eks and it would have been really stupid that people would seem like they had fallen in love that completely and excuse me in that short amount of time whereas in this like having a more extended time period it makes a bit more sense that characters could fall in love like that so that's okay that is a little better than it otherwise could be but it's still not great one thing I do want to bring up that admittedly is small but still irked me is that there's a lot of Hindu slash Buddhist elements here you know like there's a lot of talk of reincarnation and characters talk about the chakras and stuff like that which deal excuse me which tie into Hinduism and Buddhism but there are absolutely there's no exploration of those philosophies there's no exploration of those themes at all like I'm not an expert on either of those religions or anything associated with them but if they had gone into some sort of detail about it and been like okay yes this is the Hindu approach to life then that might have been kind of cool and it might have helped the series stand out a little bit you know just like that's something there there's a little bit of potential there but that they did nothing with it the story here is I mean it's it's nothing you know you can see how much friggin paper they wasted and there's just the story is nothing there's a series of subplots with very little through line and it's kind of weird because I have now done three series with this exact premise like this premise where an immortal slash supernatural boy falls in love with a mortal girl and then she just keeps dying and then reincarnating and then meeting him falling in love and then dying and reincarnating over and over and over again like I it's I did it with evermore I did it with elixir and I did it with fallen like there are some small differences between them like for example fallen is about angels that's specifically fallen angels and the other two are about the elixir of immortality and alchemy and magic and stuff but they are very much the same story or at least the very similar setup for the story like in elixir the love interest is even from italy just like daemon is in this series it's weirdly similar and weirdly enough as bad as this series was fallen did the explanation for why there's this reincarnation cycle the best and again it was still really dumb like the reason was just God is a dick how do they break the cycle they just ask God really nicely and he releases them from their curse with the others there was literally no explanation like in evermore that's just how things work and in elixir they just say yep there's a curse they don't say how they know it's there they don't say how it's broken or anything there's there is a curse and honestly if I had to rank those three series in terms of competence then fallen is the best like it's a bad series but it is better written than the others because at the very least it made me think that it would get good later you know throughout the whole series I was thinking okay something interesting and good will happen right and then it just never did and then evermore is the second most competently written and then elixir is by far the worst and frankly when fallen is better than you that is just sad like at the very least that series was kind of intriguing with the questions you know why is this reincarnation thing happening and I didn't hate most of the characters you know there were one or two that were really obnoxious but most of them were just there I didn't hate them but in spite of not being as good as fallen as competently written as fallen I would say evermore is for the funniest you know it is the most enjoyable out of all of them because it has the most insane shit like the only thing in fallen that comes kind of close is the revelation that a love triangle caused hell to be created but elixir is almost as funny as evermore but it's also much much shorter and much easier to get through like I was not quite begging for death while reading elixir the way I was when reading evermore and I have to wonder how this bizarrely specific idea took off like this bizarrely specific immortal man reincarnating girlfriend idea took off so hard that we had three series two of which were fairly popular that had the exact same setup like maybe there were some authors writing in this genre who realized that a centuries old man dating a teen girl is kind of creepy and so they tried to bridge that gap by saying oh well she's actually older than she seems and she's known him for a long time so it's okay and honestly that seems like the exact same mindset as the people who say well technically she's a 3000 year old vampire even though she looks like a little girl so it's fine for me to masturbate to her like it seems like the same mindset to me like either embrace the creepiness and just acknowledge that it's gonna turn some people off or just eliminate it you know he could be a supernatural boy who's about her age like Damon could have been just a magical boy who was only like 18 years old and then he meets ever and you wouldn't have to change that much like you could make it so they both die and reincarnate that's an idea I honestly can't even see that many ways in which this series could be made good like I mentioned a few points that you could maybe fix up a little bit but there's not much you can do here like there's so little to work with because the plot is I mean well you know by now like the plot is almost non-existent at a lot of stages so there's just not much for me to work with like so many other entries in this genre this series is just painfully formulaic I mean a girl meets a supernatural boy in the first book they fall in love right away and then mayhem ensues and they have to fight some sort of threat except not really you know even like in evermore or other stuff like that even when they bring up some cool ideas which might be kind of fun to explore or some darker themes which would be maybe a little disturbing and difficult to get through but could also be fun to explore they're just too afraid of themselves to commit and do anything with them and so they just wind up doing the same shit over and over again the only difference is being how insane can they make their world-building like that's the main reason I keep reading these things is because well it's just really funny to watch how nutty they get now a few months ago I read a twilight clone called Elemental and granted I might be stretching the definition of twilight clone of bits because the first book definitely is one but then the later ones kind of go off and do a different thing but anyways the point is that series was genuinely pretty good and it was good because it had darker parts to it you know it wasn't afraid to say okay sometimes life sucks and there was a massive threat to these characters and their lives are in real danger and at the same time every character in that series had a lot of depth and development almost to its detriment at times because it spends a lot of time dealing with side characters who didn't need this much development but still all of them have a lot of depth to them like we know their dreams we know their fears we know their past traumas we know what their relationships are like with other people not just with their significant others but with their siblings their families their friends like it's complicated and it's deep but it took that formula and it mixed it up a bit and as by doing so it made something that was unique and what made it good you know there's a reason why uh it looks or it looks goddamn and all these names are blending together there's a reason that Elemental is pretty much the only good Twilight clone I've ever read and part of that is just because I'm not really the target audience but even then if even if I'm not the target audience I can at least see how it uh performs in that genre and I can criticize or praise it based on how well it does that but yeah these other ones are just too afraid to do anything different at all and I get that the formula is what attracted a lot of people to this genre but you can still do something with it like there are a lot of stagnant genres that are revitalized by playing around with the tropes you know for example Epic Fantasy was made better by stuff like Game of Thrones and Mistborn which take that idea of this epic fantasy world where you fight the Dark Lord and they turn it on its head in some ways but then they play it completely straight in other ways or I mentioned Isakai anime a little bit earlier those are also pretty much the exact same thing over and over again but we do occasionally get stuff like Re Zero which does something very different with the same setup and as such it becomes way bigger way more popular and way well just better it just becomes way better because of that like if evermore or Fallen or any of these other ones I've covered or any of the other ones I haven't covered if any of them had just mixed things up a little bit they could have been almost as big and iconic as Twilight I really mean that they like the authors could have made boatloads of money and influence pop culture for years if not decades to come like they could have done that like off the top of my head just some ideas that they could use or maybe you could use if you want to write something like this to just to mix things up a little bit the love interest is acknowledged as abusive partway through the series and becomes a villain I mentioned that earlier the main character has dreams other than marriage and children and her being in a relationship with her love interest might upend those dreams so she has to wonder like okay do I even really want to be with this guy if it's going to derail my life just as an example make the villains have a point or make the villains have a real reason to want the characters dead besides hating the fact that they're in love or hell just make it so a magical girl meets a normal boy like I know the halo series did that but that series also does like nothing with it so you know you could still take that same basic idea and do something but I don't know if you don't want to do something different if you just want to do the exact same thing that so many other people have done then just admit that you're trash you know be short be a dumb jaunt instead of trying to be deep and complex and be a real treatise on what love is like and everything you know I think if this had just been the one book with the story it would have been okay you know because it would have been short and it wouldn't have outstated welcome and it would have been dumb and everything but it also would have been what the audience is looking for in a lot of ways you know Twilight has undergone a renaissance in the past few years where it's become popular again and people are talking about it again because it knew what it was and it succeeded at it you know it was dumb but it was just a little romance story about a girl and a guy who happened to be a vampire that Stephanie Meyer felt like writing you know Evermore is destined to only ever be known by weirdos like me who find it funny you know like it's never going to really take off and be mainstream the way Twilight did so my final verdict is imagine if you had a bowl of ice cream and shit and you ate it and the ice cream was delicious but in order to get to the ice cream you also had to eat the shit that was in the