a ddiwed y cyfryf أوr o'r fawr yma wrth yr own ystod i'w ei gwyffredig oedd amddangos gennym chi fod, Fisherman. Yng nghymru, Olyu Gwми Cwysol, yn y cwmhwylwch arnau gweithiau, Mr MacArthur? Yn gyhoedd, wrth gwrs, mae'n gwyffredig yn ddefnyddio, wrth gwrs, mae gwaith yn Gwmhwylwch gennym ni o'r cyffredig a'r Connyddu Gwydlanfa Sonigol, sydd argofio gwaith ynghymru that the Cabinet Secretary invited the media to accompany him on a visit to Inchinnon, where he made a number of announcements concerning innovation centres. I have the report from the Scotsman here. Presiding Officer, you and your predecessors have frequently taken a strong line with ministers who choose to make announcements to the media rather than to Parliament. You rightly consider it a discourtesy to inform Parliament only after the media has been informed. Is this not an occasion where Parliament can take the Cabinet Secretary's remarks as read and move on to other business? If you are concerned that this might leave a gap in our programme this afternoon, could I also suggest that you could invite the First Minister to come to the chamber later on to make a statement on his currency mystery that is deepened overnight with the remarks from Cofford beverage, which have largely hung the First Minister out to dry on this issue? Thank you very much, Mr MacArthur. The Presiding Officers have looked into this matter following representations from Opposition parties. As Presiding Officers have said repeatedly, the Government must be very careful when pre-releasing any details of announcements that are subsequently to be made to Parliament. The Presiding Officers have studied the statement carefully and are satisfied that, on balance, the full details of the statement are not contained in the media release and, therefore, members should hear directly from the Cabinet Secretary and then have the ability to question him. However, before making the statement, I remind the Scottish Government of the importance of making announcements to Parliament before placing the details in the public domain. We now move to that statement, Cabinet Secretary. I make it plain that the burden of the statement is not connected to the announcement of £14 million. I accept that perhaps that announcement should have been made on a different occasion. The burden of the statement, however, is quite different, and I am sure that members will look forward to hearing it. This is actually my first opportunity to brief members on the significant economic impact of the ambitious and groundbreaking programme, which is innovation centres. I welcome the chance to do that. In partnership with the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, innovation centres are collaborations between universities, businesses and others to enhance innovation in and across Scotland's key economic sectors. When launch, the initiative was widely welcomed as having the potential to greatly improve university business engagement by bringing together those best able to resolve many of the challenges that are facing industry in Scotland, while harnessing many new opportunities. I now want to share with the Parliament some indications of positive progress and what we are beginning to expect in terms of impact from such a significant investment. As you know, Scotland has five universities in the world's top 200, more than any other country per head of population. We have a track record of securing competitive research with funding from a range of sources that reflect the excellence and global reputation of our universities. Our universities excel when it comes to research with more citations than any other country in comparison with GDP. We are disproportionately excellent at what we do. This Government has shown its support for our universities in research through investments such as a global excellence initiative. In independent Scotland, we can and will do even more. Our universities and research facilities are core strengths in our economy. They are also an important growth sector. That is why we sought to help to improve the links between our universities and public and private sectors, increasing the economic and social benefits of innovation. We start from sound foundations. Our research pools, for example, and we were the first country to develop such a strategy, have embedded a collaborative approach across the university sector to provide a critical mass of research experience that enhances our competitiveness on the world stage. That has been instrumental in attracting international research centres to Scotland, such as the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics and the first Max Plank international partnership in the UK. That is why a British Council report recently pointed to a joined-up and collaborative sector helped by its modest size in the Scottish ethos of education as a public good as one of the five strategic assets of Scottish higher education. However, we are always ambitious to do more. Innovation Scotland epitomises our approach. Launched last October, it gives focus and impetus to improving the effectiveness of universities and businesses working together, increasing innovation in the economy. That approach is assisting in developing collaborative approaches to spin-out support, supporting easy access IP and extending the role of interface to better facilitate business and academic partnerships. Innovation centres are a manifestation of that approach in action. While research pooling was about improving the quality of our research through collaboration across the university sector, innovation centres build on that research quality and collaborative strength by promoting innovation in a commercial context. Innovation centres are large-scale ambitious projects of excellence. They are about developing the best environment for business and academia to interact, taking innovation to another level. They are part of a cultural shift that brings the innovation and creativity of our academic sector to the heart of our business life and puts business drive firmly into the heart of our academic sector. Those centres help the research community to understand the needs of their particular industry and help industry to understand the assistance that can be delivered through research. Research Government investment in the overall programme is substantial through the Scottish funding council, providing up to £124 million over a six-year period. By 18 million of that is already committed, and the first eight innovation centres, including £2 million for MSc places to improve the connections between businesses and universities, are all under way. This morning, as has been indicated, I announced £14 million from within the £124 million that will support major capital and infrastructure investment across the programme. If I can take just one example in the Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre, which I visited this morning, it will receive £4 million to help to secure NHS data sets and establish a next-generation genomic sequencing platform at its interim facility in Chynynne. We are under no illusion that those are large-scale ventures that will need time and patience for their potential to be fully realised. The public investment that we are making is being more than matched by the innovation centre partners, who estimate their contribution to be around £200 million cash and in kind, reflecting the strong support from industry, who recognise the potential ambition of the programme. Those partners all come with high expectations and high reputations. Time precludes me from naming them all, but for example, GlaxoSmithKline, Thales UK, Armour Group, PhilipsHealthCo, Cisco Systems, Thermo Fisher, where I was this morning, and Ardea Informatics, and there are many others. They are not only global players. SMEs are taking an active part, and indeed there are strong plans to make sure that those innovation centres are incubators for new activity. The first phase was launched last year with the Digital Health Institute's Stratified Medicine and Sensors and Imaging Systems. Since then, two further centres have been launched, industrial biotech and aquaculture, and later this year we are going to see innovation centres covering oil and gas, big data and construction. They have begun to make their mark on the landscape. We should not underestimate the benefits that the centres will bring to the people of Scotland and wider society. Stratified medicine is recognised as a future for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Tailoring treatment to those who will benefit most increases cost-effectiveness. In effect, it is getting the right drug to the right person at the right time. The real burden of this statement is about what is happening now across the innovation centre landscape. We are seeing advances in skills, processes, collaboration and performance leading to a significant longer-term impact on our economy. I can announce to Parliament today the first indication of the scale of that economic impact coming from the innovation centre programme. Based on the business plans for individual centres, a cumulative boost to the Scottish economy could reach a massive £1.5 billion and create up to 5,000 jobs across the wider economy. Those figures reveal the impact that our world class higher education sector, working in partnership with business, can deliver more jobs, better jobs and a stronger economy. The figures illustrate the scale of the economic potential. We are now working on a comprehensive baseline economic impact assessment. We can fully monitor and evaluate the excess of the innovation centres as they all come on-stream. That will confirm the considerable impact of the strategy. There are opportunities, as we are now witnessing, for the innovation centres themselves to stimulate productive new collaborations. For example, stratified medicine is already talking about working with big data. The University of Edinburgh is leading on a bid to secure the knowledge innovation centre on activity and healthy ageing from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The aim of that is to develop new health and care goods and services with business and economic models that enable systemic change. The innovation centres will play a role in strengthening the bid. It is a truly collaborative bid, with expert partners from Scotland, the international commercial community and other parts of Europe working together to secure the project. We are supporting that and we wish the bid team every success. We believe that we have now a community of innovation