 The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 5389, in the name of Gillian Martin, on not on my screen. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and could I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons? I call on Gillian Martin to open the debate around seven minutes, please, Ms Martin. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This book has been sitting on my table for about two months, and I knew I had to read it, but I kept on putting it off. I bought it the day after going to an event in this place, run by the international justice mission about cyber-sex trafficking. The locust effect details how violence and injustice perpetrates poverty, and it's a tough but an essential read. It's also a window into the incredible work of the international justice mission, as it's written by its founder, Gary Hogan. Hearing about children in developing countries has been subjected to abuse and rape on live internet streaming, paid for by the West's pedophiles, makes me so angry. Angry and powerless. I knew that this book contained reports of cyber-sex trafficking and many other types of violence against the world's poorest people. Those people get no justice from the courts, and they get no protection from the police. The first case that you'll read about details the horrific rape and murder of an eight-year-old Peruvian girl by a landlord who didn't even bother to hide the evidence because he knew his lawyer would bribe the police to destroy it. In the end, the police pinned the child's murder on another poor person, a boy with learning difficulties. They needed no evidence because their word was enough. The real murderer wasn't even troubled by the police. That is endemic in developing countries. I read the first chapter, and I couldn't read any further for weeks. The scale of injustice makes me feel impotent. The task of helping those people seems too great, but read on what I did, and I emerged with hope because the IGM is working hard to tackle this injustice. Today's members' debate cannot cover everything that international justice mission does to help to pose the world combat violence and injustice. We need to debate every evening for at least two weeks to do that. Today's debate is on just one of our campaigns that deals with one element of their fight against violent crime, and that is not on my screen, which highlights the issue of cybersex trafficking of children. I was able to walk away from that evening in the Parliament of hearing about these crimes and know that my kids are shielded from this horror. The poor children of the Philippines don't have that luxury. They are born into a life of violence and injustice. Children aged anywhere between one and 16 years old are subject to being abused live on the internet for paying customers. Paid-of-files in our country, in wider Europe, in the states and beyond, are perpetrating child abuse with a credit card. The Philippines authorities receive upwards of 6,000 reports of crimes like this a month, and that's just in one country. This is big business throughout Asia. As other developing countries get online, the problem is set to get far worse. Those at the event in Parliament heard how kids are taken from villages and kept prisoners and flats in urban areas and forced to do the most upsetting things imaginable by their captors. Other kids are used by their families and family friends to earn money from gangmasters in their own homes. All you need is a mobile phone, a webcam and a frightened, coerced child. So even home is not a safe place for many children. One thing that I can't forget that was said by Andrew Bevin, the regional development executive of international justice mission in Scotland that evening, was this. He told us that kids will come in from playing in the streets at a time in their day when they know that Europe logs on of an evening. That is when the demand arises. I cannot get that out of my mind. Europe logs on and the abuse starts thousands of miles away. Here's where the power to end this lies. We stop the purchase and we stop the practice. This information is very hard to hear. Believe me, I am having a great deal of difficulty talking about it today, but there are people doing something about it and it's their work that I want to draw attention to. The international justice mission worked to rescue these children from their lives of abuse. In this country, they work with our law enforcement agencies to prosecute those who pay for that abuse, commissioning acts so distressing that decent people can barely imagine them. Whilst we in the UK have agencies like the internet watch foundation working terrifically hard to take down websites along with police forces across Scotland and Europe, they are taking down websites with stored images, live streams are harder to detect and those who arrange them and those who pay for them operate in ways that make their apprehension extremely challenging. Some members may make mention of some case studies on children who have been rescued by the international justice mission working with partners in the various countries. Their success in helping children to escape this slavery, for that's where it is. That gives me hope that they are making a difference. I also want to point out that it's not only children in developing countries. This abuse of children happens in Scotland too. Operation Latisse last year gathered evidence of more than 30 million in decent images of Scottish children over a six-week period. The police have said that this is only the tip of the iceberg. As I miss peace, this is something that we cannot ignore. No constituency in Scotland is free from this. Every constituency has someone paying for abuse to happen to a child, either thousands of miles across the world or right on our doorstep. Anyway, it doesn't matter where the abuse is happening. It's happening because there is a market right here in Scotland, right here in the UK, right here in Europe. The fight against child sex abuse is at the