bowl that is basically whatever more is like if that if that metaphor makes sense you know this comes pretty close at times to being a perfect bad book series but the length and honestly just how horrible a lot of the character actions are it just kills a lot of my enjoyment you know like I can't get as into all the insane shit because it's just so long and because Ever and Damon and everyone else are just so awful like I think you could fix this series or at least fix a lot of the problems with this series just by condensing it you know not really changing that much but condensing it you know leave book one as is and then combine books two and three which is where Roman enters the picture they get the curse where they can't have sex put on them and then Haven becomes immortal like just combine those cut out all the fat and then combine books four and five which is where Roman dies and they try to get the antidote from Haven for a little while and then she's evil and then they kill her like just combine all that because both those books are just largely nothing in terms of story and then leave book six as is you know just leave that as it is like that wouldn't be amazing but it would be much better and you would get through it much much quicker so yeah even for someone who has done this sort of thing a lot like I've read a lot of bad book series and I've read a lot of bad young adult paranormal romance book series but evermore slash the immortals was just hard to get through even for me you know but at the same time at the same time I would do it again I I would like the funny weird bits were just some of the best funny weird bits I've ever come across like I have never read any book series where one of the main characters wears magical condoms before so like that's the reason I like reading bad books so much you know they they leave me baffled they leave me annoyed they leave me laughing sometimes they leave me pining for what could have been when I see little glimpses of potential sprinkled throughout but whatever they leave me pining for they're always entertaining so for my next long review I actually have a lot of ideas a lot of things I could do I'm not I'm not going to do like a formal poll on Twitter or on YouTube or anything like that so just if any of these titles appeal to you just let me know down below which ones you want me to cover because I I got a bunch of these that I could do there's blue bloods and this one is also paranormal young adult romance but this one's about vampires and angels and immortal humans so ooh mixing it up a little there's also angel fire and this and blue bloods are actually the last of that massive pile of angel romance books I bought several years ago so if I don't know if you want me to get through those anytime soon just let me know because I mean I have a giant backlog of bad books I could get through but I'll never be able to get to all of them so you know leave comments and stuff if you want me to hit those you know me I also love bad celebrity books so I also recently got ghost flight which apparently Bear Grills tried writing a book you know the man versus wild guy like he he tried writing a book also Talon of God because Wesley Snipes tried writing a book you know the guy that played blade and also possibly abused Halle Berry while they were together I said possibly don't sue me there's also life as we know it which is an apocalyptic young adult novel which is all about how the moon comes closer to earth and then the earth ends somehow I don't know I heard that one was really dumb and I just saw it for cheap so I was like why not let's give it a shot then there's Shiver which is Twilight but for furries more explicitly for furries you know it's about werewolves instead of vampires but in this world like werewolves stay as wolves most of the time so like the main character is just in love with an animal it's like I don't know it's weird and then there's also wither which is a book that takes place in a world where everyone dies young so there's an excuse for teenagers to be in charge and women have to get like kidnapped and kept as members of harems so that they can breed them and keep humanity alive you know it's this one was more the post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult boom that was big after the twilight knockoff boom but you know that's a thing I also have Red Queen which I don't actually know much about what that one's about now that I'm thinking about it but I do have a copy over here somewhere it's buried behind stuff but I do have a copy and people have wanted me to make fun of that one for a while so I don't know let me know and I may as well just say this now I'm not doing a court of thorns and roses okay it's not because I think it's too horrible and I'll never get through it and you'll get to laugh at me suffering or anything like that it's just that it's been overdone you know I I myself have already seen multiple other videos on youtube where people cover the different books in that series and make fun of them and I have laughed at them and you know Akatar seems like it is a funny series but number one I just don't want to read any more Sarah J Maas because Throne of Glass was miserable to get through it was not nearly as fun as something like evermore but yeah so I just don't want to read more Sarah J Maas and Akatar has already been overdone a lot so I'm not doing that one don't ask me but you know all those others and if you have any other possible terrible books that I might that you might want to see me cover just let me know down below you know I'm not doing a poll again I'm just going based off of vibes you know what seems popular and what I also feel like doing most of all now I'm giving you all of those examples because I want a more chill shorter project you know because I I just did evermore which was a really big one that was kind of difficult to get through and I want to try and break it up by doing a smaller easier to get through one like because you know I did the fifth sorceress and then I did this and those were both really big series obnoxious so hopefully my next one will be easier to get through and I already know what I'm doing after that one you see this one might be more more of a pain because I recently discovered there is a book written by a Texan doctor who thinks that dragons are real and also writes propaganda for the Russian government in his spare time so join me in six months or however long it takes me to get done with Leviathan by RM Huffman that one I've read the sample pages on Amazon let me tell you it's it's a masterpiece it's a masterpiece but that one is months down the road though and it'll be after my next project so just let me know what you want to see next huge thanks to everyone who watched this whole thing all of my nonsense that I put out there it's appreciated and a huge thanks to all my patrons as well especially my $10 up patrons whose names are Apo Savalainen Olivia Rayan Brother Santotys Buffy Valentine Carolina Clay Dan Anceliovic Dark King Dio Echo Flax Great Griebo Johnny St. Clair Karkat Kitsune Eliza Rudikova Lord Tiebreaker Microphone Mist Boy Peep the Toad Robbie Reviews Sad Martigan Celia the Vixen Stone Stairs Tesla Shark Vevictus and Wesley and of course everyone else whose names you see here if you want to get your name put on here consider becoming a patron and if you don't feel like doing that you can also like be a channel member or just like the video and subscribe you know share it around help help more people see my genius I'm not appreciated enough anyways see you later bye


All right. I would like to introduce Elizabeth Pajasca, who is a barrister in London and founder of Birthright. And Irmin Hayes Cline, who's a US lawyer and director of, I'm going to pronounce this, Bank or Suit, Center for Reproductive Rights in the Hague. So welcome, Elizabeth and Irmin. And I'm handing the mic over to you. Hello, everyone. And thank you very much for coming to me and her new session. I'm Elizabeth. You'll be able to distinguish this by our accents. And that rather unfortunate photo in the top left hand of your screens is me as of this. So we're going to present today on the implications of the European Court of Human Rights decision in the Tinovsky versus Hungary case, which came out of the European Court of Human Rights in December 2010. It was the first case the European Court has ever decided on that it had anything to do with child birthright. So it was pretty exciting for all of us who are interested in child birth and maternity care. But before we talk in depth about the decision, I wanted to give you an overview of what human rights in child birth mean. And this is what they mean to me and her mean. They mean different things to different people. But to Hermine and I, who are lawyers, this is how we understand child birthright. So the first thing to say, and it may seem pretty obvious to everyone in this room, is that pregnant women have the same rights as for other women. And that means the same rights, the same human rights as under international human rights treaties like dignity, autonomy, the right to remain in respect for treatment, privacy, and equality rights. And when we say that they have the same rights as everyone else, we make that point because often you hear that pregnant women have responsibilities to their fetus, and certainly in America, there's American midwives amongst us will know that American midwives are often, pregnant women in America are often subjected to responsibilities around drinking and pregnancy and drug taking and that sort of thing, which might suggest that somehow their rights are less than everyone else. But from our perspective, and certainly under international human rights law and under the European Convention on Human Rights, pregnant women are treated in the same way as other people. But what may happen in pregnancy, and this is definitely something that Hamine and I hear a lot about from women who come to us and request our advice as lawyers, is that women are experiencing real threats to their human rights, sometimes for the first time when they're pregnant and during birth. And those threats might commonly include threats to their decision-making. So they're being told that they can't make the choices that they would like to make around childbirth, and that might be anything from where to give birth, through to all those decisions you make about how to give birth, whether, you know, giving consent to things like diabetes, utomy, or assisted delivery, through to choices about pain relief and choices around having, for example, an elective caesarean.  And by that we mean that women can sometimes experience disrespectful care. That could be anything from shouting during labor, through to actual physical abuse, being shouted at through to physical abuse, like being slapped, and you certainly hear from some developing countries that women are physically abused during labor, whether it's a matter of routine, like through to being threatened or coerced with the interference of child protective services or social services, as we call it in the UK. So you're so much wonderful information. We have many different countries participating here and different languages.  