 i'w siaradau hyn o wneud hynny. Ieithio chi i chi gyd yn bryd lleol iawn Cyngorol. Mae yna ni'n meddyl â'r cyhoedd. A ddim wedi rhoi i gael â'rwyfnol gyda'r cyhoeddfaen Cymru, gallai gael aill sydd yn ei bobl yn gwneud o'r reilbonnwydig, a'r gyfeithio i gael i economy ymlaewd. Ieithiau chi'n meddyl â'r cyhoeddfaen cyflogaeth a'i gael yn imeg 썰ol, ac mae'n meddyl i'r gael i'r cyhoeddfaen Cymru, a Nicola Nicola Sturgeon. I hope that we can date, First Minister, 14 minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Let me begin by wishing you and all members across the chamber a very happy new year. Given our discussions at question time a few moments ago, I also want to take the opportunity at the outset to express my sympathy to everybody across the country who is dealing with the impact of flooding and to express my heartfelt thanks to everybody who has been over the last few days and who continues to work extremely hard to respond to the challenges that the flooding is posing. 2016 will be a hugely important year for Scotland, another hugely important year. That is why it is right to use this first debate of the new year to look back at progress made and even more importantly to look to the future. Over the next four months, there must be a great, ambitious and thriving debate in Scotland, a debate about how we build on our achievements, address the challenges that we face and realise the full potential of our nation. Let me be clear today that that is a debate that I, my Government and my party are determined to lead in the months ahead. It is on the strength of our record, our ideas and our vision for the future of this country that we will ask people to elect us for a historic third term as Scotland's Government. In setting out our priorities for the future, we are building on strong foundations. Today, for example, our NHS has a record budget, it has record numbers of staff working in it and, as we see this morning, it is delivering some of the best and fastest care anywhere in the United Kingdom. Let me take the opportunity again to thank NHS staff for their efforts day in and day out. We also have world-class universities, more world-class universities per head of population than almost any other country in the world. Those universities are accessible to a higher proportion of students from deprived backgrounds than was the case in 2007. Crucially, I am proud that this Government has ensured that the success of our universities has not been achieved at the expense of the free tuition that our students depend on. We also now have a reform school curriculum. We are seeing record exam passes and the information that we have about performance in the upper stages of secondary school shows signs of a narrowing attainment gap. According to the OECD, we now have the potential to become a world leader in education. We have also taken tough but necessary decisions to reform our police and fire services. As the Deputy First Minister has just said, we have seen the benefits of the new arrangements in our fire and rescue services in the recent days as they have responded to flooding, yes. Neil Findlay has missed the section on colleges. I am coming back to education, so perhaps the member could exercise a bit of patience, but we have taken tough and necessary decisions. We have seen crime fall to a 41-year low. We have built new colleges, new schools, new hospitals and new health centres in every single part of our country. We have not met but exceeded our five-year target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes, and we have helped 20,000 people into home ownership, three quarters of them under the age of 35. Those are all hard practical achievements, and just as importantly, if less tangibly, by trusting the people of this country to decide their own future, we have helped to create a flourishing of democratic debate and played our part in building renewed national confidence. Those achievements have made society stronger as a whole, but they have also made a difference for individuals across our nation. It is worth reflecting on the impact on real people of just some of those initiatives. For example, before prescription charges were abolished by this Government, 600,000 families earning as little as £16,000 a year had to pay for their medicines for conditions like asthma, and now they receive essential medication without financial worry. In 2007, just 85 per cent of hospital in-patients and day-case patients were seen within a waiting time that back then was 18 weeks. Last year, 95 per cent were seen within 12 weeks. In 2007, just 45 per cent of school students stayed on until six years of school. Now, 62 per cent do so. That, among other things, is because we took the decision to retain the educational maintenance allowance at a time when it was abolished by the UK Government. At the start of 2014, just 4 per cent of households in the Highlands and Islands had access to superfast broadband by the end of this year. That will not be 4 per cent, but that will be 84 per cent, making a major difference to the opportunities and quality of life of our rural communities. On those and many other indicators, we should be proud of our achievements. Our challenge now is to build on them. In the run-up to the election, we will set out a range of ambitious plans that, over the next five years, will help to transform our country even further. Let me make clear today that education will be at the front and centre of our plans for the next Parliament. Our attainment fund is already helping more than 300 primary schools across our country. In the coming weeks, we will set out further plans to achieve both excellence and equity in education, building on the work that we are doing already through the attainment challenge. Indeed, that will start tomorrow, when I publish the new national improvement framework, to ensure that our focus on closing the attainment gap is driven by robust evidence on children's progress in primary and early secondary school. In health, we must focus ever more on the... Yes. She moves on from education. New official Government figures show that only 7 per cent of two-year-olds are receiving nursery education. The First Minister's promise was 27 per cent. How can the First Minister talk about a revolution in education and in childcare when she can't even meet her timid plans? We are seeking to increase the number of two-year-olds that do take advantage of our commitment to free nursery education in early years education. I am happy to write in more detail to the member about this. Because of the time of year that those figures are gathered, they tend not to capture all of the young people that go into early years education. That figure that he cited is already much higher than that. He is shaking his head, but I am happy to write to him with the detail of that. I want to... Yes, very briefly. Let's go for the previous year's figure. That was supposed to be 15 per cent. Of the old figures, there is still half of that. She is not even meeting the previous year's commitment. She is not fulfilling her promise on nursery education. When is she going to step up to the mark? He has to understand that we are funding the provision for early years education for 27 per cent of two-year-olds. That is why we are focusing so much on making sure that parents take up that opportunity. I have offered to write to him because the figures that he is citing are already out of date, but we remain focused on making sure that we increase the numbers of young people taking advantage of that commitment. Moving on to health, we must focus ever more on the needs of our older people. That is why the process of reshaping care is well under way. Health and social care integration is the most significant reform of how we deliver healthcare since the creation of the national health service. In the coming months, we will set out further plans to shift the balance of care and the balance of investment, even more decisively towards primary and social care. We have set out already plans to create five new elective treatment centres to meet growing demand for hip and knee replacements in cataract operations. In the weeks to come, we will set out detailed plans to further improve child and maternal health, cancer care and mental health services. Our ambition for public services is matched in other areas. Last month, we received the final report of the commission on local taxation. Of course, since 2007, households across this country have benefited from the council tax freeze. In the coming weeks, building on the commission's report, we will make proposals for a fairer and more progressive system of local taxation. I would call on other parties to do likewise so that the people of Scotland can make their choice at the election. We will also set out plans to use new powers and welfare to create a distinctively Scottish approach to social security. I want to make some progress at the moment. We will continue to do everything that we can, such as what we do to mitigate the bedroom tax and to shield people from the worst impact of Tory cuts. However, our approach will not just be about mitigating bad UK decisions. We will reject the sanctions approach, based on Westminster, and place the dignity of individuals at the heart of what we do. Delivering efficient public services to human social security is one of the ways in which we will create a fairer and more prosperous country. I make no mistake that those two ambitions go together. We want a society in which strong public services are underpinned by a successful economy and in which our nation's prosperity is stronger because it is better balanced. Our commitment to sustainability means that it will continue to prioritise action to meet our ambitious climate change targets. We want everyone to be able to contribute their talents in full and be well rewarded for doing so. Our employability services will focus on improving individual skills and confidence and helping people into productive employment. We will promote greater gender equality in the workplace building on the approach that already sees Scotland with one of the highest female employment rates anywhere in the EU, with greater support for people returning to work after maternity leave and increased efforts to tackle the pay gap. We will build on the success that we have seen over the past 12 months in setting out action to extend payment of the living wage, the real living wage, even further. We will support internationalisation and innovation as the bedrock of a successful modern economy. We will publish an action plan for manufacturing and new trade and investment strategy to grow our exports and maintain our position as a leading destination for inward investment. Indeed, it is precisely because we need to strengthen the global links that are so vital to economic growth that we do plan to reduce air passenger duty. Our review of business rates will ensure that Scotland continues to have a competitive business tax environment and we will set out how we will use fairly and progressively new powers over tax. We will also continue our strong investment in infrastructure. By the end of this year, the new Queensferry crossing will be completed. Work on dualling the A9 has begun. We will also see major investment in the Aberdeen bypass, the Central Scotland motorway network and rail services between our major cities. We will boost house building even further, with our commitment to 50,000 affordable homes by the end of the next Parliament, backed by investment of more than £3 billion. Of course, we will continue to help people into home ownership through our successful shared equity schemes. Our most transformational infrastructure investment in the next Parliament will not be in a bridge or in a road. It will be in our investment to transform early years education and childcare, providing parents with 30 hours a week of Government-funded childcare, double current provision, enabling them to return to work, pursue their careers and to know that their children are being well cared for, well educated and given the best start in life. As I have made clear previously, as we extend childcare, we will focus as much on quality as on quantity with investment in teaching skills, especially in our most deprived areas, as well as in bricks and mortar. We will use the powers that we have as a Government to the full. Of course, I believe as strongly today as I always have that independence is the best future for our country. That is why, in the months to come, we will also lead a renewed debate about how the enduring principle of that case—that decisions about Scotland are best taken by people who live here—is relevant to the circumstances of the world that we live in today. We will make that case positively and powerfully, and we will do it in a realistic and relevant way. In doing so, I am confident that over the next few years, we will build majority support for that proposition. My party enters this new year riding high in the polls, but the support that we enjoy today has not come easy. It has been hard-earned over many years. As we now seek the endorsement of the Scottish people for a third term in office, we will not take one single vote for granted. Over the next few months, no matter what the polls say, we will not assume success. We will work for it. We will work harder than we have ever done before. Our prospectus for the future will be ambitious, upbeat, visionary and detailed. The coming months will see this Government and my party set out plans to invest in and improve our public services to innovate and grow our economy and to tackle inequality. Those plans will mark a new phase in Scotland's journey. They will see us take the next steps towards fulfilling our great national potential. They are plans that I hope will win the trust and the support of all those that we are so privileged to represent. I now call Kezia Dugdale. I wish you and all members a very happy new year. I can also associate myself with the First Minister's remarks regarding those affected by the floods and, indeed, all those people working to keep us safe. I can also take this opportunity to congratulate Sir Paul Greiths, who has just left the chamber on his well-deserved recognition, which I know he will accept on behalf of all those who work so hard behind the scenes to keep our democracy working. The voters should know that any frustration they feel at our political process is a blame of parliamentarians, never the Parliament. I look forward to 2016 with both hope and ambition. As elected representatives of the people, we have the potential to achieve more change in one day's work than many can achieve in a lifetime. The power held in this Parliament places a special responsibility on us, and that responsibility will only grow. To make the most of that opportunity, we have to change people's lives for the better, because we have an incredible opportunity to use the power of this Parliament to break from austerity, to restore aspiration for the generation that has been left behind in the past few years, to tackle the poverty and inequality that holds too many Scots back. We can close the education gap, pay carers the living wage, secure our NHS for the future and help people to own their own home. That is what I resolve to work for at the start of this new year. It is the first day back. Does the First Minister come to Parliament to propose measures to deal with the decline in our schools? Does she come to explain why they have not abolished the late discharge in the NHS? Do they come to talk about the future of our economy? How to prepare for the jobs of the future? How to meet the challenges of an ageing society? Do they come to talk about the jobs crisis in our North Sea oil industry? Of course not. The member has just mentioned a crisis in the jobs for the North Sea in oil. There is no crisis. We have extracted more oil than ever before in the North Sea. We have the most skilled workforce ever in the North Sea, and it is booming. I think that the member's constituents will find that an absolutely astonishing remark. As will the 50,000 people directly employed by the oil industry in Aberdeen and the 50,000 people indirectly related to it in the surrounding areas. That really truly is an astonishing remark to start this year. The First Minister did return to the chamber with a statement launching her election campaign. It is politics first, the possibilities of power second. When I saw her adverts in the paper asking for people to trust her, after nearly a decade in office, to give her another chance to deliver the change that she promised at the last election and the one before that, when I saw the adverts, I was reminded of their sales pitch the last time, the slogan, record, team, vision. Let's turn to that record. Elected on a promise of cutting class sizes, they instead cut teacher numbers and now they will cut local school budgets. Elected on a promise to protect NHS spending yet their own auditors confirmed that they instead cut NHS spending. Elected on a promise to abolish student debt, they have doubled it and cut student support. Elected on a promise to create an opportunity economy, where six out of 10 jobs created under this Government are low wage and insecure, meanwhile they slash college