front of the Scottish Government's national action plan on child sexual exploitation and through the national internet safety plan that was launched in April 2017. What more can we, as members, do? We cannot shy away from talking about this dreadful phenomenon. As hard as it is for us to talk about and listen to these terrible things, that's why I propose this debate. We must continue to speak out to ask questions of our internet providers, some who do not do enough to shut down those streams. What about the payment exchange organisations? What are they doing to help the police to identify those criminals? We need to be asking them those questions. We also need to empower and encourage our constituents to tell the police if they suspect anyone they know is accessing those images or live streams and to know enough to give them guidance on how they can do this anonymously. We must ask our Governments what they are doing to assist law enforcement agencies in tracking down those who perpetrate the trade and therefore perpetrate the abuse. Pick up the book. Don't leave the issue behind you as you leave an event or sit down after a chamber debate. Let's keep attention on the issue and support the work of the international justice mission and say very firmly, not on my screen. Species of around four minutes, please. Gordon Lindhurst will be followed by Kate Forbes. Deputy Presiding Officer, let me begin by thanking Gillian Martin in particular for bringing this debate to the chamber. She has expressed matters, if I may say so, very eloquently. Something is a very difficult topic, I think, for any of us to speak about, far less in any detail. I would also like to thank the international justice mission for the good work that it does worldwide, protecting vulnerable people and bringing criminals to justice. The not on my screen campaign has been set up to try and counter a growing problem that spans today's globalised technology-driven world. The expansion of access to the internet undoubtedly brings benefits to the younger people that, when I was young, certainly I would not even have been able to dream of. We should welcome the benefits that the internet brings and do what we can to make sure that children will benefit from this across the world. The internet also has this terrible dark side that Governments are very much still learning how to deal with. The internet spans borders, which means that any action taken to tackle the more unfortunate consequences of it requires true global co-operation across borders. In the UK, although we have no reason for complacency, we have a reasonably good track record of identifying illegal content, shutting it down and pursuing justice for those who have suffered at the hands of this terrible crime. The internet watch foundation has reduced the prevalence of child sexual abuse content hosted in the UK from 18 per cent in 1996 to less than 1 per cent since 2003. It has a number of operational partnerships across the world with police forces, Government agencies and also helping countries with lesser capability to remove unacceptable content. However, as long as there continues to be a demand, including unfortunately in this country, criminals will continue to be attracted to carrying out these horrific crimes. As the international justice mission briefing for today's debate says, it can often be seen unfortunately as a low-risk crime, easy to carry out with a potentially high financial reward. The Not on My Screen campaign contributes to an all-encompassing approach to tackling these crimes by tackling the demand for child abuse images in the first place. The Keeping Children's Safe online debate, which I referred to earlier, concluded that everyone has a role to play in keeping children safe online. The Not on My Screen campaign reaffirms that principle, encouraging individuals to think about how their online behaviour and that of those around them can have such devastating consequences for children and calling on individuals to take a stand against the crime. I hope that today's debate will help to spread this message so that we can seek to use the tools that are available, tools such as Stop It Now Scotland, which can provide help to those worried about their own online behaviour before it becomes even more of a problem, as well as giving their friends, their family or the family of children at risk of abuse a mechanism through which to express their concerns to authorities. That scheme should continue to be fully funded, as well as publicised widely as possible so that concerning behaviour can be stopped early. I would like to also briefly mention the important work that is being undertaken by the University of Edinburgh, which is being funded by the NSPCC to carry out research looking at deterrence to viewing indecent images of children. To conclude, I hope that we will all support the international justice mission campaign in the fight against child sexual abuse online. The internet is full of opportunities, but it must be kept safe for us all and especially for children. Across the world today, there are children, individual children with names and faces who are entirely in the hands of merciless abusers. It is markets and demand here in Scotland that is driving that trafficking across the world. Those who access material online through the internet bear the responsibility for what they do. Last week, we discussed the Scottish Government's strategy on trafficking and exploitation. Today, I thank Gillian Martin for bringing this debate to the Scottish Parliament, but today's debate almost pushes it into an even darker place, if that is possible. Today, pedophiles and abusers anywhere in the world can exploit children, most of whom are under the age of 10 years old. Those perpetrators of the abuse, those who drive the market, are not people who stand out when they walk by them on the street, yet they are condoning, facilitating and driving demand across the world. International Justice Mission has individual cases on its