OK. OK, thank you. I don't want to anybody. I always talk to them, sorry. It's a lawyer's problem. I'll slow down a bit. And as you say, Delray, you have a lot of people here from different countries, so I should have said at the outset that Hamine and I are talking about human rights law under the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the Convention on Political to All European States, including some of those who are outside the European Union. But what we have to say is more widely applicable with, and there are some differences in the United States and in other countries around the world, but remember that in general, human rights are international by virtue of things like the international covenants on civil and political rights and social and climate rights and so forth. So although what we're saying is based in European human rights law, we do think that the principles are internationally applicable, and Hamine will say something about that towards the end in the presentation. Do I need to get close to the mic? Someone's saying in the comments box. You're doing great, isn't it? This is something. OK. So what we wanted to do first was give an overview of what human rights have to do with childbirth. And we're doing this in two ways. We want to talk about the consent rights in birth, which all of you midwives will understand, but because you have received education and training on this issue, how to obtain informed consent from a woman. And we want to understand that as a right to non-interference. That means that women have a right to refuse treatment. And that's a right that they have, whether they're pregnant or otherwise. And that's a right that all human beings have. You have that right to decline intervention in your physical intervention in your private life. So any treatment, whether it's connected to pregnancy or otherwise, women have a right to say no to. And that's a sort of negative right. And it's manifested in the requirement to obtain informed consent, which is, of course, what midwives will be doing time and time again whenever they interact with a woman. And we're highlighting there two decisions that came out of the English Court of Appeal in the late 1990s. And some of the British midwives here in the room may be aware of those decisions. They were very important to English law, but they also set out general principles that will be applicable in any country that recognizes informed consent. And that's, as far as I'm aware, every legal system in the world has some version of consent. And so these decisions, the first one, which we've put up on that slide is remb, that was a decision about a woman who had a needle phobia. And so she didn't want to have a caesarean section. And her case went up to the English Court of Appeal. And the Court of Appeal said that women have the capacity to decide for any reason they like, pretty much rational or irrational, whether or not to have a medical intervention, even if that intervention ends in the death or a serious handicap of the child, or even in her own death. And that's a decision that women are entitled to make for themselves. And that then reflected in the following year in another decision. And this was a woman with preeclampsia who was forced, in fact, she did receive a caesarean section before the Court of Appeal was able to hand down its judgment. And she was forced to have a caesarean for preeclampsia. And the Court of Appeal was pretty horrified by that Court of Action. And it explained, repeating what it had said the year before in the UND, that women's rights are not abused or diminished merely because her decision to exercise it may appear morally impugnant. So in this case, the woman said that she absolutely did not want to have caesarean. And that she didn't care whether her baby lived or died. And she didn't care whether she lived or died. But that was her decision to make. So that's a really important way of understanding consent is a right to non-interference. It's a kind of negative right. On the flip side, we have what we call a positive right, which is choice, the right to make choices. And of course, if you are thinking about pregnancy and birth, it will very well could say, oh, I don't want to receive these interventions. But of course, what women really want is support. What they really want is to be able to make choices that they feel they can attain professional support for. And that they're going to be enabled to be autonomous women in their birth. And so that's why we call that a positive right. And those are, of course, in many ways, the most important choices for women, the most important rights for women are those positive ones. And the obvious one, particularly for countries like the UK, where choice of place of birth is such a big choice for women to make, the obvious choice is between home and hospital or home and birth center or hospital birth center. So it's not really a surprise, then, that finally a case got to the European Court of Human Rights about exactly that difference, exactly that choice between hospital and home. And that case, as we said, at the start of the presentation was Chinovsky and Hungary. And the situation in Hungary, and some of you I don't know if we've got any Hungarian midwives in the room at the moment, but the situation in Hungary was that home birth had until the mid-1990s, I think, actually been illegal. But after that point, it was no longer illegal. It was just unregulated. So the only legal, the only regulated, the only recognized place in which to be birthed was hospital. And the only recognized providers of 20 services were hospital providers. It wasn't a crime to give birth outside hospital, but it wasn't regulated. So it was in a kind of limbo in a vacuum. And of course, those health professionals, those midwives who did assist women to give birth outside hospital faced potential disciplinary sanctions. And that would mean either suspension or removal of some kind of condition on their license. So what happened in Hungary was that a committed group of midwives continued to provide home birth services throughout the sedentary era. And afterwards, one of those was Agnes Gereb, the celebrated obstetrician who retrained as a midwife. And she experienced real difficulties being able to attend women at home. She was being threatened with legal proceedings against her. And she is currently facing, as I'm sure all of you know, is currently facing criminal proceedings, not in relation to the out-of-hospital birth. The births she attended were outside hospital, but the criminal proceedings are not that home birth itself was criminal, but that when she had a poor outcome, she had committed clinical negligence on a scale that justified criminal sanctions. Of course, no doctors in Hungary when they had a poor outcome ever faced criminal proceedings. So you can certainly see that as a sort of indirect sanction on out-of-hospital at birth. But anyway, while before Agnes actually got in criminal trouble, one of her, she attended the birth of woman called Anna Kinowski, and Anna went on to get pregnant a second time and wanted Agnes to come in essentially again. But by that point, Agnes was getting in more trouble. And so she, Anna approached some lawyers and decided to challenge the failure of the Hungarian government to regulate home birth. And she challenged that before the European Court of Human Rights. And that led to the decision that we're going to talk about a bit more now. And I think I'll pass over to Hermine at this point because you've probably had enough of my voice. Hermine, do you want to start talking about the decision itself? Thank you for everything you've said so far, has been great. One thing I would add to what you have already, is just before I can go back to your slide about consent and where you focused on some cases out of England. And I'd like to just reiterate the point that the right to receive medical treatment is a pretty fundamental right in just about every constitution as a democracy, including outside of England, including outside of Europe. And when courts, in difference, oh, no, horrible, horrible party, you know, you're not the best. Let me see if I can roll on my mic. Mm-hmm, it's so terrible, horrible. I am using the mic. It's been a while. I'm using the headset. Can you believe it? I can't even hear my own audio. No, you can't hear your own audio. This is the rain. It's probably good enough. We can hear you. This is a lot of background noise. And sometimes that happens. And so that's OK. I'm in a silent room. So the background noise, this must be a low quality microphone. I guess what I would say, and I apologize for the bad sound. But what I say about consent is just that in any legal system that believes that people have rights at all, there's no more fundamental right than the right to make decisions about the body. And so opinions in different jurisdictions that talk about the right to receive treatment, how should in that language? So that they're talking about the fact that liberty rests on a first fundamental right to make decisions about the body. Because if you can't make decisions about the body, what do you really have? So this right to receive medical treatment and to make decisions about health care is extremely fundamental. And the European Court of Human Rights has also addressed it in the context of Jehovah's Witness group's right to receive blood. If I remember that, the rest of the elements are just the right to receive blood. Certainly involved with Jehovah's Witness. And they said, look, when somebody makes a decision up to receive health care, receive medical care, you might not find their decision reasonable. And that's what makes it a human right. Because it doesn't have to be reasonable. It can be personal. And it's the right to make personal decisions about the body. And from that grow a lot of our birthrights. Elizabeth, do you want to add to that point at all? That's one more point. So they're unplugged in? No, that's absolutely right. I just think for some of our American audience, they might wonder about those course-to-day cases that we hear about in the States. I think I was one in Florida a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you're able to explain how it is that some American states women do seem to be able to be coerced into having that. Well, I think when they see that, that's why we're doing this work. Because Elizabeth started this conversation by describing how we have these rights to make decisions about our body and that pregnant women are people too. And so that if every citizen has the right to make decisions about their body, then pregnant women do too. And so that's our belief about what the law fundamentally is and what the law should be. But that doesn't mean that those rights are being recognized in practice around the world. So we believe that women have these rights and different legal systems have acknowledged these rights to a different extent. But the reason we're doing this work is because we share beliefs that no maternity care system is really adequately respecting these rights in process. And so cases of forced asarians are cases of women having their fundamental rights to make decisions about their body violated in their jurisdiction. And so we believe that more legal work needs to be done in those jurisdictions to get those rights practically recognized and protected by law. So to the extent, so when women are forced into asarians in the state of Florida, what we have there is a judge saying, well, the doctor says you need a caesarean and you're not allowed