 The first item of business this afternoon is a member's business debate on motion number 13845 in the name of Christina McKelvie on halt welfare reform. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would be grateful if those members who wish to speak in the debate could please press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Christina McKelvie to open the debate seven minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I take this opportunity and open in the debate to thank all of my colleagues across the chamber who signed the member's motion to allow it to be debated today? Can I also pay tribute to the work of and say thank you to HIV Scotland and that SAMH and the Disability Benefits Consortium and Pat Unions who is the inspiration behind this motion? Last week, my colleague on Westminster, Angus Robertson, asked the Prime Minister about the suicide of Mr Michael O'Sullivan, a 60-year-old disabled man and father of two. His death followed his work capability assessment. Mr Robertson asked the Prime Minister to publish some 60 investigations by the Department of Work and Pensions, which could expose many more tragic cases of this kind. So far, he has refused to do so. Meanwhile, the coroner has warned that there is a risk of further deaths. We must keep sight of the fact that welfare reform is costing lives, bringing misery and debt into families and all in the name of putting the UK into surplus. Even his own backbenchers are questioning the Prime Minister's approach. Although the chancellor himself has suddenly decided that the House of Lords is profoundly undemocratic, that is what you say when the vote isn't in your favour. Even if the notables and the geriatrics and the Tory donors are rejecting Mr O'Sullivan's plan and calling for a rethink. Last week, the Tory MP for South Cambridge in our maiden speech, Heidi Allen, has suggested that ministers were losing sight of the difficulties of working people and their single-minded determination to achieve a surplus. Reform is not a spread sheet, she said, and she fears the way her government is going about the whole process is all wrong. Conservative Johnny Mercer urged the chancellor to do, and I quote something, anything to ease, the harshest as he put it, effects of the cuts on vulnerable people. He also said that my duty and indeed our duty is to shout for the most vulnerable. On Sunday, we were told that three cabinet members, unnamed, have expressed their concerns about George Osborne's planned cuts to working tax credits, and we can see the mess that that has created this week. Ruth Davidson, too, has also expressed her anxieties. She has said, we can't have people suffering on the way the government needs to look at this again. When you have this kind of rebellion in the governing party at Westminster, you most certainly do need to look again at your proposals. Presiding Officer, this SNP Government is shouting out for the most vulnerable, but Westminster isn't listening. Even going by Prime Minister's questions today, they are still not listening. There can be no trade-off between people's lives and national debt. Are we all going to sit us around and say, all well, collateral damage, a term that I abhor? Are people who happen to have a disability, whether mental or physical, or who struggle to find employment that they can manage, are to be punished? Are those folk who have been forced into debt and down to the food bank meant to feel that they are the undeserving poor? Honestly, Presiding Officer, does anyone actually want those so-called welfare reforms? We hear all sorts of dodgy claims by the Westminster Government that cutting benefits is the only way forward. After yesterday's welfare reform committee, Presiding Officer, I remain completely unconvinced. I don't claim to be an economist, but I do understand that the more money a national government pulls out of an economy, the lesser it is available for people to spend. That being so, then, how can you grow and develop your economy? I am sure that I will be accused of oversimplification, but it seems abundantly clear to me that if you pull money away from people, you take it out of the local spending so that people have less to spend and the Treasury then receives less tax. More brutally and more honestly, this Government is literally taking bread out of the mouths of babes. The most disadvantaged are those with the already added strain of long-term health problems and those whose quality of life is already compromised. In my constituency in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, 3,400 families in work with 5,800 children are going to feel the loss of tax credits where it hurts most on the lives and wellbeing of their children. So much for making work pay. Here are families desperately struggling to make in-meats, often in low-paid jobs or on zero-hour contracts, and they are being told that the Government sees fit to take more money out of their pockets to the tune of around £1,000 a year on average. For many families, the figure is twice that. The people who suffer most are the least able to get heard. The bankers, public school politicians and affluent aristocracy are already and regularly given a voice. Those at the bottom of a pecan order get little but abuse. Pat Onions is a constituent of Lanarkshire. Her ceasefire campaign calls for an emergency halt to sanctions, timing out and the distress and repeated assessments for sick and disabled people. The evidence shows that, despite the Government's claims, sick and