website, individual stories, stories of children who have been deceived and trafficked, for example, in the Philippines and enslaved in apartments and flats and exploited to a Western audience. The traffickers are often local, often family members or friends who benefit enormously from allowing those who are in their charge, those who are family friends to be abused. The victims themselves, 54 per cent of the victims rescued by IGM, were between the ages of one and 12 years old. In fact, I spoke to the Internet Watch Foundation last week, who said that 2 per cent of the child abuse cases that they were aware of, 2 per cent of those that they assessed were under two years old. The problem, as Gillian Martin has sketched out, is violence. According to the UN, 4 billion people live outside the protection of the law. That means that they live outside the protection of public justice systems, outside the protection of police courts and a legal system. That means that the police, the courts and the law do not protect people from violence. There is a lot of talk about poverty, but violence is the hidden crisis that is undermining our best global efforts to help the poor. If each of us imagined what it would be like if we called the police at a time of need and no one responded and nobody turned up, there was no way to get justice and we knew that violent criminals would have no fear from retribution. That is captured very well in the book that Gillian Martin mentioned. However, there is hope, and international justice mission is an organisation that brings hope because it does not do what most of us do, which is to discuss the issues. It actually goes into situations, searching day and night for individuals who are in need of rescue. IGM supports teams of lawyers, investigators, social workers and community activists who work full-time to rescue victims and bring perpetrators to justice. The internet facilitates and lifts the hand of restriction on some of the worst successes of human evil. It is so important that we get behind IGM's current campaign, not on my screen, to educate individuals like ourselves on the levels of abuse that are being generated by the western market by Scotland, to encourage individuals to take a direct stand against the abuse and to question the public's behaviour around internet activities. Right now, there are children with faces and children with names that are at the mercy of a western market. I would also like to thank Gillian Martin for leading today's member's debate on not on my screens campaign, which brings to light the hard and daunting truth of cyber sex trafficking, an epidemic that has enslaved countless children in developing countries to predators in the west, including here in the UK. Be it on a computer screen or in a brothel, through a webcam or in person, sexual violence fuels human trafficking of all kinds. We must remain aware and supportive of causes like not on my screen that are fighting for children who, in most cases, have no one else to fight for them, not even the law. This lawlessness is the crux of the issue at hand. According to the UN, as Kate Forbes mentioned, four billion people live outside the protection of the law. The idea of living in a place where the justice system is so broken is often lost on us. International Justice Mission founder Gary Hogan focuses on this in his important book, mentioned by Gillian Martin, The Locust Effect, which I have read and I would strongly encourage others to do the same. He says, imagine what life would be like if you woke up every day with nothing shielding you from violence. Children are sexually abused. Westerners pay to see it on their computer screens because those who control the children live where there are laws that are not enforced. Sexual violence wreaks havoc on what Hogan calls a plague against the global poor because they live where court systems are not known for justice but instead for corruption. Some of the poorest men, women and children in the world are abused, exploited and enslaved in plain view of police forces that perpetuate rather than prevent violence and crime. As Hogan states in The Locust Effect, the most fundamental systems of law and order have been useless for so long in much of the developing world that violent criminals praying upon the poor don't even give it a second thought. Indeed, the book features many disturbing accounts of victims of violence and crime who seek justice but are faced with barrier after barrier. In one example in the book, victims of forced labour, violent beatings and rape in an Indian brick factory waited a very long six and a half years to get to their full trial. When it was finally heard with the victims providing corroborating testimony against the crimes, the judge who had heard the case was reassigned suddenly. Although he had time, he did not rule on the case. Instead, it was passed to a new judge who then acquitted the defendants without listening to any of the testimony or hearing any of the evidence. Those victims were robbed of legal justice, and those perpetrators walked free. Unfortunately, stories like that are all too common and, in fact, many crimes never even make it in front of a judge. Hogan says, and I quote, that violence against women and girls in the developing world is against the law in nearly all the countries where it occurs. Those laws, however, are simply not enforced. Most acts of violence against women are never investigated, and perpetrators commit their crimes safe in the knowledge that they will never face arrest or punishment. International leaders agree that sexual violence is an epidemic that is targeting the poor. Its threatening presence seems to be everywhere, says Hogan, all the time and showing absolutely no mercy. However, there must be mercy through justice. The scale of lawlessness in the world touches nearly half the global population, but organisations such as IJM, which has a global team to rescue and protect millions across the world, progress is being made. Projects such as