 I call on the minister Shirley-Anne Somerville. Today's debate takes place in the same week that the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, will visit Scotland as part of a wider visit to the UK to consider the links between poverty and human rights. Like Professor Alston and the UN, the Scottish Government believes that poverty is an urgent and pressing human rights concern, requiring action from all of us. I hope, therefore, that his visit enlightens him to the reality of poverty across the UK for so many people. The concerted work of this Government, our local authorities and the third sector to tackle poverty and inequalities, particularly child poverty, and Scotland's record on standing up for human rights. I hope that he will also realise that, despite this, child poverty is set to rise because of the UK Government's continued onslaught of welfare cuts. Professor in Scotland alone will mean that social security spending will reduce by an eye-watering £3.7 billion in 2020-21. Like many of you, I hoped, last week's UK budget statement would reverse some of the most damaging impacts of UK Government welfare cuts. Unfortunately, despite some improvements to the work allowances, the fundamental changes this Government, along with many others, have called for, have not been made and the UK Government's approach to welfare is set to continue to drive more people into poverty. Adam Tomkins. I am very grateful to the cabinet secretary for taking intervention. Will the cabinet secretary explain how the Scottish Government proposes to use its ample powers to top up reserved benefits and to create new benefits, rather than just grieving about welfare cuts that other people are introducing? What does the Scottish Government propose to do about it? Minister. What the Scottish Government intends to do is to stand up for the people of Scotland in the face of the UK Government cuts. Perhaps, during Adam Tomkins' decisions, he can reflect on what he would like us to cut out of our current budget if he would like us to use those powers. We will continue to press the UK Government to ensure that those changes are made. As it was the UK Government that scrapped its own child poverty targets, it is particularly disturbing that welfare cuts have hit families hard—in particular, larger families—and that lone parents are badly affected. The two child limit alone, in just its first year of implementation, reduced the incomes of around 3,800 families in Scotland by up to £2,780. That is the situation that will worsen year on year. The welfare change that is introduced by successive UK Government since 2010 is set to increase child poverty in Scotland by around 8 per cent. While we try to lift people out of poverty, the Conservative Government is determined to push more families into poverty, making it more challenging to meet the ambitions of this Government and this Parliament on child poverty. In the face of those welfare changes, and without the full powers over welfare, employment and living wage, we are fighting poverty with one hand tied behind our back. All of this is compounded by the systematic failure of the UK Government's universal credit programme. When I visited the Prospect Housing Association in Westerhales last week, tenants spoke to me about their fear of the roll-out of universal credit. One tenant spoke to me about how he was already in a place where he could not afford to heat his home and buy food, so he relied on food banks and used a candle to light his flat in the evenings. How has it come to this? COSLA evidence shows that renter years for those in receipt of universal credit in full service areas are two and a half times higher than the average of years for those on housing benefit. Furthermore, new figures out today from the Trussell Trust show a 15 per cent increase in Scottish food bank use in just six months compared to this time last year, with benefit delays and the five-week wait being a main reason for that. That is against the backdrop of a 52 per cent average increase in food bank use in areas that have had universal credit in place for a year or more. I know that that might be difficult for Adam Tomkins to listen to, but perhaps he would do well to listen to the Trussell Trust rather than carping from the sidelines during this debate. The fact that universal credit is causing avoidable and unnecessary harm is beyond doubt. A long list of failings means that the situation is set to get bleaker. The minimum inbuilt five-week wait for a first payment causes people much of this harm. The National Audit Office found that a fifth of all clients are not paid their full universal credit entitlement on time with around 13 per cent not receiving any payment at all, and the DWP does not expect this to improve significantly. If universal credit is supposed to mirror the world of work, then at least it should be paid on time and in full. The minimum income floor for self-employed people, which makes unreasonable assumptions about the amount of money that someone must earn while on universal credit, is a clear disincentive for people who might consider self-employment. As I have mentioned, the two-child cat policy and the rape clause are completely unacceptable, deeply harmful and a fundamental violation of human rights, despite what members of the Conservative benches might think. In June, it was revealed by the DWP that 190 women across the UK had to fill in an eight-page form to prove that their child was conceived as a result of rape in order to receive the financial support to which their child is entitled. That is a disgrace. The two-child limit must be scrapped with immediate effect and the abhorrent rape clause with it. In addition, evidence shows that the UK Government's punitive approach to benefit sanctions and conditionality is not only ineffective, but it is having a damaging effect on the health and wellbeing of people as well as pushing them into poverty. During another recent visit, I was told about the case of a man who had phoned his local citizens advice bureau to arrange to get a food parcel. The man had been sanctioned after missing an appointment at his job centre, which is several miles away in a different town to where he lives and he could not afford the fares to go there. The client had mental health issues and the CAB was aware that he had gone without eating for days at a time as he had to receive food parcels in the past. He also wanted to know if he could be able to get some toilet paper and some cleaning products at the food bank. The CAB marked his case as starvation while waiting for universal credit. It is simply beyond comprehension that our welfare system, which is supposed to be a safety net, has become so punitive that it is driving people to destitution. A work in pensions committee report published today recommends that the DWP should work with experts to develop a programme of voluntary employment support for disabled people. That is exactly the approach that we are now taking in Scotland in our main devolved employability programme. Today's committee report highlights once again the failings in the whole conditionality and sanctions regime. That is why it needs to be urgently reviewed. Next year we will see the managed migration phase of universal credit begin to roll out. It will require people claiming working tax credits to make a new claim to universal credit or risk losing their benefit entitlements. In addition by the UK Government's own estimate, one third of those due to switch to universal credit during managed migration will be people with disabilities or long-term health conditions. Given what we already know about the state of universal credit so far, that is extremely concerning. Before members on the Conservative benches rise to defend the changes made in the budget, let me ask them if they really know what they mean in practice. Many of the changes announced will come into force for years. The repayment period for advances will increase by six months but not until October 2021, three years away. The two-week run-on and legacy benefits will not be in place until July 2020, 21 months away. Universal credit needs fixed now, not having the smallest of sticking plasters applied over the next couple of years. Increases to work allowances for people with children and people with disabilities are welcome as far as it goes, because it only undoes half of the 2015 cuts. Devastatingly, for many households, the benefit freeze still remains in place. That has led to a reduction in spending for around £190 million in this financial year. Increases in the cost of living with no increase in the level of benefits people rely on is unfair and illogical, so much for the end of austerity. The Scottish Government is using its limited powers. We have to try to make the delivery of universal credit better suited to those who need to claim it. Since last October, our universal credit Scottish choices means that people have had the choice to receive their universal credit award twice monthly and have the housing costs in their award paid directly to their landlord in both the private and social rented sector. The take-up has been high, with around 32,000 people almost 50 per cent taking up one or both of those choices. That provides us with good evidence that people do want more flexibility and adaptability in how they receive the support that they are entitled to, adding weight to the argument that further changes to the DWP benefits system are needed. Scotland is also committed to introducing split payments to provide an independent income to all universal credit claimants and to promote equality in the social security system. We continue to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and people in receipt of universal credit to help us to develop the policy on how payments should be split, and we will make an announcement on that in due course. I know that there will be calls from someone—we have heard it already today—that the Scottish Government should do more to mitigate the cuts coming from Westminster. This year, we are spending £125 million on welfare mitigation alone. However, I would say this. We cannot get ourselves into a position and into a place where the UK Government continues to slash and burn its way through our welfare state, and the Scottish Government is expected to take money from other budgets to somehow paper over the cracks of that crumbling system. This Parliament, which most of us campaigned long and hard for, is here for so much more than just picking up the pieces from failed Tory austerity policies in Westminster. Therefore, once again, I urge the UK Government to listen to the evidence, to make the changes necessary to universal credit and to reverse the cuts that they are inflicting and to help us to raise people out of poverty. I move the motion in my name. There has been a great deal said about universal credit since last Monday's budget, and although much of this commentary has been balanced and constructive, others have been less so, and I dare say it, have made points that are more politically motivated than related to the situation on the ground. Much of the rhetoric once again has inferred that the legacy systems that universal credit replaces were working well and were addressing the issues of poverty. That is simply not the case. Experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out that, with tax credits, working over 16 hours a week made little sense because the gain from earnings was negligible as benefits were withdrawn. It was a system driven by the wrong incentives. By 2011, the UK was one of the worst performing countries in Europe for workplace households, ranking 28 out of 28. As a system, it was far too complex and error-prone. For claimants, there were layers upon layers of interacting benefits, all with their own rules and procedures. In 2009 to 2010, error—not at the moment, I need to make some progress—were and fraud were estimated to cost the taxpayer around £5.2 billion a year, while in the same year under payments left customers without entitlements estimated at £1.3 billion a year in benefits and £260 million a year in tax credits. That was the legacy of Labour and the old systems, and that was the legacy inherited by the coalition government in the midst of the most damaging financial crisis of recent times. A simplification of the system was drastically needed, but, sadly, previous Governments failed to take decisive action, choosing only to tinker around the edges. Universal credit is the bold reform that we need, a system that reflects working life as it is and allows for changes to circumstances flexing with the needs of the individual. Work is the fundamental route out of poverty. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has highlighted that this week, and universal credit is the right vehicle. We are seeing that in the statistics. Youth unemployment has fallen by more than 50 per cent since 2010. We have record employment rate of 75.7 per cent, and since 2010 our policies have seen an average of 1,000 people moving into work each and every day. The United Kingdom and universal credit are working. I am grateful to the member for taking an intervention. On that point of 1,000 more people in work over a decade, is it also true that there has been a three million people increase in the population? Therefore, the more people into work have nothing to do with the benefits system but everything to do with a population increase. It is not also important to talk about the quality of work rather than universal credit forcing people on to exploitative zero-hours contracts. Michelle Ballantyne? There are more people working than ever before. There are more jobs in the economy ever before. Actually, this Conservative Government legislated against exploitative zero contracts, so you cannot keep using that as a reference. I have just taken one. I will continue. Furthermore, the policy's fundamental principles to simplify welfare, to make work pay and to ensure that those who need support receive it are sound. I hope that fewer in this chamber would disagree with those aims. Of course, universal credit has its problems, and attempting to untangle the web of legacy benefits and tax credits, split as they are between the Treasury and the DWP, is a challenge. However, one of universal credit's strengths is its test and learn approach. Previously, when something went wrong with the old system, there was no flexibility to change it. Now, new changes are tested, problems can be identified and solutions found. The Social Security Advisory Committee at Westminster has praised this approach, welcoming the stated intention to test and learn. On numerous occasions, it has lent you see a flexibility that is light years ahead of any process offered by the legacy benefits system. It was, however, clear that universal credit did require extra funding. I'd raised this myself with Estimette Ve and other of her colleagues, and I know that it was an opinion shared by many colleagues on this side of the benches, as well as that side. That is why the Chancellor's announcement last Monday is welcome, as it provides universal credit with a boost prior to the roll-out of managed migration. While I know that the Scottish Government wants to talk about cuts to the welfare budget, I believe that they will find that universal credit is more generous than the system it replaces, and analysis from both the Resolution Foundation and IFS confirm that, with a boost for families on UC worth around £630 a year. With £1.7 billion earmarked to increase the work allowance, the UK Government is not just making sure that work pays, but that it pays more, helping some 2.4 million families to work their way out of poverty. Mr Hammond also included a further £1 billion to assist with managed migration, and yesterday we heard from the Secretary of State just how that money will be spent. The debt that people are carrying when they come on to UC is a real concern, and I am delighted that repayments rates will be reduced from 40 to 30 per cent of standard income, helping over 600,000 families, a move that was backed by Frank Field MP. Equally, the repayment period for advances will be extended from 12 to 16 months, giving people extra breathing space to get on top of their finances. For the self-employed, there will be a 12-month grace period before the minimum income floor comes into effect, providing 130,000 families the best opportunity to grow a successful business. Managed migration will now happen over a longer period in smaller batches to ensure a smooth transition, and there will be added protection for 500,000 people claiming severe disability premium, and existing decisions or verification will now be used to make aspects of the process easier. I know that the waiting period has been of concern to many in this chamber, so perhaps for me and others, the most welcome of all is the announcement that the DWP will begin a two-week run-on for those receiving out-of-work benefits. In practical terms, that means that when an individual moves on to universal credit, they will receive an additional two weeks payment reducing the waiting time for their first universal credit payment and helping vulnerable claimants to make a smooth transition to the new system. All of that is a clear sign that, although universal credit is already working for the majority of claimants, where there are issues, the UK Government is working to resolve them. No one is suggesting that this change is easy or faultless, but once those reforms are complete, the system will be much less unwieldy and will have a social security system that reflects modern life, a system genuinely designed to help people to move out of poverty. Thank you very much. I call Mark Griffin to speak to and move the amendment in his name. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The timing of this debate is very welcome, following the budget and estimate-based statement, but it seems that the UK Government thinks that the debate about universal credit can be put to bed for this year. As we welcome the UN special rapporteur, I hope that today we can make it clear that more must be done, and both MPs and MSPs must act to help people suffering. Although much of what I am saying today will focus on universal credit, I want to thank the organisations in the third sector for their briefings covering all aspects of welfare reform. The MS Society again makes its urgent call to end the PIP 20-metre rule, and Inclusion Scotland makes a broader point about how disabled people have been targeted by reforms. SCVO and the Scottish Human Rights Consortium remind us to take a broader consideration about poverty and human rights too. We will support the Government's motion, but we want to amend it, urging MPs to vote down the managed migration regulations and for Holyhood to look at how it can go further. We often hear from the Government that we cannot mitigate all Westminster's cuts and that it would not be better if all welfare were devolved, but neither of those helped the 120,000 people who have suffered roll-out to date, or the 90,000 people who went to food banks since April. Our amendment calls for cross-party talks about what we can do right now. When we look at last week's budget and yesterday's announcement, it is clear that the UK Government has not gone far enough. Philip Hammond's £1,000 boost to work allowances and estimate-based failure to tackle brutal systemic flaws are a set of fudges that do not fix universal credit. In my central Scotland region, 21,000 people have moved on to universal credit over the past year. Their suffering rent arrears, which I have quadrupled, are having to be payback almost £8 million in advances at a rate of 40 per cent and a brutal conditionality system, forcing workers to find more work. They need support now, not constitutional rhetoric or for the DWP to take years more time. The £1,000 partial uplift in the work allowance is, on its own, a welcome improvement, but it will help some more than others. The Resolution Foundation points out that how lone parents and disabled people who are toiling to pay a mortgage or will not get help paying the rent will still be worse off by £2,000 and £1,200. The Mirror in UK Labour's 10-point action plan on universal credit, the poverty aligns, makes the call for lifting the £370 million benefit freeze, ending the two-child cap, ending sanctions and conditionality and weeks of waiting. All are still urgently needed to cut through the misery of universal credit. Yesterday's announcement that helped for self-employed and a newer 30 per cent collection rate that will be implemented is welcome. While the two-week run-on payment short in the initial wait to three weeks, those on-child tax credits, again, lone parents and the working poor are penalised because those run-on payments won't apply to them. Aside from the announcements in themselves, the delay and implementing those changes still won't help any of the people who have moved on to universal credit already. MPs must halt the Tory's managed migration because, bluntly, there's nothing managed about it. There will now be more time to claim our back date, but inherent to the design of the process is an attempt to catch people out. People on tax credits will get a time-limited invitation to apply if they don't risk losing their transitional protection. Surely it has to be better than that. Here in Scotland we should have serious, thorough discussion about how we can make people's lives easier. Call it mitigation, if you will, but people have to be reassured that Holyrood does act and is better than that callous Tory Government. A child benefit top-up is a starting point to give me five coalitions to advocate, although we know that the SNP refuses to support that. We could look at fast-tracking the income supplement for lone parents and the disabled. Those still losing out because of George Osborne's work allowance cuts is another possibility. Last week's figures on the Scottish welfare fund Scottish Choices showed that families are being well used across the country, so we should heed the call of the Social Security Committee and increase its funding, not just an upbrating but a substantial increase that not only reverses the real-terms cuts since 2014, but makes sure that people in crisis can get the support that they need. Half of people have taken up universal credit flexibility when asked is good progress, but with arrears still growing, the Government should look at improving this further. Just as the cabinet secretary mentioned, split payments should landlord payments not be automatic with an opt-out. On the two-child cap, I was not here for the debate when Michelle Ballantyne set out her reasons for support, but I did watch it back. I reflected on my own family's circumstances. I was one of four. My mother and father worked hard as a welder and a banking clerk to support the family that they chose to have. At 37, my dad was diagnosed with a serious heart condition, which meant that he was not able to carry out the work that he was trained and did for 20 years. Who plans for those situations? Who in Dundee plans for the situation that they have woken up to this morning, when they planned to have a family bigger than two? Where is the support network? Where is the state support that children depend on day in and day out when circumstances change beyond everyone's comprehension? I hope that, in the talks that flow out of today, we must look at the new powers to either eradicate welfare reforms or depart from the UK Government's direction. Just as we have banned the private sector from assessments and secured dignity and respect for the terminale, we should look at the 20-metre rule and put in place the certainty of automatic entitlement. We should be looking to lift the earnings limit and allow full-time carers to access full-time education, providing real freedom to work and study. Presiding Officer, today we can condemn the Tory Government as we have many times before, but I hope that MPs of all parties act when it comes to managing migration, and so should we, and so I move the amendment in my name. Thank you very much, Mr Griffin. I call on Alison Johnson to move the motion on behalf of the Green Party. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I move the amendment in my name. Mark Griffin spoke off some of the organisations that have briefed us for this debate, and I think that it is notable the level of briefings that we have received, and I think that that demonstrates how much interest and concern there is around universal credit. In passing the Child Poverty Scotland Act last year, this Parliament took a really important step. This Parliament said that it is unacceptable to have hundreds of thousands of Scottish children growing up without access to the basics of life, a good diet, a warm safe home, toys and activities that allow them to grow and develop. As the motion notes, we have already made some progress towards reducing poverty in setting up the new Scottish social security system. The new best start grant, launching very shortly, will more than double the amount of income available to low-income families. The changes to the devolved disability benefit assessment process made by the Greens, supported by the Parliament, are intended to ensure that people get the support that they need in as non-intrusive and dignified a way as possible. There is positive change, but the cuts—and let's call them that—not reforms, not changes, cuts risk undermining this ambition and the progress that we are making. In March, Landman Economics projected that relative child poverty will soar to 38 per cent by the late 2020s. The forecast increase, and I am quoting, is driven by the substantial cuts to social security for families with children legislated for in the previous UK Government's July 2015 budget, in particular the four-year freeze on social security uprating and the two-child limit for housing benefit, tax credit and universal credit claims. So, let's be clear. Cuts to our social security system, including to universal credit, are taking money out of the pockets and wallets of some of the poorest households in Scotland. Yes, last week's budget reversed some of the 2015 work allowance cuts, which should never have been made in the first place. That is welcome. But those do not apply to all universal credit recipients. For those without children or disabled people in the household, those cuts remain. That only represents about £1.7 billion of the £3 billion work allowance cuts that were made by the 2015 budget. As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes, universal credit is quite deliberately creating millions of winners and millions of losers. A third will be £1,000 a year worse off under universal credit, and that is not taking into account other cuts. We still have the benefit cap, we still have the two-child limit and we still have the benefit freeze. Taking those into account, some families will be losing many thousands a year. The IFS projects that, over the long term, the poorest 10 per cent of households with children will lose £3,000 annually as a result of tax and benefit changes. In the worst case, for a family unfortunate enough not to have parents in work, the long-run impact of tax and benefit changes is a loss of over £4,000. I would now like to turn to the gendered nature of the cuts that was mentioned in the Green Party amendment this afternoon. Cutting social security reduces the incomes of women disproportionately. Over the decade of austerity from 2010 to 2020, 86 per cent of net so-called savings raised through cuts to social security will come from women's income, placing women at a greater risk of deeper and sustained poverty. The IFS figures show that by 2020, lone parent families, overwhelmingly female, will lose more than £3,000 a year. To take just one example, the benefit cap in effect targets women and their children for cuts. The latest figures for August this year show that almost 90 per cent of the single claimants impacted by the benefit cap in Scotland are women and 91 per cent of households' caps have at least one child. Policy and practices research shows that for every claimant who managed to move off the cap, there is more than one household that is stuck on the cap for six months or longer. For six months, that is a cut of £360. The average shortfall between rent and housing support for those trapped by the cap is £3,750 a year. The research shows that the majority of capped households showed no change in their circumstances other than a significant worsening of their living standards following the introduction of the benefit cap. It is unlikely that the benefits of this policy, both in terms of the savings generated and the positive impacts on employment outcomes, have offset the financial costs, or, crucially, the human and social costs associated with rising levels of economic destitution. The design of universal credit, paying out to only one person in a household, is deeply problematic. Close to the gap argues that the single household payment of universal credit has left many women with no independent access to an income. The women's budget group is concerned that the reduction of women's financial autonomy could result in main carers in practice, usually mothers, losing clearly labelled child payment, which are often paid separately and can provide a lifeline to survivors of domestic abuse. Poverty is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because it means that hundreds of thousands of Scots, including more than 200,000 children, are growing up without access to the resources, opportunities and life chances that everyone else takes for granted. I accept that some improvements have and are being made to universal credit, and those are welcome, but some families are still going to be very much worse off as a result of benefit cuts. I agree with Mark Griffin that this Parliament has a strong role to play, and I look forward to addressing that further in closing. Thank you very much. Alex Cole-Hamilton to speak to and move amendment 146 to 1.4. Tight six minutes, Mr Cole-Hamilton. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in my name. I am very grateful to the Government for bringing this motion to Parliament, as I am also for Labour's amendment and the Green amendment, both of which we are happy to support. As a Liberal, I often lean into the words of William Beverage whenever we talk about welfare and the social state, but it is a recognition that we have still failed to meet the challenge of Beverage in addressing those five giant evils of ignorance, idleness, squalor, want and disease. In over 60 years, since he wrote those words, I think that my party first embarked upon the project of welfare reform, because it might be surprising that my party would be so full-throated in its backing of the Government motion today, were it not for the fact that, yes, it was true that we were there at the genesis of the project. We embarked in good faith on the project towards universal credit, and yes, I admit that we had different partners. It might have been different, but looking over our shoulder now and gazing at what has become of that project, we do so in no small degree of abject horror. We see in the evisceration of the work allowance, in the stubborn incompetence and inability to address those real practical problems associated with its roll-out, and, yes, in the two-child limit and the rate clause that necessarily stems from it, which we blocked continually in our time in office. We did so because we believed that the provision of a safety net should never have such a precondition attached to it. I associate myself with Mark Griffin's remarks and very powerful personal testimony, where we do not believe for a second that normal family life should be denied to you, should you happen on hard times. That is why we resisted the childcare through our time in office. For us, at first principles, this was about the provision of a national minimum by the state, and that should be in turn a catalyst for social mobility, a safety net where needed, but a catalyst for social mobility to allow people to hold themselves out of that position. Welfare reform is a necessary undertaking to that end, and many poverty campaigners agreed with that underlying principle. I think that our support for that motion still does not abandon that principle that some degree of welfare reform was needed. The motion is right, because it speaks to the values that we share, that we should listen to the casualties that have suffered as a result of the botched roll-out so far, heed their warnings and recognise the tremendous capacity that it has to harm some of the most vulnerable constituents that we all represent. In the first days of the roll-out, those warning lights started to wink to life across the dashboard of their delivery. In the last debate, last month, on this topic, I quoted Frank Field, who rightly in his capacity of chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee said that wonderland visions of welfare reform collapse on contact with real life. That is not down around the original tensions of reform, it is about the fact that the centre of gravity has inexorably shifted away from that original vision and that evidence in the cut to which my amendment speaks. We were clear throughout our participation