disabled people in the work-related group activity are not finding employment. What is the Government's reaction? Is it to punish them some more, to harass them and blame them for the predicament that they find themselves in? They are attacked as benefit scroungers, lazy or not, or being too picky. Work done to make reasonable adjustments to the workplace for those with disabilities is a great achievement, but it isn't enough. Some people have conditions that mean that the reasonable adjustments cannot compete as effectively as fit people in the ruthless competitive open job market. We need to discuss the extra cost that more major changes will bring to an employer, but no one discusses sheltered working arrangements, quotas or subsidies to help. I have already met many constituents who are suffering a major drop in their income under the changes to DLA. Many have lost that benefit and others will find it extremely difficult to attain PIP. Because of the UK Government's 2010 decision to reduce the DLA budget by 20 per cent, very few of those people will actually get PIP. If PIP is not halted, those people will lose all their vital support. It makes no sense to implement that change. The Scottish Government is repeatedly on the record as having opposed. Fixing the damage would cost as much in health and social care and cost terms than the roll-out would. In Hamilton, Stonehouse, there are 840 people of working age who receive the low rate of DLA and will not qualify for PIP. The impact on those individuals, their carers, who will no longer qualify for carers allowance either, their families and communities could be catastrophic. We have our Parliament with its limited powers, but we have Westminster and we have the issue that they just don't seem to listen. The introduction of evil diminishes our power massively, turns our MPs into second-class elected drapes and smacks very much of a revenge attack. It is our ever-just one example of the means by which Westminster will continue to defer and determine our future in Scotland. That is something that we must counter for the sake of all those silence voices, suffering the cruelty of conservative policies, even though that Government has had only one MP in Scotland. He is not in Hamilton, Lackall or Stonehouse, so I say call a halt and call a halt now. Thank you very much. We now turn to the open debate speeches of four minutes or so, and I call Neil Findlay to be followed by David Torrance. Presiding Officer, I hate the term welfare when it is used in the context that is being used here today. One dictionary definition of welfare is the good fortune, health, happiness and prosperity of a person, group or organisation. While none of those descriptions are fitting for what people and benefits are experiencing at present, I prefer the term social security defined as a Government programme that provides economic assistance to persons who are faced with unemployment, disability or agedness. Social security has been at the heart of our welfare status, a series of policies that have, since its creation, helped to civilise our society with the principle of a safety net through which no one would fall. That safety net is now full of large gaping holes. That is the inevitable consequence and deliberate consequence of adherence to neoliberal economics and doctrine. Progressive taxes on wealth have shrunk as regressive taxes have increased, with the poor now paying 47 per cent of their income and tax, whilst the rich pay 35 per cent, while wages at the top have fallen while the wealth at the bottom have fallen while the wealth at the top has soared. Pensions have been cut, pay the loan used spiralled, food banks have become an almost accepted part of our culture, what a dammin indictment that is. All the while, corporate welfare through bank bailouts, tax cuts, tax allowances, quantitative easing, EU subsidies, privatisation and tax avoidance dishes out, eye-watering sums of money to the biggest and most profitable corporations. And who is it that is paying the price of the global banking crash? Is it the investment bankers? Is it the hedge fund managers, the gamblers in the city? Of course it's not. It's the people who always pay. It's the people on low pay. It's the people in insecure jobs and the people who rely on our social security system and it's the same here as it is in Ireland, as it is in Spain, as it is in Greece, in the US and elsewhere. But of course, aren't the Tory party relishing ripping apart that safety net? Claiming that they have to do this to balance the books so they pay the likes of ATOS, NGOs, working links and other agencies billions through the failing work programme or via the brutal work capability assessments and they implement a sanctions regime that is regularly cruel and often absurd. And they've created a horrendous and horrible culture around the benefits system, which is humiliating and degrading for claimants and miserable and demoralising for the staff who work there as we heard yesterday at the welfare reform committee. And things are just simply going to get worse. Christina McKelvie's referred to the shambles over tax credits, but we've also got the roll-out of universal credit. Without doubt, the worst and most ill-judged decision of them all, and that is the payment of housing benefit to landlords, tenants rather than landlords. As a former housing officer, I can think of no worse policy that they could have come up with. It's as if they've sat round a table and said, right, let's come up with a plan to