Not On My Scream have been very successful in rescuing 1,300 people from trafficking and making a huge 75 per cent reduction of children available for sex across three Philippine cities. It is entirely possible, with investment and training, to turn those criminal justice systems around. That work brings mercy justice and, most importantly, hope. If we want to fight poverty and development work to have that real impact, we have to recognise the devastation that this locus of violence brings on society. If we work together, we can build capacity that is needed to create and run those functioning criminal justice systems to give people the protection and the hope that they so desperately need. I call Rhoda Grant to be followed by Rona Mackay. Can I also congratulate Gillian Martin for securing the debate and, indeed, bringing this really important topic to the chamber? Those of us that attended the international justice missions briefing on child sexual exploitation—not on my screen—could not be anything other than horrified at the extent of the terrible abuse. Sexual exploitation in any guise is simply wrong. We are all human, and we need to respect each other. Slavery was supposed to be outlawed 200 years ago yet, if anything, it is growing, with people and children being exploited. The international justice mission told us that this exploitation was now happening live over the internet rather than just by distributing images and film. Both involve the abuse of children, but some images are easier to find than live at a broadcast. With live online abuse, the authorities can tell that the connection was made, but if the exploitation was not recorded, it is difficult to prove it and prosecute users. Last week, the Internet Watch Foundation traced and tracked child sexual exploitation. It reported websites to the authorities in many countries, including our own, in order that they can prosecute them and that they also have that content removed. They are able to trace the use of images, some images being used over and over and over again by tagging them, and they know who has viewed them and they can prove it. They also have those images removed from the internet using that same tagging system. Children who have been exploited have had their lives damaged by that abuse, but how much more difficult for them to recover from this when they know that the images of their own abuse are still out there circulating and being viewed by abusers the world over. The ability to tag them, find them and remove them helps to end this continuing abuse, but it also ensures that those who view those images are also held accountable. They, like the international justice mission, are alarmed at the use of Skype, FaceTime and other such apps for the purpose of child sexual exploitation. It is horrific that abusers cannot try and solve their consciences by telling themselves that the abuse was carried out by somebody else and that they were simply tripping over those images as they surfed the net. Those acts of abuse are now being carried out at the direct instigation of the viewer. A facilitator, normally a family friend or indeed family member or someone known to the child, has groomed the child and coerced them, and they are also guilty of the abuse. They believe that they are safe and that there is no record of the abuse. However, it is possible to prove the connection if not the content of the call. They believe that they are safe from prosecution because the content cannot be screened. They forget that there will always be a record of the call. That child knows what happened on that call and, most likely, so do many other people. Some of them will be involved in the exploitation themselves, but it is also likely that other children will be present, also facing abuse, and they will be party to that event. Therefore, there is still the ability to gather evidence for a prosecution. It is only by zero tolerance that we tackle the abuse. We must also recognise the link between child sexual exploitation and adult sexual exploitation. It was not a great shock to me that a disproportionately high number of periophilia websites were hosted in the Netherlands. They have legalised adult sexual exploitation. The exploitation of any human being is simply wrong. Where it is tolerated for adults, it becomes less of a stretch to tolerate it for children. Therefore, countries that allow exploitation of adults inadvertently become havens for those who would exploit children. We need to ensure that no sexual exploitation is ever tolerated. More than that, it needs to be tackled in all its forms to create a safe and equal society for all of us, most especially for our children. Rona Mackay, followed by Finlay Carson. I thank Gillian Martin for bringing this debate to the chamber. Since being elected, like all colleagues here, I have attended many events, all of which have been interesting and enlightening. However, the event that I attended earlier this year, hosted by MSP Jenny Marra, who I understand has done admirable work in the field of child sexual exploitation and cyber sex trafficking, had a lasting effect on me and I found it disturbing and powerful, as I know the rest of my colleagues did. I came away thinking two things. First, I was shocked that this could be happening to children throughout the world, including Scotland. Secondly, I was in awe of the amazing work that was done by the international justice mission and the specialist police officers in Police Scotland and the national crime agency, who are dedicated to eradicating this horrible scourge. Those officers who are protecting our children see things on a daily basis that no individual should ever have to witness. For that is truly the darker side of the internet and of human nature. Cyber sex trafficking of children is a growing and devastating form of modern-day slavery, unimaginable before the digital age, and involves the live-streaming sexual abuse of children viewed over the internet. As Julian Martin said in her powerful speech, the majority of victims being abused and exploited are often the poorest and most vulnerable. The IGM also partners with justice systems throughout the developing world to bring criminals to justice, restore survivors and strengthen justice systems. The work that they do is essential in preventing violence against vulnerable individuals throughout the world who have no access to justice otherwise. In an effort to raise awareness, they have launched the not-on-my-screen campaign, but that is not just an international issue. Scottish children are becoming the subjects of online abuse and increasing numbers. Last year, more than 30 million indecent images of Scottish children were uncovered online over a six-week period. Think about that, 30 million, and it could just be the tip of the iceberg. 