that the first priority should be to protect and assure a national minimum family income. That should be the alpha and the omega. Thereafter, the simplification and streamlining of the process would lead to some savings in terms of bureaucracy, but above all things, it would incentivise work. However, the Conservatives governing unencumbered from our influence have demonstrated that the money-saving aspect of welfare reform is the supremacy of all other considerations. We see that in the £3 billion slash from the work allowance, which undermines both family income and, indeed, routes into work. That theoretical starting point has been corrupted by an ideological shift away from the original intent. To add insult to that practical roll-out has been beset by a catalogue of areas to demonstrable human cost. In the rent areas that we see mounting for those who are already in direct receipt of the housing benefit component, in unintended penalties that we have heard about in terms of self-employees, I associate myself with the remarks of Alison Johnson, who is right to point out the iniquity of not having a system fleet of foot enough to recognise that families are not always united, that we, by necessity, sometimes have to divide payments between claimants, particularly in abusive spousal relationships where finance is still used as a tool of coercive control. Above all, the plans afford no comfort to families in Edinburgh and beyond, who this Christmas will face the roll-out in the understanding of the problems that have befallen those who have gone before them. Those delays are legion and will happen over the festive period when household incomes and budgets are already stretched to capacity. I have taken rightly criticism in this chamber in debates like those about my party's role in the past, in respect of welfare reform and in coalition. I point to what the Conservatives are now doing unencumbered by our influence in the uncertainty and reduction around the benefits available to people, in the erosion of social mobility and in the two-child limit that has, by extension, created the rape clause. For my party, that was a project of reform that started with the best of intentions and has now been hopelessly derailed and corrupted by an ideological right-wing intent and needs to be stopped. Open debate, speeches of six minutes, please George Adam to follow by Annie Wells. I joined the SNP in my late teens, 18 years old, and at the time my community was under siege from an uncaring Conservative Government in Westminster. The years move on, but some things never seem to change, but what happened then probably defined me politically, and it was at that point that I knew the type of future that I wanted for Scotland. I've changed, I've got older, mellowed slightly, but the Tories don't seem to have changed, because even here today we heard Michelle Ballantyne say universal credit is a system that tests and learns. Test and learns, honestly. How can anyone say that? Say that to the families in my constituency who are suffering because of universal credit. Test and learn, it's more like test and ignore. What we are discussing today is one of the foremost issues that our people in the country are facing. Although not everyone is directly affected by the introduction and implementation of universal credit, the threads run through our society. We were told that the merging of those benefits would streamline the system, make it simpler, easier to access and easy that the transformation to work would be simpler. I don't think that I've ever come across a Government programme that not only does not meet any of its objectives, it targets those most in need of its services. A social security system is something that a modern, forward-looking nation should be proud of. A helping hand for those in the time of need, whether they're losing their job or changes in their circumstances that are beyond their control. Mark Griffin gave a perfect example of those in Dundee today, who might have had a major change in their circumstances in the near future. None of it was their fault, but their life might be changing dramatically. Every one of us can face those changes at some stage in our life. All of us in this chamber must have been contacted by those who are facing those hardships. The flaws found throughout this system are incredible, but those issues have been highlighted to us by the National Audit Office, Citizen Advice Scotland, the Poverty Alliance, Child Poverty Scotland and many others. Those issues, and with the migration of benefits, the loss of income, the issues with passported benefits, the reliance of online claims, the predicted increase in poverty and child poverty, universal credit has fundamental flaws. There are many, but one of the most incredible is the length of time that it takes to get an initial payment. That pushes families into debt and rent arrears. Many of those people have never been in arrears in their entire life, having worked, paid their bills and made sure that their home was secure. That is the first time that those people are facing the prospect of being behind in their rent due to the delays inherent in the system. 73 per cent of those in universal credit are in rent arrears. That compares to 29 per cent of those not on universal credit. It is easy to see what is happening in our communities with the introduction of universal credit. There is an average of 52 per cent increase usage of food banks in areas where universal credit has been in place for more than one year. That is not insignificant, yet we hear from the Conservatives that there are many reasons for the increased use of food banks. I would say that the issue is poverty. Poverty that is brought out by a failed and flawed welfare reform programme. Can you imagine having to go to a collection office, ask for a referral, expose yourself to feelings that no one would normally wish to experience, present yourself in order to ask for food to feed yourself and your family? I would like to know what those other reasons that increases for food bank use that the Tories are so keen on. I find it hard sometimes to understand the mindset of those who are determined to make another person's life more difficult, especially those in society that actually need our help. We, as parliamentarians, have experienced those with long-term health conditions and have been affected by those welfare changes. We have seen the targeting of people with disabilities and the introduction of PIP, with the introduction of universal credit and those who previously claimed employment support allowance. The life chances that you and I have been given are often harder for others to obtain or even think of obtaining. Being able to lead a life with equality of freedom and access was something that the DLA and the ESA provided. I am not the only one who has witnessed the changes over recent years, which changes many people's lives with removal or reduction of DLA. The stories of those who are unable to work have been pressured to take employment. One of my constituents had served in the army. He got a medal for his term in Afghanistan. He was assessed for work on Tuesday. He was informed by the assessor that he was been treated—he informed the assessor who was being treated for cancer and was having an operation two days later—that young man was immediately past fit for work. The sanctions associated with the system are another way to target those in need. Those hard situations, little money and finding it hard to get by, what do we do with them? They get sanctioned. Most of the chamber will know the story of my constituent who had a heart attack and could not sign on. He told the job centre and was sanctioned nonetheless. Even if you have a heart attack and you are in the hospital, you will still be sanctioned under this uncaring Tory Government. That is what the Tory welfare reform is all about. Where is the dignity? Where is the respect? Where is the understanding that life's events happen? The Scottish Government should not be paying for Westminster's mistakes. Our Scottish Government will continue to make the right decisions to have a truly fair society, a social security system, with dignity and respect that should be at the centre of that. Presiding Officer, I may have changed over the past year since I joined the SNP. Things may have moved on, but one thing you can guarantee is that you can never trust a Tory. Thank you, Mr Adam. I call Annie Wells to be followed by Bob Doris. Ms Wells, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It goes without saying that we have seen renewed discussion around the impact of universal credit and its effect on us in recent weeks and months. I welcome that discussion. We all agree that the roll-out should be done as sensitively as possible, considering, first and foremost, those who the system set out to support. As the chancellor said last week, universal credit is here to stay, and it is our duty to make sure that it becomes a success that it was designed to be. A couple of weeks ago, I put on record my own concerns regarding universal credit, calling on the UK Government to implement universal credit in a way that saw no-one left behind. I called for measures to be put in place to reform the system before its full roll-out, and asked that the most vulnerable in our society be reassured that their concerns would be listened to. It is clear in the chamber today that concerns will continue to be raised, but it is important that we recognise the fundamental support that universal credit has in principle and that the UK Government will and has listened and responded to concerns as it rolled out. I have seen the effects of being trapped in the benefits system with little opportunity of entering the workforce, and when Ian Duncan-Smith MP visited Easterhouse in 2002, he recognised that the policies in place at the time simply did not work. He saw the need to give people an alternative to a life on benefits, one that provides a safety net when needed most, and one that ensured work would always pay. That is the point that work is essential to tackling poverty. People out of work are much more likely to fall into poverty when living in a workless household. We must support simplifying a welfare system that ensures that it always pays to work. It makes no sense that, under Labour, the benefits system was so complicated that, for some people, there was little point working as they worked more, they lost more in benefits as they would earn in work. Third sector organisations have supported the principle of universal credit, and just this week, the Institute of Fiscal Studies said and I quote that universal credit had large potential benefits from simplification and getting rid of weak work incentives. Last month, the Resolution Foundation said that the prize of the far simpler social security system was one that was well worth holding on to. The implementation of universal credit is, of course, as important as its guiding principles. The UK Government has listened to concerns and changes have rightfully been made over time. In 2017, the UK Government recognised the practical difficulties in implementing the system and made a number of changes, totalling a £1.5 billion investment. An interest-free advance of up to one month's worth of universal credit was made available from January of this year, the seven-day waiting period was removed from February, and from April 2018, those already on housing benefit could receive their award for the first two weeks of their universal credit claim. Two weeks ago, changes were made during the 2018 budget, and were welcomed, according to the IFS and Resolution Foundation, that they made universal credit more generous than the system had replaced. The chancellor announced that, of April 2019, universal credit claimants would benefit from a £1,000 increase in in-work allowances, meaning that working parents and people with disabilities on universal credit will be £630 a year better off. I have quite a lot to go through, so I apologise. Claimants will be able to repay overpayments and debt more slowly from October next year, and from October 2021, people will no longer have to repay advances, and in listening to and responding to concerns over the roll-out, the UK Government has extended the managed migrations schedule to conclude in 2023. Only yesterday, Work and Pensions Secretary S MacVay announced new changes, including extending the deadline for claimants, to move on to universal credit from one month to three. What is clear is that, as universal credit is rolled out, the UK Government has and will continue to listen to concerns. Let's not forget in today's debate that the Scottish Government does, in fact, have significant powers when it comes to welfare policy. The Scotland Act 2016 devolved powers to the Scottish Parliament to introduce new benefits and top up any reserved benefit that it is so fit to. If the Scottish Government is serious about developing a fair and affordable welfare system, that is the time to prove it. As has been said, the Scottish Government is of course facing its own hurdles when it comes to social security. I am in my last minute, thank you very much. The Scottish National Party Government has talked up its new social security bases, but now we have learned that they have no idea where the staff are going to be working across Scotland. They have been stalling for so long in a timeline for their plans for the new benefits, that the independent office of budget responsibility has been unable to work out how much it will actually cost. To finish today, I would like again to stress that the UK Government's principles behind welfare reforms are the right ones. The extra support in the budget is very welcome, and I hope that it can alleviate many of the concerns raised so far, including the ones that I raised. However, I hope that this debate can also be a real opportunity as we see progress today to hear about genuine proposals from the Scottish National Party Government as to how it will deliver welfare reform now that it has the significant powers to do so. That would be a positive move in the right direction on welfare. The debate on universal credit is vital and important, although the matters that we must discuss this afternoon are deeply unwelcome. The universal credit sits at the heart of a UK welfare reform agenda and reality cuts agenda, which will remove around £3.7 billion from social security spending in Scotland by 2021. That is not simply numbers on a budget line, but rather cuts pushing families below the bread line, and it is simply unacceptable. Let me say from the outset that I believe universal credit is an ideologically driven endeavour by the Conservatives, an endeavour that is deliberately punitive and will inflict harm on some of the most vulnerable people in our society. There are many aspects of universal credit, which I would consider cruel and unreasonable, but what really gives the game away is the at least five-week wait before a new claimant can receive any cash that they are entitled to. The system is deliberately designed to ensure that those who most in need are left waiting without funds—that minimum five-week wait. Indeed, the national audit office in its June 2018 report stated that in 2017, around one quarter, around 113,000 of new claims were not paid in full on time. Late payments were delayed on average by four weeks. Staggeringly, from January to October last year, 40 per cent of those affected by late payments waited a total of around 11 weeks or more. As for this year, as universal credit rolls out across my city in Glasgow right now, the national audit office estimates that up to 338,000 new claimants will not be paid in full at the end of their first assessment period throughout 2018. That is the reality. That means that many of my constituents, who are already being told by a new and harsh universal credit to wait five weeks before they even get a single penny, are entitled to still not get the money—let me make some progress, Mr Tolkien—and still not get the money after that five-week wait. I would note that an advanced payment can, in certain circumstances, be provided by the DWP, but it is in reality a loan that must be paid back. Often, claimants are not aware of that potential advance. When people inquire, they are asked if they can borrow money from family or friends, or if there are any other sources by which they can get money. They are asked that when they ask about it. What a question to ask one of my constituents to delay them and deny them their cash to a vulnerable family and then suggest that they delay on others who may very well also be experiencing poverty