see how we can get the most people evicted possible. Thankfully, we will be able to do something different in Scotland. And then we see the move to personal independent payment, which is designed to take millions of pounds worth of benefits, disability benefits from disabled people. Now, I think no one would disagree with the view that the social security system needs reform. It's complex, it's bureaucratic and it's at times indecipherable, but it needs reform to make it simpler, fairer, more humane, and a service that helps people and doesn't humiliate people. Any of us could experience periods of unemployment, any of us could experience mental health or a disability. I'm sure none of us would want to go through a system that we see at the moment. Thank you very much. I now call David Torrens, who will be followed by Alec Johnston. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd also like to thank Christine McKellway for bringing this important motion to Parliament today. Living in such a prosperous country, I'm concerned that we are confronted with more cuts to welfare benefits. However, I work on this opportunity in the chamber to highlight the devastating impacts austerity has on our communities, whether it is families, adults or children. Today, I joined Christine McKellway in rejecting the austerity agenda settled by the Westminster Government. This agenda taps into people in and in work poverty by targeting the most vulnerable members of our society. New statistics indicate that welfare reforms will push more than 6 million people in and in work poverty across the UK. In terms of specific entitlements, 105,000 disabled people in Scotland are in danger of losing their benefits. While tax credit reforms are predicted to reduce the income of up to 280,000 Scottish families, overall, austerity measures are predicted to cost Scotland's economy £1.5 billion annually. An OECD study has further demonstrated that growing inequalities caused by benefit cuts are to a severe obstacle to economic growth. With those numbers in mind, I believe that we also have to acknowledge the multifaceted effects of welfare cuts are beside the deepening social inequality UK Government austerity plans, so there is little respect and dignity for those affected. Currently, in the Westminster's direction, the Scottish Government has strongly opposed the austerity and has taken its own initiatives in reducing the worst effects of austerity on individuals. In fact, reducing inequality and creating a fairer society lie at the heart of its policies. The Scottish Government's efforts include fully mitigating the bedroom tax in Scotland, enabling additional support through the Scottish welfare fund and community care grants, and establishing the Scottish independent living fund to help more than 2,800 disabled people across Scotland. I welcome those endeavours in easing the burden of people who are less fortunate. However, welfare cuts are not just about numbers, statistics and political bargain, welfare cuts are real people, including many unemployed disabled people and young people. Nothing will fix this better than a sharp increase in the usage of food banks across Scotland. The Truswell Trust has reported 1,117,689 people visiting Scottish food banks between 2012-13 and 2013-14 who have organised, as the nation noted, a 398 per cent increase. When the Truswell Trust launched an equality among food bank users, one of the most common reasons for accessing the service was the dartsing in their welfare entitlements. By tonight's talk about these national trends, I want to use this opportunity to mention some of the examples in my Cercodi constituency. Cercodi Food Bank was launched in 2013. It works as an independent community-based organisation. It relies on the nations and help of volunteers. Nothing less is committed to support local residents is invaluable. Over a period of 12 months, starting in December 2013, it prepared emergency food packages for 4,685 individuals. This past September, it prepared 240 food parcels that serve 3,870 meals. Grown demand shows how essential these services are, unless I want to commend all voluntary staff members of the Cercodi Food Bank who invest much of their time and effort into ensuring that both adult children do not have to go to bed hungry at night. As we are facing further tax credit cuts, more people are under a risk of falling beneath a poverty line, especially low-income families with children who are most likely to suffer. In Cercodi, approximately one in five children grow up in poverty. Connysent to this, we have to be led that this number can rise further. Given each child, the best possible starting life is too important in creating a fair and equal society. However, I am concerned that growing up in poverty will cause many obstacles to this goal. In addition to increasing number of families and children affected by austerity, the way welfare cuts are being implemented is problematic. An example highlighting some of the discriminations practices used against welfare seekers was brought to me by one of my constituents. He was sanctioned for six weeks as he has missed one day of his triage course, even though I informed him that he would not be there, due to his father's funeral. Before I conclude, allow me to make one more important point. Economically derived country, we carry a social responsibility to our citizens. Our responsibility to treat all individuals with dignity and respect. Our responsibility to support those unable to work. Our responsibility to provide families with a basic income that does not make them rely on food banks. Presiding officer, austerity impedes us from taking up the responsibility. Therefore, I support this motion to halt welfare reform. Many thanks. I now call Alex Johnstone to be followed by George Adam. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is traditional in these debates to congratulate members for having been able to bring forward a subject for debate. I would like to do that and go a stage further today and pay tribute to Christine McKelvie for the persistence with which she has brought this issue before this Parliament. It is important that we address it and address it regularly and her work, particularly in members' debates, is worthy of note. However, the issue that we discussed today is one on which Christine McKelvie and I will, I am afraid, probably tend to disagree now and into the future. The necessity for welfare reform was something that was identified some time ago. In fact, the right time to reform welfare, I would suggest, is at the peak of the economic cycle rather than at the bottom or during a recovery phase, as we currently are. It was for that reason that it was perfectly right that Frank Field, a minister in the last Labour Government in 2007, brought forward his initial proposals for welfare reform. I would suggest that, if the Labour Party had had the courage of its convictions and had taken that programme forward back then, we would perhaps be in a better position today than we are. Nevertheless, we are where we are and we have to deal with it. There are a couple of points that I think are fair to raise during the course of this debate. The first is the issue of disability benefits. There are criticisms that are being made over the transfer from DLA to PIP, and that 20 per cent cut in the expenditure that is expected within that budget heading is regularly brought up. We must remember that the change in entitlement to PIP will result in a 20 per cent reduction in those who are entitled to claim, but those people will not lose their benefits. They will be entitled to the same benefits as those who are looking for work at the moment, and they will receive the same assistance to find work. They should be the 20 per cent who are most able to make that transition. It is an appropriate thing, I believe, for Government to attempt to help those people back into the workforce in the way that they will. However, the other issue that I think is important that we raise here—and it has already been raised by Neil Findlay and others—is that of the activity this week, particularly in the House of Lords, relating to working tax credits. The policy of reducing working tax credits and replacing them with higher wages in the workplace and other measures for support, including childcare support, for example, is, I believe, a sound policy, and one that we should all aspire to make work. The problem is—and it has been pointed out by many within the Conservative Party, most notably Ruth Davidson herself, who has taken the opportunity to raise the matter with the chancellor—that, if you are going to make that transition, you have to make sure that people have the extra money in their pockets before you take the support away. The proposals appeared to indicate that the support was going to be taken away first, and then, ultimately, the higher wages and the better support measures for childcare in other aspects would kick in. That is simply unacceptable as a process, and it is necessary for us to get that in the right order. Does he therefore agree that the action of the House of Lords the other evening was absolutely right? I agree that it was the mechanism that was available to us to take forward this matter in a way that was better for us all. However, I would point out that it is interesting that the decision by members of the Conservative Party, including Ruth Davidson, to take action to further that objective and the measures that were taken by members of the Labour Party to put forward the changes in the way they did, were ultimately extremely effective in obtaining the outcome that we wanted in the short term. I suggest that the actions of the SNP have been an example of how the Scottish National Party's position can be disadvantageous and ineffective, and that the alternative routes have proved to be rather more effective in this instance. I hope that we can come to a conclusion, and I am drawing my remarks to a conclusion at this time. It is vital that, as we go forward, we understand that the reform of welfare is necessary, and that it is our duty to ensure that we reduce dependency on the state wherever we can and that we deliver real independence for all those who are able to take it up. The issue of welfare reform will remain a central debate in this and other parliaments, but it is one that we cannot afford not to address. We need to make welfare deliver. We need to make welfare less significant as time goes on, because we need to get people back into the workforce, back into the workplace and back into a position that they have more control over their own lives, and that is what I aspire to under the welfare reform heading. I can also take this time to thank Christina McKelvie for bringing this debate to the chamber, because I know that it is an important issue to her, and I know that it is an important issue to most of us in our constituency work, because, as most of you know and will be aware, I am convener of the cross-party group on multiple sclerosis, and