to engage your babies. So we're going to force you to have a caesarean and Elizabeth and I would agree with that law. And there are basically different ways that jurisdictions can address these opposing problems. But I think we'll get into that as we go on a little more. So we talk about turnout papers this time, because as Elizabeth said, it's the first time we've seen the European Court of Human Rights address childbirth. And because the way that it does so is so interesting and creates a good way to talk about problems in birth care. So this slide here, throughout turnout, we got this action to say, hey, don't I have the right to choose where I give birth and to whom I give birth and the court agreed. And it wrote all this language saying that Europeans have the right to private rights, the right to privacy, protected under Article VIII. And that includes the decision to make. The logic was actually really interesting, because they said just as a woman has the right to decide whether to become a parent, go also to she have the right to choose how she becomes a parent or the circumstances in which she brings that baby forth. And they held that that included the right to give birth with a midwife and the right to give birth at home instead of in the hospital. So the court has satisfied the circumstances of giving birth in contested weeks long, part of one's private life. That's a pretty exciting sentence. For those of us who believe that this is true, that women everywhere have a human right to choose the circumstances in which they give birth and that their right to make decisions about giving birth are part of their private life. Elizabeth, do you have anything to add to that? So I'll proceed. I'll proceed. No, I don't have anything to add. I mean, I share her music excitement about the recognition of that fundamental right about the way in which one gives birth. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that a human right choice, that that was the case, but it was great to see a court acknowledge that. And that's as far as I know, there hasn't been a court elsewhere in the world that's done that yet. So I was pretty pleased that it would be a king court human right. Right. And so they said, OK, women have these rights. And then they went on to address how the state can violate these rights and whether Hungary was in fact doing so. And they made two basic points about how the state can violate this human right in the context of this Hungary problem. And they said, one way that the state can violate this right is by treating home birth, it is by failing to regulate home birth and make clear that it's illegal. So if women are trying to choose home birth in a country or in a jurisdiction where they're not sure whether that's allowed, that that is undermined as a legitimate choice. And so the state should regulate home birth and treat it in a straightforward way as it treats hospital birth. And so that's the woman's ability to ask that home birth and whether it's legal. And so then they address the role of the midwife in this. Because Ann, if you're not to be the saying to the court, I want to be birthed with my beloved midwife, Agnes, who attended my first home birth. But the situation here is so sketchy and where all of us mothers are so concerned with legal vulnerability that Agnes is in or choosing to show up for us and attend us in our birth that I can't, my ability to exercise my choice is limited. And so the court says here, another way that the state can violate this human right is by having, is this the health professional, can't, doesn't, isn't sure whether she can attend a woman at home without fear of sanction. So legislation which arguably dissuades such professionals, that is, those professionals who are inclined to attend women at home, who might otherwise be willing from providing the replicate assistance, constitutes an experience with the exercise of that right and present the perspective model. And so then, and then the court is talking about this in the context of regulatory sanction because in the case of Hungary, they're observing that Agnes, that in Hungary, arguably, any health professional assisting a home birth runs the risk of conviction for a regulatory effect. And at least one such prosecution of a regulatory offense has taken place in recent years. So they said that the state should provide adequate legal protection to the right in the regulatory scheme. And this sentence is very interesting. And you could say that this sentence is the heart of this opinion or at least one of its important organs in the context of home birth, regardless of the matter of personal choice of the mother that implies that the mother is entitled to a legal and institutional environment that enables her choice. And in case you get too excited, except where other rights render necessary the restriction thereof. And so therefore the practical meaning of this decision in Europe and implemented in European countries is gonna turn on the balancing that that sentence requires. So let's talk more about that. So do women, therefore, have a right to give birth at home? That's the synopsis created in Europe, a right to give birth at home. When we think about, is there a right to home birth? It's important to start with the question, well, is there a legal obligation to give birth in the hospital? Because the right to home birth, yeah, it turns on that. So question one, do women have a legal obligation to go into the hospital and push their baby out or have their baby removed in the hospital? And the answer is or should be no, because everybody, including pregnant women, have the right to receive care. You know, when we see those for caesarian cases or when we see cases around the world in which women's right to make these decisions is being violated, because pregnant women and birthing women are in those cases being treated as different from everybody else. Because everybody else, not pregnant, has the right to make decisions about their body, including the right to not save another human being.  That is just not true, and it's not the reality of women making decisions in birth. But even if you were to go into that argument when somebody says, well, other people have the right to make decisions about their body, but not if you have another human being inside your body, because what about that person and their interests? And the fact is, when people have a right, when citizens have a right to receive treatment, that includes the fact that they cannot be forced to save the life of another human being. Even a human being that's outside their body and walking around, so that you can't be forced to give bone marrow to save your cousin, even if we know that if you do that, you'll save your cousin. That's still your choice. So, if there's a right to receive treatment and there should be, then you don't have an obligation to go into the hospital. And then the question is, can I ask you to create a positive rate to give birth at home in some sense? And Oliver, will you comment upon that in the context of positive choices under the European Convention and so on? Yeah, so the European Convention, traditionally, when it deals with questions about healthcare, says that women don't have positive rights to particular treatments, or people in general don't have positive rights. So, for example, in the UK, women have tried to force the UK government to provide a set in a breast cancer drug to treat their breast cancer, which is going to be the most efficient and effective drug for their particular symptoms. And the courts have looked at those cases on a number of occasions and said that you don't have a positive right to those particular forms of treatment. And so that's always been the assumption that in context of healthcare, it's very difficult to say that a person has an entitlement to a type of healthcare service. But what's different about home birth is, of course, that that is the expression of a fundamental asset of your autonomy as a woman, as a pregnant woman. And so you're not asking for a particular drug, and you're not, importantly, asking for a massive outlay of state resources because as we are all aware, home birth is actually the cheaper option. So what you're asking for is for someone to support you in the exercise of your autonomy. And I think that is the reason why, although it's not made explicit, but I think that's the reason why the European Court accepted that decisions around childbirth are different decisions from those around traditional forms of healthcare for particular conditions like cancer and so forth. So that's why there is a positive right to give birth at home and to receive the support of the midwife in doing so. The question is, the kind of million dollar question is, what are the limits? What are the limits on that, on that positive choice? Because as we will go on to show in the next slide, if I go forward, there are, of course, boundaries to that positive right. I mean, do you want to talk about this or do you want me to do it? Either or both. But I would like to add to what, before we move on from this right to home birth slide, I think that, I'm wondering that's an option practically speaking down for, is the right to access physiological childbirth. Especially in sort of healthcare systems where the medical birth that's being served at the local hospital, one thing that, if you study birth care, that of course you know, as everybody's listening, how it regards is that there's great variability in the protocols and the services that burden women are sort of put through in different hospital settings. And in some hospital settings, it's more possible to give birth without pharmaceuticals and without other kinds of interference with the physiological process than it is in others. In many places, and this is a violation of the right to informed consent, women are hooked up to an ID line and then chemicals are pumped down that ID line before the women are really told what's going on. So the right to give birth at home is really the right to access a birth care setting in which physiological birth is most likely to be possible. So I think it's worth bearing that in mind that what we're talking about it to you here is, okay, I'm in a healthcare system that supports my ability to give birth, to have a medical childbirth. And I can access that, but I also am interested in the right to access physiological childbirth with healthcare support. And what does that mean to access physiological childbirth with healthcare support, right? So you're not just asking to be left alone, although that is in fact part of what women are asking. They're asking to be able to give birth without being told that they have to do anything, to participate in coming to the hospital, getting a wheelchair, lie down for the ESM, et cetera. And yet, it also includes the right, as discussed in this case, to have a midwife with you if you want one and if she wants to attend you. Because we're not talking about midwives being forced to attend women, we're talking about the midwives who want to attend women, being able to do so without fear of sanction. And then we're also talking about backup, backup from the medical system. So in order for home birth to be a legitimate choice and a safe choice and a choice that's supported by the healthcare system, you have to be able to transfer to the hospital. Your midwife has to be able to communicate