numbers. What about her team? We have an education secretary who can't even answer basic questions from childcare campaigners on how she plans to deliver the last childcare promise that she made, let alone this new one today. We have a justice minister who didn't even bother to meet the chief constable whilst Police Scotland was engulfed by crisis after crisis. We have a health secretary who has now failed on her personal promise to eliminate delayed discharge by the end of last year and instead has managed to turn the annual NHS winter crisis into an all-year round NHS crisis. We have a finance secretary who, rather than ending austerity, has delivered a budget that is welcomed only from the Tory benches. Nationalist Front Benches are making faces, but I tell you, a team who refused to accept responsibility. I know that the member is behind Mr Swinney when he can't see it, but it is a picture. I can promise them that. I tell you this. A team who refused to accept responsibility for the power that they have simply cannot unlock the potential of the powers that are coming. Vision? They stand for independence. We know that. We respect that. We have to do that. What else? Who in Scotland do they stand with? What do they stand for? Who do they stand up to? On the bedroom tax, on the living wage, on the education gap, on the social care crisis, on living rents, on fairer taxes, every time we have pressed them, every time we have pushed them, pleaded with them to deliver the change that Scotland needs, they have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. Every time they choose the easy politics of grievance over the hard choices of radical change. Looking at our picture, her pitch for reelection in the newspaper adverts this week, it isn't team, record and vision this time. This time the offer is just more of the same, but Scotland can't keep waiting for the change that they are crying out for. If she hasn't delivered after nearly a decade in charge, she hasn't delivered the change with all her power. With a majority in this Parliament, why should people wait another five years? We can do so much more if we have a Government that looks beyond the politics at what is possible. We have, to borrow a phrase from the First Minister, once in a lifetime opportunity to change Scottish politics and, in doing so, to change Scotland for the better, to leave behind the arguments of the past, to use the opportunity that real power brings to deliver real change, to break from Tory austerity. That is what we need. That feature is in our hands. We just need a party in Government that has the ambition to seize it. When the First Minister was first elected to this Parliament, when she stood where I do now in my first time in this Parliament, when she looked at those in power and held them to account, she would never have been satisfied by the excuses that she makes in this chamber. So, when she responds with the usual SNP bad talking Scotland down when she blames Westminster, she knows that those are just excuses, a way of evading responsibility for the power that she holds. It's time for real change, not excuses, because we can do so much better for the people who are counting on us, rather than adding to austerity by giving a tax cut worth hundreds of millions of pounds to an airline in an industry that's already booming, an inexcusable tax cut in an age when climate change wreaks such havoc around the world. She could offer an alternative and help people from my generation for whom the aspiration of owning their own home has passed them by. Rather than managing Tory austerity with a one-year budget that will see children in our schools facing cuts, we could set a three-year budget, grasp the new tax powers to ask the wealthier to pay more to ensure that children, regardless of what their parents are, regardless of where they live, get an education that they deserve that allows them to aspire to anything that liberates them from any predetermined destiny. Rather than another winter where emergency teams are hardly dispatched to A&E departments in our NHS, we can deal with delayed discharge by investing in social care and we can pay a living wage for care workers across Scotland. It's a radical change that Labour will make. If people vote for Labour with both votes, they will be voting for leadership that is in a hurry to change things, not for five more years of excuses. One phrase in our adverts did ring true, they will never stop campaigning. Nearly a decade into Government, it's time that she stops campaigning and starts truly governing. It's time to use the power of the Scottish Government. In this election, Labour will offer the real change that Scotland wants and needs now. Thank you, Mrugdale. I now call on with Davidson, Ms Davidson's six minutes order. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to add new year wishes from these benches and also offer the thanks of myself and my party to all those emergency workers and council staff who are hard at work while this Parliament was in recess. Presiding Officer, 14 months ago on the day the First Minister was elected to office, I made my own case for an alternative Scottish Conservative Government and I seem to recall that I was slightly piped into second place, but the case that I put forward was clear. It was aimed not at ending devolution but at developing it. It was driven by our desire to use the powers of this Parliament to push more power into communities, to increase freedom and to increase choice. We had a commitment to our public services, a sustainable NHS, a police service that local communities could once again trust, an education system that strives for excellence and an economy that works for us all. I spoke up for a Government that is there to help and not hector, for a Government that does not seek to stifle individual freedom or crowd-out society but which uses its power and its influence to release people's potential and empowers communities for the better. As we head towards these elections in May, those are the same principles on which the Scottish Conservatives will stand, a principled, practical Scottish alternative to the SNP, with, as its foundation stone, our support, head, heart, body and soul for Scotland's place in our United Kingdom. I am not as naive as the Labour Party leader on that. The SNP must be held to its pledge to guarantee that there will be no second referendum for a generation, and I will never apologise for standing up for the union. Unlike some parties, I can assure people that that goes for every single Scottish Conservative candidate too. The Labour Party has had nine years and six leaders since this SNP Government came to power to act as a competent and effective official opposition, with all the extra parliamentary powers and resource that that entails. In those nine years, they have comprehensively failed in the only two duties that an official opposition has. They failed to hold the Government to account and they failed to put forward a positive alternative vision for our country. Will I stand ready to do both? The hard truth is that the First Minister never ceases to remind this chamber that the SNP is in a stronger position in the polls now than when Labour entered opposition in 2007. I think that something in Scotland needs to change, and if the electorate does not change the Government in May, it should consider changing the official opposition, and the Scottish Conservatives stand ready to serve. I see that the battle of ideas ahead of the election has already begun. Indeed, only this morning, Scottish Labour has pocketed a good Conservative idea, that of supporting first-time buyers through help to buy. I believe that this is indeed progress, though only Scottish Labour could base its flagship spending announcement on completely non-existent money. Their nine years in the wilderness seem to have taught them nothing, but for ourselves we have learned, and we have learned first and foremost to focus on the priorities of the people of Scotland. We know that nothing matters more than to them than providing opportunities for the next generation, and that, during this campaign, is our focus. Our paper on state schools this morning proposes several policies that can be looked at now, more autonomy for schools and independent inspectorate, greater support for literacy and numeracy, and something that I hope will be received warmly by our bookworm First Minister, a First Minister's reading challenge, to inspire children on the pleasures of a good book. I am glad to hear that the SNP will be publishing its own national framework improvement on education tomorrow, and I look forward to its findings. I dearly hope that the party of independence will see fit to give some independence to Scotland's schools. Over the coming days, we will unveil our own plans on childcare and on support for greater skills, and over the coming weeks and months, we will set out our belief in a fair Scottish deal. 1,000 extra nurses for the NHS paid for by prescription contributions from those who can afford it, putting vocational education back on the same footing as an academic one, rebuilding not decimating our colleges, and most of all an economic strategy that works for the long term. A plan that sets out how we become a country of full employment, building a working Scotland no matter where in it you live. We will also be able soon to draw on the findings of the independent commission for fair and competitive taxation, headed by Sir Ian McMillan, on how we best use the huge new powers coming to this place. It will, as the First Minister says, be a great debate, and it is one that we on this side of the chamber relish. Presiding Officer, too often in this Parliament, the debate has focused on ourselves, on the powers we have, the powers we don't have, on the powers that are coming. I fear that it will always be the case when we are governed solely by a party whose primary goal and purpose is the break-up of Britain. I can assure people that, for the course of the next Parliament, we on these benches will demand that this Parliament and whichever Government is formed focuses on the communities that we serve. Like a majority of Scots, we want to move on from the false grievance, the unnecessary division and the endless complaints, and we will make sure that their voice is heard loud and clear. Thank you, Ms Davidson. Before we go to the open debate, can I just say to members that, because I allow typical questions to run on a bit, it means that we are very, very tight for time in the debate that we are having at the moment. It is likely that some of the later speakers will be cut to five minutes, so be prepared for that. I now call Willie Rennie to be followed by Patrick Harvie. I think that that was an astonishing speech from the leader of the Conservative party. He says that we must hold the Government to account, then proceed to attack the Opposition. With that kind of logic, the SNP ministers must be absolutely quaking in their boots. My remarks today will focus on the vision for our country and my party's plan for the next five years. I first wish everyone a happy new year and thank those emergency service workers who have put in a huge amount of dedication over the last few weeks and days. I will set out why four key liberal values should be at the heart of the next Parliament. Every individual should be free to achieve their potential. We should stand with the weak against the strong. Power is safer when it is shared and we are trustees of the world and must pass on a sustainable legacy. My challenge today is that the best way to deliver on those liberal values is to get behind Scotland's liberal force. With just five MSPs in this Parliament, we have achieved much. We have stood up for college places, made and won the case for extending nursery education for two-year-olds, led successful campaigns against unjustified stop and search and armed police. We have also championed mental health services, often the poor relation in the NHS, and provided the most effective challenge to this Government on Police Scotland. We have provided strong liberal voices. With more MSPs, that voice will be so much louder. I admire Nicola Sturgeon for what she has achieved, becoming First Minister and winning emphatically in May. She should be pleased. From today's contribution, there is no doubt that she is pleased with herself. I would suggest that she is a little too pleased. The last five years of the Scottish Parliament have been dominated by independence. Fair enough, that was their explicitly stated manifesto commitment. However, while independence was in the front seat, there is little doubt that the police, schools, the NHS and our environment were stuck in the boot. Even though some found the experience uplifting, there is little doubt that the referendum divided many communities, families and friendships. I have some advice for the SNP. For the sake of our public services and the unity of the country, please move on from the constitutional debate. That advice equally applies to the Conservatives, who seem as eager as the SNP to continue that damaging debate. I remain a strong supporter of the United Kingdom, but we all need to move on from the constitutional debate. Instead, the next five years should be dominated by a bright liberal and green programme for Scotland. People deserve the best healthcare available, so we need to reverse the decline in the NHS. That is why we support a step change in mental health services, the recruitment of more GPs and the delivery of the social care that meets the needs of our growing elderly population. The planet must be protected, so we need to end the habit of missing Scotland's climate change targets. That is why we support action on climate change, including warmer homes, better public transport and an end to opencast coal. Our traditional Scottish freedoms must be protected, whether it be on excessive use of stop and search, armed police or the super ID database. We must bring an end to stripping powers from local communities and hoarding it in Edinburgh. That is why we support a reform programme that includes power transferred to local communities, protecting our civil liberties and empowering police, nurses, doctors and teachers to do their job. Our children and young people deserve the best education, so we need to reverse the decline in our once-leading education system. That is why we support proper investment, ambitious nursery education expansion and a pupil premium to give every child a chance to get a good job and realise their potential. Let me give you a new example that I referred to earlier on. The annual schools census in September found that only 7.3 per cent of two-year-olds were registered for early learning and childcare. It was supposed to be 27 per cent. The First Minister says that the figures are out of date, so if we take the previous year's figures of 15 per cent, we are still 50 per cent short half of that target. The Government is failing on nursery education. How can we believe any of its promises on a massive expansion of nursery education if it cannot even deliver the timid and pathetic commitment that it has already given on two-year-olds? Contrast that with the Liberal Democrat plan. Education for our children is the best in the world again, and NHS delivers the best available care, an environment programme to protect our planet and a reform programme to return to traditional Scottish freedoms. That will deliver opportunity for everyone. Stand with the weak against the strong, share power and build a sustainable world for the future. With just five MSPs, Liberal Democrats have punched above our weight. Just imagine what we can do more. We need more strong Liberal voices in Parliament to advance that bright, Liberal-Green Scotland. Everybody has been wishing each other a happy new year. It would be quite wrong for me not to do the same. Shamefully, I neglected to do that yesterday when I passed the First Minister on the street in Glasgow and we gave each other a wave, but I forgot to say happy new year, so I am very pleased to take the opportunity to correct that. I wish the First Minister and all colleagues, including yourself and those working in the public services in Scotland, a very happy new year. The First Minister has brought to us a debate today with three broad headings on public services, on tackling inequality and on economic growth. Those are not separate issues. Those are deeply connected about the future of our society. There is a long-standing commitment on the majority of the Scottish political spectrum to resist the agenda for privatising and diminishing public services in Scotland. That covers most political parties, not all, but most in the Scottish political spectrum. However, we know that the pressure will increase in coming years, partly as a result of UK-driven cuts, but not exclusively as a result of UK-driven cuts. Public services in Scotland will be under increasing pressure to outsource, to privatise and to diminish the scope of what they do. Let's be clear. A tax-cutting agenda in the next session of the Scottish Parliament, whether that's a tax-cutting agenda that benefits aviation, as some have already argued, or one that benefits any one of us as high-paid individuals paying in real terms