across Scotland in a strong position for attracting EU investment. Indeed, some of the innovation centres are now talking with SDI about their connection to the wider international community. We are maximising, Presiding Officer, the potential of university business collaboration to support innovation and economic growth. There is more that we could do. Independence can reinforce our global approach by providing access to more of the policy levers that are required to support innovation, including key financial tools. For example, reindustrialising Scotland for the 21st century published in June highlighted how, with independence, future Scottish Governments would be able to develop an overarching framework that aligns innovation in activity and considers new opportunities supporting innovation. Those could be through tax incentives such as allowances and R&D expenditure, our reductions in payroll taxes for employees directly involved in research and development, such as presently takes place in the Netherlands. Independence would also allow us to better support a thriving, internationally connected and competitive university sector through the removal of a damaging immigration policy that often prevents our universities from attracting and retaining talented researchers. Our priority must be the reintroduction of the post-study visa, which will attract the best researchers from across the world to work in Scotland. In conclusion, those innovation centres represent a major step forward in university business engagement. They bring with them the opportunity for a wide range of social and economic benefits to Scotland. We can now begin to quantify those. I hope that they will be welcomed by the whole chamber. That is an initiative that we should all support. The ambition and vision of the innovation centre programme is remarkable. I hope that the whole chamber will wish the partners every success over the coming months, years and decades as we work together to ensure an innovative, collaborative, independent Scotland. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, but we are tight for time this afternoon. Therefore, if members are not succinct, unfortunately that will eat into other members' ability to ask questions. Would it be helpful if members who wish to ask questions could press a request to speak butons now? I call on Neil Bibby. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. I welcome the investment in innovation centres and welcome the fact that he visited such a centre in Renfrewshire this morning, which will receive £4 million. I praise the work of industry and our universities that just goes to show that the Scottish Government has significant powers to help improve education in the economy right now and what can be done when the Government works closely with industry and our universities. The cabinet secretary acknowledged in his statement that he is not announcing any additional money for innovation centres today, despite his press release this morning suggesting the opposite. We have known the figure of £124 million over six years for many months. The cabinet secretary in his statement also said that we are disproportionately excellent at what we do in relation to university research and funding, and he is absolutely right about that. Does he accept the fact that, in 2012-13, Scottish universities received £257 million, which is 13.1 per cent of UK research funding, significantly more than our 8 per cent share of UK GDP or 8.4 per cent of the UK population? That is not to mention the 13 per cent of £1.1 billion, again above average funding, that our institutions received from UK charities. He also mentioned attracting international investment. Does he not accept that we benefit from having 270 UK embassies right across the world, helping to sell our universities and our industry? How many embassies would an independent Scotland have? Does he not accept that, as much as he tries to reassure industry, and universities, that the real threat to research and development funding in Scotland is his plan to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom? There was little surprising in that question, but I am grateful that Mr Bibby has welcomed the investments that are being made and the excellent works that are being done in and shinnen and across the country. Can I pay tribute to the work of academics for yes? I am sorry that Labour members cheer, but it does not become them. I would like to pay tribute to the work of academics for yes, because they have managed to illustrate very strongly that, far from being—I am sorry, I am just trying— Cabinet Secretary, if anyone cheers in the Parliament, I will deal with it. Please continue and answer the question. Thank you very much. I do hope that the work of academics for yes will be taken on board by those who are making so much noise, because what they have illustrated very, very clearly and proved very clearly is that academics with real ambition know that independence will work for them. It will allow them to go out into the world. It will allow them to sell their excellence, because the decisions on what is funded in research comes because things are excellent. It is not a charitable action by research councils or anybody else. We have the best in the world, and that is not going to diminish the day after independence. The power of independence will allow universities to be sold throughout the world as Scottish universities. Very often, their light is hidden under a UK bushel, and it is not done very effectively by some of the embassies that I have worked with in these circumstances. I am delighted at the prospect of our academics going out into the world and doing what they do well. I would just urge Mr Bibby to be ambitious and confident as Scottish universities are. I long for the day that we can do what we do well, and that is to debate the issues that are important to people in Scotland rather than independence. However, Scottish Conservatives thank the Scottish Government for the advance notice of the statement issued to the media at 0600 hours this morning. We welcomed the £14 million capital of the £124 million already announced for Scotland's innovation centres to improve collaboration and innovation between industry universities and across our key economic sectors. That is a mark of the success of devolved decision-making in Scotland within the United Kingdom. We are very welcome for new treatments of disease, to sustainable food and more energy-efficient homes. My question is given that further education has not been mentioned either in this morning's Government press release or in the statement that we have just heard. Can I ask if people in further education will be given equal access to those opportunities, as well as our universities? I think that it is a good question, but let me reassure the member that the statement is not about £14 million. I think that that is well accepted. The statement is about £1.5 billion, which the programme of innovation centres is anticipated to boost the Scottish economy. She should think big, not small. £14 million frees up further potential. £1.5 billion is the potential that is being freed up. In terms of further education, it is a very opposite question on this day, the day in which we complete the reform programme that we started three years ago. Indeed, I was present this morning having been to Ashen and I then went to Livingston to the Further Education Strategic Forum. There, I talked with many, many people about the opportunities that exist and the excitement that exists now in the sector of being reformed and focused on delivery. Indeed, the question that she asks is one that I discussed with the chairman of the Scottish Funding Council during the morning. Of course, there will be many opportunities for people across education, but I would encourage the member to think about education as a joined-up process, not a divided process. Further education and higher education are now very close together and sometimes indistinguishable, and it is important that all members of the chamber caught up with that. I welcome the cabinet secretary's statement, his ambition and vision for Scotland's future. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the innovation centres represent a massive step forward, bringing the academic and business worlds together, providing collaboration and innovation across both sectors? Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the strength of Scotland's higher education sector is one of the reasons that Scotland can approach independence with full confidence? I think that the member is absolutely right. The situation is that the higher education sector is world-beating. We have the best higher education sector in the world. We have heard voices in the Labour benches particularly that want to run that down, that want to diminish it and that want to under-resource it. We have heard those all the time and they cannot get away from that fact. What we need to do is to continue to build and develop that sector. To make sure that we build that sector and the wider educational sector so that we get literally the best of both educational worlds. I think that the cabinet secretary would agree with me that research underpins innovation and our economy. Sir Philip Cohen is a world-leading researcher who set up the life sciences industry in Dundee, which accounts for 18 per cent of our local economy. What is the cabinet secretary's reaction to the statement in the published letter that Sir Philip Cohen signed, saying that the creation of a post-independence common research area as an undertaking is fraught with difficulty and one that is unlikely to come to fruition? I think that Sir Philip Cohen has undertaken many things in his lifetime of fraught with difficulty and succeeded admirably, so I would urge him to continue with his confidence in his ambition. I would put into the balance alongside the statement for Sir Tom Devine at the weekend, where Tom Devine looks unusual for anybody to laugh at Sir Tom Devine. I find Jenny Marra's attitude very strange. Sir Tom Devine is probably the leading historian in Scotland, a man much ffated by the Labour Party, including by Gordon Brown, who has come to the conclusion that independence is the right thing for Scotland. If she wishes to enter into the other worlds, Michael Ataya is probably the leading mathematician in the world today. There are many academics who welcome the opportunities that independence will bring and really want to make it work. I would urge Jenny Marra to get out there and work with the people of ambition and make sure that even those who have some doubts are encouraged to deliver for Scotland. If questions and answers are most distinct, I might be able to call everyone, otherwise I definitely will not. Aileen McLeod. Will I warmly welcome the Scottish Government's support for the life kickbed for which Edinburgh University is leading and the Digital Health Institute is a key partner? Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that this bid, if successful, offers considerable economic and social benefits to Scotland? Cabinet Secretary. I do. Dr McLeod has some experience with the university sector and I know that she is familiar with the work that goes into these bids. I am certainly of the view that the more we encourage that ambition from our universities across Scotland, the greater success that we will have. Of course, in Dumfries, where the member is a regional representative, there is considerable work being done on ageing and end-of-life care. Those things tie together. Further development of excellence in health and ageing in Edinburgh will help that work being done in Dumfries. I think that there is a tremendous opportunity for joining up work across Scotland. Thank you, Liam McArthur. Very much. Aside from the assertions around independence, I very much agree with the content of the minister's statement and particularly the point around Scotland being disproportionately excellent in this area, thanks to collaboration. He will have seen the welcome trusts observation along those lines, differences in the regulations and governance systems that introduce additional burdens or that are perceived to be burdensome, can restrict international collaborations and make countries less competitive. Does he agree with the welcome trust? If so, why is he determined to create borders in something that has its strength in being borderless? Cabinet Secretary. Well, the reality is that research knows no borders and works across borders, so that is not a problem for the welcome trust. I think that the welcome trust and other trusts have been absolutely scrupulous in raising issues but not coming down on either side in this debate. I have met a range of charities who support research and all of them, without exception, have said, look, come and talk to us after 19 September. They will make things work because they know the excellence of Scottish research. The problem for those people who are raising these barriers, like the member, I am afraid to say, is that there seem to lack confidence in the excellence of Scottish research. I have no such lack of confidence. Stuart McMillan In the statement, the cabinet secretary spoke of the opportunities of independence, as well as the economic and societal benefits. The cabinet secretary will be aware that the chief executive of the ESRC made clear in evidence to the education committee that, subject to discussions on the details after the S vote, it would support a single research area for Scotland and the rest of the UK. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that this blows a hole in the no campaigns of scare stories on research funding? I think that there are many things that blow a hole in the case that is put by the no campaign, because it has no merit to it whatsoever. Another thing that blows a hole in that is the reality of research collaboration across Europe and the way in which research councils are working with other countries and countries are opening up their research funds to other countries for true collaboration. We are in a global connected world of research. Scotland is in an enormously strong position in that place, and I think that we should think big and be ambitious, not try and hide away, as the no campaign would try for us to do. As the cabinet secretary will be aware, and Mary Scanlon has already made reference to this, colleges would welcome the opportunity to work more closely with the university's industry on the skills agenda. The cabinet secretary, in his answer, said that there was a possibility to do that, but I am wondering whether there is scope to make that a more formal exercise, to formalise the relationship between universities and colleges, and also whether there will be funding made available to make that happen, especially in light of the Wood commission recommendations? It is already happening. I am very happy to introduce the member to places where that is real, but it is not theoretical. For example, there are now five courses being offered jointly by the University of Stirling and 4th Valley College, in which people matriculate jointly in those institutions. There are no barriers there. I met two weeks ago some of the students from that in my office, having visited Stirling University to see what they were doing. All over the place, the barriers have been further and higher education are breaking down. In reality, further education now delivers between 20% and 25% of our higher education in Scotland. There is a huge range of opportunities. We must go with the flow on that and encourage more of it. We should also have to encourage a great deal more online learning, because online learning is undoubtedly where the future lies, even for our institutions that teach in a conventional sense in Scotland at the present moment. There are a huge number of exciting things happening. I am really glad that the member is engaged with that. I urge her to persuade her front bench to start looking backwards and to start looking forwards at education. Can I very much welcome this announcement and say that I was delighted that the cabinet secretary visited the Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre in Inchynon in the west of Scotland, but can the cabinet secretary outline what the potential economic impact will be of this particular innovation centre? There are a range of opportunities that the centre is offering, and it is self-projecting—a range of very positive outcomes. Anna Domenichick, who is the head of the Department of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at Glasgow University, was present this morning, along with those people who are running the centre, including Mark Beggs, who is the CEO of the centre. He went through with me the business plan that they have, which projects estimated jobs that are created between £300,000 and £400,000, the additional GVA that is estimated at £68 million, but much more exciting than the figures. They also went through the differences that they will make in terms of individual lives. The work that they are doing on oncology—for example, on issues such as arthritis, which we discussed in detail this morning—is tremendously exciting. It shows that you can deliver the right drug, the right time, to the right person in a way that will make a huge difference to the individual patient, a huge difference to the health service, and it will attract many, many people throughout the world to come and see what is happening here and to emulate it. In every sense, the figures are undoubtedly good. The potential is even greater. Thank you for your brief. I might be able to call everyone. Iain Gray. The innovation centres are undoubtedly a welcome initiative, but they are very reminiscent of and identical on purpose to the Intermediary Technology Institute's launch back in 2002, with almost four times the budget even then. When the current Government inherited the ITIs, they first slashed their budgets and then killed them off a couple of years later. So why does the cabinet secretary think that he can make this idea work second time around with a much smaller investment this time when they failed so badly before? Cabinet Secretary. Well, I wish that the member had been with me this morning in Incheon and where he saw the enthusiasm, the commitment, the ideas. Even Iain Gray's dual approach to this would not have depressed them. Now, I have to say that there appears to be, Iain Gray is the main exponent of a view that everything was wonderful under the previous Administrations and it's all gone to pot. Fortunately, that's not what the people of Scotland think. They actually think the reverse of that. They now look at what was happening then and they realise how bad it was. Les Smith. Sorry, thank you. Audra, please. Thank you. I think that the cabinet secretary is warmly welcome in terms of the announcement today. I think that they are testimony to the excellence of the Scottish universities. Could I ask the cabinet secretary one thing, however? What they're interested to know is how much extra money would be available for academic research under the subscription form of academic funding if Scotland was to be independent, as opposed to what they get with the United Kingdom? Cabinet secretary. Well, they don't get it with the United Kingdom. That's quite an important issue, Presiding Officer. They get money from the Scottish Government, they get money from the research councils, which is taxpayer funded by ourselves as well. Of course, 8.8 per cent of that money comes from ourselves and the reality is that they would not only continue to have access to that, but they would have a wider world to play in and they would be able to develop very positively their projection in that world. I think that the potential is great there, but I think that it's wrong to see the research sector as simply beneficiaries from some UK largesse. Of course, Professor Brian McGregor points out that the real danger is the cuts that are well known south of the border that are eating into research funding south of the border, eating into science and technology south of the border and, as we have health, will eventually have their effect in Scotland. Can the cabinet secretary assure us today that the Scottish Government's commitment to higher education will continue after a yes vote? Many thanks. That concludes the statement and we now turn to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion number 10829 in the name of Angela Constance on increasing opportunities for women. Could I invite those members who wish to participate in this debate to press the request to speak buttons? I will allow a few seconds for members to change seats. I call on Angela Constance to speak to you and to move the motion. Cabinet secretary, if you could do so in 13 minutes, I would be obliged. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This Government's ambition to secure sustainable economic growth has been consistent. The current strength of our economy and labour market reflects the strength of our commitment to that ambition. Women are key to the strength and resilience of Scotland's economy and they have made a huge contribution to the recovery that we are now seeing. Women work in every sector of the Scottish industry, but too often they do so on an unequal basis. Our reports from the respected organisations such as the Faucet Society show that women are not feeling the same benefits, the same financial benefits of the recovery. I and this Government are determined that women play the fullest possible role at all levels of our economy and, as they do so, I want to ensure that their valuable contribution is adequately rewarded. Because well-rewarded and sustained employment can be the best route out of poverty and the best way to tackle inequality. On Monday, I published on Locking Scotland's full potential a clear statement on the great value we place on sharing our economic growth equally. Through equality of opportunity, we can create a more diverse workforce at all levels and at all areas in our economy, which maximises our skills, improves the productivity of our businesses and grows our economy at an even faster rate. We can deliver those ambitions because Scotland has great strengths and strong foundations from which to achieve progress. There are one in a quarter million women employed in Scotland, the highest number since comparable records began, and the female inactivity rate in Scotland is lower than anywhere in the UK. More young women than men stay on at school and are in higher and further education. Scotland has the highest percentage of females with at least NVQ level 3 qualifications in the UK, so it is therefore unacceptable that those strengths do not combine to create higher earnings for women in Scotland. Our gender pay gap remains unacceptably high at 7.6 per cent, and when we look at how women earn 17 per cent less than men when you take early-medium earnings for full and part-time work together. We know that women's average earnings are lower with men typically earning £90 a week more than women in full-time work. The reasons are many, but in short, too many women continue to face occupational segregation, greater job insecurity and higher levels of under-employment and pay inequality. That is not the type of labour market that can deliver the more equitable share of economic growth, prosperity and opportunity that I believe Scotland must have. The strategic group on women in work, which I chair, has, while engaging widely across the public and private sectors, played an important role in supporting our efforts to address those challenges. Our focus will be helped when, in the autumn, the Council of Economic Advisers published a report on maximising the economic potential of women in Scotland. However, the reality is that this Government, with limited access to macroeconomic tools and legislative powers, is constrained in its ability to fully address those challenges. Instead of sharing the benefits of growth, maximising our talents and unlocking our potential in Scotland today, too many households struggle to meet their bills as wages are eroded and the cost of living increases. Around half of working-age adults and over half of children in poverty live in working households. Despite the UK Government's stated commitment to supporting families, women are disproportionately affected by its welfare reforms through changes to child benefit, working tax credit and loan-paying benefit conditionality, and this disparity will continue as universal credit is introduced. In those inequalities, I believe, create an inarguable case for Scotland becoming an independent country. I believe that only independence can address those issues and create a Scotland which provides the opportunities to meet the ambitions of women. Too many women work in low-paid jobs, so the minimum wage impacts disproportionately on them. We understand and we know the difficulties that that can create. I believe that women deserve better. With independence, the minimum wage will rise at least in line with inflation every year. If that had happened over the past five years, the lowest paid would have been £600 a year better off. With responsibility for equalities legislation, we would address the scandalous inequalities and pay that persist despite the current system and 44 years of equal-pay legislation. Independence will allow us to protect women from the worst effects of welfare reform. We will develop a welfare system that is fair, personal, simple and provides women with the same incentives to work as men. Current plans for universal credit mean that a higher level of partner's income will be taken into account as income when calculating the award. In Scotland's future, we have committed to equalising the earnings disregard between first and second earners under universal credit. In doing so, it is estimated that second earners, more often women, would benefit as many as 70,000 people by as much as £1,200 a year. Of course, this Government under independence is committed to scrapping universal credit. I want to see women contributing to fully to the success of Scotland's businesses, its public and third sectors and to the continued strengthening of Scottish economy. I want to see that contribution benefiting women and their families equally. A lack of affordable, flexible childcare can be a significant barrier to many women accessing opportunities in employment, education or training. We are investing in over a quarter of £1 billion in the next two years to expand provision for three and four-year-olds and will also extend the support to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged two-year-olds. The commission for developing Scotland's young workforce rightly sets out an ambitious agenda to improve access to employment for young people. Together with local government, we are working to implement the report's recommendations. Already making £4.5 million of funding available includes support that will tackle gender segregation, training and employment programmes. In the autumn, I will set out more detailed plans on how we will work with schools, colleges, training providers and employers to ensure that existing stereotypes are challenged and barriers are removed. Improving participation is one half of the challenge that we face in maximising Scotland's productivity. As important is creating an environment in which all those in-work, including women, can thrive and prosper more equitably than they have been able to do before. Last week, I welcomed the recommendations of the working together review of progressive workplace policies. The review suggests how we can, through a partnership approach, address labour market challenges and build on existing good practice in our industrial relations. We will work with businesses and trade unions in framing our joint response to that commission. Taken together with developing Scotland's young workforce, that will provide Scotland with the opportunity to bring the right skills into the right jobs, transform people's lives and our workplaces through more equal access to work and fairer treatment and work. Today, I want to update Parliament on progress in two important areas. The working together review recognises the value of a fair work commission, as envisaged in Scotland's future, as a means to support sustainable employment that pays fairly. The Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970, 44 years later. It is clear that the current constitutional arrangements are not delivering for women in Scotland. I want to see early action. With independence, the fair work commission will, as its first priority, begin work collaboratively with unions, businesses and others to progress a review of the costs and benefits of mandatory equal pay audits. We want women to be better represented at the highest levels of public authorities. On 30 April 2014, we launched the women on board consultation to determine how a minimum quota of 40 per cent female representation could be introduced. The consultation closed on 4 July, and we received a range of views on how to address the gender imbalance on our boards, which has helped to focus our thinking on how best to address the barriers that women face. Our commitment in this area makes it clear that this is not an issue on which we are prepared to wait any longer. Yesterday, Shona Robison wrote to the UK Government to request the transfer of the legal competence in the equality field to the Scottish Parliament. We have made clear that we believe that those powers should rest in Scotland as quickly as possible and in advance of full independence. We will establish a short-life working group to develop a plan for the implementation of quotas, harnessing political support, together with expertise around the appointment process, to deliver truly gender diverse boards with the highest calibre of men and women. On 18 September, we have the opportunity to create an independent Scotland, a Scotland unconstrained in its ambition, a Scotland that will maximise opportunities for everyone in the economy, including women, and a Scotland that fully unlocks our potential. The plans that I have outlined today demonstrate that, following a vote for independence, we will use those powers to deliver a fairer and more equal society. I move the motion in my name. Many thanks. I now call on Jenny Marra to speak to and move amendment 10829.3. Is Marra at nine minutes or thereby? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome this debate this afternoon, and would like to start by moving the amendment in my name. I'm absolutely clear and we are on these benches that increasing opportunities for women is best achieved in this Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom. I want to take this opportunity today. The cabinet secretary talked about the Equal Pay Act in her closing remarks to talk a bit about the Labour Minister, Barbara Castle, and her role in fighting for the rights of women across the UK. She was the crusader for women's rights and opportunities in the 1960s who broke the glass ceiling, not just for women in politics but also in society more widely. She fought for the cause of equal rights between men and women. It was a crusade led by women, including many unrecognised working-class women across the UK that resulted in the Equal Pay Act, which was introduced by Castle. It began life not in the House of Commons, not in a Parliament building but in an industrial dispute in Dagonham in Essex. Most of us know the story about the female car seat machinists at the Ford plant in Dagonham, who took their industrial action to Downing Street to get their work recognised as skilled and equal to their male counterparts. That created the impetus that led to the Equal Pay legal obligation that the cabinet secretary talked about to pay both men and women the same. Those women in Essex were not solely concerned about their own rights in that Ford factory. They were motivated by securing rights for women across Britain, just as the suffragettes had been years before them, across Britain, Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. They led that progressive movement for Equal Pay. Those progressive movements in the trade union movement have always joined hands and forces with their brothers and sisters in towns and cities of Scotland, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, because their aim has always been to tear down barriers and not to erect borders. The United Kingdom is an economic union with a deeply integrated economy in which goods and services are traded. Being part of the large and diverse UK economy provides strength and stability to Scotland's finances, as we know from all the economic analysis over the last year. It also offers protection to Scotland from unexpected economic and financial shocks that we have seen in our lifetimes for both men and women. The rest of the United Kingdom is Scotland's biggest trading partner. At the core of the argument for economic union is the opportunity and security that it provides to women, families and businesses across this country. I do not believe that it is in Scotland's interests for the economic union to be torn apart. In the long term, an independent Scotland could not remain part of an integrated UK economy. The economic union means that we share a currency and can pool our taxes and spending in fiscal union, which ultimately benefits women. The fiscal integration in turn necessitates and sustains a sense of social solidarity and provides security to Scotland's women through the sharing of risks, rewards and resources on the basis of need, rather than the basis of nationality that the SNP posits. It is convenient, but it is not honest for the SNP to ignore that it was a UK Labour Government working with a Labour-led administration in this Parliament that made substantial inroads into expanding opportunities for women by making work pay through the minimum wage that the SNP was not present to vote for, by instigating tax credits. Angela Constance. Given that Ms Marra is a great believer in the power of Westminster to change her life for the good, I wonder whether she can tell me why the Equal Pay Act, despite it being as old as I am—that is how old it is—has still to be fully implemented if Westminster is such a success. The Equal Pay Act was a very ambitious piece of legislation that has made great inroads in equalising pay between men and women. Yes, it has got a way to go, but the cabinet secretary fails to explain exactly how she would immediately create equal pay in Scotland. I am happy to take another intervention if she would like to tell me her yearly target for that, and how quickly that is going to be achieved and how she is going to do it. If she had been listening to my speech, she would see that the first priority for a fair work commission is to implement mandatory equal pay audits so that we can identify and address the problem as speedily as possible, and not to wait until I am in my dotage or in my eighties. I was listening carefully to the cabinet secretary because she failed to do exactly that in the procurement reform bill, so I do not know why she voted down amendments on exactly that. It is a commitment for the future, but why she did not do it four weeks ago when she had the chance and the power to do it really confuses me. I would like to continue, if I may, that it was Labour that rescued the apprenticeship system, creating more than a quarter of a million places a year. We will now expand technician-level apprenticeships to ensure that Britain has the skills it needs for the future. Labour believes in order to improve opportunities for women. It is essential to have a world-class further education sector to provide the training and skills that are essential to meet the long-term needs of the economy, and that the loss of 140,000 college places since the cabinet secretary's Government took power in 2007 completely undermines the achievement of that objective. Since 2007, the SNP has slashed 84,099 college places for young women, while there are 56,000 fewer men in college. Opportunities for women have been lost, as college places for women returning to work have completely disappeared under the SNP. I would like to challenge Ms Marra on that last point. Although very short-term courses, the Scottish funding council has decided not to fund, but all courses that have employability or progression into work still remain in our college system. Can I remind her that the majority of college students are indeed women, particularly those full-time students studying recognised qualifications? I have no idea how the cabinet secretary can contend that short-term courses have no economic impact and help people get back to work. She does not want to face up to the reality that 80,000 less women have attended college since her government took power. The Wood commission recommends that we need to establish a parity of esteem between further and higher education sectors to secure those skills-based that Scotland needs. The Scottish Government has accepted and endorsed the Wood commission recommendations. How then does that square with the SNP cutting further education budgets and its disproportionate impact on women? Angela Constance has committed to reducing youth unemployment. I am happy to take an intervention from the minister if she wants. Angela Constance has committed to reducing youth unemployment by 40 per cent on the back of the Wood commission recommendations. What commitment can the cabinet secretary give to making sure that women will make up at least half of the target? Maybe she will address that in her closing remarks. However, I am still confused, as I raised with her last week, by her commitment to reducing youth unemployment by 40 per cent when John Swinney has announced that there will be full employment in an independent Scotland and seems to have found jobs for 100 per cent of young people. No, I do not have much time left. Sorry. Can the cabinet secretary tell me why her target of 40 per cent is far less ambitious than John Swinney's promise of 100 per cent? Those figures are not even close. Have they discussed their employment strategy or their targets? Have they even chatted about it? I welcome the recent Working Together review and its agenda for progressive workplace policies and the role in the STUC in taking that agenda forward. I want to know how much of the agenda will be taken forward in the event of a no vote, because many of the recommendations in that document that was released last week can actually be implemented now. I urge the Scottish Government to give us details of that in the autumn. I thank the cabinet secretary for the opportunity to debate increasing opportunities for women. That has been a constant theme in this parliamentary debate since 1999. As the briefings from Engender state in the sectors of construction in agriculture, forestry and fishing, the percentage of women is only 17 per cent compared to 73 per cent of women in public administration, education and health. Although the construction industry training board has outlined some of the work currently in hand to address those issues, I think that we can all agree that there is still much more to do. On the consensual note, we also welcome the recommendations 28, 9 and 30 in the final wood commission report, which encourages more gender balance across occupations and a welcome action plan to address gender disparities within college education and modern apprenticeships. Those are sound policies, but of course it is the implementation that counts. Engender state that Scotland's employability strategy recognises that gender is a key factor in shaping barriers to employment, but they go on to say and I quote, to date such an amalgamated policy tool has not been delivered. In the same briefing paper for this debate, Engender state that the women's employment summit held in 2012 reflected the increased political will to engage with women and work, but substantial shifts in policy resulting from the summit remain to be identified. On childcare again, I can do no better than quote from our own parliaments research and information centre, which confirms that the Scottish Government figure of increased childcare bringing 104,000 women back into work is to be polite, inaccurate. With an analysis which includes that, instead of 104,000 women coming back into work, there are 64,000 women who are economically inactive in this group of which 14,000 would like to work. The spice briefing confirms that the Scottish Government figures have been exaggerated only by 90,000. Childcare, of course, is a devolved issue, not just now. With an increase in childcare entitlement already happening and nothing to stop further increases being implemented by this Parliament. I wonder if Mrs Garland would accept that there are around 50,000 babies born every year in Scotland and therefore every year women are lost from the labour market because you don't need to be an economist to know that one of the biggest barriers to women getting into work is access to childcare. Therefore, will she accept that the transformational impact of childcare policy over a period of time is the point that is worth recognising? The point that is worth recognising—and I am familiar with many children who are born—is the fact that your figures were not modelled and the spice briefing figures are modelled. They have done a proper economic analysis and I rest my case with the figures that I have given. However, figures released earlier this month on female participation in the Scottish and United Kingdom markets are very encouraging, with the unemployment rate down to 6 per cent, 6.4 per cent for both, and employment rates up for both, as well as economically inactive women reduced also. All economic indicators are moving in the right direction, but, as I said earlier, there is still more to do. To me, it is not just about getting women into work. It is about giving women the full career training and educational opportunities to make sure that the time at work pays and that career opportunities are open. I agree with the point that the cabinet secretary made. It is about ensuring that work is well rewarded. The Scottish Government's record on