbrushing from history, the 1 million who voted leave in Scotland, 36 per cent of SNP voters, I believe. I was not one of them, but I am staggered that this Government continues to willfully and divisively pretend that either those levers do not exist or somehow did not know what they were voting for simply because this Government disagrees with the outcome. That is not working together. Then, as Graham Simpson said, there is the constant blaming of the Tories and the Westminster for all the ills of the world. I panicked earlier. I thought that I would come to the wrong debate when Alex Rowley was speaking and when Christina McKelvie was just focusing on Tories and Westminster. We hear constantly about the Tory Brexit, George Adam blaming the Tories about the disability employment rate, despite it being six and a half per cent lower in Scotland than in the wider UK. Now, Edwin Morgan appeared in time for reflection earlier. At the opening of this Parliament, he wrote, a nest of fearties is what they do not want, a symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want, a phalanx of four-locked tuggers is what they do not want, and perhaps above all, the droopy mantra of it wasnae me is what they do not want. Well, enough of the it wasnae me, take responsibility. It is not Westminster's fault. I will give way to George Adam. I know that the member likes to do the time work when he puts his hands on his hips, but is he living in another planet or dimension even? Is he not taking responsibility for the fact that I mentioned in my speech that, under your watch, disabled 48 per cent of all disabled people in Scotland are living in poverty? Take on your responsibility. George Adam may be happy to take a jump to the left, but I rarely am. The reality is that the disability employment in Scotland has fallen significantly as a result of the SNP since 2007. If anyone needs to take responsibility, I am afraid that it is this Government. It is not Westminster's fault that the number of women aged 18 to 24 in work across the UK has increased by 2.8 per cent since May 2007, while it fell 4.2 per cent in Scotland. It is not Westminster's fault that Scotland's employment rate remains lower than the UK's and lower than when the SNP first came to office. It is not Westminster's fault that economic inactivity is higher in Scotland than in the UK, and it is not Westminster's fault as Alison Harris brought in that bursary support for students in Scotland has almost halfed in the last five years. I am sure that we can all accept that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was right that the best way out of poverty, the best way to a fair society is jobs, and they are also surely right to suggest, as Adam Tomkins highlights in the amendment, that the narrow reliance upon income measures to identify households in or at risk of poverty is insufficient. Wider factors such as deprivation and the cost household face must be used in poverty measurement. As Annie Wells said, this Government has the powers to achieve all the motion wants. Alison Johnstone and Elaine Smith made that clear. We do not agree with the methodology, but we do agree that the powers are here, so let's use them as the amendment craves to address Scotland's poor employment growth rate and Scotland's high inactivity rate. Blaming the UK for things that you don't like is not working together. Let's not be distracted and suffer the negative drag on the Scottish economy and Scotland's ambition caused by an unwanted, unnecessary, unproductive referendum. That is not working together. Just last week, leading accountancy firms warned that companies will leave Scotland. Graduates will seek work elsewhere. Scotland's economy will suffer not because of Brexit, as Jeane Freeman suggested at the outset, but not because of Westminster but because of this Government's punitive tax plans. A strong economy will boost public spending, making Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK will not. It simply cannot be right that, in Inverruri, in White Hills, in the Geary, perhaps more than half of residents are about to see a council tax rise, raiding them for £9 million to fund other parts of the country, while both Aberdeen and Neeshire remain the lowest-funded local authorities in Scotland. That is not fair. I shall. Mr Simpson, I am grateful to Liam Kerr. Does he agree that the Scottish Government's proposals on council tax are an attack on local accountability and that their constant cuts to council budgets, as Alex Rowley said earlier, do nothing to alleviate poverty? Mr Simpson, you have taken Mr Kerr's last minute. I unequivocally agree with Graham Simpson on that, and I think that the point deserves to be made for the record. Into my last minute, we all want to make Scotland a fairer place to live and work. The motion is a good one, but it must be amended as we propose. Will any member allow the people of Scotland to see that they did not vote for an amendment that calls for the taking more seriously of racial and religious prejudice, to give matters a higher profile than is the case in the Government's action plan? Will any member allow the people of Scotland to see that they did not vote for a more decentralised Scotland, with greater power and control handed to our towns, cities and communities? Will any member allow the people of Scotland to see that they did not vote for an amendment that calls for an acceptance that we must confront the underlying causes of poverty? To vote against or abstain from our amendment is surely to put party prejudice over prudence, expediency over ethicality and self-interest over Scotland's interests. For all of those reasons, I commend the Scottish Conservative and Unionist amendment to the chamber. Thank you very