progressively less local taxation. A tax-cutting agenda will make that pressure on public services worse over the next session. There will be a clear commitment from the Green Party to come forward with proposals on local taxation, which are just and progressive, but there is a third priority for that, which the First Minister failed to mention, which is that it must be adequate to fund local services on the scale and the quality that Scotland deserves, and to make sure that local councils have the ability to set economic policies that are right for their own local circumstances. Greens will most certainly do that. On inequality as well, there is clear intent coming from the Scottish Government to try and close the gap between rich and poor. Partly, again, the context is set by a UK Government that has pursued welfare reforms that will be destructive to that agenda, not only on tax credits, for example, where the cuts were not defeated but merely delayed but on a host of other aspects of welfare reform. The context is also set not just by a UK Government but also so often by big business, by the ethics-free zone of market power, to which too much of what should be democratically accountable power has been handed over the years and over the decades. Just to take one example, the introduction of a new upper age band on the minimum wage for workers aged over 25 will give them a small benefit to their incomes, not enough to make up for those tax credit cuts that they will lose out on, but we know that it will also give an incentive to big businesses to put more of their workers, including younger workers, on to zero-hours contracts so that they can decide for themselves who they will give shifts to so that they can find new and creative ways of reducing their wage bills. Exploitation will not be ended under that proposal, it will merely be changed. Yet, in discussing this with the Scottish Government, there still seems a resistance to introducing the kind of conditionality on publicly funded Government support schemes and business support services that could be giving real incentives to companies to make sure that they are shifting to ethical employment practices. We need to be bolder. I think that Scotland's Parliament and Scotland's Government can be bolder on that agenda and Greens will come forward with proposals to make sure that that happens. On the third leg of this debate topic, growth, I think that the chamber knows well the traditional green critique. Simply measuring our economy on the basis of GDP growth means that we fuel inequality. The economic activity, which benefits those who need the benefit the least, but which is very often predicated on exploiting people and the planet, is not something that we can support. Green energy, for example, shows up in our GDP figures, but so would fracking. GDP measures all the stuff that is supportive and constructive in our society and all the stuff that is negative and destructive and just calls it all positive. We need to move away from that agenda. The opportunities before Scotland are extraordinary at the moment. The world is changing in so many ways and any process of change opens up opportunities as well as risks. Unless Scotland grasps the opportunities that are ahead of us right now, we will lose out on them to other countries. Those opportunities come not from having more of the same, but from speeding the transition, making the break with the fossil fuel economy that we have been dependent on for far too long. Already we are at risk of losing out on some of the jobs that will emerge from oil and gas decommissioning to other countries. If they are the ones who develop the skills, the expertise and the reputation for undertaking that work, we will miss out on it when that decommissioning work increases in scale. Unless we make that change, unless we make that transition urgently, we will risk missing out just as we did on industries such as wind power. The opportunity for us is to move faster on that transition. Those are the opportunities for the future of not just a better, stronger economy but a fairer, more socially just economy, a one that is able to support the public services that so many of us believe on. You must close, Mr Harvie. Those are the opportunities that the Green Party will put forward in the next election, and I look forward immensely to debating them with all parties across the chamber. Thank you, Mr Harvie. I also wish all members a happy new year, but I apologise for starting on a slightly negative note by saying that after the next two speakers, I am afraid that I am going to have to restrict all members to five-minute speeches. I call Clare Adamson to be followed by Ian Gray, speeches of a maximum of six minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I can reciprocate the good new year will from my fellow members across the chamber. In her address to Scotland, the First Minister emphasised that in the year 2016 will be another big and important year for Scotland, and I heartily agree. I am very delighted that, from the First Minister, we have heard a vision today of a Scotland moving forward, a Scotland growing in confidence, and a Scotland governed in complete recognition and belief of our country's limited potential. The plans ahead are about harnessing our economic potential, but more importantly, harnessing the potential of our people in Scotland, and enabling them to participate in and succeed in a Scotland that embraces innovation and a can-do attitude for our future. I make no mistakes. There are challenges ahead, especially while we are governed from Westminster by an hysterity ideology, and as Vice-Confian of the Welfare Reform Committee, I am only too well aware of the damage that welfare reform is doing in our communities and the growing inequality that it promotes. However, we also have great opportunity ahead. As an IT professional, I trust that you will let me reflect on the opportunities in my area of previous work. I was delighted during the budget that there was a commitment to invest in the success of £345 million to support research, innovation across Scotland's universities, businesses and enterprise agencies, and to align their approach to pulling funding and simplifying access to support. I also welcomed the digital strategy spending increase of £130 million in 2016-17 as part of a package of measures to bolster the culture of innovation and connectivity across Scotland's homes, businesses and universities. I also welcomed Scotland's funding council. We will provide £120 million to eight innovation centres, bring together universities, research institutes and businesses to support world-class research in big data, digital health, industrial biotechnology, sensor technology construction, stratified medicine and aquaculture and oil and gas. There has been a bit of discussion this afternoon about the opposition's response to what the Government has shown as its record-to-date, but it is interesting to look at how the industry views the budget. IS Scotland, indeed, did a response in an article by Stephen McGinty on their website to the budget a few weeks ago. It recognises that, Mr Winnie highlighted, that the Scottish budget would continue to fall year-on-year by 2020 and will have fallen by 12.5 per cent in real terms since 2010, and that those figures paint a very bleak picture for Scotland's public finances, but they go on to recognise that, even with the pressure on public funds, the Scottish Government has given a clear commitment to digital areas. It recognises the steps to extend digital applications and public services, increase the use of shared services, secure further value from procurement developments and ensure effective use of assets and reduce overlap in public services. The digital agenda will produce savings and improve the quality of our services. IS Scotland has gone on to recognise the main initiatives from the Government, £100 million to improve bronze batons' hervases as part of £400 million digital Scotland's superfast broadband, the establishment of the alpha fund to help to improve efficiency and quality of digital public services, and the support to digital transformation services in developing digital public services from a user perspective and to realise the benefits of digital technology. The article completes with a statement that, therefore, the digital sector needs to focus on addressing the challenges highlighted in the budget, but that includes providing creative, efficient technological solutions that support everyday needs of both central and local government. IS Scotland is responding with that can-do attitude that we are all aspiring to in Scotland. Can I commend the vision of this Government in the areas that it already supports, supporting equate Scotland to make positive difference for women in science, engineering and technology and the built environment? A vision that tackles inequality at the very heart shown in the support from this Government. I also commend the support for Codeclan. Codeclan aspires to be a world-class coding academy, creating a new generation of software developers, playing a leading role in accelerating Scotland's progress in building high-performance digital economy. It is innovative, it is new and it is supported by this Government and by Skills Development Scotland. I would also like to highlight the work done by one of my companies based in my area in central Scotland, Edge Testing. A company I had a pleasure of visiting during apprenticeship week last year to meet the chief executive Brian Ferry and his trainees and staff. As well as highly skilled graduates, Edge also recruit from local communities and the student cohort. They have developed a training programme and conducted with Skills Development Scotland training candidates in this highly regarded, highly valued aspect of the computing industry. I believe that the digital economy is one of the ways that Scotland's economy can grow and in doing so we can build those highly skilled, highly valued jobs that this Government has the vision to see through. The title of the debate is certainly wide-ranging, but Patrick Harvie is right as themes are interlinked. If there is a topic in an area of public policy that binds the elements of that title together, it is education. Arguably the oldest of public services is certainly one of the biggest in terms of budget, but I would also contend the most important. If there is a silver bullet that can slay the scandal of inequality, it is education. If there is a master key to creating economic growth and greater prosperity, it is to increase the quality of education, to raise the level of skills in the workforce and to support more academic research in our universities. No wonder, then, that all parties in this chamber claim to have education at the heart of their programmes. When the First Minister says that she wishes to be judged on her record, it is to her Government's record on education that we should look first. In truth, it does not bear much examination. Almost 4,500 fewer teachers in our schools, 140,000 fewer students in our colleges and student support for those who remain declared not fit for purpose by NUS Scotland. Bigger class sizes in schools, though the Government promised smaller. Student debt doubled, though the Government promised to abolish it altogether. There are fewer level 3 and 4 apprenticeships than we had 10 years ago. Standards, literacy and numeracy are falling, and the attainment gap between the rich and the rest is as bad as ever. If that is a strong foundation, I would hate to see a shaky one. This Government has broken every promise that it has ever made on schools or colleges. This Government has broken every promise it has made on schools and colleges. A whole cohort of young Scots had been through their entire primary school career before the Government stirred itself to try to address the attainment gap, and they are still spectacularly missing the target. Just before Christmas, Kezia Dugdale described a visit that I made with her to a shared campus school in Renfrewshire. Two schools, the same building, the same dining hall, the same gym, pupils from the same streets, but one school gets attainment challenge funding and the other does not. That is nonsensical. In my constituency of East Lothian, not one single school receives one single penny of extra funding to close the attainment gap, yet in my county, one in five children live in poverty. Where is the support and the help for them? That cannot be right. The truth is that if you wish to will the end of improving education, you have to will the means as well. You cannot claim to be prioritising education as this Government does, and at the same time, target education budgets for repeated real terms cuts as this Government is. You cannot claim a passion to close the attainment gap and then allocate to that task one tenth of the resource that you are prepared to use to cut the cost of a plane ticket. That is why Scottish Labour is committed to raising the top level of taxation as soon as that power is available to us and using those resources for fair start funding. Following every pupil from a poorer family, almost every primary school of many nurseries would have a fund controlled by the head teacher to implement real action to close the gap. I said that my schools receive not one penny from the First Minister's attainment fund. They would receive almost £900,000 from Labour's fair start funding. That is putting your money where your mouth is. Take a school like Dunbar primary, they could have a fund of perhaps £90,000 per year. That is a school that already runs the Dunbar mile, runs one of Scotland's fastest growing science festivals and a reading programme involving the whole community. That is the kind of imagination and innovation we should be backing up with resources in every single part of Scotland. Instead, from this Government, in this year's budget, nothing but more cuts for schools and for colleges. The First Minister, in her opening speech, held the OECD report, but the OECD report says that our schools are above average. They also say that the rest of the world is catching up and they say that the attainment gap is growing. The First Minister may be satisfied with the damnation of such faint praise, but that is not a vision good enough for us nor good enough for Scotland. Every child left behind shames us all, limits our economic prospects and entrenched inequality for another generation. The new powers coming to this Parliament mean that we can ask those with most to pay a little more and then invest that in schools, colleges and skills and enclosing that gap. Not warm words or empty promises, but real, real transformational change for a better future for the next generation. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Over the festive season, it is a time that we spend with family and friends reflecting on the year gone by and looking ahead to the year to come. I was struck, as I spent time in the company of family and friends, at the challenges that many in our communities are facing but also the distance that we have travelled in some areas and the opportunities that there are to go further. The oil industry was mentioned by Kezia Dugdale and, through family and friends, I have experience of the pressures that many are facing. The Scottish Government has established the jobs task force. I think that the work that is being done there is extremely important, both to try and ensure continued employment for individuals but also to seek to find alternative employment for those individuals who are made redundant. I think that that is absolutely important. Patrick Harvie mentioned green energy. There are many transferable skills, which I think that the green energy sector could potentially take advantage of. One of the difficulties that is faced by the green energy sector, of course, at the moment, is the policy approach that is being taken by a UK Government that seems hell bent on throttling the renewables sector. I am afraid that I only have five minutes, Mr Harvie. It seems hell bent on throttling the renewables sector rather than invigorating it. I was struck, as I sat and spoke to individuals who, for example, I know are looking after loved ones, unpaid carers in our society, who do a great service to us all in terms of the work that they do looking after individuals and loved ones, but we know that, for many of them, it is a struggle to get by. That is why the announcement by the First Minister that unpaid carers will receive a boost to the carers allowance when the power is in the possession of this Parliament was a welcome one, because carers deserve to have that increased. It is something that the UK Government of many shades have failed to do in the past. It is something that I welcome being committed to when this Parliament has the opportunity to do so. There is opportunity, undoubtedly, with the new powers that will come. I have spoken previously in this chamber of my own experiences of the welfare system, the quite sole destroying experience of filling out your child's disability living allowance form, where you have to fill out over 40 pages worth of answers explaining the limitations of your child and the things that they are incapable of doing. For many families, that is an extremely difficult experience. I wonder if there are ways that we could look in Scotland to provide a system for both application but also for renewal, which would be less onerous and less emotionally distressing for individuals. As a parent, for me, education is absolutely at the forefront of my concerns, not just for my own children, for children who go to school with my children but for the children who live within my constituency. I see education from two sides of the coin. I see education in both the mainstream environment and education for children with additional support needs. I believe that, in terms of the plans that the Government has, first and foremost, to improve the attainment in our schools, that is something that I am fully behind. I have a great disparity in my constituency between schools that are located in what you could call communities of plenty and schools that are contained within communities of poverty. When you used to be able to use free school meals as a barometer to the social deprivation of schools in your constituency, I had one school in my constituency that had a 65 per cent entitlement to free school meals. I had another school in the same constituency with a 0.2 per cent entitlement, so the great disparity was there to be seen. That school with that 65 per cent entitlement was also achieving great things in terms of attainment. It has twice won the award from the City Council, the John Porter award for educational performance and educational attainment in that school. The interesting thing about that school is that it is one that the Labour Party tried to close, Brambo Bray, in Northfield, a school serving a community of deprivation that has done great things but which the local Labour council attempted to close. It became a focal point of the by-election that led me to be returned here following the sad passing of our friend and colleague Brian Adam. It was through the campaigning efforts of parents in that community that led the Labour council to change its plans and remove that proposal for closure. I will always stand in my communities for advancement in education. I hope that we can rely on local authorities, particularly Labour-led local authorities, to back us in that in terms of the local delivery that they are responsible for. I have to reiterate, please, that five minutes is a maximum for speeches by my committee man to be followed by Christina McKelvie. I would like to begin this afternoon by thanking the Scottish Government for holding this important debate right at the start of the new year. I also warmly welcome the comments made by the First Minister this afternoon in relation to the priority being established in relation to education. After eight years of being in government, it certainly came as no surprise to me, over the past few weeks of 2015, to find the Government's poverty advisor, Naomi Eisenstadt, indicating that the populist policy agenda of the SNP is failing to tackle the inequalities that exist in Scotland, so it is not before time that the posturing gives way to proper progressive planning. No amount of talking about progressive anti-asterity policies can disguise the fact that this Government has redistributed public resources towards the better off. It is no wonder that Ruth Davidson is happier to concentrate on changing the opposition rather than changing the Government. As the late David McLeachy said, the next best thing to having a Tory Government is the SNP Government doing what the Tories want. With educational attainment slipping, inequality of opportunity and education is stubbornly entrenched, hospital performance levels even breaking the laws set by the Scottish Government itself and escalating levels of homelessness, fuel poverty and waiting lists indicating the scale of the housing crisis in Scotland is really not before time that we get a vision for schools, hospitals, housing and local government which are genuinely progressive. In making these points I recognise that it is not good enough for me to merely criticise the Scottish Government's approach. That is why when we debated housing before the turn of the year I stated clearly that Labour accepted that in our last period in office we did not build houses to the level that met the need at that time. I recognise that while our record was not bad it was not good enough and that was why we accepted the recommendation of the housing sector that at least 12,500 affordable homes were needed each year in order to seriously combat the crisis that we face. It is a crisis and no amount of denial will change that. So I am sorry that the Scottish Government's commitment on that issue falls short of what the housing sector says is needed and that it is still stubbornly refused to accept that there is that housing crisis. However, it is not enough for those on these benches just to say that we have to show what we will do is what is needed. That is why I am so pleased that Kezia Dugdale kicked off the new year by focusing on housing today and put some meat on the bones of our commitment to first-time buyers when she outlined how she would do more to help the aspirational young homeowners in Scotland who are finding it so hard to get the initial move into the property ladder. More needs to be done to create greater availability of social housing and protection for private renters and we will spell out how we think that should be done in due course, but building enough homes is fundamental to our country's social wellbeing and economics success. With a number of new homes being built in Scotland still well down on 2007 levels, that intensifies the housing pressures that existed even before the recession. So if we can build the 12,500 affordable homes and double that figure to at least 25,000 by adding greater levels of private sector building, we can start to get to the levels of house building that we actually need for our young people and growing families. Whatever we deliver for people should have a strong evidence base that will respond to meet the needs and not just to pander to preconceived and uninformed populist opinions. All Governments in recent history have been rhetorically committed to localism and preventative spend, but we are far from delivering either of those in practice. Large inequalities of income and wealth scar our society, but it is not enough to just recognise this, wring our hands and point the finger of blame at someone else for the problem. If you have the power and ability to do more to address that inequality then you should do more, if not you are as culpable as those you seek to blame. So we must commit to reducing inequalities of income and opportunity through a public service agenda that, for once, truly merits the label of being radical and reforming. That is what Labour intends to lay out in 2016 and I invite the SNP Government to follow our lead. Thank you. Many thanks. I now call Christina McKelvie to be followed by Kevin Stewart. Thank you very much and happy new year to all, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, in our recent TED talk, the topic was vision. The questions asked to stimulate that debate were, what is your vision for a perfect society or as near perfect as you can imagine? If you could make your own vision of humanity, what would it look like? What type of economic system, social structure and government, as well as their roles and purpose would you have? What will our neighbourhoods look like? Education, infrastructure, anything really, but here is the hard part, how do you or we achieve that vision? The answer to those fundamental questions, Presiding Officer, is well. Personal well, and in terms of this debate and this nation, the political well. I know personally what I want for the future for my kids, my friends, my family, my constituency and my nation. A vision that invests in people and by extension its public services. I want a vision that embraces fundamentals in lives, good health, safety and security, good nutrition, good education, opportunities for all and equality. Let's start with health. What vision do we have for health? A health service is free at the point of need from cradle to grave. The First Minister has already outlined her plans for making this kind of universal national health service. What about humanity and equality? A vision that reacts to help and protect those and nations affected by climate change or tragedy with the same vigor as reacting to the worldwide humanitarian crisis that the recent and on-going refugee situation or nations ravaged by war. A nation that believes in human rights, a safe place to live and grow and we are starting a very good point with a 41-year law in crime, making our communities safer. A nation where there is zero tolerance to discrimination and domestic violence. Will the best support and legislation for any man, woman, girl or boy who becomes or is at risk of becoming a victim? A nation that tackles human trafficking and works with the global partners to stop the traffic. An education that gives young people the ability to learn not just by rote but by thinking critically with the ability to see the world in which they live and explore all those possibilities. 1140 hours of childcare to give our youngest the best start in life and parents the best chance at learning and working, directly tackling not just financial poverty but poverty of opportunities or how about an education system and a further education system that is not based on the ability to pay but the ability to learn. Imagine if the cure for cancer was locked inside the head of a young person who couldn't afford to go to university or what about a social security system that means just that that at your time of need we will not call you a skiver or a drain in the system but we will give you hope, not a handout but a hand-up, not demonisation but actualisation, whether you have a disability, a long-term condition or just find yourself a victim of life who will have the support to get well or live life in comfort with a society that cares. When and if you are ready to go back to work we will retrain you and give you the correct support to do so. If you are a young person you will have access to high quality training opportunities or apprenticeships to open up the job market in a career path that helps you to realise your potential to become the public servants of the future, to be the entrepreneurs, to be the innovators, the researchers of the future, the business builders and just as importantly the designers, engineers and infrastructure builders that we need to build and rebuild our nation. Vision is foresight. This Government has had the foresight to protect our public services when others are going in a different direction. Investing in public services is a direct investment in our people. Continuing to be committed to that ideal, in my view, builds a society that values every single one of us, women, man, girl or boy. I ask again what is your vision for a near-perfect society? If you could make your own vision of humanity what would it look like? What type of economic system and structure and government as well as the roles and purpose would you have? What will our neighbourhoods look like? Education, infrastructure anything really, but here's the hard part. How do we achieve this vision? With the political will and the personal will, I believe that in this Government we will overcome those hard parts and achieve that vision that we all desire. I believe that this SNPP Government is the only party to deliver that vision. I was very interested to hear Ms Dugdale's speech earlier on. Nine and a half minutes of castigating the Government in all of 30 seconds of trying to put forward Labour's vision for the forthcoming election. I am so glad that I belong to a political party that takes a much more positive view in putting forward its policies. I want to concentrate on some of the things that the First Minister talked about earlier. She talked of the progress that has been made in my constituency and my city in the past four and a half years. We have seen investment by Government in hydrogen technology in Aberdeen. We have seen the construction of an emergency care centre on the Aberdeen royal infirmary site and we have seen the beginning of construction of the Aberdeen western peripheral route, which was first envisaged in 1948. To come, we are seeing investment in innovation centres, including the oil and gas innovation centre in my own city. We are seeing a new women's hospital and cancer care centre being built in Aberdeen, too. We are also seeing improvements to the Aberdeen to Inverness rail line, which I know will be greatly appreciated. In terms of growing Scotland's economy, we have seen investment in infrastructure in Aberdeen and elsewhere. We have seen the small business bonus being used to great effect by small companies across the country. We have seen money being used to support research and innovation. The oil and gas sector has been mentioned, Presiding Officer, and it is welcome news that production rose last year. In welcoming that news, Deirdre Michie, the chief executive of Oil and Gas UK, also took the opportunity to reiterate that the UK Government should take immediate action to drive investment in the future of the North Sea. I agree with Deirdre Michie, and I would call on the chancellor to heed the SNP's long-standing shout-out to introduce exploration incentives in the North Sea to protect jobs and sustain what is a vital industry for the North East and beyond. We have seen some of that progress that has been made by the Scottish Government over the peace, but what we have also seen is a Scottish Government that has had to mitigate the worst of Westminster's austerity measures. We have seen the establishment of the Scottish welfare fund £38 million of investment from this Government to help the poorest people in our society. We have seen £343 million to protect vulnerable households from increased council tax liabilities through the council tax reduction scheme. £35 million has been put into investing to fully mitigate the bedroom tax to ensure that no one pays that unfair tax here in Scotland. We have maintained free higher education. We have maintained the funding for free prescriptions and eye checks. Free concessionary travel for older and disabled young people remains under this Government. Of course, free personal and nursing care is still something that is provided here in Scotland. Even with all the austerity measures that have been put in place by a Westminster Government, the Scottish Government has proven that it will do all that it can to protect the most vulnerable in our society. I hope that we can continue to ensure that those who are most at risk are protected. I am sure that a future SNP Government will do so. In order to do so, we have to ensure that we retain a strong economy, which has happened under this Government, and long may that continue. I can't help feeling that there's something otherworldly about our debate this afternoon, something slightly surreal, at least in the approach of the First Minister on SNP-backed ventures. The debate is entitled, Supporting Public Services. Across our country, the future of our public services is very much on people's minds. Public servants and elected representatives are struggling with impossible decisions over which public services to cut, but that does not seem to include SNP, MSPs and ministers, at least not this afternoon. It most certainly does include our local councillors and our local Government officials. The grim reality facing people in so many communities, and usually the most vulnerable people in those communities, is that they are going to lose support. They are going to be charged more for the services that they already require, but I have not heard any of that in the contributions from the Government benches today. Labour and the SNP in this Parliament can make common cause in opposing the austerity of George Osborne. We can agree on the damage those UK Government decisions will have on our economy and on our society, but where we seem to differ is in what we then do about it. John Swinney spent most of his budget speech just before recess, telling us how wrong the Conservative chancellor was in his approach to the economy and to public services. Then the Cabinet Secretary for Finance copied or echoed virtually every one of those Conservative budget decisions. I will concede that there were some announcements that we welcomed, in fact which we called for, and I am pleased that the cabinet secretary has agreed to meet Labour's demands to protect health spending and to allocate any ring-fence increase for health and social care. It is the one crumb of comfort for those who rely on local care services in a budget that will be incredibly painful for those who most receive their support locally. How can the First Minister or Mrs Swinney or their backbench supporters talk about protecting public services when the cabinet secretary has cut hundreds of millions of pounds from local authority budgets more than 5 per cent in revenue terms and 7 per cent if he adds cuts to the capital budget to the mix? We will all feel it. Even those with a steady job and a secure income will feel it through the holes in the roads, the loss of lollipop crossing attendance, extra