themselves. Additionally, some of the other sources of income in the community charge eye-watering levels of interest. Are we actually asking unemployed people having delayed their benefits to seek a payday alone when they are out of work? Worse still, I can assure you that there are some very unsavory people out there that some of our constituents could ask for advances on money when they are desperate. If they were advised by the DWP to go to other sources before getting anything from them, 40 per cent of claimants who have to wait at least five weeks do not receive an advance loan for universal credit. Some might have personal funds, some might have family members who cannot afford to assist, but I worry about where the others are turning to. I want to make progress, Mr Tomkins. I have probably heard enough of you to be fair. They have to go to elsewhere to survive, and I am worried about where they are going. The universal credit is currently constructed as a cruel system for many deliberately delivering indebtedness by design. I grew up in the 1980s, when a provi-check was how you paid for birthdays in my house and a catalogue was how you paid by Christmas, but you got your benefits. Now some of my constituents will go for the provi-checks, go for the catalogs and they will not have their benefits either. It is ridiculous and it is an inhumane system. We know the reality for too many individuals and families out there with a 15 per cent increase in food bank use in Scotland in the five months to September this year, due to the inbuilt minimum weight of five weeks. The Trussell Trust has also said that when universal credit goes live in an area, there is a demonstrable increase in demand for local food banks. On average, 12 months after the roll-out of universal credit, food banks hear a 52 per cent increase in demand. On Friday of last week, I held a universal credit information event in Poesol Park in my constituency and my thanks to Glasgow North West City's advice to end-you-homes for their support, to councillors Gow and the Clarn for attending and to Poesol Point Community Centre for hosting us. It is one of five events that I have held to date and I have worked in partnership with citizens advice, local housing associations and Patrick Rady MPs as well as the local councillors. I want to mention a number of the concerns raised at those events as they illustrate some of the other deep flaws within the universal credit system. Those offering support at the information events that I have attended have witnessed first hand how individuals or groups with poor literacy skills, low or non-existent IT skills, limited or no access to computers, lack of affordability and broadband have often been left high and dry due to the digital-by-default aspects of making a claim for benefits or maintaining an online journal, evidencing their attempts to seek work. Inclusion Scotland talks about the targeting of disabled people in this, where 35 per cent of them have no access to the internet at all. 10 per cent is the figure more generally across the country. This is cruel, it is inhumane and it is by design. Why not abolish sanctions? They are quite frankly counterproductive. The PCS union who have to mentor the system wants sanctions that abolish and do not make my constituents who are vulnerable wait five weeks. This can change and we must change it. I work as a front-line housing officer for around six years. It was a very rewarding and at times tough job, a very good grounding for becoming a councillor and a member of this Parliament, because you see it first hand the daily struggles and challenges faced by people just trying to get by. In that job, dealing with the benefits system and particularly the housing benefits system took up around half of my workload, helping tenants to complete new claim forms, providing evidence of income, changing circumstances forms, advising when people started or ended a job, dealing with errors and mistakes and overpayments, dominated my work and all impacted on the ability of the tenant and their family to afford their rent, feed their family and ultimately keep a roof over their head. Like almost every housing officer in the country, I had to evict people. I had to formally go through an eviction process. I think that I did it a dozen times if I can recall, and only on two occasions I remember was the tenant actually still at the property when the eviction took place. Every other time they had abandoned the property in desperation or in the odd occasion they had never moved in, but in those circumstances when someone was there it was awful, it was a horrible experience and it was desperate. Every housing officer in the country bends over backwards to avoid such a scenario. Today, those staff are dealing with people who are in crisis, dealing with individuals and families with illness or disability, a mental health crisis, debt, people who cannot feed themselves or their family, people who are at real risk of destitution and many families with working parents who are doing their best but battling a system that is broken. The universal credit is in chaos. The SFHA tells us that, poverty lines, citizens advice, bureau tell us that, councils and charities tell us that. The only people who pretend that it is not an arbitrary party who tells us apparently that all of those organisations must be telling lies. We see a series of problems with delivery. We see people losing out because of the conditionality goalposts are moved. We see sanctions increasing, delays in payments, the five-week wait for initial payment, delays in on-going payment, a lack of support for people who do not know how to use IT systems. Those are all very real problems that are here and now. All of us would support the simplification of the social security system. I am sure that we all support that principle, but that is just a cover story. It is a cover story for what this is really about. It is about the systematic slashing of the benefits safety net for the most vulnerable people. It is about redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. It is all part of the Tory class war on the poor and so cruelly articulated by Michelle Ballantyne's offensive and discriminatory comments of two weeks ago, passively endorsed by every single Tory member. Not one of them has spoken out about those comments. No-one in Scotland or across the UK should face destitution or abject poverty. That is the sixth richest country in the world for God's sake. We should be ashamed of that fact and we should be ashamed that life expectancy has fallen for the first time in decades and that one in four Scottish children live in poverty. We hear a lot of cliched talk about the state being a corporate parent. What kind of parent as an act of policy inflicts such misery on their children? What type of parent forces a £28 a week cut to households where a disabled child? What type of parent penalises their children because their mother was raped? What type of parent supports a policy that sees evictions of families with children increase? Let me tell you what kind of parent it is. It is an uncaring parent. It is an neglectful parent and it is an abusive corporate parent that does that. This is an all-out assault on the low-paid, the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. Families losing thousands of pounds a year. In Scotland, 470,000 people are not getting the real living wage of £9 an hour, an increase of £30,000 on the previous year. We have heard about the rise in food bank news. Kettle packs being distributed to allow people who do not have a cooker or can't afford to put it on to feed themselves. They need for crisis loans to be up, rent arrears are up and in local government we see services, support services such as lunch clubs and breakfast clubs and youth work decimated. We see a crisis in mental health where desperate people are unable to get the support that they need. It is this toxic combination of low-pay, benefit cuts and the erosion of essential public services, the ones that hold our society together that is causing so much damage. Tory politicians have the brass neck to come to this Parliament and talk about mental health, about inequality, poverty and housing. I tell you that it is the duty of every one of us to call them out on their hypocrisy, their unwillingness to face reality and their disregard for people in our society who they deem as being unworthy of support. Finally, the Tories exist to increase the quality, to attack the low-paid, disabled and the vulnerable. We will not give you a minute's peace until this appalling system is scrapped. I call Moody Watt to be followed by Brian Whittle. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak in this debate this afternoon. I am ashamed, angry and despondent that in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet we have a situation in the 21st century that the poorer are getting poorer and the rich are getting even more rich. When that is solely due to Westminster Government policy choices, and it is so bad that it attracts international attention and condemnation from the United Nations and other bodies concerned about human rights, I am mortified. The roll-out of universal credit began in Aberdeen last Monday, and to be honest, all of us in any way involved in it are just dreading the consequences. Whether it be all of the public sector agencies involved, Citizens Advice Scotland locally, food banks, housing providers or my own staff, all of whom are expecting to see a rise in demand in their services. Regardless of how well prepared we are in terms of attending courses or reading up on the changes, we all feel fearful. I am especially grateful to Stuart Reed, money adviser of Aberdeen City Council's financial inclusion team for all his efforts to keep us informed of all the likely consequences of the universal credit roll-out in Aberdeen. No one would disagree that the social security system needed to be simplified as different benefits were changed over time and the system became overly complicated. However, no one, apart from the Tories, agreed that it should be an opportunity to make the poorer poorer by reducing the amount of money that is available. It needs to be remembered that the biggest part of the social security bill is pensions, and even then we have in the UK one of the lowest-state pensions in Europe. Westminster needs to reorganise its finances to meet the demands of the electorate. We want to live in a society that looks after those who fall on hard times and needs that safety net that a universal social security system provides, as Neil Bibby illustrated graphically. Instead, along with its supporters and some of the red tops, it loves to give the impression that the burden of social security payments is doled out to the feckless poor who just want to live on benefits for their whole lives. Exceptionally, few people want to live with the indignity of living on benefits. That has never been my experience in all my time as an elected politician, whether as a councillor for one of the poorest parts of Aberdeen, or as an MSP with a very diverse constituency. Neil Findlay To be very careful in the language that you choose, it is not an indignity to live on benefits. For some people, that is the only option for them, so please be very careful when you say that. I take the member's point, but what I meant was that people do not want to live on benefits. That is not their choice. The stark downturn in the oil industry demonstrated starkly the need for a universal security system. A number of my constituents, who had been in well-paid jobs, contacted me to see how appalled they were at how little they were expected to live on when they became unempoloid. Until they needed it themselves, they had not realised just how poor the pay-outs were, and that is before the introduction of universal credit. That is why we saw one man who came to access the food bank in his posh, and before the Tories say why did he not get rid of it, it is probably on some finance scheme or other. The week in which the roll-out began in Aberdeen, one of the food banks, Seafine, was already distributing its highest ever level of food parcels, centrally, and is considering cutting its distribution more widely in the north-east. So whether it is the trussel trust or my local food banks or anyone else, there is no doubt, as the cabinet secretary says, that universal credit increases food bank use and makes the poor even poorer. The cabinet secretary and others have mentioned the punitive rape clause and other punitive sanctions, and nothing illustrated this more starkly to me than one of my constituents, who fostered the child of her brother who had died, and then went on to have two children of her own, and she was caught by the two-child role. After the child property action group took the Government to court on this and one, we are still waiting months for the Government to take correct action, but what message is this sending out to people who might consider fostering? Also, I cannot for the life of me understand why the Tories think that it is acceptable to wait five weeks for universal credit and what folk are supposed to do in the meantime, even though people can expect in advance that they are expected to pay it back, further reducing their income. They must think that everyone gets large redundancy payments when the opposite is the case, especially if they are on zero-hours contracts, short-term contracts or the minimum wage. Presiding Officer, universal credit is causing misery to thousands of people across Scotland. We have already demonstrated in Scotland that we can treat people with dignity and respect in relation to the benefits that we control. It is time that we had control of all of them. I welcome the opportunity to contribute in today's debate. What we are talking about today is a welfare system that is there as a safety net for those who need extra help and support, and also help those into work where possible. I wanted to discuss the roll-out of universal credit, because being a lust MSP can have its advantages, because I get to work across several constituencies. I took the opportunity some time ago to visit a couple of offices there to see how they were rolling it out, and to meet some people who had moved on to universal credit. One of the ones that I went to see had a fantastic approach to universal credit. They have a very good outreach programme. There is recognition of people who may have mental health issues or other issues related to that, who go to them rather than insist that they come into the office. They do the meetings sometimes either in their house or out going for a walk, and eventually they are working towards taking the meetings back into the job centre, recognising that there can be stages in development prior to being fit for work. They have not done a single sanction in over two years. One of the things that came across strongly when I was speaking to the group was that there was an initial fear around universal credit because of the rhetoric in the media led by politicians. That relief and recognition of the system that they are now on is a much improved one than the complicated one that they left. In contrast to that, I visited another one where there is an insistence that all applicants appear at the job centre, which is leading some of those people into that anxiety, missed appointments and all the issues that ensue. I want to know why two job centres, not that far apart, are receiving the same instruction and framework and managing to develop two completely different policies. If we are really interested in developing that fair welfare system, that is where we should be doing our work. We should be working out why we can take that framework and come up with two different approaches. There are millions and millions of pounds that go unclaimed every year. That is a failure of the system. On the other area, we should and could be focused on if we have a genuine interest for those in the system at the core of our thought process. I have to say that there is no social security that will ever be perfect, of course, and there will always be cracks in the system. There will be those who would slip through those cracks, but what we need to do is to make sure that we work to close those gaps. I thank the member for taking intervention. Given what he just said, would he confirm whether it is his position that universal credit has not caused an increase in homelessness, housing arrears or, as the Trussell trusts say, an increase in food bank use? Is it his position that that has not happened under universal credit? Brian Whittle I thank Keith Brown for intervention, because that is something