women is well documented in the Colleges Scotland briefing paper for today's debate, and I quote from their paper. Since the SNP came to power in 2007, there has been a small increase, which is welcome, of 4,500 women on full-time courses in further education. That is against a background of a fall of 100,544 women in part-time, so 4,000 more full-time, but over 100,000 fewer in part-time. In total, 96,000 fewer women in further education now than when the nationalists came to power. I say that this is the type of course that I did as a single mum many years ago that gave me the qualifications to go on to the University of Dundee, spend 20 years lecturing economics in further and higher education, and here I am. I ask this Parliament and the Government ministers to not dismiss part-time courses. They are a way out of poverty and into a career for many women across Scotland, which is now denied as a result of nationalist policies. The UK children have 14 seconds left. UK children families act to allow more flexible working, and the IMF has stated that the United Kingdom is going to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Taxpayers, including women in Scotland, benefit from the raise in the personal allowance. Public spending in Scotland is £1,600 per head higher than in England, so it is no wonder that the SNP is having problems persuading women to vote yes. Women know the differences between promises and action, so we will be supporting the Labour and Lib Dem amendments today, and I move the amendment in my name. Thank you so much. I now call on Alison McInnes to speak to and move amendment 10829.1. Thank you. I move the amendment in my name. In seeking to appeal to women voters, the nationalists continue to tout uncosted plans and pedal myths on the currency, on childcare and most recently on the NHS. Anything to distract from the record of failing women across Scotland. The Scottish Government claims that it wants the powers to ensure 40 per cent of public board members are women, but that does not stand up favourably to scrutiny. It had the chance to show the meant business from the outset, but the representation of women amongst its nominations to the very next body appointed after that announcement, the fiscal commission, only amounted to 33 per cent of women. Two years ago, I supported Jenny Marra's amendments to the police and fire reform bill. That would have required representation on national police and fire authorities to be at least 40 per cent women and 40 per cent men. The proposal was dismissed by her colleague, the justice secretary, and voted down by SNP colleagues on the justice committee. Kenny MacAskill argued that it was not necessary to be prescriptive about that in the bill, and that it was micromanaging. I also recollect the Scottish Government defeating calls to establish a 40 per cent gender quota throughout Scotland's public bodies on a debate here in this chamber on 14 June 2012 that, again, Jenny Marra drove forward. If Ms McInnes will lend her support to the letter that Shona Robison sent to the UK Government yesterday calling for a section 30 order and giving competence to this Parliament on the equalities field, I will consider that. Board membership should be broadly representative of our society, and I'm frustrated by the lack of progress towards increasing women's representation in public life in Scotland. As I've said before to this chamber, the pace of change here is glacial. While the SNP's apparent conversion to this cause is welcome there, bona fideas must be questioned, given their record of inaction. Elsewhere, as Mary Scanlon referenced, Scottish Government cuts to college places have greatly restricted opportunities to learn. Colleges Scotland tells us that the number of women studying part-time has halved, plunging from 200,000 in 2007 to less than 100,000 today. Thousands of women who find it impossible to study full-time have missed out, and that's parents, carers, those with work or financial commitments. What thought was given to the ambitions of women when those budget cuts were being voted through by SNP-backed ventures. Strong and sustainable growth relies on our getting the best out of everyone, women and men, and that's why it's so disappointing that a wealth of female talent is not retained or properly recognised. It's diverted elsewhere or overlooked. Nearly three quarters of women with STEM qualifications do not work in the STEM industries, but there is little evidence that the Scottish Government is providing leadership on driving that forward. The RSE report is now two years old. Regrettably, the provision of free childcare has become another pawn in this Government's attempt to break up the UK. Liberal Democrats campaigned for 18 months for the extension of free childcare provision. We know that it's one of the best ways to address the disadvantages our most vulnerable children face and enable more parents to remain in or return to work. Again and again, ministers told us that they couldn't help more than 1 per cent of two-year-olds without additional powers. However, thanks to the persistence of my colleagues, Willie Rennie and Liam McArthur, 8,400 extra two-year-olds from poorer backgrounds are today toddling through the doors of nurseries. That's 15 per cent, not 1 per cent. Next year, it will be 27 per cent. Action from Liberal Democrats in the UK Government to boost the tax-free allowance means that 160,000 families in Scotland will receive additional help with childcare costs from next year. However, it's essential that our children don't fall behind those south of the border. There, 40 per cent of two-year-olds will benefit from free childcare, thanks to the Liberal Democrats. However, the Scottish Government has opted to hold back, and I'd like to make some progress. Rather than use the powers that already has to help more families, it's withholding further childcare as a bargaining chip for voters. The Scottish Government has absolutely failed to use all the powers at its disposal to break down social and economic barriers. However, opportunities for women are intrinsically linked to the success of our economy as they are to confronting cultural or social challenges. As my amendment knows, the lack of certainty around the Scottish Government's currency plan B puts women's jobs and future aspirations on the line. The currency choice determines our mortgage rates, levels of trade with other countries, how much we can tax and spend, and some the stability of the entire financial system. Yesterday, the First Minister's chief currency adviser said that sterlingisation might only last six months. Every option that the nationalists put on the table is second best to what we have now, second best to the stability that we are afforded by being part of the UK, second best to being backed by one of the oldest and most successful currencies in the world. Analysis has shown that 270,000 jobs in Scotland, some 10 per cent, are linked to the UK's single integrated market. That's the jobs of more than 100,000 women in sectors from mining to finance that are intrinsically connected to trade with the rest of the UK. For goodness sake, why erect an international border between Scotland and our largest trading partner, with whom our economy is so heavily integrated? Those are the issues that will have the greatest influence in determining the opportunities of women in Scotland. As part of the United Kingdom, we can have the best of both worlds, significant decision-making powers here in this Parliament, together with the strength, stability and security that being part of the UK brings. That is actually the compelling positive case for saying no. Thank you very much. We now move to the open debate, and I call on Christine Grahame to be followed by Jane Baxter, speeches of six minutes or thereby. I rise to support the motion, reject the amendments, which put short, say that the union is everything good and independence is everything bad. As for Alison McInnes's amendment, which I like, like Alison, not the amendment, it's a bit like war and peace. I never got to the end of that and I never got to the end of an amendment. I've never seen such a long one in my life. First of all, I must start by declaring that I have had careers as a secondary teacher, solicitor and politician, and that flows from having a privileged background. I was privileged to have enlightened parents who made it clear from the start that though I came from a working-class family with five children living in a council house scheme, I had the same rights to opportunities as the children in the bungalows around the corner who went to Edinburgh's fee-paying schools. I was privileged not to pay tuition fees, and because of the family's circumstances, I had a grant. I was privileged to have a grant to live away from home, although attending the local university because there was nowhere to study in a house with so many children. Thanks to the SNP, I now see also tuition fees have gone, as so they should, and parental encouragement, as always, remains vital. I want to welcome progress over the decades of erasing the image of women's places to put it crudely in the home by the kitchen sink, though erasing is not complete and is far too slow in its progress. I, too, admire Barbara Castle, but glacial, you have to look to the progress to Westminster, bringing in equalities, to know glacial when you see it. Now, I do not have as much time as Jenny Marra, so it is not fully erased, of course, as the image of the young woman or indeed any woman, shaped, sized, dressed, sense and so on, plays too large a part as compared to the male species. Even politicians do not escape. Who cares about kitten heels? I dress for me and me alone. Neither have the educational choices changed much. When I was at school a girl studying maths, physics and chemistry, which I did, was a rarity. Biology and botany were much more frequent and they were acceptable, and it seems to me to be much the same today. As for engineering, it was a female-free zone. Decades on change is not substantial. For example, I note from the agenda briefing that, by far and away, the greater percentage of women on the workforce, as has been said in public administration, education and health, may reflect the talents of women in those areas. However, there is more at work here, and not all responsibility can be placed on governance either here or at Westminster or, indeed, the education system. So, from the very start, education towards opportunities for women takes a certain path. Then, as the issue of the constraints put on careers opportunities beyond the educational path, and many of those constraints, though not exclusively and lovely though they are, are children. Now, while a potential employer cannot overtly ask a female applicant the question of children in the future, I have no doubt. For some employers, it is a consideration at the back of their mind and will influence whether or not to offer that job. For those with children, change days, when from women, including myself, we were expected to and did stop work till the children reached school age. Much better now, when there are statutory obligations on employers and, of course, the significant importance of free childcare hours. It could be better, but much improved under this Government and much to be improved if we had full control over our revenue and tax system and gave women, in particular, though not exclusively, freedom to have a life with time for work and for family. Because, at the end of the day, if you have happy and contented to children growing into responsible adults, whether you have opted for work, full or part-time or full-time parenting, that is an achievement for me. That is a measure that really counts and which society will benefit in countless ways. Inexcusable, of course, is the pay gap and, of course, the continuing glass stealing upon which many of us, including me, have bumped our heads. Twice I changed career direction because women already employed told me of the limitation imposed on them. So while not myself in favour of statutory gender balance because I reject anything approaching tokenism, I refer here to the death of women in high places, I really understand why many in this chamber are exasperated and feel there must be a remedy. However, what of the older women are the women who are full-time carers? 62 per cent are unpaid. They step in often unseen and unsung and often do not recognise that they are indeed carers doing it for love, not for the lolly. That does not exempt society from supporting them financially and physically with, say, respite breaks. My hope is that, with the rebirth of the Scottish nation, there will be that opportunity, whatever the results of the first Scottish general election in 2016, for Scotland to spread its compassionate wings further than it can under current constraints. For if we dispossess our young women of opportunities, we may dispossess their daughters. If we take for granted the older women who provide support for generations on either side of them, the support to care for grandchildren, their infirm partner, their ageing parents, we as a society fail to recognise that there are many more ways to contribute to society than to bring home a pay packet, that is also a measure of productivity. I welcome the opportunity today to discuss increasing women's economic opportunities. I support aspirations to improve the chances of women who may find themselves far away from the labour market or from access to education and training. However, it will come as no surprise when I say that I disagree with the conclusion drawn in the Scottish Government's motion, as I believe that many of the aims set out there in can be achieved under the powers that we currently have through devolution. We already have powers over education, training, employability and economic development. The levers that are already available to the Scottish Government to tackle unemployment, underemployment or lack of training or educational opportunities are there just now, and we should ensure that we are using them all because the barriers facing women entering the labour market are varied and complex. That is a fact that has been recognised by the Scottish Government. I may not agree with the need for independence to improve the life chances for women, but I agree that it is vital that we must ensure that every woman has a chance to enter the labour market or education should she so wish. For many women, it is about childcare. For others, it is about being able to find a place on a college course in their local area that will provide them with the skills that employers are looking for. The challenges that they face in achieving this may vary depending on whether they live in an urban area or the countryside. Five Gingerbread and the Poverty Alliance have carried out work looking at the challenges facing single mothers in rural areas and have previously highlighted the excellent report into poverty and lone parenthood. In that report, the women who were interviewed consistently referred back to the challenges of finding suitable childcare and the barriers that are prevented to them accessing not just employment but college courses as well. Given the attention that childcare has been given in recent months, that is not surprising news. Indeed, many of the issues that are so relevant to increasing opportunities for women were explored in the passage of the Children and Young People's Bill. However, what is clear to me from the feedback that I have had from parents and childcare providers across Ms Scotland and Fife is that the number of hours of childcare is not the be-all and end-all of the childcare debate. If those hours are not available at a time that suits them, families will not be able to access the support that is required to enable them to participate in education, training or employment. For many families, they are forced to either juggle their local authority provision, the support from a childminder or family members, or use a private nursery, which may be more able to meet their hours. Interestingly, the growing up in Scotland deport into the characteristics of preschool provision and their association with child development outcomes picks up on that point. Their report noted that the use of private childcare providers increased with income, and just 7 per cent of children from households in the lowest income group attended a private provider, compared with 24 per cent of children from households in the highest income group. On that point, the report concluded, and I quote, that these differences reflect the different needs of couple families with both parents employed. For those who do not have an extended family network or are not in a two-parent family, it is vital that we see an increase in provision in more flexible wraparound childcare, whether that is breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, provision during school holidays or extended opening hours. However, it is the same old argument that we have seen time and time again from the Scottish Government. Post-independence all will be well. Ignoring the fact that many of the issues that they focus on can already be addressed by this Government under powers that it already has. The importance of college provision in increasing opportunities for women, especially those from our most deprived communities, is inarguable. That is why it is so hugely concerning that Scottish Government's cuts to college courses have disproportionately affected women. Warm words from ministers today are all very well, but in our communities, the negative consequences of this Government's choices are all too clear. Occupational segregation and vocational training and apprenticeships has been raised by the Wood Commission and in a recent report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The EHRC found evidence of men increasingly moving into traditionally female apprenticeship programmes, but no evidence of an overall increase of women entering traditionally male apprenticeships. To have 3 per cent of women in engineering apprenticeships is such a shockingly small figure that shows the problems are systemic throughout society. Girls' attitudes, system, subjects and the condoning by society of gender stereotype roles for young women is a huge problem that needs challenged. The EHRC also found that there is significant gender spend on apprenticeships in Scotland. The spend per male apprentice has been 53 per cent higher than for female apprenticeships. That is deeply concerning. The Scottish Government has the power to act on this immediately, and I urge it to do so. We may argue about how best to improve women's participation in non-traditional areas of education and employment, and I welcome innovative ideas that will target this problem. However, it is clear to me—and I hope to many others—that constitutional change will not tackle the structural inequality of our society because it is this structural inequality that can hugely influence the economic opportunities that are open to women. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government sees fit to bring forward this debate and that its usual mantle of independence will solve everything. I fully support proposals to increase opportunities for women, but I want to see it right across Scotland and the rest of the UK and not by imposing artificial barriers between people across the United Kingdom. I thank you so much, and I call on Chick Rory to be followed by Rhoda Grant. That is a very important debate, particularly in one that calls for a higher ambition, not just for a very significant element of Scotland's workforce, but also on behalf of the significant foundation of Scotland's future economy and its growth, which is women. I support the motion that has laid before us, but that is not just about women. I make no apology for drawing the Parliament's attention to the significant progress that it has already made, but also to the need for a change in culture still to be promoted to exploit the opportunities for women, both by women themselves, but much more importantly, a culture change by men. I need, if I may say epitomised, by a parliamentarian making a statement that, and I quote, women need to think what they want to do while they are doing the ironing. That charge was laid, of course, by the ex-prime minister of Australia, Julia Gifford, against that crusader for freedom and justice, the current prime minister of Australia, the Oxford educated Tony Abbott, related to the UK prime minister, of course, through the joint business relationship of their respective advisers. In the business of securing freedom and justice, promoting fairness and gender equality, that misogyny has no place in Scotland and nor shall we ever seek advice from that source. Presiding Officer, there are so many areas of increased and increasing contribution by women and the need for extending that contribution further, I believe, can only be done when we have full powers over welfare reform, over employment laws and, of course, ensuring that we secure human rights in the new written constitution of an independent