charges for our children's music lessons, increased costs for using a local swimming pool. However, as always in those situations, those who need our support most will feel John Swinney's cuts the most. Young people with additional needs will lose learning support. Care centres for people with learning difficulties will no longer open. Garden assistance for older people will be removed. Single-parent families, disabled people, those on the lowest incomes, we know exactly where only two painfully aware of who will suffer most from the Swinney cuts, because they are already suffering from its cuts to local government. I suppose that in some ways we shouldn't be surprised by the SNP budget. The cabinet secretary's record over the last eight years has been to take the cuts handed to him by George Osborne and then double those cuts for Scottish local government, a 3 per cent cut in real terms for him for our local councillors. Those are not my conclusions. Those are the findings of the Scottish Parliament's very own independent researchers. However, I genuinely do not understand the contradiction between a Scottish Government constantly arguing for more powers to protect the Scottish people against conservative austerity and then that same SNP Government. Instead, point blank refusing to use any of the vast powers already at its disposal to do exactly that. In fact, there is an even greater contradiction in the SNP's whole approach to devolution on local government. Not only has John Swinney taken hundreds of millions of pounds straight out of local public services, he has stripped our local elected representatives of any power to do anything about it. The same SNP Government, which has sounded off at every opportunity about the vital importance of securing full fiscal autonomy to ensure that the democratic accountability of the Scottish Parliament has removed all traces of fiscal authority or responsibility or any remnant of independent local revenue-raising from our local government colleagues. The SNP Government constantly demand more powers for themselves, but with its centralising agenda they have stripped our local councillors of the ability to defend their own communities. John Swinney's rhetoric is full of defiance for George Osborne's austerity, but his record is to hide behind it. George Osborne does not set the budget for local authorities, John Swinney does. Those are not local authority cuts, they are not George Osborne's cuts, they are John Swinney's cuts. Thank you. I wish to speak in the debate. Please check that the requests to speak buttons are pressed. John McAlpine, to be followed by Murdo Fraser. First Minister and other colleagues have outlined extensively and eloquently the progress made in Scotland across our public services, whether that be the international status of our universities, the additional young people staying on at school, the doubling of apprenticeships and the mitigation of Westminster's welfare cuts such as the bedroom tax, all at the same time as protecting the NHS budget, now almost £13 billion, as well as the additional money, £250 million this year in aid of the integration of health and social care. I think that those achievements are valuable in themselves. Of course they are, but to evaluate them properly we must see them in context. The context here is cuts to the Scottish Government's grant from Westminster since 2010. The overall budget cut in Scotland has been 9 per cent and the capital budget cut has been slashed by 25 per cent. It is against that cut that we should judge the Government's achievements in maintaining the NHS, for example, expanding early years and those apprenticeships at the same time, and countering the recession by transferring revenue spending into capital, one of the clearest ways in which to stimulate economic activity. That infrastructure spend includes new schools and hospitals, as has been said, and, crucially, a new fourth crossing that previous Governments shied away from building. I am very pleased to see that that commitment to infrastructure investment is going forward, and in particular the commitment to build 50,000 new affordable homes by 2020, on top of the target to build 30,000 affordable homes that have already been achieved. Those achievements and infrastructure investment must be seen in context, in the cuts context. As indeed should the Scottish Government's additional burden come as a result of Westminster welfare cuts specifically, that is in addition to the cuts that are already outlined to the Scottish Government, because those are cuts to reserved spending that affect vulnerable people here in Scotland. The money to mitigate those cuts comes from the Scottish budget, for example, £38 million for the Scottish welfare fund, £343 million to protect against cuts to council tax benefits and £35 million for the bedroom tax. That is money that, strictly speaking, we do not have, but, quite rightly, we have found it from devolved budgets. We have to see the achievements in that particular context. I also welcome in that context this Government's commitment to universal benefits. It is a radical commitment because it underpins social cohesion and knits us together as a society. Those who benefit most are not the well-off but average earners and hard-pressed families, as well as, of course, the poor. Free university tuition, nursery places, personal care for the elderly, school meals for the youngest pupils, free prescriptions and eye checks—all those deliver. They are based on the principles that underpin the NHS, our most popular universal public service. It is sad that they are continually attacked by ideologs in the right-wing press and, sadly, some politicians and commentators who should know better. They have swallowed the attacks on universal benefits. I draw their attention to a paper that was published a number of years ago called The Case for Universalism, published by the Jimi Reid Foundation. It is writers, including Paul Spiker, the professor of public policy at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, whose evidence to the Parliament's welfare reform committee made an impression on all who heard it recently. They pointed out that universalism is not a something for nothing approach, it is a something for something approach, which is a core value, not just of this Scottish Government but of the Scottish people themselves. Universalism, as opposed to selectivity, is desirable because selectivity increases social economic equality and diminishes, rather than enhances, the status of the poor. Selectivity demonstrates what we euphemistically call targeting. As I said, it stigmatised the poor and I do not think that it has got any place in Scotland going forward. I now call Mardo Fraser to be followed by Michael Russell. Despite the title of this debate, a few speakers so far have made much reference to the economy, yet having a strong economy is the key to improving public services and quality of life. It is only by having a strong economy and a vibrant tax base that we can raise the revenues that we need to pay for the quality public services that we all want to see. That will become increasingly important in the years to come as this Parliament acquires greater tax powers and we see a closer link between the money that this Parliament spends and the underlying strength of the Scottish economy and the tax base. The advantage that we have in Scotland, being part of the UK, was made very clear in a report issued shortly before Christmas by the Centre for Economic and Business Research. According to the report, the UK is set to become the best-performing economy in Western Europe this year, 2016, and it is likely to overtake both Germany and Japan as global economic leaders in the 2030s. This is all good news, but there was a word of warning in that the possibility of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom could hurt the UK's economic growth. However, the central message of the CEBR report is a testament to the success of the economic plan being pursued by the current UK Government and the Chancellor's plans for deficit reduction. We should not forget that those plans were vigorously opposed by other parties in this chamber, and they are still being opposed if we go on what we heard from Mr McIntosh earlier, talking about the damage being done to the economy by the Chancellor. If that is Mr McIntosh's definition of damage, I hate to see how he would define economic progress, because on the basis of the CEBR report and many others, they are delivering success. The First Minister reminded us earlier that the Scottish Government has an ambition, but, as I mentioned, I will give way to Mr McIntosh. Does Mr Fraser believe that the austerity budget pursued by the Conservatives over the past five years has achieved better growth than if we had gone for an interventionist expansionist budget? Mr Fraser does not have to listen to me on that. I suggest that he listens to the economic experts, to the IMF, who produced the report in December praising the decisions taken by the Chancellor and the growth in the UK economy, and he listens to the CEBR. Maybe he has better experts in his own party benches. He can quote in support of his arguments, but I have yet to hear any. The First Minister reminded us earlier that the Scottish Government has an ambition to reduce inequality. According to the Scottish Government's own analysis, and contrary to the rhetoric that we often hear in this chamber, income inequality has not been increasing in Scotland. Indeed, over the last decade, we have seen a small reduction in income inequality according to official statistics. However, if the issue is a concern of the SNP, it has the power to do something about it. However, the assessment of their policies by the First Minister's own poverty czar, Naomi Eisenstadt, is a damning one, because she told the First Minister last year that flagship SNP policies on free university education and providing pensioner benefits at the cost of young families risk diverting public resources to the better off at the expense of people enduring severe deprivation. Those are areas where the Scottish Government does not need new powers. They already have powers. They are already making choices, which, in the view of their own poverty adviser, are going in the wrong direction. It is time that they stop lecturing the rest of us over equality when their own measures may be contributing to the problem. For our part, the Scottish Conservatives believe that the key to tackling inequality is to provide opportunity for all. I agree with Ian Gray that having a world-class education system for every child in Scotland has to be the priority. Those who come from better off backgrounds always have a choice in education. They have always been able to buy houses in the catchment area of better schools. They have always been able to buy additional tuition, or if they could afford it, they could opt out of the state system altogether by buying independent schooling. Yet, those alternatives have not been available to those from poorer backgrounds, so improving state education for all must be a priority for Government. Today, the Scottish Conservatives published a set of policy proposals on how we can make the school system better for all our pupils and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Simple matters such as putting headteachers properly in charge of budgets and school management, concrete proposals on improving literacy and numeracy, where our record in Scotland is nowhere near good enough, and ensuring that new standard tests at P1, P4 and P7 fit into international methodologies to allow a proper comparison with other countries. Those are all practical policies that could be implemented now and would be of particular benefit to those from poorer backgrounds and help those left behind. As we start a new year, let's hear less about the powers that we don't have and more about the powers that we already have and could use to tackle inequality, to grow the economy and deliver better quality public services. In an election year, it is not likely that this chamber will find much to unite it. That much has been clear this afternoon, and I suspect that it will remain clear for the next 11 weeks and one day until dissolution. However, I think that there is one thing that every politician can assent to, and that is the acceptance that the preference of the people in a democracy at any rate must be heated. That preference may change from election to election or even from referendum to referendum, but it is the basic and best guide to what we as politicians should be doing and delivering. I was therefore a little surprised to read in the Herald at new year the view of the former Lib Dem MP for Argyll and Bute, Alan Reid, who is now contesting the Scottish Parliament seat, that the wheels are about to come off the SNP and that voters will at last see through the party of which I have been a member for 40 years. Leaving aside the fact that the Lib Dems now have fewer wheels than a monocycle, such contempt for what Scottish voters are actually saying and doing is breathtaking. The First Minister alluded to such anti-democratic sentiment in her new year message during attention to the commentators and others who want Scotland to believe that some Sfengali-style deceit has resulted in the present electoral strength of the SNP and who urge Scots to wake from their state of enforced slumber and vote for someone, indeed, anyone who is not a nationalist. It is always tempting to believe that your opponents, Presiding Officer, are tricksters and hucksters. I can remember the days when this party took that view of Labour and the Lib Dems in coalition and to quote Lord Brackfield, muckled good it did us, because voters do not usually choose Governments and their futures out of manufactured fear, visceral dislike or thwarted entitlement. They prefer to make positive choices. It was a positive vision that propelled the SNP into government in 2007, it was a positive record team and vision that produced an SNP landslide in 2011 and it is a positive inclusive vision that we have heard today from the Scottish Government as it looks forward. That positive vision, the vision of public services supported and reformed, education continuing to improve, admittedly from a high and positive base, this is a country of educational achievement and progress at every level and no one should forget or willfully misrepresent that. The health service protected a start made on fair taxation, equality enshrined and opportunity renewed, that is what Scotland wants to hear. That is what we need to hear in, as the First Minister said this afternoon, a message of great ambition and in a thriving debate. Scotland is in optimistic mood and although I remain of the belief that it will take full independence to realise the full potential of Scotland, we can make use of the growing powers of the Parliament to achieve some of those ends and to realise some of that vision. We can renew and reform our country, our democracy and even the proceedings of this Parliament in ways that meet the demands of Scotland for a more participative way of working, engaging the energies and the talents of our fellow citizens, but to do so we will need to ensure that we encourage and embed subsidiarity and localism wherever possible. Subsidiarity and localism are particularly important in rural and island Scotland, in places like my own constituency of our Gail and Bute. Subsidiarity and localism are, I believe, in the DNA of the SNP. They were the petrol that drove the engine of the referendum. They can revitalise much of Scotland as progress with land reform and community purchase is already demonstrating, but we need to get them embedded further and deeper into our society, perhaps into local authorities. I won't rehearse here the inability of, say, our Gail and Bute Council to recognise changed times and thirst for involvement. The saga of Castle Towered and the present inappropriate and mishandled service choices consultation give evidence of something severely wrong. But not just wrong there, wrong in much better led and better managed authorities, wrong because, as is widely recognised, most Scottish local authorities are too big to serve their electors properly and too distant to be of utility to their communities. Now, inevitably, one size won't fit all. It may be that city regions are the right way forward for the cities, but we need more focus, more effective, smaller authorities, with more councillors properly resourced and rewarded. Island communities, in particular, which will benefit from the devolution of the Crown Estate, can and should be much more locally responsive and responsible. That needn't cost more because we can secure a greater economy and effectiveness from reimagining and redesigning many of the services now being delivered. That's a redesign that's long overdue. I think that the party that is best placed to respond to the desire awakened across Scotland by the referendum experience, the demand for greater involvement, participation and democracy is the SNP. It's a core part of our vision of Scotland. Allied with the vision outlined by the First Minister today, it opens the prospect of a dynamic future in which the great talents, the powerful ambitions and the boundless energy of those who live in this country can be put to work for all of us. Many thanks. I now call on Sarah Boyack to be followed by Bruce Crawford. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. At the end of 2015, we saw the Paris climate talks and rightly they focused on the challenge of reducing our emissions to avert dangerous climate change. As the world's poorest communities and citizens are bearing the brunt of climate change, that is absolutely right. We need to act to reduce our emissions, whether it's an energy and heat and housing and transport or how we use our land. The last couple of weeks have shown us that we also need to make our infrastructure fit for the future. There are challenges within Scotland and we need to both reduce our emissions but we need to make our infrastructure more resilient. In the short space of time, we've seen our electricity supply transformed since this Parliament was established, with a huge increase in the development of renewables. We've not seen the Scottish manufacturing we hope for and we've not seen the benefits going directly to communities in terms of investment and the profits that have been made. We've also seen predominantly wind being developed and not the range of possibilities that there are now. Particularly in the marine developments, we've not seen the speed or the scale that we're hoped for and that means that we're missing out on jobs and we're missing out on export opportunities as well. In this term of the Scottish Parliament, we've seen the closure of coal-fired power stations with Longannock closing just in a few weeks and we've seen the start of really big changes in oil and gas so we cannot afford complacency. We need a plan for transferable skills and we need a plan for investment in the future to help our companies to be resilient but also to make sure that our communities are resilient. We need a plan for transition and it needs to be a just transition in terms of workers and skills and in terms of communities and a key part of that transition has got to be making our housing and our transport fit for the future. As people have mentioned already this afternoon, a third of our households in Scotland are living in fuel poverty and everyone knows that there is no chance of abolishing fuel poverty in time for the Scottish Government's target next year. Every year it's a scandal that four and a half thousand people die preventable and premature deaths. People on low incomes, who are often in work or on benefits, people who can't afford to heat their homes, who are often stuck in housing, that's not just expensive to heat but they're also facing rising rents as well. That's why we need investment energy efficiency, we need action on fairer rents and we need a whole new generation of affordable rented housing. We need to make sure that our houses are going to be fit for the future because 80 per cent of the houses that are with us now will be there in 2050. They've already been built so that's why we need a warm homes act so that we provide the focus of investment on energy efficiency but also we need a new framework to transform how we heat our homes for the future. We are now missing opportunities for cleaner, environmentally friendly technologies that our Scottish companies are developing and exporting abroad. It should not be. We need to make sure that the local authorities we have are geared up, are able to invest in the technology, we need community cooperatives from solar, community heat so that we make the most of these new opportunities. We need to get ahead of the game. I was very disappointed to hear the First Minister talk once again about her flagship policy to cut air passenger duty. It ignores the impact of increased flights and increased emissions and it also creates a big hole in a Scottish budget that he's left now but I'm sure the deputy First Minister would want to tell us about. We know that the budget that we are scrutinising is under unprecedented pressure so that means that our investment in infrastructure for low carbon and electric vehicles needs to be protected. We need to make the most of our opportunities. We need to tackle air quality. We need to make sure that we promote health and active lifestyles through transport investment in electric vehicles, in new types of travel but particularly low emission zones and promoting walking and cycling. There is much more that we could be done and it is not all expensive but we need the joint work between the Scottish Government and local authorities. The last few weeks have seen the vulnerability that we have for our transport infrastructure in Scotland. Not just the fourth road bridge but the lack of resilience and capacity in our railway network, which was exposed, the challenge that we have seen with bridges and roads damaged or swept away by flooding and we need better public transport that is more affordable and reliable for passengers. Will we bring that together? Low carbon investment, looking at new models of investment through what motives? There are opportunities that we are not seizing and that is where we need to be focused for the next term of the Scottish Parliament. Opportunities missed for community investment and job creation and economic prosperity and that next Scottish Parliament needs to focus, needs to look at investment and needs to deliver real climate change and climate justice. At the beginning of my contribution to debate, others let me sincerely wish those who have not yet managed to speak to a happy and healthy 2016. Particularly those colleagues who have decided to retire from the Scottish Parliament, thank you all for your contribution to the life of the political Scotland. For the rest of us, we will submit ourselves to the test of the people in May. I, for one, am relishing the contest of the Scottish general election for three very good reasons. Firstly, because I love campaigning and as any SNP activist will tell you of a never-ending appetite to knock the next door in an effort to engage with yet another constitution. Secondly, I am very much looking forward to prosecuting the argument that the SNP Government has despite an incredibly challenging financial backdrop done a quite remarkable record of achievement in Government. I also believe that, without a shadow of a doubt, we have in Nicola Sturgeon the most accomplished leader in Scotland and the best team to take Scotland forward. Thirdly, as was laid out clearly by the First Minister today, the SNP will have a vision of how we will go about continuing to transform Scotland over the lifetime of the next Parliament. In contrast, we will face an opposition campaign, particularly from Labour, with one very simplistic slogan. Hashtag SNP bad. Kezia Dugdale's speech could have amplified it even more, shortened to that key phrase. Nine minutes and 20 seconds of SNP bad, 10 seconds of Labour policy and back to SNP bad for the rest. While that will suit the SNP just fine, we will leave their negative campaigning tactics to the opposition. We will get on with the job of talking about Scotland's potential or for aspiration to take Scotland forward. Yes, despite the undoubted challenges that allow ahead, we will provide a positive message of hope for the future. The title of today's debate is supporting public services, tackling the equality and growing Scotland's economy. On the theme of growing Scotland's economy, it is hard to find a better example of real practical help that the SNP Government has provided to businesses in the introduction of the small business bonus scheme. Figures for 2014-15 show the number of businesses benefiting from the scheme now stands at almost 100,000, who have either had their rates reduced or removed entirely. Small businesses across the country have benefited from the scheme, with around 2,400 in the sterling area alone now benefiting. Small businesses are creating jobs, boosting growth and supporting local communities. I know that the Government will continue to do everything it can to unlock Scotland's huge entrepreneurial potential and support businesses to flourish and grow, as Clare Adamson outlined so well earlier on. I know also that the SNP Government will do it, but I struggle to fully understand what the Labour Party's position is in regards to business and growing the economy. For instance, I have small business people in my constituency who ask me all the time whether Labour actually supports the small business bonus scheme. Perhaps someone from the Labour front benches will tell us during today's debate whether they will commit to supporting the scheme during the lifetime of the next Parliament. Like the SNP, it shows leadership and forward thinking when it comes to supporting Scotland's small business sector. Tourism Euro in this country makes a huge contribution to the Scottish economy, touching in some way on almost every business in Scotland. It certainly makes a huge contribution to the economy of the Stirling constituency. That sector is a key contributor to the health of Scotland and to my constituency. To Sarah Boyack, who unfortunately is not with us today, I am looking forward to having her not with us now. I know that she will see it earlier, because I saw her. I heard her. However, I am looking forward to my Labour opponent, whoever that lucky person is or turns out to be, explaining to the thousands of tourism-related businesses why they are opposed to a cut in air passenger duty. I am looking forward to them explaining why a 50 per cent reduction in APD is bad for the tourism industry. Why it is a bad thing that having APD creating nearly 4,000 jobs and adding a billion pounds to the Scottish economy by 2020 is a bad thing. How it would be a good thing for the Scottish economy to lose up to £68 million per year in lost tourism revenue every year until 2020. Whatever the Labour candidate will always be able to fall back on their campaign slogan, hashtag SNP bad. A campaign slogan doomed to failure, I say, bring it on. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Given that this is the last year that I will be pleased to come back to this Parliament, I would like to wish everyone whatever party they are in a very happy new year. I would like not just to focus on how much money we've got and who's fault it is that we've not got enough money, but I would like to focus on the value for money and good quality public services. So when we look at the extra £2 million allocated to teachers, that will really not deliver the closing of the attainment gap that the First Minister is committed to, and I welcome that, unless they look at the teacher training degree where in Scotland we have about 20 hours in a three-year degree, 20 hours allocated to literacy and numeracy training compared to 90 hours in England. So it's not all about the money that is spent, it's how well that money is spent. And then we come on to the £100 million over three years for the attainment gap. But in order to make sure that this money again is effectively spent, surely we need to understand why do pupils perform well in numeracy at primary seven and fall by over a third in their performance by S2. So surely we need to understand that before spending the money and then trying to find out what the problems are. And we should also understand, coming from Dundee, I feel passionately about this, why is it that in Dundee less than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five awards at S4 compared to 70 per cent in East Dunbarton and East Wren? Surely we need to understand that. Wherever you live in Scotland, you should have the same opportunities. And I thoroughly agree with the Conservative policy of giving the attainment fund to schools because not every pupil with low levels of attainment lives in a deprived area. Yes, many of them do, but pupils of all ages and from all backgrounds suffer poor attainment and they should get the same help individually in whatever school and whatever area they're in. And when it comes to addressing inequalities, Scotland's colleges, I know I was a lecturer for 20 years before coming here, so many people got that second chance of qualification in a training course and 150,000 part-time places lost, 74,000 lost for those over 25, and the efficiency savings for a college merger programme, where are they? They're still to be identified. So the government's management, not only over colleges but over severance payments to senior staff and principals, has been shameful, absolutely shameful. And on the audit committee, when we looked at Cochbridge College by the principal walking away with £304,000, we then found out that most of the other colleges in Scotland had done the same and this should have been managed by the Scottish Government and it wasn't. Then we had tea in the park, clearly states under the guidance. There are four main areas, the request for funding regarding infrastructure when DF concert asked for the money. The government's guidance says, under no circumstances can the grant be used to supply infrastructure, well never mind the guidance, where did the government give £150,000? And after nine years in government, we still don't even have a set of accounts for the evolved public sector in Scotland. Audit Scotland says, it's difficult for a Scottish Parliament, taxpayers and others to get a picture of understanding about public spending and the implications for public finances. We're going into another election and we still don't even have a balance sheet for Scotland. When we look at the SNP, it's very easy to blame Westminster, but on one of my last speeches here, I would like to ask the Scottish Nationalist Government to start taking about responsibility for the powers that it has instead of constantly blaming Westminster. A couple of other examples, ICT. NHS 24 is costing £450,000 every month for nothing. An IT system doesn't work. The CAP Futures programme is 78 per cent over budget. We were sure that the Government was going to help and sort all this out, never ever happened. So what I would say to the SNP is, it's time to get the same grip on the delivery of public services and value for money in future, and only then will all of Scotland prosper instead of arguing and constantly blaming Westminster. A number of members, Ken Macintosh and Murdo Fraser, mentioned about the actual title of the Government debate, sporting public services, tackling inequality and growing Scotland's economy. I'm not going to reiterate all that my colleagues have said. I think that they've covered it very well. Mike Russell mentioned about localism, seniority, Bruce Crawford mentioned business rates, small businesses and others have mentioned it as well in regards to health and education as well. What I do want to say is that I'm really proud to take part in this debate. The very first Parliament date of 2016 and one that the First Minister said puts a full potential of Scotland and its people at the forefront of the Parliament. One particular issue that I thank the First Minister for laying out is the vision and in particular the emphasis of tackling inequality. I know a number of the Opposition has said that inequality, where is inequality? Well, if you're out and about in your constituency, you can see inequality every single day and it's not just in areas which may have been deprived. It's inequality of being able to get a position in a board if you happen to be a woman. It's inequality of the number perhaps of men and others of various appearance who happen to have a higher profile than yourselves in various industries as well. That's all to do with inequality also and I think that it's something that we really need to tackle and we are tackling and certainly the First Minister with the 50-50 cabinet I think has started very well in tackling that as well and obviously I think through education in particular inequality is something that we can get rid of perhaps not as quickly as we'd like but we will get rid of it particularly for investing in learning from early years to higher education. I think education to all of us I would imagine is a key to creating a fairer Scotland and I do welcome the £33 million of investment in attainment and I slightly disagree or disagree in some things that Mary Scanlon said in regard where the money would go. I think the schools are best to make up their mind and where they would go also. Now I do have to disappoint Murdo Fraser when he mentions about people always in Scottish National Party Mary that's a wonderful Scottish National Party regarding powers in this Parliament and powers in Westminster. Well you know what comes as no surprise to anyone in the opposition mentions that I would like the full powers of a Parliament the full powers and I think that's the right way to go but we are where we are and we work with the powers they have but if I could just name some of the powers which I think would be really beneficial not just to the Scottish Parliament to the Scottish people as well when I talked about aspirations and I talked about equality of opportunity equality of ambition and aspirations for all what about powers over Trident we need to spend money on that sending that down to Westminster the war in Syria what about having powers over that the House of Lords where they can go and get £300 for 15 sorry