that I wanted to intervene on earlier on. One of my local constituencies is East Ayrshire. I visited our food bank centre where they informed us that, over the past year, they had managed to do a reduction of 30 per cent in food bank usage. The thing about that is that that message is not getting out. What they have done is that they have managed to gather, when somebody comes over the threshold, they have managed to gather services around about that, including the DWP, to make sure that all help that should be available to them and that they understand that. I think that when we are discussing this, that is something that sits very strongly with me, perhaps the different approaches across all the different areas that we should be learning from it. However, I think that that message has not gotten out, because I think that somewhere on the line it does not fit certain political rhetoric and agenda. One of the things that I did—last Friday, I visited the credit union, and I think that that is an organisation that does not get enough oxygen. It is offering help and a small way to start with, through small loans initially, and helping them in developing that management of money. I think that that, in turn, helps to develop a better credit rating as they move forward through that process. Something that we all take for granted, developing that kind of life skill for those who have not had that opportunity, is surely a must. What I would say is that it is obvious from the mess that Labour created when they were in power that the system had to change it. As the then minister responsible for welfare said, and I quote, we agree that reform is needed, we also agree that a system should incentivise work, that it should be simpler and, of course, that it must be affordable. It is worth restating that we believe that our overall model of universal credit has some merit. That, of course, was Keith Brown, who then was the minister responsible for welfare in 2012. It seemed to me that every budget that Gordon Brown brought forward endeavoured to complicate a system more and more. We had a large proportion of the working population eligible for some kind of tax credit, even those on a decent salary. It was unwieldy, massively complicated and responsible for so many claimants falling into debt. As for the SNP, it has the gall to bring this to the chamber, I have to say, when all they have done is duck the issue at every opportunity. Let's be frank, Deputy Presiding Officer, for this has been on their agenda since the announcement of the independence referendum in 2012. Let us remind the chamber that the SNP said that it could devolve a working welfare state in 18 months. After much capping, the control of a third of the working-age benefit, which is about £3 billion, the first thing that it does is hand it back for the initial three years, and then for a further two years to the end of this parliamentary term. After nine years of consideration, we have still to hear an SNP policy. It is easier to discuss what you intend to do with warm words instead of explaining the consequences of taking responsibility. The SNP is discovering that this is hard but slow is Government. This is not a debate about welfare— The member is concluding. This is not a debate about welfare, Deputy Presiding Officer. It should be. It is a debate about deflection, abdication of responsibility and grievance. Deputy Presiding Officer, it is poor fare and Scotland deserves better. Thank you, Mr Whittle. I call Alex Neil to follow by Clare Adamson. I have heard in this debate so far that the aims of the universal credit are threefold. One is to allow those people who are fit and able to work to get back into work. Secondly, to ensure that work pays in the best way to do that is a real living wage, not the Tory version or the real version. The third thing is to simplify the benefit system. Across the chamber, I think that everybody agrees with those three objectives, but there is a fourth objective, which is very important in any benefit system. During the period that people are on benefit, whether it is for a short period or a lifetime, we have to use the benefit system to ensure that the standard and quality of living is as good as the rest of the community. It is not a safety system that gives people the minimum so that they need to live hand to mouth. Every other country in Europe has a social security system that prides itself in ensuring that, during a period of unemployment, during a period of sickness, during a period when people have to live on benefit, their quality and standard of living is up to scratch. They do that for two reasons. They do it first of all because, in principle, and from a humane point of view, it is absolutely the right thing to do. However, they also do it for beneficial reasons for society. There is report after report showing, for example, if you take the Danish social security system, which is one of the highest paying to people during a period of unemployment, it actually pays the state to pay higher levels of benefit during unemployment than the pittons people get in the United Kingdom. What the evidence shows is that people then take the time not just to find a job but to find the right job for them to retrain, to get a new career, to make sure that they are going back into work as the right kind of work. What the system does in this country is to force people into short-term work, into anti-social work, into low-paid work, into inappropriate work for their skills. The result is that we get this continual churn. Unlike in Denmark, when people go into work, they are usually in that job for years before they end up unemployed again. Whereas in this country, we typically see our people end up back in the brew very shortly after getting into work because it has been done completely the wrong way. We need to not just deal with universal credit, we need to completely rethink in this country, both Scotland and the United Kingdom, what we need our social security system to do. In terms of their own objectives, of simplifying the system, of getting more people into work and of incentivising people to work, universal credit fails in all three objectives. What is done is not to get more people into work proportionately, as the cabinet secretary said. We have seen an increase in population of 3 million, and many of the numbers going into work are the people who are coming into the labour market for the first time, either through immigration or through reaching a working age. The reality is that, when you look at universal credit, what has it done? It has driven hundreds of thousands of people into dire poverty and, in some extreme cases, to suicide. Adam Tomkins Mr Neil, for giving way, I always enjoy listening to him in these debates, because I did not agree with the last thing that he said, but I agree with a lot of what he said. Does he not agree with me that the reality is that, under universal credit, claimants are more likely than they were under the legacy system to be in work, they are more likely than they were under the legacy benefits to stay in work longer, and they are more likely to be earning higher wages than they were under the legacy system. Three reasons why universal credit, despite all the rhetoric to the country, is working on the ground. I do not think that the evidence overall has proven that. What I see with universal credit is quite the opposite. It is driving people into poverty. I like to take this thing about not getting money for five weeks. I am not saying that the Tories are evil. I am absolutely sure that, when Ian Duncan Smith designed this, he was well intentioned, although George Osborne completely ruined it by making £12 billion worth of cuts to universal credit, only a small percentage of which has been reinstated last week by the chancellor. However, if you are in a low-paid job, as most people in universal credit have been, they have no savings. They usually have probably debt when they go on to benefit. They have nothing to rely on. They do not own their own home, so they cannot raise money in the back of the value of the house. Those are people typically who, even in work, were living hand to mouth. That is why 70 per cent of the children in poverty are living in households where somebody is in full-time work. Those are not only not rich people. Those are typically already poor people. To starve them for five weeks before they get a penny is one of the cruelest things that could ever be done. The reality is that one of the things that the Scottish Government is doing—I was responsible for this as a minister—is that we are going to pay universal credit within two weeks. Indeed, we looked at whether it could be done within one week and the computer systems that we are inheriting from the DWP do not allow you to do that. Otherwise, we would have made it one week. That is just about being more humane. There is no more money involved, but you do it humanely. The reality is that this has not been done humanely. It has been a shambles from day one. It continues to be a shambles, and it utterly fails every basic test that you yourselves have set for it. Thank you very much. I call Clare Adamson to be followed by Jackie Bailey. Ms Adamson, please. I had the pleasure of visiting a local business professional office suppliers in Motherwell to celebrate living wage week and to see that the wonderful job that they are doing in supporting their employees in fair work and in decent employment. However, how very different it is for many people who will be struggling on minimum wage and working in the gig economy, many of whom will be dependent on benefits. We must remember that many people living in poverty and reliant on benefits are in work. I am very sad to be here again talking about the problems with universal credit. In the previous term of this Parliament, I served on the welfare reform committee and we did some extensive work into the impact of the welfare reform on people in our society. Many of the problems that have been discussed today—the issues of single payments, the issues of housing benefit, something that we have fixed in Scotland thankfully, and housing benefit not being paid directly to landlords—were highlighted in the welfare reform committee, visited one of the pilots in Highlands and Islands Council to see some of the impact that those reforms were having on them. None of those problems are new and yet we are still faced with them repeating and repeating and repeating and causing misery for our citizens in Scotland. I want to highlight some of the work that the welfare reform committee did, because what we identified was that it cannot look at a simple identification of what a claimant looks like. Many people fall into different categories because they are in work or out of work or have different personal circumstances. However, one of the bits of work that we did was about women and social security. The committee heard evidence suggesting that there is an existing inequality for women who has been aggravated by the reforms in the social security system, including issues around childcare, occupational segregation, pink-collar jobs, as they are called the gender pay gap, and women's role as primary carers in society. Research at that time by the House of Commons Library stated that, since 2010, £26 billion worth of cuts made to benefits, tax credits, pay and pensions—85 per cent of that—had fallen on women. £26 billion had been taken from women's incomes due to those cuts. We also know that women are twice as dependent on social security as men, with 20 per cent of women's income coming from benefits and what was the tax credit system. They also have fewer financial assets to fall back on when life happens. Many of my colleagues this afternoon talked about how unpredictable life can be when people lose their jobs unexpectedly. We have talked a lot about the five-week delay. I am very conscious that we have just had a major announcement of job losses in Dundee, but for some people, facing redundancy towards Christmas, that could mean five weeks in a period over Christmas and New Year, where they are faced with absolutely no recourse and income. I think that that is a shocking state of affairs for any country to be in. Some of my other colleagues have mentioned the impact on children. I feel so strongly about that. A child should be means tested and a child should not be valued or what their parents' circumstances are when they were born. Each and every child should be entitled to the same benefit. That is why I find the two-child limit so disappointing that that has not been addressed. The support for children is about keeping those children out of poverty and helping their families. I have to address some of the points that I have heard this afternoon. Brian Whittle said that he visited a DWP office and had seen different types of policies being implemented by the officers. He is right in his Government, because it is his responsibility. The fact that there is that variation is an absolute indictment of how broken this system is and how badly it has been administered by his Government and the DWP. I also want to talk about what has been said about some of the use of food banks. I just find it unbelievable that we are talking about food banks as if they are part of what society should be about. Is it her shame that there are any food banks? Of course, reduction in the need for food banks and their use is to be welcomed. The fact that one food bank was bringing in agencies, those agencies were probably using the Scottish welfare fund to use to help people. Mitigation of £100 million a year from this Government to clean up the mess of what universal credit is doing for people in our society. I think about this. Children in particular have been hit so hard by this. A load parent with one dependent child is likely to lose about £1,770 a year. A lone parent with two or more dependent children will lose even more. When we look at the effect on individual incomes, Brian Whittle mentioned North Ayrshire. North Ayrshire, some of the people in there are like those who lose £540 a year as a result. The impact is higher on the poorer areas per household. I really do not understand how broken and morally bankrupt a system has to be before it is recognised, but I do not think that the United Nations is involved in rhetoric or political agendas. It is them who have said that the United Nations writes in the personal with disabilities that I have called out this Government for the failure to look after people with disabilities in this country. Is everybody wrong? Jackie Baillie, followed by Alison Allan. Poverty in Scotland is getting worse. About 1 million people are living in poor households, including something like 230,000 children. The majority of them are in working households. What a damning indictment on our economy and the precarious nature of employment is. It is a simple fact that salaries have not kept pace with inflation, and at the same time the cost of living is rising. People are quite simply struggling to get by. What is the response of the Tory UK Government? Instead of pursuing tax dodgers who owe millions of pounds, they are intent on penalising the poor. If we take universal credit, probably the worst example of Tory welfare reform rolled out in Argyll and Bute last month and it is being rolled out this month in Westin Bartonshire. When universal credit was introduced, as others have touched on, it had three aims, to simplify the system, reduce poverty and support people into employment. It fails on all three counts. The system is still complicated, beset with delays, claimants having to wait five weeks if they are lucky before getting their first payment. Food banks are reporting rises in the numbers needing help, and there is a direct correlation with the roll-out of universal credit. Poverty has increased not reduced under the Tories. They have cut the amount of benefits paid to some of the most vulnerable in our society. Let me give you just two examples of that. First, the disability premium. That has been cut by two thirds, and secondly, the introduction of the two-child cap. It reminds me of Communist China's one-child policy, morally abhorrent, but now even the Chinese have abolished that. Perhaps the Tories could bring themselves to take a leaf out of China's example and abolish the two-child cap. As for supporting people into employment, the in-work conditionality is totally inflexible. If you work in precarious employment in any case, the stress of searching for more work whilst holding down an insecure job places real financial pressure on people, not something that the Tories understand. In short, universal credit is an unmitigated