523 children were identified as potential victims of abuse, with some victims being as young as the age of three. Police crime statistics have shown that there is not one of our constituencies in this Parliament where online child sexual exploitation is not an issue, so it is here on our doorsteps. The not-on-my-screen campaign aims to educate individuals on the alarming levels of abuse and encourages everyone to take a stand against it. IGM is the largest anti-slavery organisation in the world. As internet access increases globally, victims can be exploited anywhere, even with just a mobile phone. In the Philippines, cybersex trafficking of children is exponentially growing, and Philippine authorities are receiving excessive 6,000 referrals every month, many of which have connections in the UK. The trafficking has been driven by online users in western countries, including Scotland. IGM programmes around the world are currently protecting more than 21 million people from violence and slavery, and 54 per cent are aged just one to 12 years old. It is important to remember that the perpetrators are often individuals who would not pick out on the street. They could be sitting next to you on a train. They do not have I am an abuse or tattooed on their foreheads. That is why we need public engagement to tackle this problem through awareness and reporting within communities. Some of the most effective information gathered by the police in online sexual exploitation cases comes through reporting by family or friends. Therefore, it is vital that the public can engage with the issue, and we all share responsibility in fighting it. IGM has recommended establishing a working group to consider what action to take regarding online CSC specifically. Resorting a data fusion centre addressing online CSC would also be a step forward. Lastly, add your voice to the campaign, tweet and use the hashtag not on my screen to help to bring awareness to the issue. We must protect those innocent children from this horrific exploitation. It is our duty and responsibility in the name of humanity. Finlay Carson, followed by Stuart Stevenson. I would like to begin by congratulating Gillian Martin on securing this important debate. I thought that it might be useful to fully set out what cyber sex trafficking actually is, but I am sure that the people in the chamber here know exactly that it is the live streaming exploitation of children viewed over the internet. Pedophiles and predators, anyone in the world, can now search online and wire a secure payment to an adult who sets up the show. Boys and girls, some under the age of two years old, are abused or forced to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam. The more abusive the show, the more the customer pays. Unlike bars or brothels with a permanent address, cyber sex trafficking victims can be moved and abused in any location with an internet connection in a webcam or as we have heard just with a mobile phone. Cyber sex trafficking has become a terrifying cottage industry with high profit margins. Children should be able to grow up free from the horrors of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking, something that should go without saying, but sadly that is not the case. As we come more digitised society, when more of our day-to-day life is spent online, it is more important than ever that we have governments that have the right safeguards in place to protect our children and young people and those most vulnerable in society from online exploitation. Cyber sex trafficking and online abuse of children must be one of the most abhorrent crimes imaginable. The IJM campaign, not on my screen, is vital in highlighting those dreadful crimes and we must recognise as MSPs that this is going on. We must ensure that our police and intelligence services are doing everything possible to shut down those websites and we have the tools to do so and to bring the full weight of the law against those who are taking part in those disgusting crimes. Governments both in the UK and Scotland are taking action on this important issue. In February, the Home Secretary announced the delivery of a £40 million package of Government measures to protect children and young people from sexual abuse exploitation, trafficking and to crack down on offenders. It includes the launch of a new centre of expertise in child sexual abuse and an extra £20 million for the national crime agency to tackle online child sexual exploitation. A £2.2 million for organisations working with children at risk of trafficking and the launch of independent child trafficking advocates. Deputy Presiding Officer, the internet is a wonderful resource but, sadly, as we have heard, it has its dark side. IJM highlights the crimes that are committed upon children and it is not easy reading but we must not shy away from it. Cybersex trafficking is a rapidly growing problem as internet access increases worldwide. It is not an easy crime to tackle. It is often seen as low-risk and easy to do. I am totally in support of the aims of the IJM to educate individuals in alarming levels of use being generated by the western market, including here in Scotland, and encouraging people to take a direct stand