with the medical staff. And so again, that goes back to this interesting sentence, legal and institutional environment that enabled her choice. What would that look like? But again, it's not just the right to give birth with your dog and your stuff and all that stuff when we're talking about the right to home birth. But we're also really talking about will your healthcare system support and protect the access to physiological childbirth for those citizens that want to use it? And so then are there boundaries to the right to birth at home? Well, human rights of the citizens are obligatory on the state. The state has to recognize and protect them. And yet the state, of course, tribunals, human rights tribunals recognize that the state has other concerns other than in addition to protecting the human rights of the citizens and that the state has, and it gives states leeway to use their own balance in some extent, balancing their concerns against the human right. And so in the case of the European Court of Human Rights, they're saying to all these different kinds of European nations that they have to respect this right. And yet they give each of those European nations some latitude to do balancing acts about what are that nations legitimate aims for protecting the health and the world and rights and freedoms of others in that jurisdiction. Elizabeth, I'm going to pass the microphone about the silence, and that's in VHR's prudence in this case in particular. Yes, so we said earlier that we can obviously write the right to choose a certain census in which you become a parent. So you'll write to choose how to give birth. And that right falls under Article 8 of the European Convention. And that is a qualified right. That means it's a right which has a limit. And it can be limited by reference to legitimate aims, and that means that those chosen by the state, so the state determines what is or is not a legitimate aim subject to the court's scrutiny. And those include the protection and the rights and freedoms of others, and indeed the protection of health. So if, for example, you had a situation where a woman, the situation we talked about earlier, say for example, the woman with queer cancer who is told that she and her baby may die if she does not have one, that's the very end. How would Article 8 work in those circumstances? Well, it wouldn't give you the straightforward answer that the right to choose treatment would. So you would balance up your rights.  And her doctor said, I'm sorry, but we're not going to let you birth at home. We want you to come into the hospital. I don't think we should guarantee that the European Court on human rights would say at that point that that was a decision that would be protected under Article 8. Of course, she has the right to decline the treatment, the right to use the cesarean, but could she insist with a midwifery centre at home? That's a different question, and I think that would be harder to say. So that's a kind of technical legal answer, but it is important that we all understand that the right to home birth is not an absolute right. And I think that's important partly because when we're advocating the right to give birth at home, we explain that it is about that there are reasonable limits on that right, and we're not suggesting that the state provides home births, provides for home births in absolutely all circumstances. So that's about getting your understanding of how the law works and getting the rhetoric right. But at the moment, we don't know where those boundaries are. Of course, there have been many other cases since the Q&A, which was just in the 40th or 15th century. So at the moment, it's not clear where those boundaries lie. Moving on then to the million dollar question, which is the fetal rights issue. So when we say that the right to home birth is limited, the first question that people will ask is, well, does the fetus itself have rights that can be used against the mother? And this is a question that can be answered really only in each jurisdiction. So Ireland is obviously different from the UK, it's different from the United States, with different states within the United States and so forth. But in the UK, as the UK mitweist here we know, there isn't a separate legal right for the fetus. So its rights, its interests cannot be used to override women's decisions about whether or not to accept care and services. But as we know from what's happening in the United States and in Ireland, and that terrible abortion case in Ireland recently, quite a woman died of disabilities to the same abortion. We know that fetal rights are increasingly on the agenda. And I mean, I don't know if you want to say something about what's happening in the States and what's happening with that particular age-old obstacle that we quote on this slide there. The essential question regarding whether women have the right to choose the different senses in what they could do is, who's the person with the law is more interested in in the body of the pregnant woman? Is it the woman or is it the fetus? And those two drunk will be used that women have a right to choose for home birth. For example, are they going to look at this sentence to some, except for other rights when they're necessary to put them there of? And they already do, in fact, in online commentaries, and they say, oh, look at that clause. That means that there is no right to choose a certain sense in what she did first. And they will almost do that clause to nullify the entire traumatism attitude, because it's obvious that the other right, that the most significant other right is the right of the fetus. So when states that want to resist supporting the right to home birth and midwifery do so, they do so by saying that the woman does not have the right to put her baby at risk, and they argue with study like the law study at all that home birth puts the baby at risk, and that midwifes put the baby at risk sometimes it's argued. And so, so indeed, what we think is that the more a person, a jurisdiction, a legal system or a judge treats the fetus as separate from the woman, the less likely the woman's agency is to be defective in decision making around childbirth. And so in the United States, we have, you know, abortion has sort of a political significance and power here that it doesn't have in mainland Europe, although Ireland is not to be a significant exception for the European rule. But we have this whole personhood movement going on here in states that are passing or something to pass laws that will recognize fetuses as people with full rights. And once you do that, as the national advocates for pregnant women are up when it comes to now, you'll essentially turn the woman into a container. And because what's happening in these separations of mother and baby arguments is that the mother and baby are separated. We have a fetus with rights and a mother who may or may not have rights. But then the assumption was that the mother is not an adequate protector of those rights. And in fact, it's the professional who is just situated to protect those rights. And so there was this article late last year in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in their ethical, in their ethics. It was their ethical statement and it was on home birth and they said, well, there's this thing, home birth happening, and what should we do about it? And they said that the rights of the woman should be balanced against the beneficence obligations of the professional and the doctor, and that the doctor has rights that flow directly towards the fetus and that when women try, for example, to give birth at home, that the doctor should strong arm them into giving birth at the hospital in the name of the baby, in the name of their responsibility to protect fetal and neonatal patients. And other editorials like this one cited in the Lancet have said the same thing. Women might have the right to choose to make choices about birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk. And so then the question always becomes, well, who decides if the woman is putting her baby at risk and it's this decision that she's making? Who gets to make the decision about whether this is a risky choice that she's interested in making? Oh, look at this, what do you think? Okay, question. Well, should we move forward then? We're talking about whether women have a right to homeless and here there's another question of do homeless midwives have a right to process? And if so, how do we talk about that right? Are there any comments on this under EU law? Okay, do you hear this? Well, what can not be said is that homeless midwives, if homeless midwives are unregulated or if they're, if not sure for them whether they can process a discussion that the right of the burdened women is actually being violated. So it's important to be clear that cannot be about the right of the burdened women. It's not explicitly about professional rights of midwives. It's about the rights of women to be attended by whom they want and that that right is being violated when midwives cannot process without fear of tension. Yeah, now let's see. Yeah, I can see people want to ask questions and we've only got a few minutes left. So just skipping through these slides. There are some cases coming up in the European Court of Human Rights from these other countries. We hope that they're gonna define the right more clearly and we're confident that they're not gonna limit the decision into most of these. I think we're gonna say something about the value of commercial Europe, but I wonder whether perhaps we should, we should hear from people before we do that. What way is that? Is that the best way forward? That sounds good to me. Yeah. Do we take questions? There's one from Ruth. Ruth. So that's what I believe is something that we're gonna talk about in the UK and the UK lawyer. Does this, will this really need to change it and will it need to be incorporated into the UK law? Well, it is incorporated into the UK law because the human rights that means that all decisions of the European Court of Human Rights must be respected by UK public authorities and that includes hospitals and care providers. So it is part of a UK law and part of what birthrights my organisation is doing is lobbying to make sure that people understand that and understand what the implications of this must be judging the new. Well, there are other questions earlier on on that list that we should respond to. There were some questions there around risk and the fact that hospital births as the birthplace study showed are actually more risky for mother and baby, particularly for multi-parasites women. And I think that that raises a really interesting question about who is the arbiter of risk. And ultimately, only the woman can be the decider about what risk she's willing to bear for her and her baby because as soon as we put that risk analysis into the hands of the health professionals or into the hands of the judges or social services or chopchetta services or whatever, then we basically decimate the woman's decision making capacity. So discussion around risk always has to focus on what risks the woman is given or the information is able to make that decision and see what the women are not given information about risk that's genuine and honest information. So our information about hospital births being risky, I don't know any multi-parasites women in the UK who