Mary I've only got a bit minute left they can get £300 for walking in 15 minutes north they go again they don't even need to get taxed on that moneys now that's the kind of powers I think we can start off with and various other powers as well why shouldn't the money that we raise in Scotland be kept in Scotland and I mean I was impressed by Sarah Boyack's contribution as he said there's not here at the moment when she talked about green energy and absolutely correct green energy carbon capture wind and wave power but our hands have been tied by Westminster stopping us for pushing forward on green energy and renewable energy we lead the way on that we could lead the way even further and yet because we don't have the powers over that our hands are tied so I think people need to learn not a lesson but please learn the truth of that matter I'd love to go further and put forward the aspirations that we have in this country the people have these aspirations it was seen in the referendum that was why such a return of Scottish national party members to Westminster because they seen the Scottish national party and the people in that party and what we put forward was fantastic aspirations for this country and there's nothing to be ashamed of of having aspirations for your country and your people and we shouldn't be ashamed of saying that sorry we only get 30 seconds and that's why we can't give away the fact that we do desperately need and should have the full powers but while we're here at the moment we are working as best as we possibly can with an aspirational Scottish Government with a government that puts forward equality of ambition and equality of opportunity and I'm proud with part of a Scottish national party government in this Parliament thank you Presiding Officer thank you now Colin Mary Fee to be followed by Dennis Robertson thank you Presiding Officer our public services are a lifeline to many people and it is vital that we fully support and invest in these services over the last nine years many of our public services have been under financial pressure through the council tax freeze the recession and to a notorious charity the workforce in our public services have suffered while striving to perform to the best of their abilities and we must all be grateful to them thousands of council workers have been made redundant over 4 000 teachers have been lost libraries and community halls have been closed colleges squeezed with 140 000 fewer students and failing after failing in the police service on that record it's clear that the SNP have failed to support public services in Scotland and failed to keep their promises and the recent budget shows that local authorities will face further cuts and whilst I accept that the Scottish Government's budget has been cuts by 2.2 per cent in real terms the reduction to the local authority budget of 350 million a cuts of 3.5 per cent is simply unacceptable unjustified and wrong no i'm sorry my time's been cut and I've heard enough meaningless rhetoric from the SNP today thank you a cut to local authority spending of such a high proportion affects the quality of the public services we receive and will inevitably lead to a greater number of job losses local authorities play a key role in the education of our young people they play a vital role in childcare and an important role in supporting our most vulnerable people and should be protected from such savage cuts after john swinney's budget announcement cosla highlighted that as a direct impact of the SNP's austerity budget 15 000 local authority workers will either lose their jobs or be made redundant the SNP are not working for people the length and breadth of scotland and they must be held accountable for this the SNP have failed to use their new tax raising powers and have refused to increase the top date of tax for the very riches to 50p the SNP could have chosen a different path to avoid swinging cuts to local authorities however it's clear that the SNP have decided to copy and paste the austerity economics of george osborne the social justice budget cut by 7.9% in real terms the education budget cut by 6% in real terms the fair work budget cut by 5.1% in real terms and the justice budget cut by 5.3% decisions and cuts made by this scottish government that will have a damaging impact on public services and our most vulnerable people and Presiding Officer tackling inequality is one of the main issues that brought me into politics creating a fairer society with equal opportunities for all is the goal of any socialist and i aim to work for that goal every day to tackle inequality we must invest in education housing and wages the 2016 17 budget shows that the scottish government has little interest in tackling inequality with cuts to social justice education and fair work on sunday the first minister revealed her key election issues one of those being the living wage and over the last couple of years we've heard much from the SNP about the living wage they can't legislate for the living wage and i've voted time after time against scottish labour amendments during the procurement bill the spice briefing earnings in scotland of 2015 shows that scotland lags behind the rest of the uk in paying the living wage of £7.85 an hour when broken down by gender 24% of women employees earned less than the living wage compared no thank you compared to 15% of men the spice briefing also shows that 65% of people who earn less than the living wage are women and it's no surprise that the private sector pays below the living wage with a rate of 28% compared to 4% in the public sector private sector areas such as accommodation and food services retail and wholesale trade administration and support services are the worst industries for paying below the living wage and in conclusion the debate today has covered three very important topics and there has been limited time to to fully discuss all of these things but i'd like to finish by stressing again that to tackle inequality and grow the economy we must invest in better housing better education and better public services thank you thank you now Colin Dennis Robertson after which we'll move to closing speeches thank you very much Presiding Officer and like everyone else this afternoon can I extend my best wishes for 2016 Presiding Officer can I begin by looking at our public services and commend the work that's been happening within my own constituency during the flood crisis that has been taking place in Ballotar and the surrounding areas we have seen the public services work and in a co-ordinated way our ambulance service or police service or fire and rescue service are council workers and an army of volunteers we should be very proud we've got a community spirit a community spirit that should give us a sense of pride throughout scotland and this i think is replicated when we do face crisis and i believe that is something that again we should we should actually commend and say that our our risk our emergency services actually just come up to the plate when it is needed i was very struck when i was in Ballotar and a boyn yesterday and Bruce Crawford said earlier that tourism and small businesses play a vital part in Scotland's growing economy and that's very true and i believe that Ballotar and that surrounding area will again play a vital part in that growing economy because Ballotar will be open for business again and that is due to the community spirit that i believe is there within that community it was demonstrated yesterday by the business community who are working together with everyone else to try and ensure that the cleanup operation takes place as quickly as possible and the recovery plan is there the cabinet secretary for finance john swinney has already indicated that there will be additional monies available and again it was much appreciated that he went to Ballotar to see for himself what was going on and as i say i think he was probably impacted as i was it was quite emotional to engage with many of the people within the area but again i come back to that community spirit it was absolutely immense we've got a lot to be proud of i think within my own constituency and the work that has been going on i think with the Scottish Government and Mary Fee says she's held enough about smp rhetoric but can i say that i'm proud of of what we've actually achieved in this term of parliament and in the term of government that the smp since 2007 if i look at my own constituency the work that is nearly completed with the imbaramsy bridge that's going to make a tremendous difference for commuters in the a96 the work that is going to be between Aberdeen and Inverness on the rail and with kintor station by 2019 that's going to make an immense difference for people within that community so we've got lots to be proud of the infrastructure work that is going on with the beauty and the connectivity to try and engage to enable people within the rural and remote areas to set up small businesses and for people just to engage it within the health service for instance the video conferencing with the digital connectivity for our health service we've got people not having to travel many hours for a 20 minute appointment this is something we should be proud of this is something that the government have achieved and it's something i think people can get a tangible benefit from with regard to the health service it was also mentioned by others that you know there's there's areas to be proud of i'm very proud of what we've achieved in the health service and the reason i am within grampion because it was undergoing a very very difficult time it's come through that difficult period and we've now got a health service to be proud of in grampion we've also got a health service to be proud of in terms of the the moneys the new moneys that's been introduced into our mental health service that's additional money so we've got moneys there for our children adolescent mental health service one that wasn't there before and we can see the benefit now for our young people there's much to be proud of with this Scottish Government and there's much to be proud of with the aspirations that we have for the future thank you and before we move the closing speeches i'm grateful of the four members who are due to be in the chamber for the closing speeches if they will rejoin us for them please no call on jackson carlaw six minutes please mr carlaw thank you president officer and i too wish everybody a happy and eventful new year and i'd like to start by paying tribute to one public service that's not been mentioned this afternoon and that's public service broadcasting and in particular to our public service broadcaster in scotland bbc scotland and more particularly still to that consumant broadcaster jackie bird and the bbc's hogman a coverage which mercifully spared the nation the commercial alternative for there on the other channel was the former comedian in what used to be known as the don't watch alone slot staging a sort of recreation of the opening scenes of mcbeth and that sort of new year programming that nicolai and elena chowchescu used to be so fond of no if and i know the first minister likes to refer to polls and trends in the last poll of 2015 the first poll of 2016 the nation voted with its remote control by a margin of eight to one it switched away to public service broadcasting and from the snp and this afternoon's debate this afternoon's debate which was on public services was in fact the inaugural campaign speech for the elections due in may and indeed that was the tone that was followed although i've got to say if the contributions from snp backbenchers this afternoon are any indication of the enthusiasm they have for this campaign it was as lackluster a collection of tributes as one could possibly imagine now i read the first minister over the recess and i thought she said something that i thought was a was a truth she said that when opposition parties and others accused the snp of being a one party state it says more about the shortcomings of others than it does about their own political success now i think there's some truth in that there is a responsibility on opposition parties to provide that opposition to provide that critique but also to provide that alternative vision for scotland and yet this afternoon in a highly selective series of statistics across all areas of responsibility the first minister gave us and i don't you know this is not an administration of holy mendacious people of course like any government it has some achievements to its credit i'm happy i'm happy to acknowledge that it has some credits to its account but as willy reny and others demonstrated this kind of unalloyed tribute all of success that the first minister articulated is far from a comprehensive truth this is a government which came to office nine years ago with no record to defend and now it spins to deny its failures and failings and without so much as a passing blush extols those doings that it has as an almost biblical success in worldwide democratic politics and there was the first minister this afternoon fresh promises with so many of those she made before yet waiting to be filled and bruce crawford articulated this snp mantra that any criticism of the snp is simply to be rebutted by saying snp bad and snp ministers if we talk about police or education or health say that this is an attack on the police it's an attack on teachers it's an attack on nurses and hardworking civil servants and others and the public service of course it's not it's an attack on the political incompetent management of these public services which has actually been the hallmark of this snp government because there's no follow-through on policing a reorganisation which then to well advertised failings in terms of people actually being able to contact the police in education the first minister talked about the percentage from deprived backgrounds being higher than in 2007 but didn't mention it was a far lesser percentage than has been successfully achieved in england underpinned by far lower bursaries or in health no mention of the fact that they spent great amounts of money on a new hospital in glasgo great news for glasgo but in fact then didn't think how people were to get to it how the staff were supposed to get to it where they were supposed to park when they did or even when they went into the hospital how they were supposed to be treated constituents are still coming to me from the south side of glasgo saying that when they arrive at the hospital and ask at reception for accident emergency they're told we don't know where it is that is and the first minister's response in a second because the first minister's response when i raised this on the government programme debate at the beginning of this session was to say she'd sent in a team who were going to rectify all the problems and get all the problems continue and now we're told the earliest we can expect this hospital to be a functioning effectively is sometime in the spring. Nicola Sturgeon in case jackson carloff forgets i'm sure he wasn't going to will he take the opportunity to join me in congratulating nhs staff across this country in delivering the best accident and emergency waiting times in the whole of the united kingdom as if to prove by point any criticism of the snp's performance and health is to say that we are criticizing the staff of course but let me say this the staff in the nhs don't want these platitudes in the chamber of congratulations from politicians what they want to see is a proper health service being delivered for scotland which is sustainable going into the future. Presiding officer what we got today from the first minister was the usual overblown highfalutin rhetoric her successes a fresh argument and independence she said she was going to make having singularly failed to articulate it this afternoon and then she concluded to my astonishment my absolute astonishment with a political tribute to Margaret Thatcher because I remember and I know she's just finished her biography I read Margaret Thatcher's third election campaign had the strap line the next steps forward and there at the heart of Nicola Sturgeon's peroration were the words the next steps forward well between now and may Scottish Conservatives will build on our education announcements detailed by Ruth Davidson and murder police today with policies and health on justice on opportunity and the economy we will do so as a party with an unswerving commitment to the united kingdom and scotland's place and rolling it to the defence of the UK and to our low tax entrepreneur economy which offers real opportunities to the have nots in scotland who've been so let down by this government in practice now Colin Alex Rowley eight minutes please mr Rowley Presiding Officer thanks very much as Mary Fee said there are there are three big issues here that are being debated today public services talking on equality and growing Scotland's economy and in the time we've had today we've been able to give some justice but I certainly look forward to the debate over the next four months and I do hope that these are the big issues that we will be debating as we go forward into the Scottish general election if I can reflect on today and perhaps start with Ruth Davidson and the comments she