against that abuse. It is incumbent on us to work together as legislators to ensure that every step is taken to protect our young children online. There is often an outcry when we suggest, when Government suggests that there should be more access to people's internet logs, a cry of breach of their human rights. Perhaps by demanding our human rights, we are actually abusing the human rights of those children who get abused and we need to look very carefully at how those privacy and encryption methods are now used and how they can actually make it more difficult for the perpetrators to be caught. I, my colleagues, commit to ensuring that we do as much as we can so that the internet can be harnessed by everybody for the incredible tool that it is and not abused by the few and the second crimes as highlighted by not on my screen campaign. The last of the contributions and the open part of the debate is from Stuart Stevenson. I thank you, Presiding Officer, and congratulations to Gillian Martin for bringing this important topic to us today. Particularly, I thank those who have helped to brief me. Barista Annabelle Turner came to see me yesterday and briefed me on behalf of the international justice mission. It is worth having a wee think about what they are about. She, like many of the people who work for them, professionally qualified providing services to that organisation entirely pro bono without any financial benefit accruing to them. It is indicative of a caring society that people are prepared to do that. However, that is a subject that will quite properly motivate people to do their very best to deal with it. Cybersex trafficking is not an easy subject to discuss. The people involved are very nasty people indeed, but I, until comparatively recent times, in my constituency, had at Peterhead prison Scotland's Serious Sex Offenders prison. Sex offender sentenced to four years or more in prison, 300 or so of them in my constituency in the prison, essentially cut off from friends, family and people elsewhere. It is worth having a little think about those people who were in that prison. They are a quite different kind of criminal from the kind of criminal that you would meet if you go to Socton, if you go to Barlinne. Much cleverer, much more socially competent, much more convincing. They are able to use their social skills and knowledge and expertise to perpetrate their foul crimes. They are able to suck in other people to protect them, to create a cocoon around their offending behaviours. I know of one particular sex offender who was in Peterhead prison, whose parents were so convinced of their son's innocence that, before the police arrived at a particular locus, the parents had been cleaning the blood off the walls and repainting rooms. Those were parents whom you would not have thought were the most upright members of society but were caught by the duplicity of a criminal involved in sexual abuse, not online, in the particular case that I am talking about. We have had some references, most recently by Finlay, about technical measures that we might take. It is worth saying that we could get ISPs. All our traffic goes through internet service providers to look at the traffic that is going through and detect what is happening. However, the honest and unfortunate truth is that that simply will not work, because if you encrypt what is going through, you do not know what is in the encrypted package. Yet encryption is an important part of protecting certain kinds of data on the internet, so we cannot ban it on the internet. It simply is not possible. I suspect that there were back to the Al Capone approach. Al Capone was a gangster in Chicago in a very corrupt city for some seven years, until, in 1931, it was concluded that the only way to get him was that he had not paid his tax bills on his old gotten gains. That is the one way that we might be able to make some progress, and that is to track the money and where it is going, because it is difficult to transmit money without there being a mechanism for doing so. I will just leave and there is not time to go into the issue of bitcoin and chains that go with that, but even there it should be possible. I too very much respect what is being done by the internet watch foundation, taking down sites as they do. However, what we have to do is get right back to the genesis of the sites and make it economically enviable for them to do it. I met Christof Clarsen, as I think others did last week from the IWF, and he was very interested in what he has to say. I have no magic solution, none of us here do, but having a debate like this at least allows us to the problem, that is a good start, and I commend Gillian for bringing it to our attention, allowing us to explore that important topic. I call Mark McDonald to respond to the debate around seven minutes, please minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I begin, like others have, by congratulating my friend Gillian Martin on bringing this important debate to the chamber? Gillian struck a note of caution in her speech where she said that this was a very hard issue for her to discuss in the chamber. I don't think that that's something any of us should ever feel in any way apologetic for. The fact that we find this difficult, I think, is essentially a reaffirmation of our humanity, that this creates that sense of revulsion that makes it difficult for us to speak about these issues. But to speak about them we must, and therefore bringing this debate to the chamber, I think, is exceptionally important. The point has been made by a number of members this evening that speaking about the issue, the mere fact of talking about it, is not, in and of itself, enough either. We have to ensure that we are taking appropriate actions where we can and when we can, and I will try and touch on some of the areas where the Scottish Government is taking action within the powers and the remit that we have available to us. We stand supportive of the work of the international justice mission