are being told they're really much riskier for the baby to be born and have children at home. And really they ought to be being told that. But to me, I'm not going to tell any superiors and midwives that they're between appointments that women should be told when they're multi-parasites or birth at home, I can't imagine. I can't imagine. So there are a couple of questions. If I can add to that point, when we think about, the turnoff school is just great opinion to talk in a really smart way about birth care and it raises the question, what would maternity care look like in any country? The women in that country, if they're right to choose the person's sense in which they're birthed was actually respected. And that prism for looking at maternity care can be really valuable. And then when we come up, but what's going to happen? Basically, turnoff school needs to be converted into a reality in any country in Europe. It's an opinion of the court, and some European nations are more closely in the court that's upholding the turnoff school than others. But in all cases, what would have to happen for women to have that right respected is for them to claim their rights under turnoff school. Because in Hungary, and that's happening in various ways in different nations, as Elizabeth just mentioned. But when this challenge occurs when women try to have this right implemented and there's resistance to that challenge, they're going to be called, well, you're not allowed to put the baby at risk and other things. And so then, I think what people are making arguments about the right to privacy and the right to the burden is to deal with some challenge obstetric, this claim of obstetric, that obstetricians are the best protectors of facing the mother and baby at this point, and that only they can be trusted to really make these decisions. And so thinking about America and how it would turn out to be right to be implemented in America. In 1976, the State of California had a case in which unlicensed middle-aged were being prosecuted, and the defense argued in that case that women have the right, under the right to privacy, which also exists in the United States, to choose the person's chances in which they give birth. That was 1976. And they argued under Roe versus Wade, again, as with Chernobyl, just as you have the right to choose whether to have a baby with the right to choose how. And in that case, in 1976, the court said that women, the California Supreme Court said that women do not have the right to choose the person's chances in which they give birth under the right to privacy. And they said, well, look, under Roe versus Wade, it has this sort of trimester distinction, and therefore they said, actually, the way we do Roe versus Wade is that at the point of fetal viability, the state's interest in the fetus supersedes the mother's right to privacy. Therefore, she does not have the right to choose the person's chances of birth. And I think that decision was limited, because a lot has happened since 1975. In 1975, the caverian rate was about 5%, and now it's 35%. So if there was a holding on that right to choose the person's chances of birth that essentially assumes that a woman leaving obstetric care and giving birth at home with a midwife was risking her baby and that the safe thing for her to do was to be in the hospital with doctors, I believe that that holding and that assumption could be revisited in light of changed person's chances. And that the caverian rate alone in just about every place is grounds for pulling the rug out from under the medical claim that only doctors can be trusted to have that final authority. And in fact, in any jurisdiction with a caverian rate over, shall we say, 15%, the old World Health Organization member out, could be argued that it's essential that the state recognizes that the woman has the right to make the decisions about, for example, whether she's going to have a caverian section, because what are we dealing with if we're in a place where doctors with 30, 40, 50% caverian rate have the authority to say whether a woman is going to have a caverian section, and the woman does not hold the authority to assume that. And that's extremely concerning. And that's an argument to be made in a lot of different places. Other than this, I want to talk about the dignity. Yeah, so I think there haven't been too many other questions. Do you guys, whether we have contact with obstetricians in the UK, that's certainly something that birth rights is doing with people of obstetricians? Actually, in the UK, at least, the resistance, you don't encounter the resistance that women in the United States are some of the issues. I just wanted to mention one conference that birth rights is putting on on October 16th. In London, at the Royal College of Physicians, they're going to have speakers from a very wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, including with life, but also academics and ways of talking about what dignity is in the right to mean and childbirth. And do you want to mention your conference in Belgium? I'll just flip to the other side. Here we go. Honey? I think we might. Sorry. I had to unhook my mic. So I'm involved with a organization called Human Rights and Childbirth, and we held a conference in The Hague in 2012 on the subject, and then another one in 2015, actually, last month, in which we looked at the clause of Trunovsky versus Hungary that says that the woman's right is violated if midwives can't report her without fear of sanction and what does that look like in the USA, for example. And so we're going to have another one-day conference. That was a joint conference with Midwifery today, this April in Eugene, Oregon, where they have their annual conference. And they're going to have their European conference in early November in Belgium. And so we are together going to have a one-day event on November 4, in which we look at cases in Europe that are implicating Trunovsky versus Hungary. Both the cases that Elizabeth mentioned earlier that are coming out of different countries, and we're going to try to gather these places. And the lawyers behind those cases and some cases of midwives across Europe that are facing sanctions in different ways for supporting that impossible birth. And Elizabeth and I should both be there. And we've been asked whether we're going to lie to three new conferences. And that supporting our intention is just very expensive. So if we can raise the funds to do that, then I hope that we will. But please do think about coming along. And the tickets will be back, I think. They will be back in a few weeks. And we'll be back in a few weeks. We'll be back in a few weeks. There we go. Great. So thanks, everyone, for listening. Thank you, Elizabeth, and Ray. Thank you for showing the advice for this opportunity.


Graf y bydd hwn yn bryddoedd ytheg lung o gymryd gennym i ddweud i gefnogi yng Nghymru yma i dda not yn fawr Sinofnol o'r ffrin mor fynd i gyflusoedd i'r bwyllfa. Rydw i'r bobl ddechrau i'r dyfnogi'r ddweud i gyd-dweud i gyd-dweud i ddweud i'r pobl sy'n ddweud ni'n ddim yn ddweud. Felly mae yn fawr yn ddweud i gyd-dweud i gyd-dweud i gyd-dweud o'r gwaith i gyd-dweud i gyd-dweud, The question is that, motion number 182, the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, would be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next item of business is a statement by the First Minister on taking Scotland forward. The First Minister's statement will be followed by a debate therefore there should be no interruptions or interventions during the First Minister's statement. I call on Nicola Sturgeon. I will set out the priorities that will guide this Government over the next five years. They have one central ambition at their heart to make real and lasting progress towards true equality of opportunity for all. By the end of this term, through the action we take to improve our most life-changing public services, education, health, social care and social security, we intend to ensure that many more people get the opportunities and the support they need to fulfil their potential. Greater equality of opportunity will make a real difference to the lives of those who suffer disadvantage, but it will do so much more than that. It will boost our economy and enhance the quality of life of all of us. It will help to create not just a fairer nation but one that is wealthier, healthier and happier. Before the election, I said that our manifesto was my job application. I am pleased that it proved to be a successful one. However, it was also a comprehensive plan of action for the next five years. It is now our blueprint for delivery. Today, I will set out the overarching priorities of this Government and how we will set about achieving them. I will set out our plans for the long term but also the immediate actions we will take now to reform and transform Scotland. Our priorities are clear. We must continue to grow an economy that is strong, sustainable, fair and inclusive. We must put local communities more in charge of the decisions that shape their lives. We must use the new powers of our Parliament as best we can to help to grow our economy and tackle inequality. We must drive forward reform of our public services to make them fit for the challenges of tomorrow as well as today. We must support and empower our teachers, colleges and universities to deliver an education system that gives all young people the chance to reach their potential and achieve their ambitions. We know that inequality has its roots well outside school and we must do much more to tackle it at source. We must also aim for our schools to be places where young people can overcome inequality and succeed regardless of their background. Whatever our differences, I firmly believe that the aspiration of this Government for a wealthier, fairer and more equal Scotland is shared across the chamber. There is no doubt that this is a Parliament with the ability to be bold and progressive in how we achieve that vision. So I will do everything I can to harness that consensus. We will draw on successful ideas from around the world and, as I indicate in some of the announcements that I will make today, we will also take forward good ideas from across this chamber if we believe they can help achieve our goals. Presiding Officer, as I have already made clear, the defining mission of this Government will be education. That is because we want every child to have a fair chance in life and we know that a good education is the foundation of that. We also know that ensuring equality of opportunity for young people starts well before the school years and extends far beyond the school gates. So we will introduce a range of new policies targeted at the early years. Within a year from now, every child born in Scotland will receive a baby box, a box of essential items to help level the playing field in the very first days of their life. This simple but, I think, very powerful idea originated in Finland and has been a huge success. It provides practical help for parents. It also helps to reduce infant mortality and improve child health, partly because it encourages early contact between new mothers and health visitors. The baby box does more than that. It also symbolises the fair and equal start that we want for all children. That is why we will be very proud to introduce it here in Scotland. We will also use new social security powers