disaster. It is making people already in poverty poorer. The UK Government needs to stop the roll-out now and halt the managed migration of existing claimants on in-work benefits. I want to point out another flaw that is touched on by Claire Adamson and Alison Johnson. The context is that poverty is gendered. It is the case that the majority of poor people are female. Women are twice as dependent on social security as men, and we know that the gender pay gap contributes to women being low-paid and facing poverty. The Work and Pensions Select Committee in a recent report noted that the default policy of single monthly payments per household risks the entire family income, including money that is meant for children going into an abusive partner's account. The woman can feel trapped, dependent on an abusive partner for money, which she then uses to control the relationship. It makes it so much harder for them to escape from the abuse. I will close the gap in their briefing. For this debate, it noted that 89 per cent of women who experience domestic abuse also experience financial abuse, so dual payments need to be the norm, not the exception. Let me turn to the roll-out of universal credit in Westin Bartonshire and say to Michelle Ballantyne that this is the situation on the ground. I want to start by paying tribute to the Westin Bartonshire Citizens Advice Bureau, the council and Westin Bartonshire Food Share for their efforts in preparing for this. Although there is immediate concern about delay in payments, the real concern is for January and February, when the consequences of spending choices over Christmas come home to roost. There is a real fear of housing debt being an issue, particularly for those receiving their rent direct instead of it going to the landlord. I was asked that this is looked at again. The two principal mechanisms that we will use locally to help people will be through local food banks who are gearing up for this, and the second is the Scottish welfare fund. The Scottish Government has the power and the means to help, and of course the UK Government should hold the roll-out of universal credit and to quote John Swinney, we should not let them off the hook, because their welfare reforms have been nothing short of brutal. But we cannot in all conscience ring our hands, say how terrible it is, but stand by and do nothing. I have one final request of the Scottish Government, and I say this as gently as I can. Instead of cutting the money for the Scottish welfare fund in my area, which is the consequence of the reprofiling and, indeed, the real terms freeze that there has been, there is a little more money available to help those who are experiencing immediate difficulties as a result of universal credit, I think, would be in order. Indeed, the Scottish Parliament social security committee has recommended this, and I believe that they are right. At the centre of all of this are people and families struggling to cope. They need practical assistance, they need it now, and we mustn't lose sight of them. As we have heard, the UK Government's tax and welfare changes since 2010 are estimated to have increased the number of children living in relative poverty in Scotland by 8 per cent. The Citizens Advice Bureau estimates that the primary reason for the people they work for being in rented areas is that they are having been moved on to universal credit. They recorded that 79 per cent of people on universal credit were in their years compared to 29 per cent of the other people that they deal with. Those of us on Parliament's social security committee have heard evidence in only the last couple of weeks from food banks who anticipate a rise in demand for their services in every area where universal credit is being rolled out. Indeed, in my constituency, universal credit went live there at the end of September, and I know that the food bank there is braced for growing demand. As others have alluded to today, the Conservatives are, I am afraid, asking the rest of us all to suspend our disbelief and for us all to see no connections between any of those facts. Last week, on the social security committee, we heard some shocking evidence from the PCS union about the apparent unpreparedness of DWP, even to begin to cope with some of the changes that lie ahead. It is unclear to take just one example of the union's concerns how the tax credit system is to be moved from HMRC to DWP anything like, seamlessly. Just as concerning is that many people in receipt of tax credits who do not presently even see themselves as being part of the benefits system are suddenly going to be dealing with the DWP, and in many cases it seems quite likely that they may have to reapply for something that they thought they had already been awarded. As others have mentioned today, there is, of course, the five-week wait for payment for universal credit. I know that I cannot be the only member of the chamber who will have encountered the family in this situation, a family trying to live off literally nothing whatsoever for a period of five weeks. The Trussell Trust has found that 70 per cent of people in this situation found themselves in significant debt as a result, and it really would be surprising, Presiding Officer, if they had found anything else. The Tory social security spokesperson today quoted IFS and the Resolution Foundation as confirming universal credit as being more generous than the old system. I feel the member quoting rather selectively there, because IFS notes that universal credit will in fact result in a third of households entitled to universal credit being at least £1,000 a year worse off under universal credit. I think that those facts speak for themselves. However, it is worth considering what all of this means in human terms. In the view of Inclusion Scotland, UK welfare cuts have had a disproportionate and discriminatory impact on disabled people. I quote them when they say that they believe that over 50 per cent of all cuts are falling on disabled people and their families. Inclusion Scotland, who represent Scotland's disability organisations, has made a very strongly-worded representation to all of us as parliamentarians on this. It has called the UK Government's welfare agenda a grave and systematic breach of disabled people's human rights, and the UN has said something similar warning of, quote, a human catastrophe. Inclusion Scotland concluded that the cumulative impact of the UK Government's welfare cuts is resulting in deepening levels of poverty, destitution, worsening mental health, suicides and deaths. I note that there was much heckling when somebody else quoted such a scenario earlier on when it came to the view of the Tory benches, but I should say that those are the views of Inclusion Scotland. The first question is probably what can this Parliament do about that, and perhaps the broader question is, does it care? On the first question, we have power in Scotland to make changes in very small areas around the edges of universal credit, and important power though they may be. Beyond that, there are, of course, regular calls, and we heard them today for this Parliament to mitigate all the effects of the UK Government's benefits reforms on some of Scotland's poorest families. Of course, as we know, £125 million worth of such mitigation has been spent by the Scottish Government this year, and it is only right that we, as a Parliament, have tried to take the edge off the most extreme of Westminster's measures. However, we need to be straight. Some £3.7 billion is expected to come out of the UK Government's social security spend in Scotland by 2021. No amount of mitigation by this Parliament from the resources that it has to spend on devolved public services can possibly mitigate for that, or make the Tory's damaging benefits reforms go away. The bigger question is, does the Parliament care? I wish that there was unanimity across the chamber in answer to that question. We have listened to what the Tories have had to say today. I can not really only conclude in view of some of their recent revealing outbursts from some benches about people and benefits that I cannot, in any honesty, claim that all parties in this Parliament do care about this matter, but I hope that the rest of us who do will continue to make our views loudly known. Colle Keith Brown, who is the last of the open debate speeches. Thank you, Presiding Officer. My constituency of Cluck Marnish and Dumblain was an early adopter of universal credit back in 2015. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and to highlight the impact that the policy has had on the people that I represent. There is no doubt that, rather, as part of the wider welfare reform agenda, the introduction of universal credit has been the biggest change that the welfare system in this country has undergone. In order to assess the impact of the roll-out in my local area on 7 September, I hosted a summit in Allawa in the town hall. It was well attended by local councillors from different parties, officers from both Cluck Marnish and Stirling councils, Cluck Marnish and Stirling citizens advice bureaus, local food banks, the poverty lines and the local third sector. I also invited the two Tory MPs who represent my constituency at Westminster and who are more than willing, on any occasion, to stand up in the House of Commons and extol the virtues of universal credit. Stephen Kerr, for example, stated just a few weeks ago, I am grateful to be a proponent of universal credit. Luke Graham, MP, claiming earlier this year that universal credit is a positive and transformational reform, which I suspect will come as news to many of my constituents. Unsurprisingly, both Tory MPs declined the opportunity to attend the summit, unwilling that it would seem to listen to the actual facts of this toxic Tory policy. However, it was clear from the evidence presented by all those who, yes, it will do. Adam Tomkins, MP, for the number of taking intervention. I wonder if he would agree with those words. We agree that reform is needed. We also agree that the system should incentivise work, that it should be simpler and, of course, that it must be affordable. It is worth restating that we believe that the overall model of universal credit has some merits. I wonder if he would agree with those words, because those words were his uttered in this chamber on the 21st of March praising the virtues of universal credit. What a complete waste of an intervention. You have already heard from all around the chamber the shared values of trying to make it more simple, trying to encourage people into work. I think that we understand that point. That does not excuse the effect of the policy that you and your party are proposing. It was clear to the evidence presented by all those who attended the summit that I mentioned that the system is fundamentally flawed. It penalises the most vulnerable people in our community, causing financial hardship and extreme distress to many claimants. Since the full role of universal credit locally in my area, both council areas have seen, despite what Brian Whittle says, a significant rise in the level of claimants who have rent the rears, with nine out of 10 tenants in Clutmanusure claiming universal credit accruing rent the rears in 2017. The average debt per universal credit case nearly doubled that of the non-UC cases, a similar situation that is observed in Stirling council, where rent the rear rates also were on the rise. In 99 cases, Stirling council tenants had the rears solely comprised of a rare accumulator to await for their first universal credit payment to arrive. A record number of people having applied for crisis loans and a steady increase in the use of food banks is now by Brian Whittle that the Trussell Trust might be saying something other than rhetoric when they point out that the direct link between universal credit and the increase in food banks will haunt Brian Whittle in his local area. There has also been a surge in the number of people using the local services such as the Systems Advice Bureau. I am happy to give way to any single Tory who wants to stand up just now and say that they agree with Theresa May that austerity is over. I thought not. Nobody in my constituency believes and certainly nobody on universal credit. Even if, as we have heard from the cabinet secretary, it is going to take two to three years for some of those most basic changes to happen, austerity is still going to be fit there for those people. The system is not simple. Adam Tonkin's point to me that we should support a simplification is not simple. The common select committee reports that it is not simple. It is unreliable even for the most capable of claimants who have little or no support built in for those who need additional help, but these local councils, food banks and voluntary services to pick up the strain. Just to highlight one or two of the issues raised by those in attendance at the summit I referred to, the fact that claiming universal credit is a difficult and complex process for everyone was highlighted repeatedly. I also have to say, both for local councils and the Scottish Government, that we also have to improve the way in which we make it as accessible as possible, and simply telling people that they have to use an IT system to do that is not enough. We have to make sure that the support is there. The representative from Clot-Manager of Citizens Advice Bureau stated that it can take hours to make a claim, even for those with IT skills, and it is a nightmare for most people, not only for those with complex needs. That is why we are going to see it really bite when people with complex needs are exposed to the system. Representatives in the third sector have shared their experience of supporting vulnerable people through the process of claiming universal credit, highlighting the difficulties faced by people, especially those who have learning difficulties. There is also an issue of bank accounts, with people often trapped in a difficult situation of having no money to get an ID in order to get a bank account in order to get and receive benefit. I have mentioned before in the chamber, in my constituency, that we would have a single RBS or Clidio bank in the first place. It is also alarming to note, as we mentioned previously, that the sanction rates in the two job centres that are relevant to my constituency have risen significantly and progressively since they have received full roll-out as the claiming account has grown. The Tories in my constituency and across the country continue to be enthusiastic cheerleaders for universal credit, denouncing that any criticism is mere rhetoric. The UN, the Trussell Trust, the common select committee are all just rhetoric, according to the Tories. That can be the only way in which they feel that they can deal with this situation. I have five here who have barely lifted their eyes during the entire debate. I think that you are thoroughly ashamed of it. If you are ashamed of it, you should be speaking up. If you feel—and I think that some of you must feel—this is a bad system, there are people who are committing suicide, there is real misery amongst children and you are sitting there and saying nothing. I suggest that you go down to Westminster, grab your colleague Tracy Crouch and see if you can borrow the Tory spine for a day, because at least she had the spine to stand up for something that she knew was having an effect on poverty across the country. We should see some of that spine in this group here. You know that it is not working. You can see that for yourselves. You never said it before that your chancellor had agreed it a couple of weeks ago. You never said it then. You should say it now. It is not working. You should haul the roll-out and you should admit the fact that you have got the policy completely wrong. We now move to the closing speeches. I remind all members that they should always speak through the chair. I call Alex Cole-Hamilton quite tight on timings for the closing speeches. Please, up to six minutes. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am very pleased to close for my party in what I think has been an illuminating debate. It offers me the opportunity to restate my party's support both for the amendment in the name of Mark Griffin and that of Alison Johnstone and for the motion as a whole. I think that the cabinet secretary set the tone and the landscape in which this debate is being conducted. When she evoked the image of the gentleman forced to light and warm his home by candlelight, I am haunted by that. It is the delay in particular, the five-week delay before any cash is forthcoming, that has created images like that and the increasing demand that we have heard about today on food banks. It is the structural flaws around universal credit and its roll-out that have created that situation. We should, in this place, be using bureaucratic words like starvation. That is astonishing. That is Dickensian, Deputy Presiding Officer. What struck me most was how far away those aspects of mitigation hinted at by the UK Government actually are. I think that the cabinet secretary was quite right to call that out, that those are three years hence when people are suffering right now. Simply, if you recognise that the system is already broken, either fix it now or stop it entirely. Michelle Ballantyne started by suggesting that debates such as those are politically motivated. It was a point that was echoed by Brian Whittle. However, when her Government refuses to acknowledge complaint after complaint and calamity after calamity in the roll-out of this system, I am afraid that calling it out in a political arena such as this is all that we have left to us. She laid out the original drivers and I agree with them as I agreed with them in 2010, but they are no longer the original drivers behind the system. They do not recognise things such as in-work poverty or delays that we have already covered or the iniquities of paying into one bank account where abuse is a factor or spousal abuse is a factor. Bob Doris addressed in empirical terms how we have moved from a reform agenda to a cuts agenda. He referenced the £3.7 billion that has now gone from the system. That is exactly what my amendment speaks to, because it underscores the difference of intent between the Governments of that which my party was part and that which followed immediately after in 2015 and brought around that punishing budget to universal credit. I commend Neil Findlay on the passion of his contribution, his reflection and of our dereliction of duty as a corporate parent. It is something that I have long argued since before I even came into this place. Like Mark Griffin, who offered a very powerful speech in terms of his own particular family example, it was really compelling in terms of the understanding of the lived experience of the reforms and what that means. It is clearly shaped to a good part of Neil Findlay's life. I am glad that he is channeling that to this day. This is no longer about a system that is unravelling. It is about a system that is the fundamental fabric of which it is ruined and unmendable. George Adam picked up on that in his addressing those ill-chosen words of Michelle Ballantyne when she talked about the fact that we need to test and to learn. First of all, those are human lives that we are talking about. They are not lab rats. Second of all, we are trying to show that where the system has failed those tests, but your Government still refuses to learn from that and pushes back. I think that it is something that you should take away and reflect on. Alison Johnstone anchored her speech into the not insubstantial cuts that the July 2015 budget brought about. Again, I reference the fact that that exactly speaks to our amendment, but I really appreciate the green amendment in the fact that it referenced the very gendered nature of the impact of those reforms. It was something that picked up once again eloquently by Jackie Baillie and by Clare Adamson. I go back to that fact that finance is still used as a tool of coercive control and abusive relationships. That system has to recognise that it is there to serve the most vulnerable people in our society. I can think of very few more vulnerable people than those who are abuse survivors still stuck in abusive spousal relationships. Again, Annie Wells took us back to basic principles. Once again, I say that we support those principles, but those principles are far adrift of where we are to this day. One of my favourite speeches in this was from Alex Neil. I enjoy his contributions immensely, but I think that the international comparison that he made was very important. He reminded us that social mobility in places such as Denmark and other European countries is not just about moving people out of the unemployment column. It is about giving them a meaningful new start at life and economic self-management and sustainability. It is important that we hang on to that when we consider the early foothills of our own social security system in this country. I will conclude with that. The system is clearly broken. That is evidenced in the early roll-out areas such as those constituencies such as Keith Brown and others. We have to listen to the lived experience of those who have suffered because of it. I am not a particularly religious person, but there is a passage in scripture that I have reflected on before when we talk about the welfare state and social security. In the book of Jeremiah, there is a phrase that says, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Again, I am not religious, but that really speaks to me in terms of the first principle, that important starting point from which any social security system or indeed any other public policy that we design in this place should cling, and we are a country mile from that now, thank you. Alison Johnstone, for up to six minutes please. I would like to start by confirming that we will be supporting the Government motion at decision time, as well as the Lib Dem amendment and the Labour amendment. We will not be supporting the Conservative amendment. The cabinet secretary focused on many of the flaws of universal credit, not least the five-week wait, and pointed out rather alarmingly that the DWP does not expect any significant improvement. That is rather horrifying. She also spoke of the uncertainty that self-employed people will experience under this policy, those whose earnings vary from month to month. I think that one of the most daunting aspects of her contribution was when she informed Parliament that 190 women have filled in a form to prove that conception wasn't consensual, and that Citizens Advice Bureau have filled in a form in which she noted that one of her clients was suffering starvation while waiting for universal credit. Michelle Ballantyne then went on to point out that no-one is suggesting that universal credit is faultless, and that, of course, universal credit has its problems. Alex Cole-Hamilton has picked up on the fact that we have focused on the gendered nature of the cuts. He also pointed out that finance is used as a tool of coercive control. I cannot think of a better example of that than the two-child limit and the rape clause. I am not entirely surprised by Michelle Ballantyne's response to that. I notice that she is not responding at the moment. A few months ago, Esther McVeigh came to speak to the Social Security Committee, and we had a chance to question her, and I asked the Secretary of State. As a minister, are you comfortable with the idea that a woman has to prove non-consensual conception to access an entitlement? In her response, Esther McVeigh said, there is potentially double support there. They will get the money that they need and perhaps an outlet that they might need. This is not the outlet that women who have been traumatised in such a shocking way need. Mark Griffin's contribution was very powerful indeed. He pointed out that this Parliament has to step in, and that is absolutely right. I agree that it does. This is a devolved Parliament. We have responsibility to ensure that those who live in this country have every opportunity to succeed. Equality is key. It is difficult to experience the opportunities that your friends and neighbours have when they are suffering from abject poverty. The Parliament should and must do all that it can, but it is not very frustrating. I speak as someone who joined the campaign for a devolved Parliament before I joined a political party. It is very frustrating when the Parliament is constantly called upon to sort out the chaos that is being inflicted on people in this country by another Parliament. That said, I will continue to push strongly and to ask this Government to adopt universal child benefit top-up. At the very least, as Mark Griffin asked, we see the income supplement fast-tracked. Annie Wells spoke about devolved powers. I really would like to understand what Annie Wells thinks the point of this Parliament is. I hear so little of vision coming from those benches and always, and Brian Whittle joined in, a cry for this Parliament to mitigate Westminster's cuts. Surely you must have more of a vision than that. Brian Whittle? I thank the member for taking that into the bench. I think that he will find that I discussed the way that the universal credit has been rolled out in the framework. However, what I would suggest to you is that the £3 billion that was given to this Parliament—the first thing that it did was to give it back to Westminster. How can you complain about that? Alison Johnstone Mr Whittle, I am sure that you are well aware that what is being delivered to this Parliament and through universal credit is nothing but cuts. Cuts to people's living standard, cuts to the quality of life, cuts to the most vulnerable in society. Bob Doris and Neil Findlay both spoke of sanctions. What we have to remember with universal credit is unprecedented. We have never had in-work conditionality. Now, even when you get a job, you are still not trying hard enough, don't the Conservatives realise that if higher-paid work was available, those seeking work would be highly likely to be in those higher-paid jobs? We also heard last week from PCS, who spoke to the committee, of the impact that cuts in the number of job centres, cuts in the number of staff working in those job centres, how can work coaches help people to find higher-paid jobs when they are struggling under a ludicrous caseload? Neil Findlay pointed out that no one on the Conservative benches has picked up on Michelle Ballantyne's contribution a week or two ago. I think that the response to that is because it is Conservative party policy and they are quite comfortable with it. Alex Neil, I agree wholeheartedly that we should not be offering people the bare minimum on which to survive when they need support. We should be ensuring that they have support that enables them to contribute in a way that maintains their human dignity and helps them into those well-paid jobs. Jackie Baillie spoke about people budgeting for Christmas. On universal credit, that is a very big ask indeed. We, as a Parliament, have a role to make sure that everyone can enjoy a decent quality of living. We will continue to campaign for increased child benefit, but we will also continue to condemn Westminster's cuts when that is the right thing to do. Pauline McNeill, up to six minutes, please. Universal credit is in crisis and what's more, the benches opposite know that it is in crisis. It took Esther McVeigh to contradict the Downing Street line only a few weeks ago, when at least she admitted that there were losers in the universal credit system. I am with Keith Brown on that. All the debates that I have done in this Parliament, I have hardly heard a word of criticism in any real sense from the benches opposite. Of the seven reforms or eight reforms that we have heard, is that not an indication that the test unlearn is absolutely, utterly failing. Like George Adams, I find it quite insulting that you say that we should support a system that tests unlearns. Who are the people we are talking about here? The people that you are testing to learn are the people who need the most support from the state, and it is really not acceptable to say that that is how we are going to adjust a deeply flawed system. In fact, it was Heidi Allen, South Cambridge, who has been the most outspoken on this, and even the injection of £1.7 billion, she says that it is not enough, and we need to be honest with ourselves that it is not working. I don't actually believe and I would like to hear if Michelle Ballantyne is saying that somehow behind the scenes they made some representations, I'd like to hear it. It was 38 degrees in the analysis that said, and so there's been some accusation that there's political rhetoric around this. Well, I'm sure you know that there are 39 Tory MPs whose seats and their majorities are outweighed by universal claimants, so I wonder who are the ones that are playing politics with this. Ian Duncan Smith, who is the original architect, I mean I actually think that at least he had some ambition here. This system that we are, you are defending now, is nothing like the system that I believe that he wanted to design. I think it's a million miles away from it, so you don't want to just tinker with the previous welfare system. Well, you certainly did not. You've removed billions of pounds out of the universal credit system. There are mounting rent arrears. The use of food banks is up. The entire system of people relying on tax credits and child tax credits is completely overturned and, as you've heard from Alison Johnstone and others, the waiting times built into this system alone is inflicting deep poverty on a daily basis to thousands of people, so you certainly did not tinker with it, that's for sure. Those design flaws are hurting people. The facts speak for themselves. The resolution foundation says that, on average, families are losing £1,200 a year by 2020. I do think that I have said that there are good features about the system. The online system isn't all that bad, but it does penalise many who are not on the internet, so there is still a lot to fix. It seems to me extraordinary that you would build into a system that you'll get transitional protection unless your family's circumstances change. If your partner leaves you or you leave them or you stop work or you join households with another person who has children and, incidentally, the two-child cat will apply to them, you will lose your transitional arrangements. What kind of system would do that to people? Every single person in life knows their circumstances. Do not stay the same and they change. Why would you build that into a system? Alison Johnstone also said that, and I have heard that the inclusion of self-employed people in the universal credit system was actually something that they just forgot about, but they decided, well, we'll just put them in with it now that we've remembered about them, and I actually think that that bears out, because if you look at anyone who's been self-employed, you will know that it's not really valuable to make an assessment about your daily needs on a month-to-month basis. That has to fundamentally change. Other members have talked about the gender issues. I think that it's the one that shocks me the most. It is well known that when you have payments to a single household, you know that that is likely going to be that those benefits will go to the male earner in the household. There are literally thousands of women who are going to suffer if that is not fundamentally altered. The director general of universal credit said in 2014 that many people are unaware that they will be changing from the HMRC to the DWP. I am talking about working people, people who have worked for 20 or 30 years, but who have relied on a little bit of help through the tax credit system. Have you forgotten about those people? They will all be affected by this change. Frankly, it seems rather strange to me that you would take them out of the HMRC, move them into the DWP, and I bet any money that, as Neil Cooleyan says, it will be a shock when the letters arrive and the doorsteps of people who have never been unemployed, but all they've done is taking some credit from the state. I mark my words. Why would you apply conditionality to those people who have paid their taxes as a working person? It seems to me quite extraordinary. What concerns me even more—we heard evidence from the PCS last week—is that managing universal credit and all the changes as far as the staff are concerned in the DWP is nothing compared to all of the work that they will take from the HMRC. I remember that all the people, thousands of people on tax credit, will now be administered by the DWP, and no account has been taken of that. Universal credit must be halted. If we have to tackle poverty in this country, then there are too many changes that need to happen before it actually works. I call Adam Tomkins for up to eight minutes. Universal credit is the biggest and the most fundamental reform to the welfare state that we've seen since the welfare state's creation after the Second World War. It is a modern benefit based on two sound principles. First, that work should always pay, and second, that those who need support must, of course, receive it. That change is necessary, because we simply