recently the MS Society Scotland brought this report out. MS, enough, makes sense of welfare, because more and more people with MS have been struggling to either access benefits or to retain what benefits they had, and one of the issues with MS in particular is that most people are diagnosed between their 20s and 30s, so it means that it is during the peak of their working life. They go from being a professional person, being able to do everything that they want, working, paying their bills, to someone who is having to rely on the state now only because of their medical condition, and one of the problems of the legislation is that it does not take long-term, disability or long-term conditions into account. It is as if it is just a spreadsheet to get that person off of that spreadsheet because they need to do something else, and that is the problem that we are seeing. That is the picture that has been painted in our constituencies, and I do not think that that is good enough for us to be going down that route. The MS Society Scotland's report has said that 11,000 people in Scotland have MS, and it is a lifelong condition, and there is no cure. When they are asking to make welfare, it makes sense. They are saying that MS must be at the heart of shaping the system, and I would say that that would be about any long-term condition that when you are dealing with a welfare, because the whole idea of welfare is to support people in their time of need. If we are going to be doing that as a society, people who are disabled or have long-term conditions are the very people that we are wanting to help. I think that the system is wrong at the moment, and that is why I am supporting Christina McKelvie. However, when they did their report, they found out that 65 per cent of people with MS agreed that, without disability benefits, they would be unable to afford essential items such as food and heating. 85 per cent agreed that, without disability benefits, their independence would be negatively impacted, and 91 per cent found the process of claiming disability benefits stressful, which the irony of that is, with a condition like multiple sclerosis, is that the actual pressure of going through the system could trigger another attack and make it actually probably qualify for the PIP one day, as opposed to not qualify for it. The way that the system decides whether a person is using PIP as an example, can the person walk 20 years if they get MS 20 metres? Yes, they probably could, but they will probably be in their bed for the next 24 hours, because of the chronic fatigue that will follow on after that. Those very practical things must be taken into consideration, because that is about people and the people that we serve. One of the things that MS is enough, is that it is difficult enough to live with it without having to deal with Westminster's so-called reforms. Mormore Simkins, the director of MS Society in Scotland, said, it is simply not good enough that people in Scotland who have MS are being forced to make difficult choices between heating their homes and attending hospital appointments. That is the situation that the Tories have now got many people dealing with long-term conditions in now, and that is not what this should be about. It is not good enough for Alec Johnson to say, we are where we are, that is not good enough. We are dealing with people's lives, and the quality of that life is the important aspect as well. Because of that, I follow Christina McKelvie's call to have Westminster halt the so-called reforms now. Many thanks. I now invite Margaret Burgess to respond to the debate. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would also like to thank Christina McKelvie for bringing this issue to the chamber, which all who have spoken in the debate have agreed is an important issue and one that we should keep revisiting. Today's debate has given members an opportunity to reflect on the consequences of the continuing austerity programme being forced on the whole of the UK by the UK Government. It will see £12 billion removed from welfare expenditure each year by 2019-20, with around a billion cuts being made in Scotland. Those draconian cuts, undertaken by the UK Government, are why the Scottish Government continues to do what it can with the limited resources that we have to mitigate the impact of welfare reform and help those who are affected. It is very clear that we in Scotland have a very different ideological position to the UK Government on the importance of social security. Like Neil Findlay, we should talk about it as social security. We see it as an inclusive safety net that, at some point in our lives, almost all of us will use. I find it difficult to imagine any Government of any persuasion in this Parliament taking forward some of the UK measures in terms of social security. We know that individuals and families across Scotland are bearing the brunt of those reforms. The Scottish Government analysis shows that the impact is being felt by the most vulnerable people in our society. Christina McKelvie and George Adam have highlighted some of the groups of people who are being badly affected by those reforms. Sanctions hit young people hardest. The group was likely to be affected by the benefit cap as lone parents. Disabled people, as we have heard, are particularly affected by the bedroom tax and many lose facing some or all of their disability benefits due to reassessment from disability living allowance to PIP. I heard what Alex Johnson said about that, that 20 per