to introduce a maternity and early years allowance to give financial support to low-income parents, initially when a child is born, then when the child starts nursery and again when they start school. That will be targeted help to reduce any quality at key stages of a young life. Over the next two years, we will recruit 500 more health visitors to help improve child health and wellbeing. We will also transform childcare. By the end of the next Parliament, the availability of flexible, high-quality, state-funded early years education and childcare will be doubled to 30 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds and vulnerable two-year-olds. Children eligible for extended early years provision will also benefit from free meals, like children in primaries 1 to 3 already do. By 2018, every nursery in our most deprived areas will have an additional qualified teacher or childcare graduate. That will be a key early step in ensuring the quality as well as the quantity of expanded childcare. There is no doubt whatsoever that the expansion of childcare will be our most important infrastructure project of this Parliament. It will help parents, particularly mothers, into work and it will be a transformational investment in the life chances of our children. The support that we give children in their earliest years will complement and contribute to our efforts to further improve school education. I believe that Scotland has a good education system. We have great schools and great teachers. We have a new curriculum, record exam passes and more young people leaving school to go on to positive destinations. We will never talk down what we have, but we are determined to do even better. It is simply not acceptable that school leavers from the most deprived 20 per cent of areas in Scotland, if we look at hires as just one measurement, do half as well as school leavers from the most affluent areas. Our aim is to ensure that Scotland's education system delivers excellence for all. Our manifesto sets out a range of reforms to help us to achieve that aim. We will shortly begin discussions to develop a new, fair and transparent funding formula for schools to ensure that resources go where they are needed most. We will expand our attainment fund and invest an additional £750 million over this Parliament, specifically targeted at closing the attainment gap. From next April, £100 million a year of that money will go direct to head teachers so that they, not councils or central government, can decide how best to use it to deliver improvements in their schools. We will undertake work to empower teachers and parents within a framework of national policy and inspection to drive more of the decisions that shape the lives of their schools. We will implement the new national improvement framework, including new standardised assessments that will help inform teacher judgment. By ensuring that we have reliable data, the improvement framework will enable us, for the first time, to accurately measure the attainment gap and set precise and transparent targets for closing it. The reforms that we plan are substantial. Before the summer holidays, John Swinney will publish a draft delivery plan, setting out more of the detail, timescales and next steps in our plans to close the attainment gap. It will build on the discussions that he is already having with teachers, parents, local government and trade unions and provide the basis for further consultation. Let me stress that point about consultation. I want our work to close the attainment gap to be the mission not just of this Government or even of this Parliament but of the country as a whole. I want it to be guided by the best possible evidence from around the world. That is why I announced yesterday that I will establish an international council of education advisers and I want it to be built as far as possible on consensus. To that end, I can confirm today that over the next few months we will convene a major summit on school reform and raising attainment. It will bring together all the key stakeholders in education to look at what each of us can do to help raise attainment and how collectively we drive this work forward. We will invite party leaders and education spokespeople to attend. We will work hard to build consensus and partnership. However, what we will not do is allow the search for consensus to result in inertia or in the lowest common denominator for action. We intend to be bold and to move forward with purpose and with pace. We have a precious opportunity over the next five years to make real and lasting improvements for the benefit of this and future generations. We are absolutely determined to seize that opportunity. Giving young people the best school education is about equipping them for the rest of their lives. We are also determined to extend the opportunities open to young people later in life. We will deliver an additional 5,000 apprenticeships in highly skilled careers, including the total number of apprenticeships to 30,000 by 2020. We will work with schools to inspire more young people, boys and especially girls into science, engineering and technology. We will use our new powers when we have them to introduce a jobs grant to help young people aged 16 to 24 who have been unemployed for six months or more to move into and remain in work. We will maintain the number of full-time equivalent college places and continue to focus on the skills and training that help young people into work. We will widen access to university. By 2030, we aim to ensure that 20 per cent of Scottish domiciled university entrance will come from our 20 per cent most deprived communities. University education will remain free of tuition fees front door or back door for as long as the SNP is in government. I know from my own personal experience that free tuition is essential to supporting working-class young people into university. Though it is essential, I also know that it is not sufficient. We must also break down the other barriers—the financial, the cultural and the institutional barriers—that mean that young people from poorer backgrounds are less likely to go to university than their more affluent peers. Over the summer, we will appoint a commissioner for fair access to drive the change that will be needed in our universities and colleges and ensure that the recommendations of the widening access commission are implemented in full. The target that we are setting is clear. A child born today in one of our most deprived communities must, by the time they leave school, have the same chance of getting to university as a child of the same ability from one of the most well-off parts of our country. That is a fundamental part of what I mean by a fair and equal society. Our young people are fundamental to our future as a country, but the ambition that we are showing in education will be matched in other areas of our responsibility as well. We will protect the police budget in real terms and we will strengthen the accountability and improve the community focus of policing. We will improve how female offenders are treated with greater use of community sentencing and support and more use of local custody units. We will also step up our work to tackle violence against women and girls and we will legislate to create a new offence of domestic abuse. We will ensure that at least 50,000 affordable homes are delivered over this Parliament, including at least 35,000 for social rent. If we can go further than that, we will. Those new houses will help to ensure that individuals and families across this country have access to good affordable homes, but they will also deliver economic benefits. Their construction will support around 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs a year and generate around £1.8 billion in economic activity. We will also introduce a warm homes bill, making use of existing powers to tackle fuel poverty and new powers over energy efficiency. We will continue to take action across a range of fronts to tackle poverty and inequality. We will shortly publish a Fairer Scotland action plan. We will also implement all of the recommendations of the independent poverty adviser and we will commence the socio-economic duty contained in the 2010 Equalities Act. Over the next few weeks, I will also reappoint an independent poverty adviser and we will bring forward early legislation for 50-50 gender balance on our public boards. During this Parliament, of course, we will assume important new responsibilities over social security. We will introduce a social security bill in the first year of this Parliament and we will start work to establish a new Scottish social security agency. We will use our new powers to put dignity and respect back at the heart of our social security system. We will abolish the bedroom tax. We will make changes to how universal credit can be paid. We will extend winter fuel payments to families with severely disabled children and we will restore entitlement to housing support for 18 to 21-year-olds in our country. We will end, once and for all, the degrading DWP approach to disability assessments and we will ensure that disability payments are not reduced or means tested. We will increase carers allowance and I can announce today that we will also consider the introduction of a young carers allowance to provide extra support for young people with significant caring responsibilities. This is a proposal that was in the Green Party manifesto. I think that it has real merit and so we will now ask our carer advisory groups for their views on how to take it forward. Our new responsibilities will give us the chance to develop a social security system that respects the dignity of individuals as human beings. Rather than stigmatising those with disabilities or those who cannot find work, we will value their potential and help them to contribute to society. Let me now turn to health and care. We will continue as Government to take forward a major programme of investment and reform. Over this Parliament, revenue spending on our national health service will rise by £500 million more than inflation. That means that by the next election the NHS revenue budget will be almost £2 billion higher than it is now. However, we will not just increase what we spend, we will also change how we spend it. For example, there is a growing awareness of the importance of expanding mental health services.  