cannot go on with the legacy benefits that universal credit replaces. Those legacy benefits were a legacy of failure. The legacy benefits were complicated to use. They were completely outdated. They were unaffordable, but most importantly of all, they did not work for the people who use and rely on them. Under the last Labour Government, the amount of spending on welfare increased by almost 65 per cent. At the same time, the number of households where no one had ever worked almost doubled. That is a legacy of failure. That is why universal credit is a necessary reform. That is why the Labour Government had the opportunity to reform welfare under the Blair Brown years. That is why it was right, as Alex Cole-Hamilton said, that the coalition Government grasped that nettle and took responsibility and governed, which is not what we hear from the SNP front bench. universal credit is revolutionary. The old system was one size—it is a significant change. It is a very significant change, for sure. There is no argument from the benches about the magnitude of the change that universal credit is seeking to achieve, nor indeed the magnitude of the problem that was created under the last Labour Government that needed to be addressed. What we now have is not a system where one size fits all, but a system that is tailored to each claimant's individual needs, abilities and skills that recognises that every person is unique. I will in a minute, if I can, Mr Brown. Even before the autumn budget of last month, universal credit has been helping people to get into work faster and to stay in work longer than the old system. Alongside that, figures out that only last week show that the number of children now living in a household without working adults is at its lowest ever. Having a working role model in a child's life is immeasurably important. If that is one of the achievements of universal credit, it is one of the achievements that I think we should welcome. I am happy to give a way to Mr Brown. Keith Brown. I thank the member for giving away. He said that the policy is tailored to individual needs, and yet the report from the select committee in the House of Commons says that it is the human cost of containing to apply this, if it is simply too high, and that it is arbitrarily punitive. Is there any criticism that you accept of this policy, or is it all just to be dismissed as rhetoric? Adam Tomkins. I do not dismiss all criticism of policy as rhetoric. I hope that Mr Brown knows me better than that. I have been in and out of job centres all over the Glasgow region, which I seek to represent in this Parliament. When you go into job centres in Glasgow—I would be interested to know if it is the same as what Mr Brown hears in the job centres in his constituency—is work coaches, whose work I think is immeasurably to the Government's credit and to their own credit, work coaches enjoying the flexibility, the new unique flexibility that universal credit gives them that the legacy benefits did not. Of course, there have been very significant issues with the roll-out. As I said, this is the biggest single change to the welfare state that we have seen in 60 years. I think that, under successive secretaries of state, starting with Damien Greene, David Gawke and now Esther McVey, we see a DWP that is listening, that is learning and that is seeking to make changes—changes that we have called for and changes that we welcome. We have seen the seven-day waiting period removed. We have seen interest-free advances added to the system. We have seen free-phone telephone numbers, which I remember Pauline McNeill calling for in a social security committee when I served in that committee alongside her, introduced. Last month, in the budget, we saw the chancellor reintroduce £1.7 billion back into universal credit. Universal credit has always ensured that work pays, and now it pays even more—something that stakeholders and charities right across the board, Deputy Presiding Officer, from the Resolution Foundation to the Trussell Trust to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and more have welcomed. The Trussell Trust, which the cabinet secretary mentioned in her remarks, said that, for example, by restoring the work allowances and increasing support to those moving on to universal credit, the Government has listened to evidence from the front line and, indeed, from food banks. Those are significant improvements, they said, that will make a real difference to many people supported by universal credit in the future. The key point is that those changes will push the expected cost and, indeed, the expected generosity of universal credit higher than the system it replaces. Those are not my words, Deputy Presiding Officer. Those are the words of the IFS, and they are supported by the Resolution Foundation, who said just last week that this will mean that the Government's flagship welfare reform is now more generous than the benefit system that it is replacing. Not that we have heard any of that from any of the Opposition benches in this Parliament this afternoon. I am happy to give way to the cabinet secretary. Shirley-Anne Somerville I am grateful to the member for giving way. The Resolution Foundation also pointed out the increase in work allowances for whom it is coming back, because it is not coming back for everyone. The decrease in income tax will not compensate the average household and the bottom 30 per cent of income distribution for the amount that it will lose due to the benefit freeze, so what you are bringing back is not a lot. It does not cover what the UK Government has already taken away from the poor. Adam Tomkins The point, cabinet secretary, is that under those reforms, as reformed, universal credit is now more generous than the system it is replacing. It is not a scheme of cuts, it is a scheme of welfare reform. What we have not heard in this debate, Deputy Presiding Officer, is anything at all from the SNP front bench about what they want to do with their powers. We have not heard anything about the devolution of employment services or discretionary housing payments, all of which have been fully devolved since 2017. We have not heard anything about how they propose to use the power to top up reserved benefits. We have not heard anything about how they propose to use the power to create new benefits. This today was an opportunity, Deputy Presiding Officer, for the SNP, to lay out exactly how it sees devolved welfare powers working in Scotland. We have not heard anything from anybody on the front bench about that. The Scottish Government still has no idea where hundreds of new social security staff are going to be working despite having already advertised for some 400 workers. They have been so slow. Minister, your Government has been so slow to set out a timeline for delivering new benefits that the Office of Budget Responsibility has been unable to forecast how much it will cost. Excuse me, Mr Tomkins, could we have a wee bit hush here and let Mr Tomkins finish his nearly complete? My last point, Deputy Presiding Officer, I am grateful to you, is this. The Joseph Frantry Foundation is absolutely right to say that, for those who can, work represents the best route out of poverty. That is why it is critical that universal credit is designed to get people off welfare dependency and into the world of work. That is the argument that I was trying to have with Alex Neil. His view is that universal credit is not doing that. My view is that universal credit is doing exactly that. It is for that reason. Actually, if I am honest, I am alone that I support it. I believe passionately that the Joseph Frantry Foundation is entirely correct that, for those who can, work represents the best route out of poverty. That is why universal credit is working. It is working because under universal credit people are more likely to be in work. It is working because under universal credit claimants work more than they did under the legacy benefits. Finally, it is working because, under universal credit, claimants are earning more in wages for the work that they are doing. That is why I support universal credit. That is why I support the amendment in Michelle Ballantyne's name. I call Aileen Campbell to conclude this debate for up to nine minutes. The debate today was passionate and informed by many of the organisations and third sector groups that contacted MSPs who described the impact of welfare reforms on universal credit on people and communities, not just anyone, but cuts that seem to particularly target the most vulnerable in our society and, as Alison Johnstone pointed out, a pernicious impact on women. The debate coincides with a visit to Scotland by the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. A timely visit and a timely debate this afternoon gave us all the chance to talk about the impact on people of those cuts, highlight the hurt, highlight the punishment being endured by families for daring to have more than two children and recognise that, despite the rhetoric from the chancellor or the claims that austerity is over, that more and more children are being pushed into poverty. Universal credit, the United Kingdom's flagship welfare policy, is in crisis. Successive UK Governments have failed to develop and resource universal credit properly over the last eight years and failed to learn crucial lessons about its disastrous impacts on households across the UK. As the UK budget made clear, they have failed even now to take the action that is needed to sort out this mess, which is why it must be halted until it is made for purpose. No Government should be pursuing policies that are so clearly causing harm, yet the ideological cuts still seem to be too irresistible for a UK Government held bent on ignoring facts, figures, the devastation and hurt that welfare cuts are causing. The truth is that people are hurting. We have heard from the Trusill Trust about a 15 per cent increase in Scottish food bank youth directly relating that to shortfalls in universal credit. We have heard from George Adam talk about a constituent of his being sanctioned in hospital recovering from a heart attack. Mark Griffin described how family circumstances can suddenly change and yet the welfare system is no longer designed to help to provide that safety net that so many families up and down this country require. Maureen Watt also spoke about her constituents caught by the two child cap after fostering a member of their family, after family bereavement, and then going on to have two children of their own. Absolutely horrifying examples about what is happening in the here and now as a result of conservative action. The Conservatives, Michelle Ballantyne, called these people customers. Therein lies the problem that inhuman, transactional opinion, the Conservatives and the UK Government have about our welfare state. Maybe that somehow helps them cope with the pain that is being felt by others to keep it inhuman, to keep it separate somehow. There seems to be certainly no care and there certainly seems to be no understanding. To suggest, as Annie Wells did, that somehow we in Scotland should just ignore the root cause of the poverty caused by the social security cuts from her Government and to not bother that the finger of blame points squarely at the UK Government and the disruption that it is creating that to right this wrong the Scottish Government should just absorb it, to continue to soften the Tory blows and to take money from elsewhere from within our budget to plug the gap. That situation and that opinion is simply unsustainable because the fact is that it is estimated that annual social security spending in Scotland will be £3.7 billion lower in 2020-21 than it would have been without UK welfare reform. To put that into context, this is the equivalent to three times our annual police budget or the entire annual budget of both NHS Glasgow and Lothian together. That is one heck of a sticking plaster that Annie Wells and Brian Whittle expects this Government to find. Let me be clear that while the chaos of welfare cuts is the fault of the Conservatives, we will not, though, sit blithly by. That is why we have, with the powers and the resources that we have, taken significant action. We have spent £125 million on welfare mitigation and measures this year to help to protect those on low incomes. That is over £20 million more than we spent last year. That includes fully mitigating the bedroom tax, helping people to keep their homes. It also includes our Scottish welfare fund, which has helped 306,000 individual households, a third of them with children, with awards totaling £173 million over the past five years. That is money that simply lets us stand still, mitigating the worst impacts of another Government's policies by another set of politicians blind to their impact. On universal credit specifically, we have given people in Scotland the choice to receive their universal credit award either monthly or twice monthly and to have the housing cost in their UC award paid direct to their landlords. We are committed to delivering split payments in Scotland, too. Free school meals are available to all children in primaries one through two to three and for children of families on low income, but we know that many families struggle with the cost of feeding their children when this provision is not available during school holidays. That is why the programme for Government announced an increase to our fair food fund to £3.5 million and £2 million of that will provide targeted support to children and families' experience in food insecurity during the school holidays. Last week, I launched the financial health check with Citizen Advice Bureau Scotland to help to reduce household costs. That is just a flavour of the action that we are taking to help to protect the people of Scotland. Furthermore, in response to claims that we have not used the powers at our disposal, let me set that record straight. We are guided by an approach to ensuring that that is safe and secure transition and already delivering a better service in Scotland with a service designed with people. We have since the 2016 Scotland Act passed started extensive consultation. 2017 started delivering Scottish universal choices to give people flexibility over UC payments. In 2018, Social Security Act was passed, the agency was established, it has started delivering carers allowance supplement and it will deliver best start grant before Christmas, despite the DWP not having changed its IT system to aid us in that delivery. We have announced that the disability benefits assessment will be fairer. That suggests to me that there is a lot of action happening as a result of this Government's priority and commitment to helping those who are most vulnerable in our society. The UK Government and the Tories talk about testing and learning, while they should learn from this Government in the running of a social security service that is based on dignity and respect. Of course, there is more that we have to do. We need to make good on our targets on child poverty, and we are working on the development of a new income supplement to lift children out of poverty. Tonight, we will again come to vote to send a message to the UK Government. I have no doubt that all Bar the Conservatives will unite to say to that UK Government to scrap your two-child limit policy and its morally bankrupt rate clause, halt the chaotic roll-out of universal credit and please treat people as people, not as customers and certainly not as some sort of target for your ideological drive to stigmatise those in poverty. It does not have to be like this. We as a country have the potential to take a different path. We are showing a glimpse of what is possible through our new social security agency. Another Scotland is possible, one that is based on fairness, equality and protecting those that are most vulnerable. Unfortunately, that is not a message that we see being taken forward by the UK Government. It needs to heed the will of this Parliament and it needs to listen to what we are telling them and to stop with their callous cuts to their social security system and treat people with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Thank you very much. That concludes our debate on the impact of UK Government welfare cuts and universal credit on poverty. We are now going to move on to the next item of business, which is an urgent question, which I was able to select earlier. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for returning from Dundee to be able to answer the questions that the members will wish to put this afternoon. As a consequence of the urgent question, decision time will be at 5.15 today.