Good morning. My name is Ken Macintosh. I am the presenting officer here at the Scottish Parliament. It's a great pleasure, on behalf of all my parliamentary colleagues, to welcome you here to Holyrood to the Scottish Older People's Assembly. I just begin by saying, I hope that you're not going to be a difficult crowd.  I'm sure that won't be the case, firmly and I'm also sure I don't have to tell you anybody here now how much Scotland society is changing just looking at the demographic alone. Current projections suggest that the population of Scotland will rise to 5.7 million by 2039 and that as a country our population will age significantly with a number of people age 65 and over and an increasing by more than 50% over those 25 years. That should be such good news for us all because it means quite simply that we are all living longer. But there is also no getting away from the fact that those changes have great social, political and economic significance. Just like teenagers—or the middle-aged—older people cannot be classed as one homogenous group. We are all individuals. Regardless of our age, no matter what stage of life we are at, we all have much to contribute. ers i ddweud.Would a growing recognition, in recent years, is, we have not given enough thought to the positive aspects that an ageing population can bring or its particular needs. We have not considered how to capitalise on the skills and experience that an older society has. Just as one example, in terms of assisting with care for younger generations, we all know how enriching an experience it can be. Young children benefit immensely from a good rhaglen o'r Rhaglen, ond yr gynllun yw ymddugol yn ddiddordeb yng nghymru, ond oes o ffawr ddigitio a'r ddigitio i gael y gwahanol ymddugol yn ynghymru. Ar ystafell yng nghymru yn y parlymydd yw'r amser ynghwrt yn ei tynnu, ond rwy'n ei ddweud oes o'r perdyn nhw, ond ar ôl 17 anferstwyll, mae'n ddweud ac yn 17 anferstwyll ond rwy'n ei ddweud o'r parlymydd yn ddweud o'r gwahanol ynghymru. Y gallwn i ochr trafio ar gyfer cwpwys i ddweudio ar gael y gael awgfyrdd. Y gael awgfyrdd yn yr edrygiad ikr hynny yn gweithio'r ddweudio ar gyfer ei awgfyrdd gyda'r cy Warrior DdoethExc yn ddiweddar o ond o pob gan'i gweld gyda'r ddweud,ain i ddweudio ar gyfer cyfriddau iositionu i awgfaith neu ei awgfaith neu ei awgfaith. Rwy'n credu cyfrîl enw i ddweudio'r ddweudiaeth o'r cyfrîl eich ddweudio ar gyfer y ddweud, rydymaint â gweithio ac i gyfaelol o gyfaelol hubau ei hwn ac oesidol iaeth i gweithio gwelliannol. Eich eich tolu oesidol y Cymru fel arfyrdd ymgyrch gweithi, mae'r gweithio i'r gweithio a'r iziwyddiant cynnig. Gweithio'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r gweithio'r gweithio a'r gweithio a phyllwgau yn ddiwedd i gwasanaeth o gwael iaith. Fe amlu yn gweithio i gweithio i gweithio i gweithio grithi ac i gweithio i'r gweithio the Community Empowerment Bill that received royal assent last year. This year, I also know that the Assembly continues to travel the length and breadth of the country, holding meetings with older people covering a range of issues, from funeral poverty, the state pension and active citizenship, to name but a few. I have noted that many of those issues will be discussed throughout today's event. In fact, today's Assembly is an example of how vital subjects like pow redesol a chyst stations aquwyr rodd wedi gweld cyfl complaint fel gydym, o brolughsol a gyfrypaeth nawr headacheur. Sutiar ni am ein ffur sash, mewn lluythur hon chi'n teulu o bwysigol, o bobl ynghyülerol nesaf gan graddion rebellionon ar gyfer gwnaeth â bwyll criad. Rwyf i wneud gyda'r peréu yn y gwirionedd ac ni efo i'w cyhoedd Brynwyr yng Nghymru. Mae'r perhewbeth y gallwn gwirionedd gan gweithio â ddau ac fewn yr Rydych chi'n gweithio i chi gan gweithio canu yng Nghymru. Rwy'n teimlo i gyd yn yw'r gweithio arddangos cyflogion oedd arlaeddau yn y cyfnodol yn gweithio'i gwirionedd yn y gwirionedd. Rwy'n cyffredin Passerbyn ar y gyfer y Gwyrdd Reichart� 이�c iawn y dweud o thangos. Mi hefyd yn gwneud, a'r ffafgwrdd eich modd iawn i fynd yn fawr i gweithraff dros dyfodig, i fynd yn gwneud yn ddweud. Rwy'n mewn y ffacol iawn o'r cyffrediniddor, ac rwy'n mynd i fod yn dweud. Rwy'n mynd i fod yn dduod â osbladau cyd-dot, a fe oedd yn daethignol colleaguesiaid i ddyjuou i symud i gweithio eu sydd. Rwy'n mynd i fod yn byw'r cychydig, oedd dduod, oedd gweithredu I的 the policy makers on where our priorities should lie now and will be coming years. I hope that you will find that today's stimulus is exciting, interesting and enjoyable and I look forward to hearing about your discussions as the day progresses. Thank you. We are beginning with the Carnot an we will call the Tom Burnie who is the chair of the Scottish Oldkeys whats assembly to come comes today to come and address the chamber Thanks, very much Presiding officer. Thanks again for the use of the Parliament. Felly, ymhellwch arwtodd mae'r gwasi yn agloniwyr, ddu o'u pryd, ond mae'n gweithio'n ddigon. Gallwch yn ddigon i gwyll likewyr ond mae'n gweithio na'ch rwyf. Mae'n roi hetio'n ddigon i'ch ddigon i'ch gweithio'n gweithio. Mae rhaid i'ch dyfodd iawn i'ch ddigon i Mariaryn Gwylch yn gredigol i ni, yn f organiz yma, dwi'n dduol i'ch gweithio'i pac eich hefydl장. Dwi'n ddigon i'ch ddigon i ni'ch ddigon i ni. Neil Findlay, the convener of the Scottish Parliament of Health and Sport Committee, and I want to apologise that Christina McKelvie was going to be here this afternoon, but instead she couldn't make it for personal reasons. We will have Alex Cole-Hamilton, who is the deputy convener of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee, who will be here this afternoon too. We also have John McCormick, who is the chair of the Commission on Parliamentary Reform. I'm glad to hear that Jackson Carlaw is also here, so thanks for coming along, Jackson. Two people I'd like to mention, particularly, is that we also have two of our friends from the Northern Ireland-Irish Pensioners Parliament, and that's Nickson Armstrong and Eamon Donachey, so thanks, Nickson and Eamon, for coming over. It's been nice to see you again. More importantly, of course, is the fact that all of you are here. It's a terrific turn now, and we have represented here about 60 different older people's organisations, people who are working one way or the other, to help older people, but 60 of them. That's a organisation as well as the numbers of people as well. We have people all the way here from Orkney—I was talking to somebody this morning—and all the way down from Orkney to Dumfries, so we cover a wide spectrum of not only organisations but of geography as well, so thanks everybody for being here. You see from the video up here that we've had a whole series of public meetings with older people all around the country. Again, there are dozens of meetings in different places where we ask older people to tell us what they think is important, and these are the issues that we then try to take forward. We've also taken part in several conferences on various issues affecting older people, and what we try to do is make sure that our voices are heard. I'd like to say first off that Sopa describes itself as being a voice for older people. I emphasise as our voice. We're very conscious that we're not the only voice that all of you are voices as well, and all of you are doing your work in different places to help your communities. Sopa is a collective organisation. Our committee is made up of a number of different older people's organisations, and collectively we tried to make sure that we're covering the whole spectrum of issues affecting older people, but we're very conscious that other people are doing that too. Our particular strength, I think, is that we've been given a role where we're able periodically to talk to the ministers and put issues to them. We're also able to serve on various policy committees where, in the policy committees, we can influence, we hope, policies affecting older people before they're introduced. We find that much more constructive than just simply complaining about the policy afterwards. We do that too, but if we can try to influence policies before they're introduced, we feel that's the best way to go ahead. We tried to make sure that older people are involved. Normally, at this stage in our conference assemblies, it's an annual report and I cover all the issues that we do in the year, but there simply isn't the time for it today. What we decided this time was that rather than just hearing from the Sopa, we thought that we'd invite a number of other older people's organisations to give short statements about the things that they think are important. Later on, we'll hear from a number of different older people's organisations telling us what they've been doing throughout the year to help older people in their own communities. Some of the big issues that Sopa has been raising, of course, are the pensions. One of the things that we do, naturally, is that we try to get higher pensions, but we know that's a difficult one. What we've been trying to do is expose the fact and raise awareness to the fact that pensioners, far from what you believe in the press sometimes, are far from where we're off. We have 120,000 pensioners in Scotland who are living beneath the poverty line because the state pension is below the poverty line. We're also making international comparison and saying that, in compared to other countries, the British pension is one of the lowest in the developed world in relation to earnings. Our pensions are very low. We also know that the current proposals for increasing the pension age will mean that, by the time they reach the peak of 68, we will have just about the highest pension age in the world. There will be very few other countries who have to work to be 68 before they even get their pension. That's bad enough, but we also know that the way that that is being introduced has been particularly hard on women because they are jumping a bigger beth, and they are being penalised by the fact that the pension increases are being introduced far more quickly than they should be for women. That's the kind of thing that we raise. We're having a meeting in Westminster next year where Mary Black is organising it for us, and, hopefully, in Westminster, we'll be raising that kind of issue along with, we hope, friends from Northern Ireland and from the active Wales who represent older people in Wales. That's one issue. Another issue that we raised was funeral poverty. I think that that's a good example of how SOPA works. One of our organisations in South Lanarkshire told us that they were concerned about the cost of funerals. Something had occurred to me. We then started checking. We found that funerals... I mean, the cost of funerals have been escalating far faster than the rate of inflation to begin to the point where families were getting into debt in order to pay for a funeral. We took that to the... We've made some checks and found it varied from place to place, so we went to see Alec Neill, who was a minister at the time, and we explained that. Alec Neill, to his credit, set up by Ars John Burrung in Fraser Sutherland to conduct a review of the cost of funerals around Scotland. Among other things, they found that, for example, in East Renfrewshire, it cost you the council charge £700 for a burial, seven miles away in Easton Bartonshire, it charged £2,700. Four times seven miles, a huge gap like that. John Fraser Sutherland did a terrific job. He produced a really good report, and they've also produced a booklet giving advice about how to deal with funerals, but what we're trying to do is continue with that to try to raise not just the effect that funeral directors charge, but also what councils charge to make them more reasonable and affordable for ordinary people and try to even it out a bit. That's one thing. Another one is that we try to encourage active participation when we go to these meetings around the country, what we talk about, what we do, but we also try to encourage them to say, why don't you get together? Why don't you raise these issues? A lot of things can be dealt with locally. Why don't you do that too? That has been, I think, a catalyst in some areas, in many areas, for older people forming organisations and getting started doing things for themselves, too. Another thing that we try to do is dealing with the new technology. We've been trying to see up here, on the board here, that we have the St Kilda thing. That arose whenever we made a film about teaching people to use computers and care homes, and from that we got eventually the Lost Songs of St Kilda came out. We missed out on the copyright for it, but we were the first to raise that. We've also talked about training people to use computers, but also telecare. That's the system where you have your home linked up to the health centre, or whatever, to various security devices to look after older people. We made a film of that, but we were able to show run and talking theoretically about it. We showed what it's actually like for a real person in a real home to be using those things. Sure, there are big advantages in it, but we're also able to show the limitations as well, so we use that, because that's an important thing for older people, too. Another big issue, of course, is the merging of health service and social services, the integrating them. That, in principle, is a good idea, but we know that it's very patchy in places to places, and we know that it's particularly on older people. What we've been arguing is that, throughout the country, on each of the management boards, we're charged with introducing that that older people should have a place on the board, so that when they're making decisions that are known to the person there, actually to say, well, that's not a problem for me, a problem for older people, because we want to get older people involved at that level, because it's something that will have an impact on them. Perennial one is that we raise some time back to the pay of care workers, because we know that care working is probably one of the most important and most difficult jobs in the country, but we know that they're also one of the most underpaid. I spoke to a care manager once, and he said, it's all right for you, Tom, talking about training and retention and all that, but if they can pay five pounds a week more working on Tesco's, how are we going to keep them? We believe that they should have a decent wage, and we were instrumental, I believe, in getting the living wage applied to care workers. It's still not enough, but that's what we'd like to see them respected and their job treated seriously. Lastly, maybe, and this might be an annual report, but I'm going to skip over it because we're very short of time. Next thing is, of course, sharing experience. I went to a meeting of a speaker in Auckland, and I found out there in the care home that what they did was they opened up the care home to various social groups. So, for example, the local towns chess club and bridge club and all that could come in to the care home and have the meetings using the facilities of the care home. It was a way of rather shutting older people away in some box in a care home, it was letting the community come in, they could take part in social clubs and widen the amounts of the community's actually involved. So, we've been able, and committees and so on, to argue that that is a good practice that should be used in other places too, so we tried to disseminate that kind of thing. Now, there won't be—I need to leave it there a bit—there won't be a full report of our activities that will appear on our website. But the main message, as Ken mentioned, is that there are now a million older people in Scotland, and older people are citizens, and they have rights to influence the policies and services that apply to them. That's what we try to do. I usually put poetry in, but I don't have time. One wee Bertone practice said, I always thought the simplest words would be enough. If you don't stand up for yourself, you'll go down. Surely you can see that. What we try to do is encourage older people to stand up for themselves. Today, you won't have a chance to say what you think is important. We will then take note of that, and I'm quite sure that MSPs will take note of it. One of the problems in politics is that, by its nature adversarial, older people are not immune from that. I hope today that what we'll be doing is we'll meeting on a common cause. What we all want is a better world and a better society for older people. I hope that today we'll be looking constructively about how we can go ahead and achieve that. Thank you very much, Tom. I now call Neil Findlay, who is the convener of the Parliament's Health and Sport Committee. As convener, Neil will talk about the committee's work and strategic games slides. Good morning, everyone. It's an honour to be here this morning. The sight in Parliament looking out here is much more attractive than it normally is. Could I say that I am the same as you? I'm just an older person that hasn't grown up yet, and that's how I certainly regard myself. My name is Neil Findlay, I'm an MSP for the Lothians, but I'm also the chair of the honour of being the chair of the Health and Sport Committee in Parliament. My job today is just to talk to you really about the role of the committees in here. I hope that that will work. The committees are very important in Parliament. Our job is to hold the Government to account for their actions and hold public bodies to account. Organisations such as health boards, regulators and all of these integrated joint boards are very important now, councils. We hold them to account for their actions on health and sport, and we have a whole number of committees that do other things. The Government makes policy, and it's our job to check that policy and hold them to account on behalf of the people who elect us. We have to make sure that the Government exercises its powers appropriately. Ministers spend vast amounts of public money, and they have to be held accountable for that public money, and that's what the committees do. They also look at legislative proposals and scrutinise them and see if they are having the desired impact. That's generally what the committees do. The Health and Sport Committee might be the only committee—I'm not sure but—that has a strategic plan for what we're going to do. It's only half a page and not a big document, but it's a plan that says that, in all our actions, our overriding aim is to improve the health of the people of Scotland. That's not rocket science. It looks like something that's very obvious. Below that, we also have aims of measuring the impact on health and equality. Scotland is scarred by appalling health and equality. We want to see how Government policy impacts on that, but we also want the committee to scrutinise and assess that impact. We also want to look at the preventative focus. A lot of Government talk is about preventative action to prevent people from becoming unwell, and we want to examine how that is impacting as well. Money is always very important. One of our points in our plan is to look at the long-term cost-effectiveness and efficiency of public money being used. Of course, with the vote for Britain to leave the EU, we are also looking at the implications of that vote on health and sport. That is the overall objectives that we have for the committee. We do not manage services and we do not run the health service. The reason why we come up with that plan is to ensure that committee members do not start getting into small issues that they should not really be getting into. We are talking about the strategy of running the health service in Scotland, not whether you get your toenails clipped at your local health centre or not. It is important, though that is, but it is not for us to manage that service. It is for us to look at how that service has been brought in. We do a lot of public engagement. One of the things that I have been determined in my committee is that we start to speak to more real people, as I call them. We often speak to policy advisers, chief executives, trade union leaders and all of that. It is very important, though that is, we do not speak enough to people who are using the health and social care system. I am very determined that we will do that more and more. I want the committee to be as open, democratic and accountable as possible. The committee members, no matter how unpalatable some of us might view each other's views, will be heard. I will ensure that their views are heard. We recently went to the Golden Jubilee hospital and spoke to staff and patients there. One of the ways in which we have brought more people into the committee system is that we had a breakfast meeting a few weeks back where we got 25 social care workers. I am really glad that you mentioned social care. My opinion that social care is the biggest health issue in Scotland at the moment. If we do not get this right, then we are in huge trouble because of the ageing population. We brought 25 social care workers in to speak to them about the terms and conditions that they have in their workplace. My instruction to them or advice them was to tell it like it is that you have this opportunity. By God, they took their opportunity. It was fantastic. What they told us was very uncomfortable to listen to. I have been involved in this issue for a long time. None of it surprised me, but a lot of it appalled me. Social care is something that we have to get right. It is not just about paying a living wage. Why should we only pay care workers who care for their loved ones, 8-pound odds an hour? To me, that is a scandal. It is all of the other issues relating to their work. Why should they have to pay for their own uniforms and phone calls? Why do not they get paid when there is a gap in their work in the middle of the day? Social care is a huge issue, but we want to speak to many more people who are in the front line workers, both front line workers and patients and people who are working in the system. That is the engagement that is holding the Government to account. Ministers expect to be called to committees regularly. I think that we have had the health secretary before us probably four or five times already, and that will happen regularly. Health boards expect to be called to give account for their actions as well. The new joint authorities on health and social care have been in. Many of them have been in. After Christmas, we intend to get the regulators in, so that is like people like healthcare in Provement Scotland and the public sector ombudsman, and all of that is around the regulation of the health and social care system, and we speak to local authorities regularly too. The population, as I said, is getting older. If you look at the statistics, 2012-17 per cent, the population is over 65. That will soon be 25 per cent of the population. That is a huge shift. That is a really good thing that we are all living longer, but I think that most of us know that if we are living longer, then at the later years of our life, we live those extra years where complex, multiple conditions that need managed and need managed for long periods of time. That can often be complex. It can also be expensive for both the patient and for the services, and we need to get our head round how we, as a country, as a society, are going to provide high-quality decent services for that ageing population. Those changes are very significant and will have to be planned and executed properly if it is going to be successful. As people get older, unfortunately, healthy life expectancy is not keeping at pace with life expectancy. The new health and social care boards, 31 of them, are all operational up and running, and they have major responsibilities for delivering services in your area. We have identified that they have different cycles of budgets. The health NHS has a different cycle from local government, and that is causing issues around budgets. The way in which money has been allocated for things such as the living wage to care workers was not implemented particularly well according to the integration joint boards and caused a whole range of problems. There is a real recognition that we have to shift money from hospital settings into the community if we are going to tackle that ageing population and keep people in their homes longer, because being at home and amongst your family and friends and people who love you and care for you is the safest place that you can be—it is not hospital. All that is really on the agenda in terms of the new boards. One major issue that kind of haunts the NHS in Scotland is delayed discharge. People stuck in hospital who should be at home, who want to be home, the vast majority of the time, but cannot get out because there is a delay for some reason. It might be because there is a package of care that has not been provided or cannot be provided, or complex issues that are difficult to get a resolution to. That is costing the system a huge amount of money. We are finding it difficult to get agreement on what it costs to keep somebody in hospital for a day or a week. Some people suggest that it is £2,500 and other people suggest that it is £4,500. However, if you can provide care in somebody's home for say £400 a week with decent care at home, why are we keeping people in hospital for say £3,000 or £4,000 a week when they do not want to be there and it is safer for them to be in their home? That is a real major issue. I have not got a lot of time left, so I will crack on. Other work that the committee has been looking at recently is recruitment in the health and social care system, which is a massive problem. We have got a GP crisis. There is a real shortage of nurses. Just yesterday, there was a report on the shortage of nurses in private care homes. There is about a 28 per cent gap in the number of nurses at the need in care homes. We have been looking at the performance of the NHS. We have been looking at how the new GP hubs system will be rolled out and we have been looking at that community care, social care workforce issue. Much more will be done after Christmas. The committee is now considering what its next lot of work will be. We have been doing very short inquiries because we have a lot of new members on the committee, many of whom have no experience in health. That is a very good thing because they come with no baggage and fresh eyes and fresh ears. They are looking at things with a different approach. We have been doing an overview of a number of issues. Initially, we thought that it would be a good opportunity to educate all the committee and refresh the committee on health issues. What it has done is allowed us to cut to the chase very quickly. Rather than sit for weeks going into every dot and comma, we have actually cut to the chase on some issues and really got some powerful evidence. We have called the Government to account on a number of things and health boards to account. We will be launching a series of inquiries in the new year. Some of them, I suspect, will be much longer, more substantial pieces of work that will run aside some short, sharp inquiries. The committee will be getting out of the building because we want to get out into the community and speak to people like ourselves and other organisations and hear first hand from people on the front line how their experience is of the health and social care system in Scotland. It is largely a good story, but there are a number of issues and problems that we have to address. That will be the role of the Health and Sport Committee. I do not speak for other committees when I have been on anything that I have said. I am just trying to give you a flavour of the work that my committee does and will continue to do in the coming weeks and months. I thank you very much. My time is up. Thank you, Neil. That is a very helpful insight into the work of the Health and Sport Committee, one of our most important committees here. I now call on Jeane Freeman, who is the Minister for Social Security, to address the assembly. The minister will talk to us about the Scottish Government's actions on a range of issues to support older people. Thank you very much. I start by thanking Sopa and all of you for the opportunity to be here this morning. As Neil says, it is actually a better site to be standing here. Neil and I have, in the past couple of weeks, exchanged a few sharp words, and it just shows you the difference that it makes when other people come into our Parliament because he lent me his pen this morning. I also repeat the Presiding Officer's thanks to Sopa and everyone who has been involved in organising today's event. It does take a fair bit of effort and we are grateful for that. My thanks to all of you for taking the time to come along and particularly to our guests from Northern Ireland. I also especially thank Sopa for the lost songs of St Kilda. If you have not had the opportunity to listen to that CD, it is absolutely beautiful and particularly beautiful when you know the history of how it was discovered and how the CD has been made. This has been a year of significant change for many of us and for our country as a whole and it has also been a year of change for Sopa. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on becoming a Scottish charitable incorporated organisation. It is not an easy task to go through that exercise. It is important and valuable to do it but it does take a great deal of time and effort and I hope that you have found at least the process valuable and congratulations to you for achieving it. I also thank Sopa for your continuing work to ensure that the concerns of older people throughout Scotland are given expression and that older people are particularly involved in decisions that affect their lives. The work that Sopa and other organisations working with older people do is important. Your experience and your views are critical to helping us as a Government to create a better and fairer Scotland. I am, of course, an older person myself. I have to say that it is not how I think of myself and I suspect that it is not how many of you think of yourselves either. In our heads we are at least in our 20s and I think that that is a good thing. Somebody the other day accused me of behaving like a teenager. I found that to be a great complement and it was in this chamber in fact and I was also only last week called diminutive. I have never been called diminutive in my life so I have had a pretty good week. Me and Nell are exchanging pens, I have been called a teenager, it has just all been grand. I do not think of myself as an older person and I suspect that you do not either because what we are are people of talent, of experience, of insight, of expertise and of ability. Each one of us has a history and a story and, most of all, each one of us has a great deal to offer. We use all of that to help our families, our friends, our communities and many, many of us to try to help our country too. Some of us are in paid employment, some are caring for friends and loved ones, some are volunteering. All of us are doing our bit to continue to contribute to our own lives and to the lives of others and your voices are important in making sure that people across Scotland see that and see what we have to offer for all the value that we can bring. These are not easy times and you have told us clearly and often of the pressures and challenges that older people face. It remains important that, as a Government, as a Parliament across all our parties, we continue to work to tackle poverty and inequality and find the ways that we can make the most impact for the work that we do. That is why, as your Government, we invest in services and initiatives to make sure that older people's voices can be heard with equal value and alongside everyone else. From smaller projects such as generations working together and out of the box, to our support for the national entitlement card on local and long-distance buses, energy efficiency installation to help to reduce fuel bills and the £100 million a year that the Government spends simply to reduce the worst effects of UK welfare reform, including millions into the Scottish welfare fund and to mitigate the bedroom tax. Last year, the Scottish Government held a national conversation about what more needed to be done to build a fairer Scotland and, in October, we published our fairer Scotland action plan, with 50 specific actions designed to tackle poverty, reduce inequality and build a more inclusive country. Of course, older people were an important part of those conversations and we learned of two particular concerns that were raised—free personal and nursing care and the growing experience of too many of isolation and loneliness. We have made clear our continuing protection of free personal and nursing care for older people and we have begun the work to look at the feasibility of extending that support to people with dementia who are under 65 years old. Loneliness and isolation, of course, affects people of all ages, but as we get older, our capacity to act entirely for ourselves in order to address that issue can lessen, ill health, loss of friends and family can all combine to add to our loneliness. We have tried to offer practical support to community-based projects and to Age Scotland for their silver-line work, but there is a great deal more to do and a real need for us to co-ordinate a better response. Next year, we will work together with SOPA and others to develop a new strategic approach to how we tackle social isolation and loneliness from the ground up, from communities themselves. Many of us are in work or we want to be in work. For some, it is because we want to keep on working, but increasingly, as more and more of us will find our pensions less able to help us make ends meet, more will stay in work or seek work, because we have to. Too often, though, finding work is hard because we are considered too old. Like so many prejudices, we are not seen for the skills, the experience and the ability that we offer, but instead for the grey hair and the wrinkles that we carry. We need to work with you to help employers to see past all that and work with you to remove the other barriers that are faced, including making sure that the devolved employment programmes that we will shortly have are tailored to offer older people the skill training and the support that is needed. Finally, let me turn to two particular issues that I know are of concern. The first of those is, as has been mentioned, the negative impact of major changes to the state pension, particularly as it affects women. I am aware of your strong support and mine for the growing number of women against state pension inequality, the Waspie movement. We support the equalisation of the pension age for men and women, but what we cannot support is a situation where more than two million women paid their national insurance contributions, expecting that they would receive their state pension at a certain age, only to find that the goalposts were removed by the UK Government without, at the very best, any real adequate notice. The effect of this change is that many women have had their retirement plans and the limited financial security that they had paid for and planned for, shattered, and are now forced to accept temporary part-time work, even our low-paid contracts, all of which themselves offer very little financial security. It is a matter of considerable regret to me that we do not have the powers in this Parliament to change that situation, but we have pressed the UK Government to step back from this deep unfairness. So far, they have not listened, but I hope that, with the continuing involvement of all of Scotland's MPs in the UK Parliament, with Waspie and with others, we will eventually help the UK Government to not only see sense but to see what is reasonable and fair. One of your other campaign issues from last year was funeral poverty. As many of you will know, 11 benefits will be devolved to Scotland, including funeral payment, and a month ago we completed a three-month Scotland-wide consultation exercise, an exercise designed specifically to hear directly from those experiencing the current benefit system for those particular benefits. The object of that exercise was to listen to that experience and to hear ideas about how it could be improved. Benefits such as attendance allowance, disability living allowance, now moving towards personal independence payment, carers allowance, winter fuel and cold weather payments and, as I have said, funeral payments of particular interest and relevance to older people. Over 120 events were held in every local authority across Scotland, and we have now received over 500 written responses, around half of those from individuals and not from organisations. From all of that, it is certainly clear that there is a real interest and a real desire to be involved. I want to thank SOPA for the support that it gave us to that consultation and the continuing support that I know that it will offer as we begin to build that service. On funeral poverty, both SOPA and the Scottish Pensioners Forum are members of the group that we are working with to look at how we can most effectively tackle the issues involved. The cabinet secretary, Angela Constance, has hosted three round table discussions and a national conference on funeral poverty that involved the funeral industry, local authorities, third sector organisations and others—all of the people that we need to get round a table to address some of the issues that Tom outlined earlier. The programme of work before us includes creating a more effective safety net in the form of the Scottish funeral payment when the powers transferred to us from the DWP, exploring options around a Scottish funeral bond to help people to save and plan ahead financially for our own funeral and publishing a funeral cost plan in