and of the Internet Watch Foundation, which has been mentioned this evening, and its work to try and eradicate child sexual exploitation and the abuse of children that is often perpetrated and perpetuated as a consequence of the digital world in which we now live. Many members touched on the challenges that are faced as a consequence of the internet, the balance that there is between the positive impact that the internet has had in terms of making it much easier for us to experience connectivity across the world. It was a point that Gordon Lindhurst touched on, but also the dark side that is often created as a consequence of that, and it makes it much easier for those with bad intention to be able to make those connections as well without ever having to actually come into physical contact with one another. That was another point that was raised during the course of the debate. I think that Rhoda Grant made an important point that, while, as has been spoken about, the individuals may feel that the crime that they are committing is one that does not have a victim because of the lack of physical proximity, it was made by almost all members that there are victims. Rhoda Grant made the important point that it also is not a crime that is without evidence, and Stuart Stevenson rightly touched on some of the challenges that can be faced in terms of being able to track some of that internet use and where exactly those connections are being made, but he also made the important point that, if one follows the money, often that can be the means by which to catch those who are perpetrating those offences. Here in Scotland, we take a very strong approach to having a position of trying to support individuals who find themselves being exploited. Gillian Martin made the very important point that, while much of what has been spoken about in the debate—I was spoken about by the international justice mission—has focused on those children in other parts of the world who find themselves being abused for the gratification of a Western audience. We must not forget the fact that there are examples and Operation Latice highlighted examples of children in our own midst who are also being abused over the internet, and that abuse must also be cracked down upon. That is why I was grateful to see Police Scotland's Operation Latice targeting those individuals who are responsible for sharing those images online and creating some of that material here in Scotland. We take the approach in relation to human trafficking and exploitation through our Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act, which introduces a single offence covering the trafficking of both adults and children for all forms of exploitation. In March of 2016, we published an update of the national action plan to prevent and tackle child sexual exploitation, which set a range of actions to meet agreed outcomes to tackle that form of sexual abuse. As has been highlighted on 30 May, the first human trafficking and exploitation strategy was published setting out how we can get better at identifying and supporting victims, identifying perpetrators and disrupting their activity and raising awareness across the board. That strategy makes clear that support and protection for child victims of trafficking in Scotland should be provided within the context of Scotland's child protection system, and we are getting it right for every child approach to improving outcomes for children and young people. The Government has also funded Stop It Now Scotland to develop and test a prevention toolkit that can be used to help people to prevent child sexual abuse before it occurs. We are also providing funding for SACRO for their challenging harmful online images and child exploitation or choice programme. It is a pilot programme suitable for those downloading illegal images of children from the internet, where there is a low risk of sexual harm and the offences are non-contact in nature. The service is aimed at males aged 18 and over, who may be considered suitable to be diverted from prosecution or who are subject to a structured deferred sentence community payback order or other community order or licence. We will engage with the University of Edinburgh and Stop It Now Scotland as they undertake research on deterrence to viewing online and decent images of children. I think that that is one of the important points that we need to focus on as well in this, Presiding Officer, is that, while absolutely we want to ensure that the individuals who perpetrate these offences are caught and are brought to justice, Ash Denham highlighted some of the challenges that we face in relation to that in the way in which justice can be delivered in other countries. It would not be for me to talk about how other countries should run their own justice systems, but I think that there is a concern out there that children who are subject to this exploitation and Kate Forbes highlighted some of the numbers that are identified as living outside the protection of the law. I think that we need to take a very strong line that those children should, in the first instance, be believed and, secondly, should have access to justice. In and of itself, Presiding Officer, I recognise that that is not going to be enough. We have to ensure that we also are doing everything that we can to restrict and reduce the demand that exists for those images. If we turn off the demand, we restrict the supply and we make it less likely that those children will be abused because the demand for those images will simply not be there. I recognise that, in Scotland, we will probably only be talking about a small number of the global total of individuals who are going to be downloading and accessing those images, but we have a part to play in relation to that. The Scottish Government stands ready, alongside our partners, to do all that we can to ensure that both the demand for those images and the supply of those images are tackled at source. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting.