What about other types of radical expressions? It's useful to remember the following product. For any real numbers a and b, the product a plus b times a minus b is equal to a squared minus b squared. And this leads to a useful definition. We say that a plus b and a minus b are said to be conjugate expressions or conjugates. Remember definitions are the whole of mathematics, all else is commentary. One easy way to remember what a conjugate is is that the conjugates have the same terms, but in one they're added, and in the other they're subtracted. For example, let's find the conjugates of 40 plus 3, square root of 8 minus 7, and square root of 5 plus square root of 2. So definitions are the whole of mathematics, all else is commentary. Let's pull in our definition of conjugate. And again, the idea behind the conjugate is we'll have the same terms, but in one we'll add, and in the other we'll subtract. So the conjugate will have the same terms, but we change whatever the operation is. So the conjugate of 40 plus 3 has the same terms, 40 and 3. But since we're adding here, we'll want to subtract in the conjugate. So the conjugate will be 40 minus 3. The conjugate of square root of 8 minus 7 will have the same terms, square root of 8 and 7. But since we're subtracting here, our conjugate will be an addition. The conjugate of square root of 5 plus square root of 2 has the same terms, square root of 5 and square root of 2. But instead of an addition, we'll have a subtraction. So who cares about the conjugate? The reason that conjugation is so very important is you need to do it to speak Latin. Wait, wrong script. I mean, the reason that conjugation is so important in mathematics is that suppose either a or b or both involve a square root. Because the product a plus b times a minus b is a squared minus b squared, and when I multiply a square root by itself, I get the radicand, multiplying two conjugates will eliminate some of the square roots. For example, suppose we want to rationalize the numerator of the expression square root of 7 minus square root of 2 over 5. So remember that conjugate will have the same terms, square root of 7, square root of 2, but the operation will be different. Since we have a minus here, we want our conjugate to have a plus. And since we want to be able to use equals, we have to multiply numerator and denominator by the conjugate. Since we're trying to rationalize the numerator, let's go ahead and multiply out this mess. Square root 7 minus square root 2 times square root 7 plus square root of 2 is going to be square root 7 squared minus square root 2 squared, which we can simplify to 5. Into denominator, well, before we do anything, remember factored form is best. We had to multiply out the numerator because we didn't want to have any square roots in it, but in the denominator, we're already in factored form. Let's leave it in that form. So we'll leave our denominator as it is. The product of the factors in the numerator is equal to 5, so we'll write that. And now our numerator and denominator have a common factor of 5, so we can remove it. And that gives us our final answer, which has a rational numerator. One thing worth pointing out is that while we have rationalized the numerator, we haven't been able to suppress the radical expression. A version of it has appeared in the denominator. We could also try to rationalize the denominator, 8 over square root 3 minus 1. So the denominator, square root 3 minus 1, we can rationalize by multiplying by the conjugate. So the conjugate has the same terms, square root of 3 and 1, with a different operator. Instead of a minus, we'll write down a plus. Multiplying numerator and denominator by the conjugate, again factored form is best. So we'll leave the numerator as 8 times square root of 3 plus 1, but because we wanted to get rid of the radicals in the denominators, we do have to expand, which gives us a denominator of 2. We can simplify the fraction by removing common factors, and again the only thing that really matters is whether the numerator also has a factor of 2, and it does. We'll remove the common factor, giving us our final answer, and because factored form is best, we'll leave this in this form and not multiply it out.


Oh, it's filming. You're filming? Is it on? Or are we on the air? Well, yeah. Hi. My name's Weezo. This is my very own Weezo vlog. We, I want to tell you things that are good and things that are fun, tweets are very good. We thank you for Kibble. Kibble, I like Kibble. Deal? Is it okay if Chevy's in your vlog? I don't want to be in the vlog. My name's Chevy. Hi. I'm a very good boy. Who's this? I'm the commander. I'm the boss. Y'all, everything, everything. Are we gonna get a treat for this? Listen, what kind of vlog is this? Let me show him your bed, Diesel. Okay. Hey, this is my bed right here. It's actually two beds, but you're both mine. No, one's mine. Yeah, one's Chevy's. Sometimes I let my brother use one because I see two, but they're not mine. I'm just a blanket. This is my brother Frank, and that's my fog. Very warm. This is him. His name is Wibbit. He's my best friend. Oh, he's my dad. He's my best friend. Where'd you get him, Diesel? I know mom got him. He was a gift. He pressed it. You need to put him on your bed. Yeah. Is the commander allowed to sleep on your bed? Sometimes. I'm a big fluff. Yeah, can I have a treat now? Can I have a treat? You gotta say something for the vlog. It's one of them home videos. You gonna get a treat if I do it? Maybe. Maybe. Please? Are you a good boy? Are you a good boy? You want it? How come he got it? I'll hide you with my karate moves. I don't know if I want it. I gotta go get another one. I know where they are. Come this way. I'll show you where the treats are. Show them where the treats are. Here, show them. There's this one. Come, come. Where are they? They're that way. That way? Yeah, they're right there. Yeah?  Come on, open the door, kid. Okay. Where'd they go? What did you do with them? We've had a theft. Chevy, where's the treats? They're on the counter. There you go. They're favored. Okay, so I got another one. Chevy got it last time. Diesel. Can you sit? Aye, Moe, Stephanie, you can. Can you tell me one thing you're thankful for? I'm thankful for air. For air? Yes. Oh, it's just wonderful air with you. Life will be very difficult with you. Fair enough. Can you tell me one thing you're thankful for? I'm thankful when you go to work because the place quits down a lot. I don't know why you're still here. Must be the weekend. Okay, not very nice, but give me one for that. Grab another one. Where's the wiener? There he is. All right, wiener. Do you know one thing you're thankful for? Let me grab a smaller piece for you.  Oh, give me the big one. Okay, here's a little piece for you. Yes, sir. Let's see. Tell me one thing you're thankful for. That was the other day you were walking around the bed and you stubbed your toe. That was funny. Very thankful for the good laugh. That was nice. That was a good one. I remember that. Guys, let me give you a treat. That wasn't very nice. You guys not like me?  Can you give me treats? They're right there. Travis, tell me another thing you're thankful for. I'm thankful for treats. What other thing are you thankful for? Thankful for my kibble. What else? Thankful for when you give me my treat. Anything else? I'm thankful when you stop asking questions and give the treat. Oh, you slobbered all over me, man. Slobbered all over me. I thought this was supposed to be a weasel vlog.  Why are you even letting Jim have the camera? It's supposed to be a weasel vlog. I'm thankful that it was supposed to be a weasel vlog. That doesn't make sense, man. You can have the treat, but it doesn't make sense. I am very offended. Man, you mean my bone alone. You don't wanna be a part of it? You messed up the bed, look at this. Maybe you should make a game. I don't got tons. Chevy, tell me, who is your favorite mom? You didn't even know what I was gonna ask. The answer is mom. Are you sure? Who is your favorite parent? Yeah, why don't you, mom, color studies? Both of you? You don't even have to ask me. Okay, does anybody like me? Diesel, who's your favorite mom or dad? There's so much pressure, man. So much pressure. I'm gonna ask you to go to mom. Definitely, mom. She gives you best hugs. Very nice. Very nice. What would I have to do to be your favorite, Chevy? You'd have to be mom. How do I do that? Well, what's so special about mom that I don't have? She gives good hugs. You guys all about the hugs? Yeah, pretty much. How would you, that's pretty much how you judge a human. Judge them by their hugs. You tell a lot about a human by their hugs. Come with me, look. Where are we going? I'm gonna show you my mom's bed. That's my bed too, I sleep there. That's where mom sleeps in there. That's her bed. I must always protect my mom. Come with me. This is my mom's kitchen chair. That's where she sits. I love her very much when she sits. And so I sit too. Just like this, see? I'm a very good bully. Mom tells me every day. Okay, what else do you love about your mom? Everything. Sometimes she opens the magic door and gives me magic carrots. I love carrots. Will you give me carrots? You'll be my favorite for five minutes. Five minutes? Are you sure?  Yes. Is it in here? It's in there, it's in the magic door. I'll just open it up. Okay, I'll show you. Okay, where's the carrots? I don't know, I've never gone in there before. That's where mom goes. Does she usually give you the big ones or the small ones? Usually small ones, but I'll take a big one. You'll be my favorite for 10 minutes then. It looks like that's how it got in here. Just big carrots.  All right, Chevy. Oh, hi, Diesel. I heard you with carrots. Can we close the fridge? This shouldn't stay open. You can't what you call it, I think. It's a fridge. All right, I call you a magical cave of wonderlies. Food and treats and carrots. Chevy, I promised you a carrot. Let's give you a nice big piece. Sit. Now remember, you said you'd be, I'd be your favorite for 10 minutes, right? Is that gonna be 10 minutes right now or am I banking this for later? It's gonna be 10 minutes from now. Oh my goodness. Are you gonna say that? Eat your carrot, Diesel. Who's your favorite? Mom. You sure? Who's your favorite? Okay, you can be my favorite until she gets home.  All right, Commander. I'm gonna negotiate a deal with you. I don't negotiate with terrorists, especially carrot terrorists. Calling me a terrorist?  If I give you these, will you stop calling me that? I might. Nail promises. I might bite your finger if you don't give it to me. I'll bite you. I'll just take the whole hand. Diesel, these aren't for you. You already had yours. Can't have any of one? You can be my favorite till this evening. Pee. These are for the commander, okay? I gotta get him to like me.  Weiner? Yeah, don't even try, okay? You'll never be my favorite. Just give me the carrot, and no one gets hurt. He's worse than you, man. It's a carrot, and no one gets hurt.  Okay, if I put this one right between you guys, who's gonna get it? Figured. I got another one for you, bud. Here, you gotta stop calling me the carrot terrorist, though, okay? All right, deal. Just give me the carrot and I won't hurt you. Just give me, oh, yeah, right there. All right, have I won over? Have I won you guys over at all? Yeah? You can be my favorite for 15 minutes now, dad. 15. That's pretty good. Thank you. Diesel? Got till this evening, right? Tell mom, get home. Yes. And unfortunately, I do have to transfer my favor to give him over to her, because she gives good house. Weenie, we're friends, right? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, yes, friends. I mean, we do live together in the same house, yes? Mommy brought you home one day and you just never left. So I've learned to live with you, yes? We might cause our friends. Anything else you wanna show them, Chevy? Not today, maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow we can show them the outside date, the outside park we have. We have our own very own park outside with the kids. It's supposed to be a weasel fog. We brought my brother's kind of cookie over. So sorry about that. So sorry you had to deal with him, guys. Thanks for watching my job, fog. Maybe we'll do another one, maybe we won't. Maybe I'll just walk in circles and lay down. You never know what the world brings.


Thank you all for coming. I was just telling Phil that the work I'm going to tell you about—oh, can everybody hear me? Good. I was just telling Phil that the work I'm going to tell you about today is something I had absolutely nothing to do with. I just found it very interesting, and when Shantel asked me to do a presentation, I thought, I'm going to talk about those ants. So that's why I'm telling you about this today. It's a little bit strange. So you're probably familiar with symbiosis, which is a relationship between two species that both of them benefit from, as opposed to parasitism, which only one partner benefits. For example, animals can't break down cellulose, so they can't get the sugar that is stored in cellulose, but a lot of herbivorous animals can digest cellulose by hosting bacteria or protozoans that do know how to break cellulose in their digestive tract, so they just carry them around. And so they give the symbionts a place to live, and the symbionts help to feed them. Another nice example is that there's a species of squid that has a light organ attached to its ink sac, and it doesn't produce the light itself. The light is actually produced by a bacterium, a vibrio, which comes in and colonizes the ink sac and makes the light, and then the light. It's a very small squid, and so the light helps to hide the squid in the dark oddly enough. So it doesn't cast, it doesn't look like it has a shadow. Yes, cellulose and starch, they have different kinds of glucose, actually, different glucose forms, but they are related. They are both polysaccharides. Okay, so symbiosis is just two species living together, and they may be so closely associated, like lichens, for example, that they can only survive together, but each species still retains something of its original identity. In endosymbiosis, you have one species, which is nearly always a prokaryote or some kind of bacterium, is inside the cells of the host species, not necessarily in all of their cells, but in at least some of their cells, and therefore becomes an essential part of the host and has to be transmitted to the progeny of that host organism. And probably one of the most well-known examples of endosymbiosis is in the origin of the eukaryotic cells, cells that have nuclei, and sometime during the development of that cell, two different kinds of bacteria started taking up residence inside those early nucleated cells, and one of them, aerobic bacteria, became mitochondria, which we use to produce a lot of our energy, and in some plant cells, chloroplasts, cyanobacteria, got into those cells and became chloroplasts, and so those cells are photosynthetic because of endosymbiosis. So in this case, they are in all of the cells.  So there's a bunch of insects that have endosymbia in them, and I've just listed four of them here. One of them is Drosophila, many, and there's a lot of different Drosophila species, and many of them carry an endosymbiote called Wolbachia, and there are different species of Wolbachia that are associated with different species of Drosophila. In aphids, there's an endosymbiote called Bushnera, and the psyllid insects, which are like teeny, tiny, cricket-like things, have a very small endosymbia called Carcinella, and in the carpenter ants that I'm going to talk about today have an endosymbian called Lufmania. And a lot of these relationships are still not fully understood. Wolbachia is a very successful endosymbia. It's not just endosophila. It's in a lot of different insects. It's also in some other, a lot of other invertebrates, especially different kinds of worms. It wasn't even discovered in insects until 1924 when it was founded Mosquitoes, and it was also found in Drosophila in 1965, and now there are a lot of known Wolbachia associations. What it does for the fruit fly is an entirely clear. It may protect Drosophila from other kinds of bacterial infections. Some species of Drosophila live longer when they have Wolbachia in them, but it can also lead to sterility or kill off the male progeny, so it's not entirely good for the Drosophila. A couple of cool things about Wolbachia is that Wolbachia is related to the Rickettsial ancestors of mitochondria, so I think that's kind of interesting. So we have a kind of young endosymbia that's related to a very old endosymbia. In one species of Drosophila, Drosophila on a Nasi, there's at least one full copy of the entire Wolbachia genome in the genome of the fly, and it's transcribed, and nobody knows what it's doing there and why it's transcribed or what it does for the fly, so there's still lots of mysteries. In the aphids, what the bushnera does is to produce some essential amino acids because the aphids eat this or sap suckers, and so they're not getting a lot of protein out of their diet, so they get their essential amino acids from the bushnera. A bushnera is from a totally different kind of prokaryote from Wolbachia. It's related to the endobacteria, like E. coli, but its genome is very, very small, and E. coli's genome is about 4.6 megabases, million bases, but the bushnera genome is only about 640,000, so it's much, much smaller, and that tends to happen in endosymbians. They tend to pass off genes or just either pass them off to their host or just lose them entirely. The carcinella endosemian is interesting because it's got the smallest known prokaryotic genome, only 174,000 bases, and it's practically, it's so small it's practically not a prokaryote anymore, it's practically an organelle, but what we're going to be looking at today is the blockmonia relationship to its carpenter ant host. Interesting thing about blockmonia is that it's probably, it's related, it's closest endosymbiotic relationship is butmera, and it may have been acquired by lateral transport from mealybugs, a similar endosemian in mealybugs. Okay, so carpenter ants. There are a lot of species of ants, about 12,000 species of ants, and about a thousand of them, a little over a thousand of them, are carpenter ants in the genus Canfinotus, and these carpenter ants live in tunnels that they make in wood but they don't, unlike termites, they don't eat the sawdust, so they just, you know, leave the sawdust, and they all have these obligate endosymbionts which produce some essential amino acids for them. So the ants provide shelter for the bacteria, and then they also transmit the bacteria to their offspring. So they're fairly typical endosymbionts in that respect, but there's a few other things that make them strange. Blockmonia was one of the very first endosymbionts to be described in an insect, although it wasn't identified initially as a bacteria, blockmon thought it was a fungus because it looks kind of like spaghetti inside the cells that it resides in, but later it was found to be bacterial, and then blockmon was honored by having it named for it. So the work that I want to talk about was done by some people at McGill University, Rafiki, Rajkumar, and Avuhe. And they were studying the relationship between blockmonia and its ant hosts, and they were looking at how the ant embryos developed and how they interacted with the bacteria, and the reference for the article is given there, and it's also in the references. So what they found was that the interaction between the ants and the blockmonia involved three important things. One of them is the germline, the cells that produce the germ cell, the eggs and sperm of the ant, maternal genes of the ant, which are active in the embryo, and then a group of genes called the hox genes. So I want to talk a little bit about each of those so that it all makes sense, sort of. So we'll start with the germline. General embryos develop from single cells, fertilized eggs, and these come from cells that are embryonic cells, which are called germline cells. And germline cells in all animals become cellularized, become separated off very, very early in development, and that's true of these ants. It's interesting that the germ cells develop before the gonads that they are eventually housed in, so they actually migrate into the gonads as the gonads form. So this is what the insect germline looks like. You have cytoplasm just on the very surface of the egg. So most of the egg is yolk material, but on the very surface of the egg is a very thin layer of cytoplasm, and on one end is what's called a polar cytoplasm, and this is a cytoplasm that's going to wind up in the germ cells. So this, I think this is meant to be the fertilized egg nucleus. So these nuclei divide, and they don't get partitioned into separate cells until fairly late. So at first the nuclei divide by themselves, and then they migrate into that surface cytoplasm. And in the very first cells that become actually cellularized, actually separate entities, are the primordial germ cells. So they develop before any other cell type even gets compartmentalized. So I just want to tell you something about the developmental sequence in insects. You've got several sets of genes that hacked in sequence. First you have maternal effect genes. What these do is set up the anterior and posterior axis of the embryo, the front from the back. And then you have a couple of sets of embryonic genes, and these, let me go back just one minute. These are actually maternal genes whose proteins are put into the egg. The gap genes and the peri-rule genes are genes that are active within the embryo itself. And they sequentially subdivide the embryo into smaller and smaller segments. So the gap genes divided up into big pieces, and then the peri-rule and the segment polarity genes divided up into smaller and smaller pieces until you have the separate segments. And these are the segments that becomes visible when you look at the caterpillar larvae or something like that. You can see the individual segments in it. And then finally the last genes, and these are also embryonic genes. The last genes to act are the hox genes, and these assign specific structures to this particular segment. So it decides where the leg is going to be, where the wing is going to be, where the eye is going to be, that sort of thing.  These all contain a common 180-base homeobox sequence, which encodes a particular protein which is probably DNA binding, and that's called the homeo domain. So the hox genes, an important thing to remember here, is maternal effect genes act very early, and the hox genes act very late in development. So that's the way it usually works. All right, so this is a picture of the hox genes because they have some other peculiar features. These are the hox genes in Drosophila because the Drosophila hox genes have been studied quite a lot, and a lot of the names refer to their structures in Drosophila. So these are the hox genes, and what's interesting about them is that not only do they decide what goes where, they are ordered on the chromosome in the same relative positions as the body regions that they determine. So the map of the hox genes is the map of the embryo. So for example, this labial gene produces mouthparts, where it tells the segment to produce mouthparts. Whereas this abdominal B gene, down to the other end, produces the posterior abdominal segments. So they not only are mapped in structural order, they're also mapped in activation order. So the first genes that are active are the genes at the anterior end of the embryo, and the last genes that act are the genes at the posterior end of the embryo. And the two hox genes we're going to be interested in are these two here, UBX and abdominal A. UBX is for ultravide thorax. So these two genes have a role to play in the interaction between blocmonia and the ants. And this just lists the different hox genes. It tells you what the names are. And I just thought it would be interesting for you to see what the hox genes look like in humans, because humans have four sets that have the same relationship to the anterior posterior axis of the body that they do in Drosophila. And they have four sets because of whole genome duplication during the evolution of the vertebrae. Okay, so I just want to review the relative activity times for the maternal effect genes which are the first genes to act and the hox genes which act much later generally. Okay, so what the McGill researchers discovered when they were studying the genes that are active in these developing ant embryos were some very odd things. And the first odd thing, or one odd thing, was that there were two hox genes that were expressed very early. They were expressed in those posterior germ cell cytoplasm. And those were maternal genes, maternal hox genes that were active in the germ line. So those weren't from the embryonic genome, they were from the maternal genome and the proteins had been parked by the mom in the egg. So these genes are not only acting much earlier than they would normally act, they've been modified so that they are activating the germ line genes. So they're now doing something weird that these hox genes don't do in other animals. The other weirdness was that the organization of the embryo in these ants is different than it is in other insects. First, the posterior germ cell region wasn't used to produce the gametes. Most of the endosymbians collected in that posterior germ cell region and were used to produce bactericytes, and the bactericytes carry the endosymbians into the developing gut where they became active in digestion and in producing amino acids. The embryo region, the part of the early embryo that became the embryo was displaced from the anterior end of the egg, and three more germ cell regions are produced in these ants. These aren't found in most other insects. So we've got weird hox genes and we've got weird germ cell genes. So this is a picture of the bactericytes, and you can't really quite see the bucamania in there, but the bacteria are inside these cells. The bactericytes are developed from what normally would have been primordial germ cells, but these are bactericytes, and instead of going into the gonad, they go to the guts where they make these essential amino acids. So to try to figure out what was going on in these ants, what the investigators did was they looked at the embryos of carpenter ants, they compared their genetic activity to that of a lot of other related insect species, and they asked several questions. They asked, where is the germ line? They asked, where are the maternal hox genes active, or are the maternal hox genes active? Do they have endosymbionts, and if they do, what kind do they have? Where is the embryo developed within that egg, and which of the germ lines produces the gametes, and what are the others up to? So that's what they're looking at, and looking at dozens and dozens of different species. And this is just a summary of what they found. Okay, so what's typical of most insects is this picture that you see here. There is one germ line zone, it's in the posterior, that is going to become the germ cells, and the germ cells, as the embryo begins to develop, will then migrate into the embryo and snuggle up into the gonads. So this is your typical insect. Now some of the relationship, or some of the relations of blockmonia, that we're not blockmonia, remember there's a thousand species of those. So some of these other insects did have a new germ line zone down here, and for some reason this new germ line was participating in producing the germ line. Some of these species had other endosymbionts, but some of them had no endosymbionts. In these species, the maternal abdominal A and UBX were expressed in both of these germ line zones. So the second zone probably was, or may have been active in producing the germ line, but we don't exactly know, they don't exactly know what that second zone is for in those insects. Okay, third stage is the acquisition of the blockmonia endosymbion. This occurred just judging by which species have it and which species don't have it about 51 million years ago, and as the blockmonia came in and started messing with the germ line, the embryo moved anteriorly, moved out of the way of the blockmonia, or apparently looks like it's getting out of the way of the blockmonia. And there's a third germ line zone up at the anterior end. So this combination is seen in a few carpenter ant species, but mostly what you see in the carpenter ants is this situation in which you have now got the original germ line zone, the two new zones, and then a fourth zone, which is called number two here. I know that's confusing, but that's the way they number it. And this fourth zone is now the real germ line. So this is where the eggs and sperm for the next generation are going to develop. And these cells also pick up a few blockmonia from this sort of decoy germ line zone, which makes the bacteria sites. So these all become bacteria sites. These become gametes, but they also pick up just a few of the bacteria so that they can transport them into the next generation. So very complicated. And these cells here become active in the midline of the embryo, and these seem to help the bacteria sites move into the gut. So they all have jobs to do that they didn't have before. So this is just a summary of that history. So here's a date line up here. So this is about the time, about here, where blockmonia gets into the ant eggs and becomes a kind of permanent endosymbion. That's an enormous amount of work that they were doing. So a couple of questions here then. What are those maternal hox genes, UVX and abdominal A, doing? So one of the things they looked for was, you know, where are those two genes active? And they found that the abdominal A messenger RNAs localize in germ line zones one and three. Those were those, that number three was the first extra one to be produced. So abdominal A activates that one or goes into that one. And UVX is in all four germ line zones. And so they asked the question, well, what happens if we inactivate UVX or those, all of the UVX and abdominal A genes by using interfering RNA. So interfering RNA is, pairs up with the RNAs and keeps them from being transcribed and doing the normal thing. So this will specifically inactivate those two genes. So what happened when they inactivated abdominal A was the germ line genes didn't get expressed. The buccalmonia didn't get incorporated, the bactericides didn't form, and they didn't get into, and blocking UVX led to misplacement of the zone two germ cells. And they didn't get into that region. So those didn't get into the gonads. They don't into the embryo. So blocking those genes totally screws up the embryonic germ line. So they also say, well, what happens if we take away the endosemia using antibiotics? And you can do this in Drosophila. If you do this in Drosophila to get rid of the Wolbachia, the Drosophila will be just fine. If you do that to the ants, if you do that to campinotus by using antibiotics to get rid of the endosymbionts, half the embryos don't develop at all. And the ones that do develop don't have effective germ lines. The germ lines aren't acting normally. So they're basically sterile. So the endosymbionts seem to activate genes in the embryo, including the hawks genes. And the hawks genes from the ants have been modified to activate the ant germ line. So those two things have sort of become interactive, which is very, very strange, but it's what happens in this blochamania and it's been worked out over the last 51 million years or before. OK, so I just want to make a couple of other comments about blochamania. As I mentioned before, if you take it out of the Drosophila, the Drosophila is going to be fine. I mean, it doesn't actually have to have it, although the Wolbachia does produce seminal acids in the gut of the insect. However, Wolbachia has also found some nematodes and it is essential to those. So it's possible that it's been in the nematodes longer than it's been in the insects because the Wolbachia genome in the nematodes, these worms, is much smaller than it is in Drosophila, in the flies. OK, so at some point in future time, maybe it will become essential to Drosophila, but it isn't yet. So blochamania, on the other hand, is absolutely essential to the survival of all carpenter ants. And so it is effectively part of this insect species because it transmits it from one generation to another, and it interacts with the genes of the host cell. And this is the references that this one right here, this is the first article that I saw and I thought, oh, that's really interesting. So and then the rest of it is just some of the other information. So I have not been watching the chat because I can't keep track of it while I'm talking. Are there any questions? Oh, one thing I wanted to mention about ants, which you may or may not know, ants are kind of like bees in that the male ants don't have daddies. The male ants develop only from a single set of chromosomes or use just a single set of chromosomes that they get from their moms. So probably nearly all of the embryos that these guys were looking at were females that had arisen from fertilized eggs. So the fertilized eggs become females depending on what they eat, they may or may not become queens. The unfertilized eggs, of which there are not very many, become males. I'm pretty sure those are circular genomes because they're prokaryotic. Do you mean the blochamania genomes? Right, Phil? Yeah. Back in the 70s, I've got to do a little bit of stuff with a postdoc person with some messing around with the circular DNA. Yes, they do. They do. Any particular group of ants is going to be nearly all females and nearly all workers. The only, the worker ants have ovaries and they have eggs. But they don't ever get them fertilized. So they do have gametes. They just don't use them. I mentioned those other insects. And let's see, there are other endosymbionts. I think the most starling examples of endosymbionts are the ones that are not the ones that produce the mitochondria and the chloroplast. In fact, the chloroplasts have kind of an interesting story because most of the, most plant chloroplasts come from prokaryotes, from cyanobacteria. But there are some unicellular green algae that are eukaryotes. And those have become incorporated in the endosymbionts. And those have become incorporated into some other kinds of cells. And some of the, some of the protists, like euglena, I think, actually got its chloroplasts from a green algae rather than from a cyanobacterium. Yeah, the very, the very, the very first, a new queen, a new queen, when the queen mates, and this is true bees too, I think, when the queen mate, she's probably going to mate once, not necessarily with just a single male, but she's going to mate once. She's going to store all the sperm cells and then as she will then release those from wherever she keeps them, and I'm not exactly sure where that is, but she releases those every time she produces a new set of eggs. So mostly those eggs are fertilized. And her first litter is always a bunch of females because she's going to need some worker ants to help take care of her.  And in most cases, the males don't get produced until later until she's about to, you know, give off to another queen. I think the thing I found the most interesting was that early action of the hawks genes, because the hawks genes are found in so many different organisms and they generally act after all those other embryonic genes, and in this case, they're acting very early. Those two hawks genes, that are the maternal hawk genes, are acting very early, which means that what they do has been changed. I mean, their job has been modified, and I found that totally fascinating. And of course, that has happened in other hawks genes over evolutionary time because the hawks genes and, you know, humans don't do exactly the same thing as the hawks genes in, say, ants. Although in many cases, you can substitute a human gene, a human hawk gene for an insect hawk gene, and it will do what it's supposed to do in the insect. So there's quite a lot of similarity among those genes. In fact, you can still tell which one is which. You notice that they were, let me back up and show you the color coding on them. I should have started from the other end. I just wanted to show you the human hawks genes and the fruit fly hawks genes. Here they are. Okay, so you see the color coding. So all of these pale ones are labial genes. And there have been some additional genes added in the human genome. For example, this one isn't in fruit flies, but it is in the human genome and possibly some other mammalian genomes as well. It's not just in human. So all mammals have these four sets of hawks genes. Yes, hawks have hawks. You said, why might that be? And I'm not quite sure what you mean, Phil. Oh, it's hard to say why something happens. It's more like how, but if Hawks genes are activated early. Is there an advantage or was this just some sort of mutation that was retained? I think it has to do with bilateral symmetry because he's in all these Hawks genes are in all bilaterally symmetrical animals. So they're in earthworms. They're in flies. They're in chickens. They're pretty much the same Hawks genes. And in most vertebrates, you've got these four sets because of the whole genome duplication very early in vertebrate evolution. There are some other genes like I think some of the myosins that there are also four copies of. But because maybe because the Hawks genes are active during development, more of them have been retained. Oh, that's an interesting question there gone. The genes, the Hawks genes in the Hawks genes that produce the appendages, the arms and legs, they are active kind of in the same. The same order. So the posterior Hawks genes are, well, you can see the color color coding here. You got three sets of Hawks genes that are active in the same order. This gene, this gene, that gene are active going starting from the proximal region of the limb to the distal region. So it's kind of like the anterior posterior axis except it's the part that's near the midline and furthest from the midline. So these are acting to produce the different parts of, you know, the upper and the lower leg in the feet or the hands. So I think that geometry I think is very, very interesting. So, oh, so in answer to Sisi's question, yeah, possibly. I think that it might have, might have led to some muscular changes that would have led to bipedal movement. If you look at the nobos, I don't know if you've ever watched the nobos, but those are the, sometimes called the pygmy chimps, although they're not that much smaller. If you look at the nobos, they are quite bipedal. They walk around on their back legs quite a lot. Even though their arms are still quite long and they're still essentially quadrupeds, but they stand up and hold things. I've got a picture of a bonobo. I took it to San Diego Zoo that standing up holding a stick. It looks for all the world like, you know, he's holding a spear or something. Yes, we're quite close to the chimpanzees. In fact, the bonobos evolved after we did. We split off before the bonobos did from the chimpanzees. Too bad we didn't split off, split off after. He might have been less aggressive. Yes, the, the upright posture is definitely a defining character of humans. And I think, I think the, the voice boxes to the changes in the lyrics. Oh, well, I, I never met a homo erectus, but I think I would call it human. They're certainly included with the hominids. Oh, barrigan. Okay. That'll be fun. Yes, I think the, I think the ability to disagree might, might have been refined with the development of language. Well, it's in the genus Homo. Homo erectus. That's a good question. Maybe whales. Actually, the bonobos are pretty nice to each other. Yes, some of the hox gene mutations are very strange. Antenopedia, for example, puts legs instead of the antenna. So it's got feet on its head. And the proboscopy, I think has feet on its nose. Possibly. I mean, there are a lot of gene mutations. I think one of the important ones is the language gene. And I don't know if that gene is homeotic. I'll have to check that out. Oh, you know, it might be it's Foxp2. It might be a homeotic gene, but it's, I don't think it's a hox gene. Well, the, the, they picked up the Blocomani about 51 million years ago by comparison with the other insect species. So is that early relative to insects? Insects have been around for maybe 400 million years. So I don't, I don't think it's early in insect evolution or, well, that one is an early insect. There may be some that are, that are early. Bushner, for example, has such a small genome. It's probably been around for a while. Oh, elephants are sentient. I think so. Somebody was talking about elephants, maybe here might have been here somewhere about experiments that have been done with elephants.  So they know it's them. They're, they're looking at a reflection and they know there's something up there that's not normally there. So there's, I think there's a lot of sentience in that. Yes, supposable thumbs are, I think, what got us in all the trouble that we get into the fact that we're tool users. And tool, tool builders, you know, that we're so manipulative of our environment. Yes, there you go. Although there, there, there are some other. Well, the, the chimps, the chimps are tool-using too. A little bit. And some birds. The Darwin's cactus finches are tool users. They use the, the spines to dig, dig stuff out. Well, did I miss any questions? Oh, well, the endosymbiosis that produced the eukaryotic cells occurred pretty early. The pro, the eukaryotes were a couple of billion years after the earliest of the prokaryotes. So, but two billion years is pretty old. And there are, there are a lot of, a lot of symbiotic relationships among groups of prokaryotes that, you know, bacteria that hang out together and help each other out. In fact, probably that kind of association was the precursor to the development of eukaryotic cells.  Oh, I can, I'll send that to Chantal. The slides, Alva. I'm sorry, I meant to do that before, but I'll go ahead and do it. Well, I'm glad you found it interesting. I, I've enjoyed the opportunity to dig into it a little bit more. Well, thank you, Phil. Yes, I should do this more often. It's been a while. Oh, welcome, Rosa. I hope you'll come back. Oh, good. I'm, thanks for saying that tag. Sometimes I mumble. Well, I will send those slides to Chantal. And so they'll be available. And thanks again for coming.


The next item of business is a statement by John Swinney on information sharing provisions in relation to part 4 and 5 of the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of the statement. I call on John Swinney. Presiding Officer, improving the lives of all of our children, young people and their families is something that members of this Parliament have been working together to achieve for many years. Getting it right for every child has been the national approach in Scotland to improving outcomes and supporting the wellbeing of our children and young people since 2006. Its core premise of offering the right help at the right time from the right people was supported by all parties then, and I still believe now. This Government remains wholly committed to applying the getting it right for every child approach as part of our determination to ensure that all of Scotland's children get the best possible start in life. The foundations on which getting it right for every child is built are the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Above all, it seeks to ensure that public policy and practice decisions are taken in the best interests of the child and delivers the Government's responsibility to protect and support families to nurture their children. The name person service is central to fulfilling the responsibility of Government and the wider public sector to enhance and support children's rights. The name person service is a simple but important concept that came from families themselves, that having a single named contact such as a health visitor or a teacher that you know you can go to for advice, information and support about any aspect of your child's wellbeing is helpful for children and parents. For practitioners, having that same clear point of contact at the core of a team of professionals and services around a child enables agencies and individuals to work more effectively together to better support, safeguard and promote the wellbeing of children and young people. It makes available access to early support for all families because, although it can be clear in some circumstances that help may be required, it is impossible in all cases to predict if or when a family or a child might need extra help. Whether families are faced with difficulties posed by the debilitating cycle of deprivation and unexpected diagnosis of a disability, a breakdown of family relationships or other challenges when circumstances change, there are clearly times when children, young people and their families benefit from a clear point of contact for information and support to help them navigate the system and to get the help that they need. As I made clear my statement to Parliament in September, this Government remains absolutely committed to the name person service as a way to support children and their families. On 28 July last year, the Supreme Court ruled definitively that the intention of providing a named person for every child to promote and safeguard their wellbeing was unquestionably legitimate and benign. The judgment itself did not require current policy to change and did not relate to current practice under getting it right for every child. A local authority or health board can continue to nominate a person to be responsible for the provision of services to a child, and organisations can, within the framework of the existing law, continue to deliver or engage with such existing or developing named person services. I want to reiterate my support for practitioners across Scotland who continue to live up to their commitment to develop and deliver a named person service to families in their local areas within the framework of the existing law. However, the Supreme Court judgment requires us to change the statutory provisions relating to one aspect of the name person service, and that is on information sharing. I believe that the aims of the policy justify broad support, and that, when the way forward on implementation of information sharing is accurately understood, it too will command support. The Supreme Court determined that ministers needed to provide greater clarity about the basis on which health visitors, teachers and other professionals who support families, will share and receive information in their named person role. It ruled that the information sharing provisions of part 4 of the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014, as they were originally framed, are incompatible with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that changes are needed to make those provisions compatible with article 8 to ensure respect for a person's private and family life, his home and his correspondence. The Supreme Court judgment has provided an opportunity, therefore, to revisit the information sharing provisions in the 2014 act, in a way that will not only secure the protection of those rights, but will improve the name person service and reassure parents and practitioners and the wider public that that service will work with and for families. Since the Supreme Court judgment, I have led a three-month period of intense engagement. I have listened to parents, charities, practitioners and children and young people, and from those who support the name person policy and those who have concerns about it. Over three months, that engagement involved over 50 meetings and some 250 organisations and groups. That included around 700 young people, parents and carers, practitioners, professionals and leaders from education, health, local authorities, police, faith communities, unions and charities. Importantly, we listened to those who had concerns about information sharing and were prepared to consider a revised way forward. We reached out to others, including Care Scotland, Clan Child Law, Together and the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, among others. We are grateful to all those who took part in what was a genuinely open engagement. A key part of our engagement was to listen to children and young people, our commitment to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, requires us to uphold children's rights by ensuring that their voices are heard, listened to and acted upon by all those who support them and provide services to help them. On a more personal level, young people recognise the benefit of having access to someone they trusted to help them get support if needed. The Government listened to parents. The name person service provides a point of contact and support who works in partnership with parents and families to help them navigate the wider system. Parents told us that they do not always get the support that their families need, so that they have to tell their stories over and over. Parents also told us that they want the name person service to work in partnership with them and that having a say in the sharing of information about their families matters to them. Their views and their experience reinforce the initial rationale for creating the named person service. The Government listened to practitioners. As with families, nursing and medical professional organisations and trade unions, it told us that information sharing that was rooted in consent, engagement and empowerment of families was the best way forward. Only in exceptional circumstances, such as where the risk of harm was present, should we consider departing from those core principles. Practitioners highlighted that professional judgment and discretion remains vital in working with families to decide whether, when and with whom, information should be shared. The Care Inspectorate highlighted to us that sharing of relevant and proportionate information in relation to the wellbeing of children had improved as organisations prepared for the implementation of the named person service. Joint inspections of services for children and young people in 2014-16 showed that most community partnership areas had developed mechanisms for sharing information about individual children with relevant services while working within the requirements of data protection legislation and duties of confidentiality. Therefore, reports also show that practice remains inconsistent across services in localities and between localities, meaning that families will experience different levels of support. A recurring issue in tragic cases has been a failure to share information when remedial action could have been effective. Putting the findings from the extensive engagement and Care Inspectorate reports alongside the ruling of the Supreme Court makes clear what needs to be remedied. We must provide consistency, coherence and confidence in the approach to sharing information below the threshold of risk of significant harm. That is where the named person's role is so important for support to families to get the assistance when they need it. I propose to bring forward a bill that will include new provisions on when and how information can be shared by and with the named person's service. The new provisions will ensure that we address the Supreme Court's judgment, live up to our objective of supporting children and young people and giving them and their families reassurance that their rights are fully respected. I intend to introduce the bill ahead of the summer recess, and I will work with Parliament to agree a timetable to enable commencement in 2018. Without legislation, there is a risk that the benefits of a coherent and consistent approach, which is delivered through good practice in some places, are not made available to all families. That means a longer timeframe for commencement than I originally anticipated, but I believe that given the significance of the issues that are involved, Parliament must be given the full and proper opportunity to legislate on those issues. That approach will involve replacing some of the provisions in the 2014 act that the Supreme Court was concerned about, with new provisions requiring named person's service providers and others involved with children and young people to consider whether sharing information would promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of the child or young person, and requiring them to consider whether sharing that information would be compatible with data protection law, human rights and the law of confidentiality. Only if information can be shared consistently within those legal constraints will there be a power to share it and the legislation will make this clear. That approach aims to promote good and consistent practice by imposing an explicit duty on named person's service providers and others to consider whether or not to share information, whether that would promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of a child, while making it clear that that might only be done when there is compatibility with data protection law, the law of confidentiality and human rights law. Through both practice and legislative framework, the importance of involving families in the sharing of their personal information will be central to how the named person's service works with families. There is also a crucial balance to be struck. We must ensure that the 2014 act supports children, young people and families to access support easily if they need this. However, we must also strive to ensure that the amendments to the 2014 act do not result in unnecessary bureaucracy or a burden on services. I have reflected on this point very carefully. To support implementation of this approach, it is proposed that a new section be added to the 2014 act to provide for the making of guidance, specifically on information sharing, designed to address the Supreme Court's judgment. The guidance will be an important resource that will assist practitioners to take a systematic approach to information sharing in appropriate cases. It is envisaged that the guidance could incorporate suitable case studies to assist understanding by practitioners and it will also help to address the concerns expressed in the Supreme Court judgment about the question of proportionality. The approach supports the ambitions shared by practitioners for enabling continued improvements in working together while leaving appropriate scope for practitioner judgment and discretion. I would intend that draft guidance will be presented to Parliament as early as possible during the bill's passage. I am aiming for a draft to be available at the same time as the introduction of the bill ahead of the summer recess. This Government will also work with practitioners and organisations to enable them to implement the new legislation. We will work with key partners to develop and deliver national training and capability building programmes to ensure that proportionate information sharing that works for and with families is the norm. We will engage key partners in the inspectorates, the statutory, third and independent sectors to develop resources for robust self-evaluation and review mechanisms for use by practitioners. I also recognise that, after a campaign that is involved a lot of misinformation about the named person service, it is important for Parliament and the country to have confidence in the getting it right for every child approach. Ensuring the trust of families and young people across Scotland is critical in ensuring the future success of the named person service. The legislative process will create the opportunity to do this. We will also deliver public information campaigns with partners that provide accessible information for children, young people and parents on their rights and entitlements, embodied in getting it right for every child. I want to reassure Parliament that we have taken very seriously our responsibility to provide an appropriate response to the Supreme Court judgment. We have sought advice and listened to a wide range of views and experiences. We now intend to put in place measures so that the aims of the named person service as supported by Parliament and described by the Supreme Court as unquestionably legitimate and benign is compatible with data protection law, human rights and the law of confidentiality. By making those changes, we will respond to the Supreme Court ruling in a way that improves the named person service and gives families, practitioners and the wider public greater confidence that information sharing for named person service purposes will be in line with the founding principles of getting it right for every child and will respect their rights fully. The approach that I have set out today seeks to bring consistency, clarity and coherence to the practice of sharing information about children and young people's wellbeing across Scotland. It also seeks to achieve something more fundamental, to enable us to work together as Government and Parliament to deliver the original aims of a policy journey that began over 10 years ago. Let us agree today to ensure that we get it right for every child. There now comes the opportunity to put questions. I would ask any member or invite members to press their request-to-speak button, if they wish to do so, and I call Liz Smith. Cabinet Secretary, every single opinion poll that has been conducted on the named person policy shows that the majority of the public and a very large number of the practitioners who you mentioned in your statement do not want named persons. Can I ask on what evidence you have decided not to abolish the whole idea? Secondly, you mentioned that the Supreme Court said that the named person policy intervention was unquestionably legitimate and benign, but to be precise, there is a very significant difference between a policy of caring for wellbeing with benign intentions and a named person policy that had at its heart, potentially disproportionate and intrusive data sharing, which was ruled unlawful. Does the cabinet secretary accept that key difference, something that he has not recognised in his statement, and will he confirm if wellbeing, in its term, will be defined in the new bill? Thirdly, has the cabinet secretary recognised that the most recent statistics tell us that the vacancy rate among health visitors, who are the key deliverers of the policy, is rising as is the age profile? Is this not a real problem for the implementation of the policy? First of all, on the question of the policy intention, the Government was elected on its policy commitments, and the Government is committed to the named person service, and Parliament has legislated for that to be the case. Until such time as Parliament legislates not to have a named person service, I am duty-bound as a minister to respect the view in the wishes of Parliament, and I do not think that Parliament would expect anything else of me in that respect. The second point is on the question of the Supreme Court's judgment about named person being unquestionably legitimate and benign. Liz Smith is correct that the Supreme Court raised issues about proportionality, and in my statement I have gone to great lengths to set out how the question of proportionality will be addressed, and it will be addressed by placing the duty on practitioners to consider whether there is a legitimate case for sharing information and then going on to consider whether or not the sharing of that information is compatible with the existing legal framework in which we all have to operate. The question of proportionality is, in my view, as all issues raised by the Supreme Court have no alternative but to address the issues raised by the Supreme Court, and the question of proportionality has been addressed in that fashion. Thirdly, on the question of wellbeing, Liz Smith will be aware that wellbeing is defined in the Children and Young People's Act. The terminology is present in the act already, and of course Parliament will have to consider the legislation that I bring forward. On the final point, in relation to health visitors, Liz Smith might not have got to this detail yet, but the data revealed this morning an increase of 117 in the number of health visitors as part of our target of reaching 500 by 2018. That is welcome progress towards that objective, and we need to ensure that we have a strong health visitor community in Scotland able to contribute to supporting families where they need that support to assure the wellbeing of young people. What the health secretary and I are very focused on doing is making sure that we have in place a seamless integrated support arrangement in place for those who need it in our society to make sure that, at the earliest possible opportunity, we can act to overcome the difficulties and the challenges that children face in our society and to provide the support at the earliest possible opportunity that we can. I agree. My thanks to the Deputy First Minister for Early Sight of his statement. The Deputy First Minister talked towards the end of his statement of misinformation about the name person service and acknowledged, I think, the consequent loss of trust among parents and practitioners in the policy. He knows that we have long argued that one of the elements that allows some of those misrepresentations to gain credence is the inclusion of 16 and 17-year-olds in the name person scheme. Can I ask him once again to consider using the legislative process on which he is now embarked to remove 16 and 17-year-olds from the scope of the legislation in order to help to re-establish the credibility of the policy? I am grateful to Mr Gray for his remarks. I am familiar with his long-expressed view on the question of 16 and 17-year-olds. When I came to Parliament in September, I set out to Mr Gray the origins of the thinking why 16 and 17-year-olds were included, and the origins of that are the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as a young person up until the age of 18. The Government is trying in a whole variety of different ways. The Minister for Early Years and Child Care set out information just a few weeks ago on the steps that the Government is taking in another and different area of policy on the minimum age of criminal responsibility to fulfil our obligations in relation to the UNCRC. Mr Gray raises not an easy issue for us to resolve against the backdrop of that policy framework. I also rehearse to Mr Gray in September the fact that a sizable proportion of calls to our helplines to childline from vulnerable young people can be from 16 and 17-year-olds. I think that there is an important and illustrative lesson for us in that. The question of removing 16 and 17-year-olds from the name person legislation does not form part of my current proposals, but the Parliament is going to embark on a legislative process, and it will be up to Parliament to consider those questions. I will call a number of speakers. The opening speakers get slightly longer questions from now on and very brief questions and equally succinct answers. James Dornan is to be followed by Adam Duncan. Cabinet Secretary, I think that it might be worthwhile reminding the Parliament that the name person service is abacking the Parliament, local authorities and the major child welfare organisations. Can the cabinet secretary detail how he will consult the bill and how he will ensure that the Education and Skills Committee will be kept updated in any progress? Obviously, I have gone through an intensive programme of discussion and dialogue to get to where I am today. The formal consultation on the bill took place until in the young people's bill and the question of a name person service took place back in 2012. The bill will be subject to scrutiny by the Education and Skills Committee, and the Government will, of course, fully comply with the timetable that the committee agrees and disagrees with the parliamentary authorities to ensure full scrutiny of all of the provisions. Adam Tomkins, to be followed by Rona Mackay. Will named persons under the Deputy First Minister's amendments be able to share information about children without their consent or without the consent of their parents only where it is necessary in order to safeguard the children's welfare? Any broader power than that is likely to continue to be in breach of the law. Let me say two things to Mr Tomkins. The first is that I envisage that information will be shared with consent in all but the exceptional circumstances. The exceptional circumstances I would consider would be exceptional circumstances provided for by the DPA law, human rights law and the law of confidentiality. Any exceptional circumstance would have to be enabled for information to be shared without consent, as long as it was provided for in those legislative instruments and within that legislative framework that I have set out. Rona Mackay, to be followed by Daniel Johnson. Given the many scarce stories that we have heard in the name person service, a concept that came from families themselves, could the cabinet secretary outline how he will ensure that the general public understands how that will work? The first thing to do in that respect is for us to address the issues that have given rise to significant concern. As I have looked through this issue, it is quite clearly the issues around information sharing and perhaps some of the issues that Mr Tomkins has just raised with me that have caused that concern. The answer that the Government has come up with today is a very strong and robust answer to those issues that enable us to proceed with an approach that addresses those concerns and then allows us to focus back on the core principle behind the name person service, which is to provide a dependable and reliable point of contact for individuals, for children and families to go to when they require support in our society. When we strip away all the debate that has gone on about that, that is what the name person is about. It is about providing a contact point reliably available for families and for children that they can go to when they need help. In the experience that we have had from the consultation exercise, that is the service that members of the public are looking to achieve and, on that basis, I think that we can build public confidence. Daniel Johnson, to be followed by Jenny Gilruth. The challenges that are faced by the name person policy to date are twofold. First of all, the legal issues that are identified by the Supreme Court, but also the issues around trust of professionals, teachers and children. Therefore, I ask what activities within the period of intensive engagement were addressed specifically on that issue of trust? How does the cabinet secretary now understand the issues around trust that are faced by the policy? What actions will be taken to address the issues of trust in the name person before, during and after the implementation of the revised policy? I suppose that the formulation that Mr Johnson talks about is helpful. There are legal issues that must be addressed before the service can be implemented in relation to the legislation in the Children and Young People Act 2014. We have to address those issues, and I have set it to Parliament and the mechanism by which we are going to do that. I might add that the highest level of authority that the Government can put in place is to ask Parliament to legislate on this question. We can ask Parliament to do no greater contribution than that. That is a first and very important point that I am recognising that legislation is required, which in a sense leads me into the second point, which is about building trust. If I am asking Parliament to legislate again on those key issues, I am recognising the need to ensure that parliamentary authority is given to those provisions, which I hope will assist in creating some public trust. The second point that I would make in that respect is to link into what Rona Mackay has just raised with me, which is to make the point that when the name person service is explained to people, not as a service that will be intrusive to family life, because, as a consequence of the legal issues that I am now going to address, we hopefully address that point conclusively, the name person service can be expressed and explained to members of the public as a resource that is of benefit and of assistance as a contact point for families to make sure that they can get the support when they feel they need it. The last point that I would make to Mr Johnson is about practitioners, and of course practitioners covers a wide variety of different professionals in that respect. In my experience of the public services, many of our public servants are teachers or as health visitors or as care workers or in whatever function they are exercising. They are very keenly motivated by the wellbeing of the individuals for whom they are offering support or providing education. That is a key connection that enables the policy to be successful because it links the needs of individuals directly with what can be delivered by public servants. In all our experience, we all see public servants who make a phenomenal contribution to our society, and we have the opportunity to ensure that members of the public have access to that quality of service. Jenny Gilruth, to be followed by Ross Greer. I remind members that I am the parliamentary liaison officer to the cabinet secretary. To ask the Scottish Government how the sharing provisions within the Children and Young People Act will impact upon classroom teachers. There is a requirement for classroom teachers to be fully cognisant of the role of a named person, and what issues can be raised with a named person through the appropriate training and support that is available to them to ensure that that role has been used to the full. However, classroom teachers have a particular role to ensure that they are supporting the young people in their care and working within the structures of our education system to make sure that any concerns that they have about the wellbeing of young people are properly addressed in the appropriate fashion while respecting the legal rights of individuals in that process. Ross Greer, to be followed by Tavish Scott. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. I am reassured by Mr Swinney's answer to Daniel Johnson in regards to the Government's consultation period over recent months, but ensuring that young people in particular are engaged in getting it right for every child is essential. Will the cabinet secretary be able to confirm what the Scottish Government will do to ensure that young people, such as through organisations such as the Scottish Youth Parliament, which they have directly elected, are engaged in the legislative process and in the drafting of new guidance? I am keen to make sure that we use the process to build confidence in the whole approach. Therefore, I will take an open approach to inviting the contributions and input of organisations to help us to design the legislation but also to design the guidance that goes with it. Of course, the guidance that goes with it is very important because we have to make sure that it provides the necessary clarity for individuals and therefore having that informed by children and young people would be particularly beneficial. On the question of dialogue with young people, the cabinet met last week with a group of representatives from the Children's Parliament and the Scottish Youth Parliament for what the First Minister committed us to was an annual discussion on relevant issues of mutual interest. I know that members of the cabinet got a tremendous amount out of that conversation, and we will continue that dialogue. I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement and for his recognition of the importance of legislation in allowing for the parliamentary scrutiny that I suspect others were hinting at. Does he recognise that the scope of the original legislation was seen to be exceeded by the potential implementation of the named policy proposals and therefore parental concern is significant and has still to be adequately addressed? Will he recognise or will indeed the explicit duty that he outlined to Parliament this afternoon guard against the invasion of parental and family privacy that is of such concern? Is he minded to note that that is potentially likely only to be tested or that balance is likely to be only tested in court? Will he recognise the danger of a breakdown between the police, teachers and health workers on one hand and parents on the other, given the concerns of the matter? What has he specifically got to do to address that point? On the last point that Mr Scott raises, my whole intention is to create an atmosphere of partnership working between public authorities and public servants and families, and that is the whole intention behind named persons to make public services much more accessible and readily contactable by individual families. At the heart of the concept is the encouragement of that process. Second point that I would make is that I think that anyone looking at my statement will, I hope, come to the conclusion that I have recognised the importance of clarifying the issue of consent around the sharing of information. My answer to Mr Tomkins was that the information will be shared with consent in all but the exceptional circumstances. I hope that that goes a long way to addressing the issues that I know underpin the question that Mr Scott has raised with me. The final point that I would make in relation to Mr Scott's point is that what I have done in my statement is to look directly at the issues that are raised by the Supreme Court, and I believe to address them directly and adequately. That is by recognising that, if information is to be shared, there would have to be consideration given of whether the legal authority enabled that to happen. If that was done, that would protect the rights that Mr Scott legitimately raises with me today. The framework that has been put in place is designed to provide absolute clarity around the sharing of information and to protect those very rights that are at the heart of Mr Scott's question, at which, frankly, underpin the Supreme Court judgment that I have to address. Clare Haughey, to be followed by Ross Thomson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can the cabinet secretary outline if there will be any additional resources for named persons service providers to support the implementation of those changes? The Government has already made resources available for the implementation. We made that allocation to local authorities during 2016-17. Obviously, we will look at the specific issues that are required in relation to raising awareness on those questions to make sure that practitioners are fully supported and taken forward the important work that they have to take in this respect. Ross Thomson, to be followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I remind members of my register of interest as a serving Aberdeen City councillor. Is the cabinet secretary aware of the survey responses provided by a sample of heads of senior school guidance in 29 Highland region schools, in which was shared with Bill Alexander, which makes plain the extent of the concern amongst practitioners about the named person policy? Seventy per cent strongly agree that named persons have caused them greater stress. Over 80 per cent are concerned at the impact of named persons in legislation, which is four in five teachers. Further, last year, Aberdeen City council leader Jenny Lane stated that named persons was putting people off taking up positions as primary head teachers in Aberdeen. Therefore, would he agree that, with all this evidence, this is naturally a matter of great concern to parents and teachers, particularly when he says today that their trust is crucial to the future of named persons? I think that the point that I find difficult to understand in the underpins Mr Thomson's question is that, somehow, members of the teaching profession are not focused on or concerned about the wellbeing of the children that they educate. That is what the name person concept is about. That is what the teaching profession is doing every single minute of the day. It is looking at the wellbeing of children and supporting them to fulfil their potential. I am keen that the named person proposal is explained to people in our professions on that basis. If I heard the explanation of the named person proposal that has been communicated quite extensively in the media, I think that if I was a teacher, I might have some concerns about it. Mr Thomson has fuelled much of that in the process. What I am interested in doing is making sure that we work with practitioners and parents and families to ensure that we have in place a point of contact that is a reliable asset for families to address the issues in which they might need support from our public services in the years to come. I want to pick up on the very legitimate question that Claire Hawke asked about resources. It would not have escaped the chamber's attention today that the front page of the Herald states very clearly that over £1 billion has been cut from the whole Government in the past five years. In order to ensure that there are sufficient resources, we need to get a more fulsome response from the cabinet secretary on that point. What could he say, given that we have those cuts in the whole Government, that there will be adequate resources to make sure that that policy does work? I point out to Monica Lennon that, in the most recent data that was available about local authority spend, an increase in resources has been allocated to education and children's services. The second point that I would make is that the Government has already made an allocation to local authorities for the implementation of named person, and that money has been allocated to local authorities in this financial year. Clearly, named person has not been introduced as originally conceived of by the legislation, so local authorities have that money. I have not reclaimed that money, but it is sitting with local authorities who are able to support them in their activities. I come back to the point that I made to Liz Smith that the data that we saw this morning saw an increase of 177 health visitors on a well-known way to our commitment to achieve an increase of 500 by 2018. I would also point out to Monica Lennon that there has been an increase in the spending power available to local authorities as a consequence of the Government's budget decisions and the decisions that were taken by the Parliament in agreeing the budget provisions. I thank the cabinet secretary for his detailed statement. I think that interested parties would welcome any information that the cabinet secretary could provide on what checks and balances that would be on the named person's service, and can he offer any assurances on that? There are provisions within the existing legislation for concerns about the operation of named persons to be raised, a complaints mechanism that exists around the workings of named persons. There is every opportunity for individuals, if they are concerned about the way in which the service operates, to openly raise those concerns and to have those concerns addressed. Jeremy Balfour, to be filled by John Mason. The cabinet secretary said that he has met 250 organisations and groups and had 50 meetings over the past three months. I understand that he is still not met with the known-to-name persons group, who obviously brought this case to the Supreme Court. Can you tell me which organisations he has met that are against his proposals, and, secondly, will he now meet with the group so that they can discuss their concerns with him? I explained my position on that to the Education and Skills Committee when I was there some months ago. I have been focused on addressing the issues that arise out of the Supreme Court judgment to ensure that the named person's service can be put into practice. That is what the Parliament has legislated for. That is what I consider to be my duty as a minister. I know that Mr Balfour does not agree with it. I know that the Conservatives want it abolished, but that is not the position of Parliament, and I am a minister accountable to this Parliament. My democratic duty is to make sure that I address the issues that are raised by the Supreme Court process. I have not met known-to-name persons because there is a clue in the name. They do not want named persons. They do not want to engage a discussion with me about how that could be put into practice. They want to end it. What I have done is that I have discussed with clan child law, for example, who were a party to the legal action, the issues that they are concerned about, to try to adequately address those issues. Obviously, they will speak for themselves, and they will make their views clear about the steps that I have taken. I have engaged with organisations that have expressed concerns. I relayed them in my statement, clan child law, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council and Care Scotland. Those organisations had concerns about named persons, and we have engaged with them to try to address those concerns. I have taken as open an approach as I possibly can, but I think that the Parliament will understand that if I am interested in implementing the name person service and finding a way to do so, it would be unusual for me to meet people who do not want anything to do with that particular policy to be implemented. John Mason will be followed by John Scott. I wonder whether the cabinet secretary will accept that, within my constituency, there are many vulnerable children and vulnerable families who are really needing a named person and the help and support that they can give. Can he reassure them and me that he will hold firm to his principles in providing that service? I recognise the need that exists in Mr Mason's constituency, but I think that that will be the position in every constituency in the country. There are particular challenges in Mr Mason's constituency, but I can also think of families in my constituency that would benefit from such a support. I assure them that I will hold firm on that view. That is why I have come back to Parliament, having taken time to consider the very difficult and complex issues that are involved in the process to ensure that the Parliament can have a legislative consideration at the highest test possible that the Parliament can deploy to ensure that we have in place the measures that can turn into practical support for the people and the families that Mr Mason represents. If the cabinet secretary is determined to reintroduce the named person's legislation in this relatively short timescale, will he assure Parliament that the policy intentions of this bill will be fully developed and clearly expressed on the face of this new bill to give Parliament every opportunity to fully debate the policy intentions of this bill and give Parliament every opportunity to make good and ECHR compliant law on this occasion? The first thing that I would say to Mr Scott is that the Parliament has already legislated in the Children and Young People's Act 2014 on many aspects of those provisions. The only part of it where the Supreme Court expressed any concern was about information sharing provisions. I have set out to Parliament the route by which I intend to resolve those questions. I have done that to the highest standard that Parliament can expect on any question by asking Parliament to legislate again. Obviously, Parliament will have to be satisfied with the timescale that is available to consider that legislation. As Mr Scott knows, the Government does not operate in this Parliament with the majority, so there will have to be agreement about timescales involving committees and other parties to ensure that, during proper consideration, it is given to the legislation. However, there is often criticism levelled at ministers who take appropriate and adequate time to look at issues. I have been criticised for taking as long as I have been taking to look at the issue. I make no apology for it because I want to come to this Parliament with good, strong and well-considered legislation that can address serious issues raised by the Supreme Court to fulfil my commitments as a minister, and Parliament would expect nothing else of me. That concludes our statement. We will now move on to our debate on international women's day. We will just take a moment to change seats.