spring of next year to bring together action across all of the sectors. Last Wednesday, Angela Constance also announced that we will provide funding for the next 18 months to make sure that citizens advice bureaus, 2,300 advisers, can access training to help them provide better to support to people who want to put their affairs in order or apply for that funeral payment. Across all the other benefits, it is my absolute intention that we will continue to build our new social security system for Scotland from the ground up. It is complex, its scale is large, but it is also an absolutely golden opportunity for us here in Scotland for the first time in decades if not longer to build a new public service. In building that service from the ground up, we will, in January, launch a recruitment exercise for 2,000 volunteers—people who are currently in receipt of any one or more than one of those 11 benefits—to join us as volunteers in our experience panels, to work with us over the lifetime of this Parliament, to help us to build everything about this system, from how it informs people about what is available, what the benefits are, their eligibility, who they are for, to how it communicates with individuals, to how the decision-making process works, to how the appeal process works, to where and how you see it can touch it and can speak to it. I hope that many of you in this room and SOPA and the other organisations will help us to promote that recruitment exercise, because that real, lived, direct experience of the service as it currently sits with the UK and how we should improve it is absolutely vital to making sure that this golden opportunity is one that we get right for the first time. Those 11 benefits will affect one in four of us—1.4 million people—so there is a responsibility there, but also an absolutely marvellous opportunity. Finally, let me just repeat what the First Minister herself has said. That is the central ambition for this Government and at the heart of our overall programme across all the portfolios, is to make real and lasting progress towards equality and greater opportunity for all. I hope that you will take my assurance that, from my point of view as a Government minister, greater opportunity for all and real equality includes all of us, as well as everyone else in Scotland. Thank you very much for your time and I hope that you have a very productive and useful day. I would now like to ask John McCormack. If John McCormack would come forward to speak to the Assembly, John McCormack comes with a wealth experience from the BBC, the SQA, the Liberal Commission, but I am delighted that he has agreed to chair the Commission on Parliamentary Reform and will speak to you about making your voice heard in this Parliament. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I can also thank Tom Burnley and the Assembly Committee for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. Last month, the Presiding Officer announced that he was setting up an independent commission on parliamentary reform. I was delighted to be asked to chair this commission and it reminded me of how privileged I felt to be present at the opening ceremony of the new Parliament in 1999. Since then, this Parliament has changed the lives of people in Scotland and, like many people, I now find it difficult to consider a Scotland without this Parliament at the heart of its democracy. Since it was established in 1999, we have seen a lot of change in politics as well as across wider society. 17 years ago, social media was in its infancy. 16 and 17-year-olds could not vote in elections. Over that period, the Parliament itself has changed, gaining many new powers in 2012 and again in 2016. It is a good time to reflect on whether the Parliament remains fit for purpose and for the challenges that lie ahead. In 1999, four key principles were set out for the Parliament. It was to be accountable and to the people of Scotland, and it should hold the Scottish Government to account. It was to be open and encouraged participation, involving the people of Scotland in its decisions as much as possible. It was to be power sharing, sharing power among the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland, and at the core of everything, it was to promote equal opportunities, treating all people fairly. The commission's job is to look at how the Parliament works today, keeping those original principles in mind. We have been charged with three key purposes. Ensuring that the Parliament has the right procedures, checks and balances in place for the most effective conduct of parliamentary business, clarifying the Parliament's distinct identity from that of the Scottish Government, and underpinning all of that, increasing Parliament's engagement with the public and wider society, as we have already heard this morning from Mr Finlay. It is a sizable task to deliver in a few months. We are planning to report in the summer, but it is one that I and the other members of the commission are greatly looking forward to. The commission itself is made up of 11 members, a representative from each of the five parties in the Parliament, and six members from Civic Scotland, who represent a wide and diverse range of experience across our communities. We have met twice so far, and when I leave here shortly, I will join my colleagues for our third meeting this afternoon. We are in the early stages of planning how we will take the work forward, but we want to involve as many people across Scotland as possible, from those with a wealth of experience of engaging with the Parliament to those who might never have thought about how it works or thought about getting involved. The fact that you are all sitting here today means that you are already involved in some way with the way the Parliament works. The Scottish Older People's Assembly and its aims and activities embraces many of the founding principles of the Parliament, ensuring that people who you represent are included in the decision-making processes, promoting active citizenship and seeking equality and social justice for all. I know that there is a wide spectrum of organisations here today who represent the varied interests and concerns with the older population. The experiences and skills of the people involved have ensured that SOPA has good access to Governments and Parliament, raising issues directly with ministers, cross-party groups and Parliament, as well as the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. You work hard to make sure that you represent the views and concerns of older people at grassroots and also to be in a strong position to challenge or support laws that are passed. A look at your website shows how active you are and how varied is your approach to getting people talking and campaigning and getting people involved. I have noticed that you have also been successful in getting politicians to take notice. In 2014, when your assembly was held here in the Parliament, some of the delegates took an active role in contributing views to the local government and regeneration committee's work on the community empowerment bill, and your views helped to shape discussions around one of the key acts passed in session 4 of this Parliament. With all that activity in mind, I would like to invite you all today to contribute to the work of the Commission on Parliamentary Reform, to use your experiences to inform the commission and to help to shape our discussions. For those of you who have engaged directly with parliamentary business, whether taking part in a committee inquiry or submitting some written evidence or perhaps submitting a petition or signing a petition, we would like to hear your views about the processes and how effective you found the experience, what was good about it and what could have been done differently. For everyone else, we would like to hear about any other ways that you have been involved with the Parliament. There are many ways that you can do this. Yesterday, we put out a call for views asking people to tell us about their experiences, and you can find all the unnecessary information on our website. If you type in parliamentaryreform.scot, everything is there, parliamentaryreform.scot. Any problems with that, a telephone call to the Parliament's number asking for the commission in parliamentary reform and you will get through. There is also on the website an online survey that only takes a few minutes to complete. It asks about the ways that you have engaged with the Parliament, or not, as the case may be. We would also ask you to get as many of your colleagues and friends as possible to complete this survey. The more views we get, the better our understanding of what people's experiences are. I know that many of you are here representing organisations with many members living across Scotland. We would also like to hear from them. We can support you in organising discussions and gathering views. If you have any events or meetings coming up between now and March, we would like you to consider helping us with our task. We can supply you with information, a discussion toolkit or, if possible, get involved directly with your events. Please get in touch with the commission to discuss what is possible. There are many challenges ahead for the Parliament. Significant new powers are being devolved at a time when resources are stretched. Technology will no doubt continue to develop at a rapid pace changing methods of working, participation and communication. Underlying that remains the key principles of openness, accessibility, power sharing and equal opportunities. The commission's role is to ensure that the practices and processes are in place to safeguard those. Looking ahead, I think that you will agree that what we all want to achieve as a Parliament fit for the next phase of Scotland's development. A Parliament fit for the 21st century, a Parliament that will be relevant for the new 16 and 17-year-old voters now and throughout the rest of their lives. So please type in parliamentaryreform.scot and find out what we're up to and then get in touch with us. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I look forward to working with you in the months ahead. Thank you very much, John. Thanks indeed to all our speakers this morning. It's a chance now for everybody here to contribute and participate. If you wish to make a few remarks or perhaps direct a few questions to our either our chair or parliamentarians here, this is the opportunity we've got about 20 minutes before a series of other presentations. If you do want to speak and ask a question, put your hand up. I'll look at this. Everyone's gone quiet. I'll take a few people. If you could stand up, if possible, and introduce yourself and then make your work. I'll just take the lady in the back there to begin with. Yes, lady in the back of my head. I think my voice is loud enough without this. Can you hear me? My name is Peg Yong Berry and I am the representative from the Fair for All sterling branch. The question I would like to ask is directed at Neil Finlay regarding, he mentioned about shortage of nurses in Scotland and I think all of us know that through the media and so on. I want to ask him what is going to be the impact of Brexit on recruitment and retention of nurses from the EU? Before we take that, do you mind if I just take a couple more and then I'll ask a few more hands up please. We'll just take this gentleman here first. Yes, yes, sir. Thank you. Bill Finlay, learning in later life, University of South Clyde. I would like to ask a question, a general question. I came through here by train this morning and it was excellent. It's a very good way for older people to travel. The staff were really courteous, really kind and the train run in time. Would it be possible for Parliament to approach the railway company and ask them to appoint a senior manager as a troubleshooter, someone who could call out the right staff at the right time when something went wrong, an engineer capable of freeing the brakes of a train stuck across the blocking the entrance to Edinburgh Waverley or perhaps a line has come down somewhere over in the west? He would then be able to get an overhead man out or whoever out to fix that as quickly as possible at the same time to alert the management in various stations to let the passengers know what is going on. So would it be possible for us to have such a man appointed? Thank you, Bill. A question that was put repeatedly this week in Parliament. Can I have any more hands-up over this side here? Yes, ladies in the front row here. You can actually, if you just speak to your mic for Europe, you can stand up. Do you mind if I do? No, that's