It will be backed by an additional £150 million of resources over five years. Our action will include the recruitment of more mental health link workers in local communities where they will work alongside GPs and other health professionals. This work will be led by a new dedicated Minister for Mental Health, a key ask of the Liberal Democrat manifesto. We will also continue to adapt services for an ageing population. We know that the incidence of cancer, for example, is likely to increase as people live longer, so we will invest £100 million in a new cancer strategy to improve survival rates and reduce inequalities. We will also invest £200 million in new elective treatment centres to meet increased demand for procedures such as hip and knee replacements and cataract removals. By increasing capacity for these planned procedures those centres will also ease pressure on emergency care. The integration of health and social care, which took effect last month, is the most radical reform in healthcare in Scotland since the foundation of the national health service. Helping people to live independently for as long as possible requires expanded community and social care services. That's why we will support integrated health and social care partnerships with an additional £1.3 billion of investment over the next five years. We will also take forward our work to transform primary care, delivering a community health service with a new GP contract, increasing numbers of GPs and nurses working in the community, and new multidisciplinary hubs. We will also explore other initiatives to relieve the pressure on our family doctors. All GP practises will have access to an enhanced pharmacist and we will examine a proposal in the Labour manifesto to extend the minor ailment service to make it a universal service available in all pharmacies. All of us know that better primary care, provided by a range of expert health professionals, will become ever more important in the years and in the decades ahead. We are determined to make the decisions in this Parliament that will ensure that we have a health service fit for the needs of the next generation. As the way in which we deliver healthcare changes we will also ensure that the structures of our NHS and the relationships between local government and our NHS reflect, rather than inhibit, those changes. Wyrwch clas universal public services are part of our vision for this country. However, those services need to be paid for and underpinned by a strong economy. Just as a strong economy is enabled by world-class public services, supporting the economy has always been important to this Government. However, with new powers over income tax, it will become even more so. For the first time, there will be a direct link in Scotland between the number of people in work and paying tax and the revenues we have to invest in our public services. We are fortunate that Scotland has strong economic foundations. For example, just yesterday, the Ernst and Young annual report showed that 2015 was a record year for inward investment in Scotland. However, we also know that we face significant challenges. My appointment of a dedicated economy secretary is recognition of those challenges. The difficulties in the North Sea oil and gas sector during the last 18 months have undoubtedly slowed growth and affected levels of employment. We see evidence of that again today with the announcement from Shell. That is why this Government will remain very focused in the months ahead on doing everything we can to support the oil and gas sector. Although the productivity of our economy has improved relative to the rest of the UK, we know that it is still a long way behind European neighbours such as Germany and Sweden. Innovation is crucial to improving our productivity. That is why we are investing £120 million in new innovation centres to bring businesses and academics together to develop the ideas and products in some of the key growth sectors of the future. We will continue and we will expand that approach. We will launch an annual innovation prize and invite the council of economic advisers to propose specific actions to boost productivity through innovation. Through the CanDo forum, we will do more to encourage entrepreneurship. We will build on the success of initiatives such as the Edge Fund and Entrepreneurial Spark and we will encourage even more people in Scotland to establish and to grow the world-class companies of tomorrow. Over the summer, we will also carry out an end-to-end review of the roles, responsibilities and relationships of our enterprise development and skills agencies, covering the full functions of Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council to ensure that all of our public agencies are delivering the joined-up support that our young people, our universities, our colleges and our businesses need. Scotland has had great success in attracting investment and in helping companies to innovate, export and expand. We have real strength and depth in our universities and a record of achievement in our skills agencies, but now is not a time to rest on our laurels. Now is the time to ensure that we drive greater innovation and improve our productivity. We will also continue to invest in the infrastructure that businesses need. Top of that list will be superfast broadband. In 2012, just 42 per cent of premises across Scotland had access to fibre broadband. Now the figure is above 85 per cent, but that is not good enough. By 2021, we intend to reach 100 per cent of all premises across this country. This is an investment that will improve productivity across Scotland and transform the connectivity in remote and rural areas. We will set out our detailed timetable for achieving it over the next few months. Our investment in broadband is just one of the ways in which we will boost the rural economy. We will work to resolve the difficulties in the cap payment system. Fergus Ewing will update Parliament on this work next week. We will also continue to support our food and drink industry, which has achieved such great success in recent years. We will maintain the road equivalent tariff scheme to the lifeline ferry routes and air links. We will continue to support smaller businesses, the lifeblood of our economy. In next year's budget, we will extend the small business bonus, which has already saved small businesses £1 billion by increasing the relief threshold and lifting 100,000 small business properties out of business rates altogether. Our focus on the economy will go hand in hand with our commitment to promoting equality. We will use the Parliament's new tax powers fairly and progressively. We will protect those on low and middle incomes, but generate extra revenue for public services by asking higher-rate taxpayers to forego a tax cut. We will also make local tax more progressive and ask those in the most expensive houses to contribute more. We will also continue to promote fair work. There are now 500 accredited living wage employers across the country. We will increase that to 1,000 by autumn of next year. Over the summer, we will publish a labour market strategy, which will build on the work done by the Fair Work Convention. Through the Scottish business pledge, we will encourage more companies to adopt good employment and business practices such as gender equality, the living wage and worker involvement. Let us be very clear in a highly competitive global marketplace that Scotland's economic success will be based on the excellence of our people and our products. We will succeed not through low wages, but through high skills and high quality. Finally, in promoting sustainable growth, we will continue our transition to a low-carbon economy. Since 1990, we have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 38 per cent. We are on course to meet our current target of a 42 per cent reduction by 2020. However, we must be bolder. We will legislate to establish a new and more testing target for 2020, one of reducing actual Scottish emissions by at least 50 per cent. We will look for support across this chamber for the bold and sometimes controversial actions that we will need to take to meet that target. In doing so, we will not just be living up to our moral obligations. We will also be seizing a massive economic opportunity. The low-carbon and renewable energy sector already employs more than 21,000 people. A tougher target gives us even greater incentive to develop clean energy, promote energy efficiency and move to a more circular economy. Presiding Officer, the final theme I want to touch on today is empowerment and democratic accountability. Within this Parliament, we will work constructively to improve the way in which government is held to account. I have already made some proposals that seek to do just that.  For example, at a time when the UK Government is disgracefully still considering repeal of the Human Rights Act, we will take a different approach. We will work with Civic Scotland to establish an agreed set of social and economic rights for all of Scotland's citizens. By valuing and strengthening human rights, we can empower citizens and encourage better government. We will devolve more power to local communities. We will work with local authorities to review their roles and responsibilities and get more powers into the hands of communities. As a first step over the course of this Parliament, we will increase participatory budgeting across local authorities to at least 1 per cent of all council spending. We will also introduce an island's bill to give new powers to our island communities and continue our work to get more land into community ownership and make land ownership more transparent. The Land Reform Act passed at the end of the last Parliament provides a strong basis for taking our land reform agenda forward. I can confirm today that over the summer we will progress our commitment to introduce a mandatory public register of controlling interests in landowners. We will also, as you would expect, continue to build the case for Scotland to become an independent nation, a position backed by a majority of MSPs across this chamber. Of course, we know that Scotland will only become independent if and when a majority of the people are persuaded of our case. We also know that our job is to govern at all times for all the people of this country. That is what we will always strive to do. As part of that, we will seek to build alliances across party boundaries. I believe that there is a clear progressive majority in this Parliament, and whether there is cross-party opposition to unfair or regressive Westminster policies, such as continued austerity, the renewal of trident or attempts to undermine human and trade union rights, we will work with other parties to maximise Parliament's influence and make Parliament's voice heard. Looking ahead to the debate that we have in this chamber tomorrow, defending Scotland's place in the EU is a key early priority in demonstrating that progressive majority. The priorities that we pursue over the next five years will shape Scotland for the next generation and beyond. The proposals that I have outlined today have at their heart a faith in social justice, a belief that we will prosper as a nation and succeed as a society if we encourage every person's potential and respect every person's dignity. It's only by empowering individuals that we will achieve our shared ambition for a fairer and more prosperous nation. The priorities that I have outlined today are designed to do just that. Our young people must know that if they work hard, they will have a fair chance to achieve their dreams. Workers must be paid a decent wage for a decent day's work. Those who rely on social security must be valued for their potential contribution to society. Entrepreneurs and business owners must get the support that they need for their businesses to grow. Older people must be helped to live as independently as possible, and all of our citizens must know that their rights are valued and protected and that they will have a say in the decisions that affect them and their communities. That sense of empowerment for individuals, for families, for communities and for our country as a whole is what we will seek to build in the next five years. By doing so, we can make lasting progress towards true equality of opportunity for all. I look forward to working across Parliament to achieve that goal.