much. Mr Kerr called in Freeman to wind up the Government till 459 please minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. This Government is fully committed to tackling poverty and inequality and our fairer Scotland action plan makes that absolutely clear, backed as it is by a major funding boost of a new £29 million fund for communities and the third sector. As the cabinet secretary said in her opening remarks, tackling poverty is the job for all of Scotland. Every bit of the public sector, this Government, local government and all of us is individuals. I am grateful for the many positive contributions that I have heard during this debate from across the chamber, and I want to deal with some of them in some detail. Can I turn to the contribution that was made by Ms Johnson in putting forward the Green amendment? I have to say that I would agree very much with many of the points that she made on both social security and child poverty. Indeed, the point about citizens' income is an interesting idea that is well worth further consideration, but I know that she recognises as I do that, with 25 per cent of tax powers and 15 per cent of social security powers, we are very far away from being able to make that any kind of reality. I also agree that, across the public sector, signing up to this agenda, and with respect to her points on health, I do believe that Sir Harry Burns, who is currently reviewing our health targets, will be mindful of the connection that he has long expressed, and that I agree with Fully, between ill health and the impact of poverty. On the point about taxation, I have to remind the chamber that our income tax proposals on which we were elected and for which we have a mandate are proposals that protect low and middle income families and, at the same time, generate extra revenue of around £1.2 billion in cumulative revenues by 2021-22. To Mr Kerr, I really do not believe that asking for higher tax earners to forgo a tax cut is unfair. In fact, it feels to me like a very fair proposition indeed. Turning to the amendment that is put forward to us from Labour, an amendment that we are very happy to accept, I absolutely welcome the comments and the approach that Mr Rowley made and the approach that he took. I would say to him that the plan itself, although we are absolutely committed to driving forward, is not the end of the matter and other comments and other contributions will be very welcome received. While I agree that it is critical to all of this, it is public sector reform. I am afraid that I do feel that he is still failing to recognise the reality that this Government's budget will have been cut by 10.6 per cent across a decade. I also recognise, too, that our procurement reform bill for the first time includes a living wage requirement. We did indeed argue for employment powers in the Smith commission, but, unfortunately, we did not receive all the support that we might have wanted in order to secure that. Finally, let me turn to the Conservative amendment. It feels to me a very great pity, Presiding Officer, that Mr Tomkins and his colleagues have chosen to ignore not only the approach that we are taking in the fairer Scotland action plan, which is to address actions across the whole of government but to join up the dots in what we are doing across the whole of government. For example, he does not seem to have read our economic strategy nor to recognise that we have a race equality framework that specifically supports faith and belief equality, nor to recognise the community empowerment act, which very specifically looks to hand powers to local communities and individuals in those local communities. How unfortunate that, in all of his 10 minutes, he had so little, if anything, to say about tackling income inequality and economic inequality. I have to say to the point about how we keep harking on about Westminster. We harp on about Westminster because, actually, the primary causes of poverty and inequality in Scotland are the rest at the hands of a Tory Government in Westminster—hands of a Tory Government—that, can I remind you, you told us that we would all be better together? Can he say that very many people in Scotland are finding that to be a reality? My last point on this question is this, and it is to Ms Wells. Can I repeat that our track record on the gender pay gap is significantly better than the UK's? I understand that it is handy to be discriminating in the statistics that you might use, but it is helpful to be accurate in them. In our gender pay gap, we now sit at around 7.3 per cent compared to the UK at 9.4 per cent. Let me repeat our absolute commitment to delivering on the Fairer Scotland action plan. In welcoming the plan, Jamie Livingstone of Oxfam Scotland said that it urgently needs to move from paper to practice in order to reduce poverty, and I couldn't agree with him more. We need more than fine words, and that is why we have no intention as a Government of allowing this action plan to languish on the shelf. Although we need more than words, language is important. The cabinet secretary said earlier that poverty can lead to people experiencing marginalisation and discrimination. Where does that stem from? Attitudes that have hardened under the rhetoric of a Tory Government at Westminster, a Government that has chosen to give tax breaks to the rich, sanction and put caps on those benefits, those on benefits, chosen to sell off social housing and increase rents and yet impose a bedroom tax. A Tory Government at Westminster that will reduce yet further the benefit cap in the next two weeks or so, increasing by six times the number of families and individuals in Scotland who will be affected with that. All the while, deflecting from the real hardship of