fine, you can sit down. Helena Scott, Scottish Mental Health Co-operative Action in mind. This morning we've heard equal opportunities mentioned. We've also heard the new innovative health and social care integration. However, there is no consistency across the 31 IJBs in Scotland. I'm particularly concerned when it comes to looking at the needs of older people where there is very active sort of separation of adults and older people, our old age psychiatry. I'm looking at it particularly from a mental health. How can we actually ensure that we are not dismissing older people from adult social care by age-capping social care services, particularly in commissioning frameworks? I do believe that this could be discriminatory, and I think that we need to be sure that there is consistency and it is a responsibility of the Scottish Government to ensure that we apply that fairness across groups and we don't use age as a proxy to separate services. Neil Duggan, on the first issue of Brexit, who knows what's going to happen? Partly, the UK Government doesn't seem to know what's happening. If we removed all the overseas staff from the NHS today, it would crumble and die. That's the simple fact. My wife works in the St John's hospital in Livingston, and she goes in and out of the hospital, she sees the number of staff, speaks to them from across the EU and across the world. Those are very difficult things to predict, and I certainly would not predict what's going to happen. In the care home sector, I think that the situation could be even worse, because many of the low-paid people that we've been talking about who work in social care, particularly in care homes, come in from overseas, and many are very badly exploited as well. I certainly would not predict what's going to happen. I don't think that anybody could, if you can't predict what's going to happen, go to the booties, you'll make a lot of money, but I think that many people couldn't. On another couple of things, on the mental health issue, I think that that principle applies to anything. For example, we give free personal care at the moment it's over 65. My brother has multiple sclerosis and can't walk the length of this lector. He's had it for 20 odd years. He gets no social care whatsoever. Why is it age-related? I do not understand why it's age-related and not condition-related, but those are huge issues that we need to address. I think that there is an issue about we have to allow the joint boards the autonomy to deal with issues in their area, to reflect the needs in their area, but that should not mean that there's a complete disparity between a service that you may receive in Highland and one that you receive in Dumfries and Galloway. As for my friend with the trains, I get the train every day. I would have thought that what you're calling for is actually the role of the train operator anyway. Why are they not doing these things as normal? If a train doesn't work, why is somebody not fixing it? The system has got significantly worse, and if he speaks to passengers as I do every day when we're on the train, there's now a kind of resignation that is just a rubbish service. They're not even getting angry anymore. They just expect it to be poor. I got the train this morning. There was no problem, but there regularly are. Jeane Freeman, do you want to comment on a couple of those issues? Thank you very much. Just a short point on the question of the impact of Brexit. It seems to me that if we look at health, simply at health, the problem that we face partly because we don't know what the UK Government's plans are, but if we lose our current workers in the health service in terms of who are EU nationals or others. Not only are we losing numbers, we're actually losing a significant skillset and experience that contributes to and enriches our health service. For many years, I had the absolute privilege of chairing the board at Golden Jubilee, and I know that that board benefited hugely in terms of our heart and lung work, as well as our elective work in orthopedics, from the interchange of skills and experience between those healthcare professionals, be they consultants or others, who came to us from other countries and our own homegrown, if you like, healthcare professionals being able to go to those other countries too and bring back new ideas and new techniques. The loss would be a significant one, and one that I think that we should do everything that we can to try to prevent. I wrote down—I hope that it's recorded—that, probably for the first time in this chamber in the last couple of weeks, somebody said that the trains ran on time. I'm going to send it to Mr Yousaf. It will be of some comfort to him. I agree with Neil. I think that the point that the gentleman that Yousaf laid out just seemed—I'm sure that everyone here—a perfectly sensible system. The real question is not why couldn't we have that, but why don't we have it? I hope that, in the actions that Mr Yousaf outlined, I'm sure that, in there, we will see that that is a question that he has put very strongly to Abelio and to Scott Rail. We will look to see those improvements. I think that we have been clear about what happens if those common sense, basic improvements and, including in communication, telling us, as we stand on that platform or whatever, what is happening will take place. We are all, generally speaking, in this country, pretty reasonable and fair people. We accept that things happen. What we don't like is to feel ignored, because nobody is bothering to tell us what is happening with our train or whatever. The last point on inconsistency in terms of an age cap, if you like, or what you worry might be an age cap across the IJBs. Two things. It's not my area of responsibility. I know that SOPA will be taking a careful note of all the issues that are raised today, and we will feed them back into Parliament. However, on both the train question and on this, I will make sure that the cabinet secretary and Mr Yousaf are aware of what is being said on all of that. I don't think that we can tolerate that kind of cap in terms of age, but I will raise that with Ms Robinson. I'm sure that she will look at it and perhaps be able to get back to Tom and SOPA with her thoughts. I can have some more questions, and then we'll let the gentleman here, the lady right in the back, and the lady in the middle there. The gentleman here first. Yes, my name is Yanda Freese. I'm from U3A in East Kilbride. We're questioning that about how the annual increase to the old state pension is applied. The old state pension has several elements. The basic state pension has additions. For example, if you defer your pension, you don't take it for a number of years, you get additions for deferment. There's also a second state pension if you didn't contact out. A few years ago, the annual increase was applied to all those different elements, to the basic state pension, to the second state pension, to the deferment. Over the past two or three years, the DWP has just quietly given a zero increase to those additional state pensions. I don't know if people are aware of that. For example, this year, the annual increase was applied to the basic state pension only. For example, for my wife, the headline rate was something like 2.5 or 2.6 per cent. The net impact of applying the increase to the basic state pension only was that my wife's state pension that she received was 1.59 per cent. I think that that's grossly unfair. My question is, why has the DWP just quietly ditched those increases to those legitimate additions to the state pension? Jeane Coulthart, Secretary of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, Lanarkshire branch. I am also a volunteer adviser in the Humane Advice Centre. We fill in attendance allowance forms and everything with an independent advice centre. You say that you are giving a lot of money to CAB. What about the independent advice centres? Because they are the ones that do a lot more to the community than CAB and social work. A lot of people do not want to go to social work because you have to wait at least two to three months to get an appointment to get a form filled in. You are only giving four weeks to get that form filled in. Sometimes they won't accept an extension. We do lots of things. We do home visits for the pensioners to fill in attendance allowance forms. We deal with quite a lot of things. North Lanarkshire Council is closing us down. We had our funding cut by 36 per cent. We help the community far more than the CAB. We have that point. Thank you very much. The lady is right in the middle there. Yes, yes, with her hand up. Her microphone should come on in a second. Yes, I think. The lady in the tartan jacket. Thank you very much. My name is Heather Goodair. I chair the Edinburgh Health Forum. I have raised the issue locally in Edinburgh, but I would be very interested to know what is going on in the rest of the country. My question is to Neil Findlay about the terms and conditions of care workers. He has raised one or two points already, but what I am really concerned about is that when you are working on a split shift, you clock off at 10 o'clock at night and you start again at 8 o'clock in the morning. That is in contravention of the European working time directive. While we are still in Europe, can we please fix this problem and make sure that shift work patterns do not introduce this anomaly? I know that, in other parts of Scotland, I have heard that in Galashield, the workers clock off at 8 o'clock and the night shift takes over. It would be interesting now to hear what goes on in the rest of Scotland and whether they have overcome the problem and how they have done it. Thank you very much. Thank you. For both our politicians again, I think that that is a question. Jeane Freeman wants to go first this time. If we are brief with the answers, we will get a couple more questions. In terms of the UK state pension, I wish that we had the power to take the decisions that would answer the problem that you have outlined. It is a very clear problem and you are absolutely correct in terms of the increases that have not been applied to the additional elements and the fact that that is not widely known and may indeed be news to some of the folks in this chamber today. I can only speculate that the rationale for that is part of the UK Government's thoroughdom to austerity as a way of getting us all out of trouble, a policy that everybody will have their own views on. I personally think that that is not working. In terms of the lady at the back and the independent advice centres, the particular bit of funding that I was talking about is related to funeral poverty. However, the Scottish Government spends £30 million a year on advice services across the country. As part of the work that is being done in parallel to building our new social security system, it is a review not to reduce that amount of money but to look at where advice services exist, what is the advice that they offer, where are the other gaps and perhaps in some places duplication, because one of the things that I am determined that we will have in a new social security system in Scotland is clear information for everyone on every benefit that is available, regardless of which Government is responsible for it, and clear information on where to get advice and support to make your claim and fill in those forms. That work is going on and that will allow us to look and see if we are making the best use of that £30 million bearing in mind your point about community-based advice services and the value that they bring. I do not particularly think that there is always a one-size-fits-all answer to those matters. We will be looking at that and taking those points on board as well. I am happy for anybody who is involved in advice services to contact me directly and offer me their thoughts on what would be the best approach that we should take. I say on pensions that I know nothing about pensions to my great shame. It is an issue that I am personally having to deal with at the moment, because I have something like five pensions sitting in various pots and I am trying to find out and get advice on what to do with it. Part of the issue is that it is not clear. I am not clear as to what to do with that. If I am not clear and I kind of know who the system is to speak to, then what is Mrs Smith who stays next to me, who is not tuned into the system? How is she getting that advice? I make that public confession that it is something that I know very little about. I think that that is the same for a great many people. When you are younger, you put your hands over your ears when people