made earlier about making the play to be the official opposition in Scotland and I would have to say to her that for the first time in more than half a century we have absolute poverty in communities the length and breadth to Scotland and that is absolutely down to the policies of the Tory government so I don't I don't know about the SNP bad but I certainly know the policies and what the Tory stand for in Scotland are bad and I'm sure the people of Scotland will recognise that at the polls in May if I could turn to Bruce Crawford and Bruce Crawford talked about SNP bad I'd thought that actually it was the SNP that came up with that term SNP bad so if you're unhappy with that Bruce you need to give a ticking off to your your your own party but can I say Bruce Crawford also talked about the record number he talked about flights and the air passengers duty and he couldn't understand why Labour would oppose that we have in Scotland right now record numbers of flights we have the air companies in Scotland reaping the record low levels of fuel costs and at a time when we have that and at the same time we have which will cost us the air passenger duty will cost us millions upon millions upon millions of pounds at the same time as that well we you're willing to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a tax cut in an area that yeah and good times it would be fine to do we're seen hundreds of millions of pounds being cut for public services right across Scotland so that is the choice and for me that choice every day will be to invest in public services like like Kevin Stewart he said he wanted to concentrate on what Nicola Sturgeon have to say and I will do likewise I certainly am someone who tends to believe that my glass is always half full and where I see policy and I see investment then I will welcome that investment if we take for example in terms of health and social care I have raised with the the deputy first minister on a number of occasions the need to shift funding for health into health and social care recognising that community care does not come on the cheap and I have welcomed the fact in his budget that he's said he intends to do that so I would welcome that today but I would say that there is a further crisis in social care and it comes to another point that the first minister raised which is the living wage and she rightly highlights the success in terms of more and more companies actually introducing the living wage but that is causing problems in some sectors particularly in health and social care where if they are to raise the living wage then they need to find that money for some place given that the majority of money is going in to health and social care come in through the public sector then it is a responsibility of government if we want to see health and social care if we want to see care workers up and down Scotland paid a decent wage the living wage then we need to recognise that it is a responsibility government to put money into that that is an area where Labour in Scotland have said that we will fund the introduction of living wage right across the care sector in Scotland and I certainly hope that that's something that the SNP would consider doing with us and it's also about recognising in terms of the economy where in the short term we can grow jobs in the economy one of those such areas is absolutely the care sector I read this morning about a company in Fife that was there was reporting losses for the first time in the care sector and one of the reasons that they put down for that was the use of agency staff and the reason that they're having to recruit and bring in agency staff is because there is a major problem with recruitment and retention in the care sector so we need to recognise that by investing in the living wage we would also be investing in quality care and social care across Scotland but at the same time we would be growing the economy and growing jobs and the case for that is absolutely there because for me in terms of the economy the key issue is jobs good jobs good jobs for young people jobs for long-term unemployed jobs that are quality jobs jobs that will last jobs that we can build our future around and that is why today what we need in Scotland is a strategy for jobs to ensure that we can give everybody the opportunity and that we are ambitious not just for some of the people in Scotland but ambitious for all the people in Scotland. I agree that the funding of social care whether it's home care or a residential care should be the same whether the person is in a council run home or an independently run home that would allow every care worker to be paid the living wage well don't but it's a different debate and perhaps not one I've got time for today can also welcome the fact and actually wrote to the house minister back on the second of the emperor and welcomed the fact that that Nicola Sturgeon had confirmed that there was a commitment from the government to 50,000 houses for rent and now see that that's affordable housing I would urge that Shelter Scotland and others have talked about the need for 50,000 houses for rent 50 houses and social houses for it I've not got the time sorry so I welcomed that fact then I wrote to the I wrote to the house minister then and I set out a number of proposals you know the first minister constantly says if you have any ideas if you have any thoughts bring them to us in a very positive way I wrote to the house minister then and I suggested to her that what we need to do if there's a consensus in Scotland Shelter Scotland tell us that there is a house crisis in Scotland we know that from the start there were 150,000 households and local authority waiting list across Scotland as at the 31st of march this year I agree with him about the importance of housing supply which is why we've committed to 50,000 affordable houses over the next parliament I wonder if Alec Rowley could explain why his pledge on housing today is nothing to do with housing supply while Labour has still said nothing about increasing housing supply in Scotland because it's one because it's one part of housing housing for Labour in Scotland is a big issue and we will we will be talking about housing and bringing forward more proposals for housing in the coming weeks in the coming months and I hope that we can have a debate on housing in Scotland one part of that as was announced today by Kezia Dugdale our leader is that we will help young people be able to get on the house and ladder for many young people many young people my constituency I'm sure your constituency and others they find it really difficult to be able to have the deposit to be able to get the mortgage particularly since the banking crisis banks are not actually helping young people Labour in Scotland will help young people get houses but we're equally clear Labour in Scotland will build houses and will ensure in partnership with local authorities that we build social houses for rent recognising a shelter Scotland has put forward we have a housing crisis Presiding Officer I will wind up by saying where I started my glass is always half full I want and Labour in Scotland wants to work with any party in this chamber where we can tackle inequality get good public services and create jobs so that we share the wealth throughout the holy Scotland. Thank you and I call on John Swinney to wind up the debate cabinet secretary 10 minutes. I think this afternoon we learned something very important in revelation to me about Jackson Carlaw. I think there was a hint of jealousy in Jackson Carlaw's condemnation of Scottish television and the astruining of that magnificent piece of Hugmanay television which involved the First Minister. I am absolutely certain. I am certain. Mr Carlaw should never, he should be such a gentleman he should know not even to ask the question. Of course I watched the programme. It was magnificent and Mr Carlaw knows it was magnificent because he watched it too. I hope that demonstrates that I am not on the mendacious side of this administration for the benefit of Mr Carlaw and I shall be fascinated by his explanation of who he believes fits into which particular category as the months wear on to the election campaign. I am going through one of those phases in my life where I am enjoying the speeches of Michael Russell. It has not always been like this but I am going through one of those phases where I am enjoying his speeches and it was a very substantial and thoughtful contribution but I thought in one phrase Mr Russell captured the difficulty and the dilemma that lies at the heart of the opposition critique of the Government because what Mr Russell fairly did and he is absolutely correct in this, I had the misfortune to come across as I put away the Christmas decorations, an old box of press cuttings in the attic which certainly deserves to be thrown out of how the SNP just argued its case against whatever was prevailing from the Government and just saying what was wrong about the incumbent government and all the rest of it and Mr Russell summed it up beautifully. He said, muckled, good it did us. And if the opposition do not listen to what Mr Russell said today then well they will have invited upon them what comes their way and they will be involved as Ruth Davidson so eloquently predicted today in a scrap for second place between the Conservatives and the Labour Party and they will be welcome to that scrap for second place while we set out our vision for how we take forward the future of our country. Because while of course we accept that there is always work to be done to deliver on the commitments and the priorities of government and to meet the challenges of our day there are achievements upon which the government is right to found its record and its opinions. The opposition could have talked today about the fact that our economy has grown in each and every of the quarters over the last three years. They could have cited the fact that employment in Scotland has risen again and unemployment has fallen. They could have cited the fact that, as the First Minister made in an intervention, the fact that in the weekend ending 27 December, 96.1 per cent of patients were seen treated and discharged from accident and emergency within four hours, the best performance in five years in any of the last five years. They could have talked about the fact that we have seen record passes through the advanced higher system and the implementation of curriculum for excellence or they could have talked about the fact that we are now seeing in Scotland 600 hours of free high quality early learning and childcare for children in Scotland or they could have talked about the fact that we have a 41 year low in crime but no the opposition chose to run the familiar critique which Mr Russell effectively captured as the agenda of running down everything the government represents. I really know that I have the greatest and deepest respect for him but when he says here that the Labour Party is prepared to work with us on all these questions there is scant evidence listening to the Labour Party's contribution to debates of the willingness of the Labour Party to work with us on any particular question so I think there is a need for people to take in the opposition to take heed of the wise words of Mr Russell muckled good it did us as they look forward to the forthcoming election campaign. The other point which I think came out of Mr Russell's speech was the reflection that Scotland is in optimistic mood and I think that that is where Scotland is today. Scotland wants to hear about what it is possible to achieve what it is possible to do what we can undertake to ensure that we live in a stronger and a more effective society as a consequence. The Government's debate today focused on the delivery of public services, the improvement in the delivery of public services, about measures to strengthen the economy and the efforts to tackle inequality, capture the range of different propositions and approaches the Government is taking forward and which underpin the choices that we have made in the budget process that we have put to Parliament. Of course, I believe. I'm grateful to the Deputy First Minister for giving way and some of us do give credit where it's due. I like for example the business pledge and the ethical standards of employment practice that it sets out but will the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister go beyond that, build on that and make those ethical standards of employment practices a requirement for those companies that want to access taxpayer funded support services and grant schemes? That's the kind of measure that would build on the credibility that's already been built up and make sure that we make a real difference for employees in Scotland being treated well by their employers. What the Government is trying to do is to win the argument right across the sectors of the economy about the importance of making the commitments that are inherent in the Scottish business pledge. I have to say that the business community in Scotland have responded very strongly and very positively with many advocates in the small business sector, in the SME sector and in larger companies prepared to make that commitment. We want to build that voluntary willingness of companies to work with the Government to improve the quality of employment because if we improve the quality of employment we will improve the productivity of employment and ultimately we will improve the public finances of Scotland and the resources that we will have at our disposal to deliver on the agenda that we take forward. A lot of the discussion today has hinged around the questions that are inherent in the Government's budget and the Government's budget reflects the themes of improving public services, of strengthening the economy and of tackling inequality. The debates that we will have in the course of the next few weeks in Parliament on the scrutiny of the Government's budget will also require the Opposition parties to come forward with alternatives to the propositions that the Government puts forward. It is all very easy to come to Parliament today and to set out all the things that are apparently wrong with the Government's budget. Mr Rowley just said a moment ago that he was fully supportive of what the Government was doing in relation to driving the shift of the balance of care to put much greater emphasis on social care within the system, fuelled by £250 million of new resources that will be put into the system. It is welcome that Mr Rowley supported that, but that position was scarcely recognisable in the position that Mr Mackintosh put forward today, where that whole proposition, which is central to the budget that I set out in December, was attacked as some form of attack on local government in Scotland. I will go way to Mr Rowley. Does he accept that as a result of the budget that councils, education authorities up and down Scotland will cut education budgets this year? I do not think that that is in any way inevitable. What there has to be at the heart of the budget is the acceptance of the arguments and the necessity for reform in the way that we deliver public services. The reform agenda is something that is inescapable and unavoidable for every one of us within Parliament. The Government has embraced it. We have accepted reform on police and fire. Mr Rennie belittles the approach on police reform, but we have a 41-year low in crime in Scotland today. The reform of the fire service that I saw with my own eyes in my constituency, the strength and the advantage of fire reform in Scotland by making sure that resources that would not ordinarily be available on Tayside were available to help my constituents to deal with the difficulties that they faced, a difficult reform that was taken forward by the Government. We did it on colleges to make sure that we focused colleges more on employment, and we will do it on the other aspects of public service reform that we will undertake. I know that we are not allowed to question the Scottish Government any more, but is that his real considered analysis of the police Scotland reforms that 40-year low is that it? Nothing else? Nothing about call centres? Nothing about stop and search? Nothing about armed police? Is that his analysis? Sincerely, First Minister? Yes, Mr Rennie, because the people I represent care about living in our country with a 41-year law of crime, and the sooner the Liberal Democrats understand that they might have more than five members in this Parliament after the election. Presiding Officer, we are very proud to stand on our record, but more importantly, we will set out as the First Minister did already today a vision of how we can build on that record to create a strong society, a society driven by the determination to tackle inequality, to deliver economic opportunity of our society and to deliver the public services upon which our citizens depend. Thank you. That concludes the debate on supporting public services, tackling inequality and growing Scotland economy. We now move on to the next item of business, which is decision time. There are no questions to be put as a result of today's business, so we are now moving on to members' business. Members who will leave the chamber should do so quickly and quietly.