their ideology and its policies, by using the language of strivers versus skyvers, indeed in the Tory amendment, it is apparently the fault of those with addiction involved in the anguish of family breakdown and who are—I cannot believe this Victorian word—workless that lies at the heart of what poverty is about. Let me make it crystal clear. We will never, as a Government, stoop to divisive language, setting one group against another or belittling and diminishing those who need our collective help to live the lives that they deserve. Orwell said, language corrupts thought and the language we use is important. That is why we have emphasised the importance of our language in terms of the Social Security Bill. The powers that will come to us will be powers that provide us with a significant opportunity to take a different path from the UK Government, to harness those powers to our values and support people, not on the basis of dogma but on the basis of compassion, ambition and action. We will set the tone from the start with our new social security system and we will have the principles of dignity and respect at the heart and alive in everything that we do. However, we also need to be clear about the things that we cannot do, all the wrongs being visited on the people of Scotland that we cannot yet make right. Since May, I have been listening to people affected across Scotland. I have heard much that is wrong and unfair in the current system. Where those benefits are being devolved, we will make those changes. I am grateful to organisations such as MND, Inclusion, the Glasgow Disability Alliance and others for drawing those important matters to our attention. However, where we do not have the powers, we will continue to advocate hard for the changes that are necessary. Having heard about the issues around people who are not fit for work, being unable to get employment and support allowance, people having their benefits sanctioned and forced to turn to food banks and the current shameful UK debacle on tax credits so crudely inflicted on people, I can only say how much I dearly wish we had 100 per cent of the social security system devolved to this Scottish Parliament so we could put dignity and fairness at its heart. We start from a strong track record of delivery. We have appointed again the independent poverty adviser on poverty and inequality. We acted quickly on child poverty, bringing forward clear proposals for a child poverty bill for Scotland. We will commence the relevant provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to introduce a social economic duty, supporting in its way the no-wrong-door approach. Both of those are unique to Scotland, showing that we are leading the way in terms of fairness and equality. Scotland is leading the way in creating a fairer country, and that is something that we can all be proud of if we work together to make it happen. I commend our motion to Parliament. Thank you, minister. That concludes the debate on building a fairer Scotland. We move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of motion 2057, in the name of Clare Adamson, on behalf of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, on a standing orders change to First Minister's question time. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee is proposing some changes to the rules on First Minister's question time. Since the start of the parliamentary session, the Presiding Officer has trialled changes to the format of First Minister's questions. Up to eight questions are being selected instead of six, and the time for First Minister's questions has been extended from up to 30 minutes to up to 45 minutes. On 6 October, the Presiding Officer wrote to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, asking us to revise standing orders to make those changes permanent. The committee's view is that the revised format for First Minister's questions is an improvement on the previous arrangements. We believe that it is cross-party support for amending standard orders to allow the new format to continue in the future. Those relatively limited changes to standing orders that we are proposing today will allow that to happen. I am pleased to move motion S5M-02057, in my name. Thank you. The question on the motion will be put at decision time. There are five questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment 2077.1, in the name of Adam Tomkins, which seeks to amend motion number 2077, in the name of Angela Constance, on building a fairer Scotland, be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. Parliament will move to vote, and members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote is as follows. Yes, 34. No, 90. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that amendment 2077.2, in the name of Alex Rowley, which seeks to amend the motion in the name of Angela Constance, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are all agreed. The next question is that amendment 2077.3, in the name of Alison Johnstone, which seeks to amend motion number 277, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are not agreed. Parliament will move to a vote, and members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on the amendment to the name of Alison Johnstone is as follows. Yes, 34. No, 91. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that motion 2077, in the name of Angela Constance, as amended, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are all agreed. The next question is that motion 2057, in the name of Claire Adamson, on a standing orders change, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are all agreed, and that concludes decision time. We will now move to members' business, and I will take a few moments to change chairs.