talk about pensions and yet probably it is one of the most important things in life. I am publicly displaying my ignorance of the issue, but I hope to make a pertinent point. On the advice shop stuff, the experience that you are talking about when people go to other advice centres is not the experience that I have in my particular area in West Lothian. We have a fantastic advice shop run by the council and has been for a very long time. The issue that you will be experiencing is that you probably were funded by local authority yet and that has been cut. Local Government finances is on its knees. It is on its knees. The council tax freeze combined with cuts to local government. The local authority that I was a member of in West Lothian was the UK council of the year in 2006. It got that award because it was efficient, well-run and delivered good public services. So efficient, so well-run and so good were the services that it has had £90 million taken from it by government. I think that that is a scandal and it is a disgrace to the communities that we serve because we need essential services like you provide and like the whole host of others. Until we address that issue, services like you provide are going to go as will others. That is the reality of it. When I finish it, I am happy for you to come back on that. On the whole issue about benefits, pensions are lumped in with the benefits system. That is part of a drive by the UK Government that sees the benefits system in whatever form is one of the places that it is going to rip money out to deal with the austerity issue. Now that we have the opportunity to reshape the benefits system in Scotland, what we should be demanding is a right for people to get the benefit that they are entitled to. The target for the benefits system in Scotland should be to ensure that people who are entitled to benefit A get it and B that it is an accurate payment of that benefit and C that it is on time. Care workers are absolutely on the money on this. The issue of pay is just one element of it. Care workers might have some people to visit in the morning for a couple of hours then they have a gap during the day. If they do not live near their work, they are wandering about a supermarket or sitting in a cafe for a couple of hours and then they are going back on in the evening. They do not get paid for that couple of hours in between times. They do not get paid travelling time many of them between the people that they are visiting. One of them told us that every time they visit someone they have to phone in and tell their employer that they have been there and that they have to phone a premium rate phone line using their own phone. That kind of stuff is absolutely incredible. The whole package around care staff is much, much deeper than just paying them a living wage. That is a very, very small part of it. I am not going to take any more questions, but I will take a couple of statements. Jimmy Miller, I am a member of the SSA, SPF and SOPA, but the question that I would like to ask is the Scottish Government. I am also a member of what is known as equality for veterans. Most of the people in here do not realise that any veteran of my age—in other words, come out of the army 74 onwards—are not entitled to their pension, even though they were not allowed by army regulations to enter into a public pension scheme where they were serving. The British Government—I know that it is a devolved issue, but the British Government says three years ago on MP Katie Clark had a debate in Westminster about that issue. The British Government said that there are a quarter of a million veterans in that situation. I would like the Scottish Government to find out how many of that quarter of a million are Scottish veterans and how many of those are going to food banks where, if they were getting the pension, which they should have got in the first place, they would not need to go to food banks. I am asking if the Scottish Government could find out how many of those quarter of a million pensioners in my situation and other people like me—how many of them are Scottish and how many of them are going to food banks—were, if they were getting what they were entitled to, they would not be a drain on the public purse. The lady there is with a hat on, yes. My name is Mokami McCrum from the African Women's Group. Mine is actually an appeal, a request, just that we want to all of you, the forums and the assembly, Africans, some of you may know, have been in Scotland since 16th century contributing to the economy and also to the community as teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners. We've been everywhere, but I think the invisibility of Africa is something that bothers a great deal. As we grow older, we are finding that now we are becoming carers. We are worried about pension. In many ways, our story is your story. Our fears are your fears. Our tears are your tears.  We don't have a base where we can say you can come and speak to the older people there. When we find that we are struggling and we don't have anyone to support us or to help us, we don't know what to do. Many people end up being isolated or rejected and it's a big problem. Yet, when we speak to people, they tell us, we don't know about older people forums and we don't know about the assembly. So why is that the case? I don't know who it is. We have been knocking. When I was younger, I'm still young in my head, but I used to knock door at offices and policies and places, but now when I try to get up, I find my body doesn't run as quickly as my brain. So we need to stop knocking on your doors. You need now to start welcoming us and finding out who are the older people in your area because we can't all form our own retro groups everywhere. I think it's better if we're part of the system and sharing the services that are available. So I'm just throwing that to you and to the policy makers to see how you can make that happen. Thank you. Thanks very much. There's a lot of hands being up now, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to wait. There's a session this afternoon, and there's a lot of people who I'd like to get in. There's a session this afternoon with lots of attempts to make points or ask questions. Also, there's my colleague Jackson Carlaw here at the back, Jackson. I take it you'll be around to be able to contribute later. Sorry, yes. Eura, a reform commission this afternoon. Permission for attending here is not granted in that case. Anyway, I'm glad that Jackson was here also to hear the comments made. I'm just going to move on because we've got a number of presentations now, but 10 presentations. The first one's going to be from Donald McLeod from the Highland Senior Citizens Network. I would just ask you, Donald, to keep it very tight to a few minutes if you can. Thank you. Thank you very much. Matin Vaugh, or Fesker Maugh, says now. Good afternoon. Highland Senior Citizens Network, we have over 300 members. We have a mantra and nothing about us without us. In recent times, we've seen a change take place in the culture of involvement. Much more involvement is possible now than it used to be. I take the point about knocking on doors. It used to be knocking on doors, the music would be turned up, the curtains would be drawn and you wouldn't be able to get anybody to pay attention, or if they did, they would offer you an appointment next June at five to five for five minutes, that kind of thing. Nowadays, there is a national culture of involvement, community empowerment bill through to the SDS act, the integrated joint boards, the carers act that will come into being. All of these stress involvement, involvement, involvement. In April this year, we held our annual conference and a selection of quotes were given to people and we were asked, what's your favourite quote? The favourite quote was this one, Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand. That's based on the writings of Zun Kwank 2200 years ago, so that wisdom has been around, we've been slow to apply it. Involve me and I will understand. I would pay full sum tribute actually to NHS Highland, Highland Council, our independent sector partners and the voluntary sector generally. We now have commitment to involvement in Highland. We have two workers, Ann MacDonald, Devan and Joe. Joe is going to join us very shortly, would stand there, that you can see who they are. Courtesy of the integrated care fund, three days a week each, they will be working. Involvement and engagement co-ordinators is their title about supporting the involvement of older people, because you can't expect that just to happen as a matter of course. And as you were saying, you have to go out to communities, go and find people, where are they, how do they live? We have to go and find the people who are invisible to many of us. 32,000 older people today live in care homes. Where are their voices? How are they heard? I'm going to give you some instances of how we have involved people. Care home in Inverness, fairly, bad report, four ones across the board, we wrote to them expressing our profound disappointment with them. It was a national chain, they said. Senior execs came up to meet us and we gave them an offer and said, what can we do to help you? Ann is in that care home now on a regular basis, enabling the residents to speak out, to say what's on their mind, to fill in surveys, supporting them to do that. Another care home was wanting that to happen. Now, no, not just about communities coming into care homes, the care home residents are saying, what about us going to visit other care home residents? Let's get out and meet people. That is critical. 32,000 people need their voices heard and we need to support them. Care at home, we had a problem in the north and west highlands. Again, an in-house service, poor ratings. The door has been knocked, and we've said, can we help you to improve that? They said, we're desperate for you to help us. We've got the trust of older people's groups throughout Highland, so it will mean that we can facilitate the conversations with older people's groups and local communities in Highland to say, care at home, let's have a conversation and let's look at how this will happen.  You were saying that, and I think that John McCormack had been talking about it, the importance of going out to people and saying where you are, we can find you and we'll have the conversations. With Sopa's help, Catarax, Catarax became a big issue in Highland, huge delays. We took it up and said, we've got to address this. Sopa helped us, put it on to the national agenda. Now, the latest report I heard was, Catarax, they are being dealt with. There were special measures put in, weekends, appointments and so on, so things have changed. Such a critical issue, action resulted. Last point, communities rising up to care. We need communities to do that, and they are doing it in Highland, and I'll share examples of that maybe later. Generations working together. We are the national centre for intergenerational work, and we support people across the whole of Scotland. Our vision is to create a fairer Scotland, where people of all ages, particularly—this is the key—the younger and the older people within our communities. To build respect and understanding, which will then result in building a more community spirit, will allow people to be able to speak more freely. We have lots of benefits for our younger and older people. I think that intergenerational work is extremely cost effective, and it contributes to multiple agendas of what we have been talking about here this morning. I just want to give you some of the benefits to older people of being involved. Older people directly have told us that they feel less discriminated against. They understand younger people. They feel safer in the community because of their involvement with younger people. The loneliness in isolation is a huge area that we can help through intergenerational work. People feel empowered. People feel more confident. They learn new experiences and new skills. One thing that we have in vast amounts in this room is a wealth of life experience and a wealth of skills. We have all got that part to play in passing some of that information to our younger people. We have talked about care homes, which is one of the areas that intergenerational work works extremely well. We see younger people going into visit and doing lots of different activities with people in care homes. What that is actually doing is reducing loneliness and isolation for the older people. It has given them something to look forward to. For the younger people, we have now seen an impact that they are discovering that older people—I am not saying everybody—are really interesting and that we have got something that we can be doing together. We are now seeing younger people go in and training, volunteering in care homes, training and then going on to full-time and part-time employment in care homes. It is a win-win situation. I personally, for intergenerational work, would love to see more intergenerational work in care homes, because it is one of the answers that is very cost-effective. If we can bring volunteering, intergenerational work and be friending into care at home and care homes, we would be going a long way to addressing some of the issues that we have.  Intergenerational work, generations working together, come and visit us please, thank you. Helena Scott and Angela Dias from the Scottish Mental Health Co-operative, thank you very much. Hello everyone and thank you SOPA very much for giving us this opportunity to address mental health as a key public health issue in Scotland. We are particularly interested in mental health in later life. We represent the Scottish Mental Health Co-operative, which is a collaboration of the local mental health organisations in Scotland. Each of us provides services across all ages, including those to mental health in later life. I should add that we also originated the idea of the age in mind project, which Angela is going to speak a little bit more about. It is a unique project in Scotland because it is addressing specifically the needs of people aged 50 and over with pre-existing mental health conditions and also those who are growing older with mental health conditions. If I can ask you please to take one salient point home with you today about mental health, then let it be that more older people experience depression than experience dementia in Scotland. More older people experience depression than dementia. I quote the Scottish Government's mental health strategy for 2012-2015. The social determinants of depression, of course, are loneliness and isolation. They are not the only determinants but they are key determinants. Alison, you mentioned that. Thank you very much indeed. My last point is, today I would really like to ask you, in fact I would like to plead with you to help us to complete this three-year project, which completes in October next year, by putting mental health on your agendas because without you, and you are the catalyst for this change, if you think about one in four of us in Scotland will experience some diagnosable mental health condition at some point in our lives and it's likely that one in four of us here has a mental health condition already. I'll pass to Angela now. The project Age in Mind spoke to around 150 older people in Scotland and about 60 organisations who worked with them to find out what were the issues of stigma and discrimination that people faced and they told us many, many, many issues. But one that I'm going to concentrate on today and that's come up already is that people perceive that there is an age bar to services at the age of 65. The effects on people are absolutely profound. What people told us about was that the experience reduced availability to services. They no longer saw community nurses or psychiatrists. They took much longer to have medication reviewed instead of medication. It was unhealthy for them for a long time and they had much less access to psychological therapies than they had had when they were under 65. They felt they were often being treated as if they had dementia, which when they actually didn't, they had other kinds of mental health problems. They felt that the care plans they received were very discriminatory in the sense that when you're under 65, you have quite aspirational care plans. When you get to 65, your care plan is suddenly all about keeping you safe and well, as if you have no other ambitions in life, although you may have another 35 years to live. They talked about the fear of losing places at mental health centres or not being able to access them anymore if they weren't set up to work with the needs of older people. They also talked about the benefits system where if you're over 65, there are certain elements of disability living allowance or PIP as it is now, which you can't access if you acquire your disability or mental health problem after the age of 65. All these things add to poverty and isolation for people. All these things are really serious issues which we are campaigning against and I would really ask that if I can get Glenda to disseminate some information that you would support us when we campaign to get this age bar removed from health services across Scotland and across certain elements of the benefit system because we really, really believe that people's needs should be based on what they need rather than what their age is. It's an irrelevant and it's wrong and it's totally discriminatory and probably nobody intends that discrimination but the effect on people's lives is really, really bad so we'd really appreciate your support in this campaign. Thank you. Caffeine, thank you. Caffeine from the University of the Third Age Scotland, thank you Caffeine. Good afternoon. Introduced into the UK from France in the early 1980s, the University of the Third Age now has 1,000 member U3As and in excess of 350,000 members throughout the UK. Here in Scotland we have 47 member U3As and over 4,000 members. Each member U3A is independently run and is therefore able to reflect the interests and needs of its members. Initially it was an organisation purely concerned with lifelong learning. The changing demographics of the country have led us to become increasingly aware of the important role we can play in the health and well-being of our members and this is reflected in many of our subject groups. One of our underlying aims now is to help minimise the feelings of isolation and loneliness by encouraging and facilitating active participation in groups. Meeting friends old and new is a crucial part of our organisation. Throughout Scotland where location allows local members are building links with universities and schools to facilitate intergenerational learning and to extend their own knowledge. This is particularly valuable in areas such as computer technology, local and social history projects and in healthcare and health awareness. Improving the confidence of our members has encouraged many to become proactive in joining other groups, becoming board members, volunteering in health programmes, becoming active in local pressure groups, especially in rural transport and affordable houses and also participating in many intergenerational programmes and events. In this way the wealth of experience and knowledge of our members is used to the benefit of all age groups. Many local youthreAs share meetings and speakers who in my own youthreAs over the last year have spoken on issues such as the pensions, state and private, making wills, power of attorney, fuel poverty, food banks, rising funeral costs as well as some lighter topics such as the impact of fracking, sexuality in the ancient world and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Throughout the country walking groups have been active in restoring coastal pathways, campaigning for more public toilets and improvements in rural transport. Local history groups, whilst researching local involvement in World War 1, have encouraged memory sessions and shared tales of members' experience. This has led again to intergenerational links through contacts with schools. Computer groups, again linking with local schools, have introduced members to the benefits of the internet, increasingly important for those whose families do not live locally or who can easily travel. Music, as we all know, stimulates the brain and singing for pleasure groups have been able to demonstrate improvement in the health of their members. Breathing problems have been reduced and balance and memory greatly improved. Confidence has also increased. The new slogan of UKU3A is learn, laugh and live, and whilst it doesn't always easily slip off the tongue, it does and copers what we aim to do and what we do indeed achieve. As individuals, as older individuals, we continue to grow and to learn and to share our knowledge and experiences with others within the organisation and in the wider community. As older people, we do live our lives to the full by being active, helping each other and making new friends. Yes, there is a lot of laughter, too. Afternoon, everyone. I am here to give a good news story to you. Alfie, advice line for you. I live in the beautiful area of Forth Valley and we have three local authorities. We have Stirling Council, Cluck Marlin Council and Falkirk Council. A way back when the change fund was in operation, we fed back Stirling Older People's Reference Group that was actually a gap between emergency servers, NHS 24111, and we would, as an older persons group, like to speak to a trained person. It was lifted and last December in Bones a pilot was run and it was called Alfie. Advice line for you. Nothing to do with the singing and dancing or the film. By early February it was rolled out for the whole of Forth Valley. It's a good news story and I'll tell you what Alfie actually does. There is a direct number that you can phone. It is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week by a trained nurse, either a band six or a band five depending on the situation. She can organise a district nurse to call if necessary. She can also offer you general advice on medicine if you've just come out of hospital. They can also arrange certain equipment for you and they can tap in to the social care services within either Falkirk, Cluck Marlin or Stirling now that we're joined. I actually checked yesterday for the stats on what actually and where people had actually used this and there was almost 700 people who had used it within the whole of Forth Valley area. Strangely enough, 45 per cent of those were actually people or partners or carers or older people phoning on behalf of their situation or their person. I don't like to promote this unless I've actually used the service so a couple of days ago my next door neighbour actually came from a hospital. Her husband was worried and I actually stood over while this actual she was using this service. I can only say it will be evaluated next year and we at the older people's reference group in Stirling hope to actually not only promote it again but to make sure that that service is safe and secure. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask John Parkill from the Learning and Later Life Students Association at the University of Strathclyde to address this. My name is John Parkill and I too am a newly elected president. However, in my case I have been elected president of the Learning and Later Life Students Association known as the 3Ls affiliated with the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Strathclyde University in Glasgow known as the CLL. The CLL offers many adult learning opportunities for a range of audiences. One of its main areas of work is providing a large number of classes, workshops and seminars on a wide variety of subjects all aimed at those aged 50 plus, particularly those who are retired. This was how I started out. I attended a number of these classes and became a volunteer working for the 3Ls. You can take one of the centre's classes with no qualifications. They are open to the public and I defy anyone to say there will be nothing of interest for them. Believe me, there will be. Such classes can run for one day or up to 20 weeks. They run Monday to Friday during the day or some at evenings and weekends. The daytime programme has over 4,000 enrolments each year with students aged from 50 to 93 years young. The evening and weekend programme has around 2,000 enrolments each year. The summer programme this year celebrates its 13th year of existence and has had 1,300 enrolments to date. Once you have taken a class and this is where it gets really interesting, you can then join the 3Ls. In the 3Ls we have almost 1,000 student members. Such membership gives you access to join one of our 17 clubs which cover a wide range of subjects, take part in our programme of social events and outings, attend the series of our lunchtime talks, join conferences at home and abroad. For a number of years, our members have attended the senior summer university in Palma, Mallorca. This year, we organised a week-long series of events in and around Glasgow called Making Waves and we certainly did when we spent time on the River Clyde, Loch Lomond and the Forth and Clyde canal. Next year, we hope to repeat those activities and also visit Orvietto in Glasgow for a programme with the Dante Allaghery Society and much more. The collaborative relationship between the 3Ls and the CLL recognises the importance of our association in not only broadening the senior student experience but also in providing learning and volunteering activities where friendships can be formed and undertaken. Such factors are supported by the World Health Organization and much international research as being essential to health and wellbeing in later life. Our contact details are on the screen and I would urge you to take a note and find out a bit more about us. There are also some leaflets available in the exhibition stalls. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, John. We will now hear from Diana Finlay from Scottish Borders Seniors Networking Forum and Age Scotland. Diana. Age Scotland really welcomes today's event as an opportunity to discuss the key policy issues for older people. During the Scottish parliamentary elections, Age Scotland highlighted the importance of national strategy to tackle loneliness in Scotland. We have heard about loneliness quite a few times today. We are pleased that the ministers have announced that this is an initiative that they are going to work on next year. Through funding from the Scottish Government, we have been able to award groups or member groups of Age Scotland, allowing them to engage in activities that bring older people together and addresses the challenge of loneliness. Our Age Scotland free phone helpline, which has been mentioned, provides information and advice as well as friendship calls for older people. Over the past six months alone, our advisers have ensured that older people have been able to claim nearly £200,000 in benefits that they had not realised that they were entitled to, which again is another topic. We are sort of repeating the same topics in a way, but never mind it and emphasise them. The charity believes that this highlights that the benefits system needs to be more accessible for older people and has recently held about nine events across Scotland, with older people being involved to provide input for the Scottish Government's consultation on its proposal for Scottish social service process. Hopefully, that is a good opportunity for us to see improvements, one can hope. As an Age Scotland group member, we in the Scottish Board of Senior Networking Forum are one of five groups of community research teams throughout Scotland, currently working on a major study with the University of Stirling on quality of life. We are trying to find out what consists or what makes good quality of life for older people. That research will be reported on next year. There will be a survey coming out, so be aware and please contribute your opinions. Age Scotland offers many different opportunities for older people to volunteer. Our helpline, we have older people there helping. Now and next training, which is helping the transition from working life to retirement. We now have also eight regional ambassadors around Scotland, older people, busy in their regions involved in all sorts of activities and encouraging other older people to become involved and engage. In fact, it is older people supporting other older people. Not only loneliness, Age Scotland continues its parliamentary campaigns on warm homes, community transport, health and care, including a project supporting early dementia sufferers. In a way, I keep feeling that we are repeating the same things, however. That is a time of significant challenge for older people in Scotland, and we look forward to working with everyone here in trying to ensure that the correct and good policies are created and put in place to address them. Now we welcome Alan Spinks talking on behalf of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners. Yes, good afternoon. The National Federation of Occupational Pensioners has been providing support and welfare since the 1930s, when they were originally established to support their retired members of an organisation that most of you remember, the GPO. The name has changed over the years, the make-up of the membership has changed over the years. Our main groups of members now are British Steel, BET and Royal Mail, although we are now open to membership from anybody who is in receipt of a pension. We have 74,000 members across the UK who use 133 branches to come together. Within Scotland, we have 5,500 members of that 74,000 and 10 branches in Scotland. All those members have the opportunity of coming together at either a local level or an area level. Here in Scotland, the branches come together twice a year to discuss matters of concern regarding older people. We take those matters forward either through an umbrella group like SOPA or direct to the appropriate government. The 74,000 members are not there because they have been taken on automatically when they have retired. They have chosen to be members. We are a subscription-based organisation, headquarters in Luton with 10 paid members of staff there and two members of staff out in the sticks, so to speak, myself here in Scotland and my colleague in Northern Ireland. I was interested to hear a couple of colleagues from Northern Ireland here today. As a subscription-paid member, members get six NFOP magazines a year, which have many articles on various older people matters. They have the opportunity to phone in and get free advice on legal matters, IT, tax, pensions and a whole range of special offers for members, including such things as travel insurance. The 10 branches in Scotland meet regularly, have guest speakers, days out, annual holidays and, as I say, the opportunity to raise older people issues, which then can be taken forward at a national level. Good afternoon, girls and boys. Just under five years ago, a lady called Alison Gilday stuck a flyer in shop windows inviting people over 65 to come to a discussion group. Six or seven of us turned up, some because we were curious, some because there were free pancakes. We're now just short of 250 members and do things in association with sister groups in Oben and Campbelltown. We're all advised by the experts that it's important to keep active in later life. While we believe that this doesn't just relate to the body, it relates to the mind. The best way to do this is to become involved in active citizenship. We get every week a counsellor, an MSP, an RMP, someone from the national health in, they give us a few minutes speech and then we give them a hard time. In fact, our MP, Brandon Ahara, said in a newspaper interview recently that when he was elected, he was worried that somebody would have to appear in question time, but after a session at Grey Matters, that no longer held any fears for him. Because as we all know, one of the joys of getting old is that you don't have to worry about making a good impression anymore. If you think somebody's a damn fool, you tell him. There have got to be some consolations and no longer being 29. The other one, of course, is being able to use your experience and say to an MSP, for instance, that you're too young to remember, but this same problem cropped up in 1953 and this is what we did about it. Although it appears that the Government isn't terribly interested in our active citizenship, I was looking up funding recently and come across more than 20 funds on active citizenship, all of which women were addressed at 16 to 25-year-olds, not a single penny available for us. And yet this is at a time where Gene Freeman acknowledged the experience that we all have. I mean, every retired person's got 40 years' professional experience in something, and yet the Government's borrowing millions of pounds to spend on consultants. Why? Although if I get on to that particular being my one, the presiding officer will think I'm running a filibuster. So all I'll say is if any of you are interested in what we're doing, come and talk to us. We joined SOPA for two reasons, one because we wanted to be part of a national voice like this and the other, we want to learn from things that happen in other areas. As I say, we say to people, you're too young to remember this, but there's nothing new in the world. If we've got a problem in Argyll where we are, Donald and Inverness probably solved that problem three years ago or Diana down the borders or whoever. So let's use this sort of experience to network with each other. We can all learn from each other. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Rob. You're hired. Tom, that's the end of our session now. Could you make a few closing remarks for us? I'm being rude. I remember I was at a meeting of pensioners and an MP was telling us what a drain we were and how much we cost the country. I reminded him that one of the things we do is pay his wages. Thanks everybody for the overview. That gives a terrific picture of the way that older people in Scotland are helping other older people. We helped them with healthcare. 21 per cent of people over 65 in Scotland are looking after their own parents, so we helped them that way. Education, U3A and CLL have helped to self-development, we're helping older people to improve themselves and continue education. We've also heard from Rob there the kind of active campaigning that older people are involved in around the country. So what we're doing collectively is we're trying our best to improve our communities. We heard from the Highlands when Donald said about cataracts. It's a good example, Donald, that we heard about the problem of cataracts in the Highlands. We raised it nationally, and we found it was a national problem. So now we have a review looking around why aren't we meeting the requirements for examining people and giving them proper cataract operations quickly enough. We've heard from Alison about intergenerations now. On the time in the press, we get this idea that we're trying to set older people against younger people and that we're costing too much. We have an article in the national day dealing in the national newspaper today that they've given me an article where I'm addressing that problem, so you might like to look at that. The main thing is that SOPA is going to try to improve its relations with older people and we're going to have a meeting set up with the members and leaders of the youth parliament. Jimmy mentioned ex-servicemen. One of the things that hasn't happened under the screen that you don't know about, I assume that this country looked after its ex-servicemen very well, but when we met them, we found out that actually they're more likely to be unemployed, they're more likely to be depressed and they're more likely to be poor than the rest of the country. So we've asked the Government to look at how our ex-servicemen are being treated. Lastly, isolation and depression. Big issue, one of the things that older people die of. I remember I was going to go to a conference at SOPA to speak about the problems of isolation and what we should do about it. Just as it was going out the phone rang, there was an old lady who wanted to talk to me about something and she started again on and on about the problems that her husband and her first husband was better than her second husband and I'm thinking, how can I get the old lady off the phone and then I thought, this is ridiculous. She's lonely, she's isolated, she wants somebody to talk to me and I'm saying I'm too busy because I'm going to deal with isolation. So I think all of us on that is not just the question of the Government taking on responsibility for loneliness and isolation. All of us individually as people should be concerned about the older person next door, the lonely person along the road and we should for our part try to do what we can to talk to people that would involve them, rather than being annoyed whenever we get something like that. So there's an old saying that all politics are local. In what we do in SOPA is we hear a bit of local issues, we try to translate them into national issues and by doing that we try to get best practice and we try to find a universal solution. So thanks everybody for your contributions in the work you've done. Thanks very much Tom, that's a very upbeat note to end on and that's concluded our morning session. When we break for lunch we're going to go out this door here on my right, your left and there are some organisations waiting for you. There's two different rooms, the Clark Maxwell and the Smith rooms and we have action on elder abuse, Citizens Advice Scotland, the Cair Inspectorate and the Royal National Institute of Blind People in Scotland. So enjoy your lunch. Thank you very much and I hope the rest of the session goes very well. Thank you.