cent that will lose their benefit can get into work. I would suggest that he applies the same theory to that as he was making for working tax benefits. Let's see if people can get into work, let's support them into work before we actually take away their lifeline of benefit, and I think that it applies across the board. The point that I was trying to make at the time in my speech to which he refers is that those who are no longer entitled to disability benefits will continue to be entitled to other out-of-work benefits, so they will not lose their support entirely. No, I think that that's semantic there. They might not lose their support entirely, but they will lose a considerable part of their income that they require to make ends meet at the moment, and they're going to lose that if they lose their PIP, which is additional to any other benefits they may get, so I really don't accept Alex Johnson's point on that. I think that it's very clear that it was made by David Torrance that we're talking here about people that come to our surgeries, people that live in our communities, and we know that many of those people are turning to advice agencies for help in their time of need, and the Scottish Government is doing what it can to help those affected. That includes investing £23 million across three years to 2016 to provide advice and support services to mitigate the impact of welfare reforms. The Smith commission gives Scotland opportunities on social security, although only around 14 per cent of social security spending will be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Powers over disability benefits and carers allowance will provide opportunities to have a more joined-up system, and we've already started to indicate how we plan to use those powers to better support people in Scotland. I think that the First Minister has already announced that, if that Government continues, we would increase carers allowance in line with job seekers allowance. Neil Findlay talked about universal credit and some of the changes to universal credit. The flexibility that the Smith commission will give us and universal credit will give us some the frequency of payment to the claimant and payment to the housing costs element direct to social landlords will be able to do that with the flexibilities, and I would certainly agree with Neil Findlay that tenants are telling us that that's how they would like their payments made direct to the landlord. However, as the Scotland bill, as it stands, fails to deliver a coherent set of powers that will allow us to tackle long-standing, entrenched issues, but rest assured, we will take an intervention. Neil Findlay mentioned earlier that 14 per cent of benefits would be devolved. Almost 50 per cent of benefits is the state pension. I don't think that the minister is asking for that to be devolved. Can she clarify? As Neil Findlay was very clear in the white paper that we produced when we were looking at an independent Scotland, we very much asked for all social security powers to be devolved to Scotland, including the state pension. However, what we have been very clear about is that, unless we get all the other levers of the economy and the power to raise all our own finance, in those circumstances we would not be asking for the state pension to be devolved. We will do what is best for Scotland and the environment that we have for Scotland. We are making progress in some key areas, but we also need to ensure that the wider fiscal framework is in place and will not accept a deal that is not fair for Scotland. The Smith commission was also clear about how it expected employment support to be devolved. It said that all employment programmes that are currently contracted by DWP for the unemployed should be devolved. That would include, but not limited to, contracts to deliver the work pension and work choice. Smith also called for a new governance mechanism to be established, which integrated the reserve functions of Jobcentre Plus in Scotland. As in the proposals for welfare devolution, we are concerned that the Scotland Bill does not deliver Smith's proposals on employment support. However, the limitations of the Scotland Bill will not deter this Government, and we remain engaged in a discussion about how to create a fairer Scotland, conversations, meetings and events are being taken place across the country about the type of country that we want Scotland to be. It is not a traditional consultation. The process is designed to encourage and add to the conversation that is already going on throughout Scotland about how we create that fairer, better place to live and work. We are determined, and I believe that it is vital, that instead of doing things to communities, Scottish Government will do things in partnership with communities. A stocktake paper has already been published, which provides an update of what we have learned throughout the process so far, and we plan to bring forward a social security bill in the first year of the new Parliament. The true cause of the UK Government's austerity programme has been especially felt by those least able to carry the burden, so it is entirely right that we demand that the UK Government abandon those plans. To conclude, the Scottish Government welcomes the motion from Christina McKelvie, which gives me the opportunity to reiterate our opposition to the UK Government's continued austerity. Many thanks. That concludes Christina McKelvie's halt welfare reform debate, and I now suspend this Parliament until 2 o'clock.