Scotland. I make no apologies for concentrating in today's debate on opportunities for women in business and entrepreneurship. We arrive at positions, sometimes, based on personal experiences, and in my personal long experience in business, I found women where and are the best managers in business facilities, be it in customer service, HR, credit control or indeed in the case that I was involved in setting up a subsidiary in Europe by a woman colleague. Given the flexibility in each of those situations and others that are required, those women managers invariably exceeded the performance of their male counterparts. Yesterday morning, Presiding Officer, on Radio Scotland, I listened to a programme about opportunities for women. It clarified that women have to work 14 years more longer than men to achieve the same aggregate income or that women in their 40s invariably earn on average, in some cases 40 per cent less than men, even with an earlier retirement age that does not, in my opinion, mitigate those circumstances. When a comparison was made in the same programme about the men's ambition for progress in that of women, men invariably and partly and perhaps unsurprisingly chased a higher salary and benefits as a number one priority, whereas women chose location, then work sociability and then flexibility. If we are to fully secure the opportunities for women, which I am sure we all desire, and consider the fairness and equality needed, then a seismic culture change is required, not least to men's role and man's role in the family. I experienced that with my stepson, who has raised that in the family home, our twin granddaughters, while his wife carries out a very important international function, and happily they live in Singapore. Flexibility, fairness and equality of opportunity are paramount. In the research from the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, it is showing that increasing the number of women entrepreneurs to match the number of men would actually generate £7.6 billion extra for the Scottish economy. That is not a small cost or a small price. I would have other caution that setting numbers like 40 per cent on boards or matching the number of men when alpha male are out there seeing that to be the norm. This morning, at the EET committee, reflecting on the great success of the Edinburgh festival and festivals, our witness panel comprised 80 per cent of women, the chief executives of the forum, the festival, the fringe and Creative New Zealand, and they deserved to be there because the festival, as we know, is a jewel in the Scottish branding. The Government's role is critical in establishing a level playing field for women in entrepreneurship. The establishment of the women and enterprise network, the financial support for the women's enterprise, business ambassadors and the investing women initiative are stepping stones to that level playing field, as will be the outcomes, I am sure, from the working together review and the young workforce commission. The culture among men must also change so that the creation and promotion of opportunities for women, and indeed for men, are seen as a wider sense of acceptance of value as part of the overall remuneration. Those are based on merit and contribution and that a more flexible working environment is something that we must eventually work toward. Now call on Rhoda Grant to be followed by Christina McKelvie. Gender inequality is built in in Scotland and throughout most of the world. There are notable exceptions, however, in those countries who have worked hard to create an equal society. In Scotland, the areas where power is wielded are male dominated. Without action, that will continue because, like points like that, people exercise the power of the world in a way that reflects their own experience, not deliberately but it is natural. We all make decisions based on our own knowledge and experience. To redress the power and balance, we need to be brave and we need to take positive action. We need to look at equal pay not just for the same job but for jobs requiring similar levels of skills and experience. I often quote the salary of a police officer who is a male dominated career and a nurse who is a female dominated career. Both careers require a public service ethos, the ability to care and assist others, and both have built in inherent dangers that can be life threatening. One requires three to four years of university study and job based training. The other requires 12 weeks college based training followed by 20 weeks as a probationer. After training, the staff nurse who studies for three or four years earns just over £21,500. The probationer police officer who has not finished their training earns over £26,000 at 31 weeks. That is gender based pay. It happens more widely, jobs that pay the minimum wage are often female dominated occupations. We need to deal with gendered pay segregation and place equal value on the work that is carried out regardless of the gender domination of that person or profession. A child's life chances depend on his mother's education and pay. It is only by lifting women out of poverty that you tackle child poverty. It does come at a cost but so does the alternative. What is the cost of a child growing up in poverty? Not only the cost to that child alone but to wider society. When that child becomes dependent on services because its life chances have been curtailed, because its health has been damaged and its own children who are again born into poverty. If we are serious about tackling child poverty, we must first tackle the mother's poverty. Sexual exploitation is also a result of gendered poverty and inequality. We can tackle sexual exploitation by giving women access to economic levers and equal pay. We can eradicate the desperation of poverty that pushes people into those types of exploitation. By creating a more equal society, we make it unacceptable for people to be bought and sold because of their gender. To do that, we must have women in positions of power and that will not happen because, like appoints, we have a built-in imbalance and then a built-in discrimination occurs. We see that by the lack of women in positions of power and we need positive discrimination to correct that balance in order that we can go forward with equality. Taking those steps is difficult because of vested interests. Most people would say that they believe in equality but the reality is not so palatable if you are being the one asked to step aside to allow it to happen. The Scottish Labour Party put forward proposals to have positive discrimination on public boards but that was rejected by the Scottish Government at the time, as Jenny Marra told us earlier. However, it has now been promised that if Scotland votes for separation, surely that is an election bribe. People would have more confidence in those proposals had the Scottish Government not used its majority to vote down the proposals in the past. This debate today could have been about implementing this now. They could have said that, regardless of the result on 18 September, they will implement those policies for the boards that they appoint themselves, taking leadership instead of passing the bug and engaging in constitutional wrangles. They will not. Actions speak louder than words and do they really believe that women are so gullible? They have done the same with regard to childcare but did not even bother to do the research or cost their policy properly. However, if we are going to create opportunities for women, we do need to make it easier for women to work. We need to provide affordable, accessible childcare now. A pipe dream promise is not good enough. We should also have to share caring duties between the sexes. Men should also have to share the responsibility for childcare, both partners and employers contributing to their employees' time off for childcare responsibilities. Women who take career breaks to bring up children often struggle to catch up with men in the workplace who have not had to do that. Where that is shared, it would provide equality in the workplace and create a more equal society. We need to encourage, and of course we do, women into male-dominated workforces, which are therefore more highly paid. However, we also need to value the professions and the careers pursued by women. Those career choices are often hugely important in our society, caring roles looking after the young, old and unwell. We all depend on those roles. We have all been young, we all hope to be old and we will all experience ill health at some point. However, we do not value those roles at all. It is sad that we are still debating opportunities for women so many decades since the impact of inequality has been recognised. We will do that by changing our society, not by changing our country. We need to tackle those difficult decisions now and step up to tackling the inequalities in our society. That is what we should be doing now, rather than wrangling about our constitution. Christina McKelvie, to be followed by Dr Lane Murray. Women of Scotland across the centuries have been drivers for change, in spite of the social and economic barriers that have constantly worked against them. We have testament to some seriously impressive heroines who have blazed a trail and we are rightly proud of it. Let us take a brief look back to our historical sisters. Maybe a wee bit further back than Christine Grahame was able to go in her contribution. However, St Margaret of Scotland, born and exiled in Hungary via Northumbria, arrived in 1068 at what we now know as St Margaret's hope near North Queensferry. She married Malcolm III. Driven by her faith, she served orphans in the poor every day before she ate and established the Benedictine Order Monastery at Dunfermline, as well as the ferries between Queensferry and North Berwick. She was the power behind the restoration of the monastery at Iona. Opportunities for women to make an impact in Scotland, even in the 11th century, were limited. My namesake, Christina, the sister of Robert the Bruce, moved things along a bit a few centuries later. She commanded the garrison at Caldrummy Castle and successfully held out against probal oil forces led by David of Strathbolgy prior to her defeat by her husband, St Andrew Murray, at the Battle of Covene. However, there is no lack of feiciness among our Scottish ancestors. Mary Slesser came out of the slums of Dundee and became a skilled jute worker before she decided to follow in the missionary footsteps of David Livingston. She transformed the role of women in Nigeria, especially in her work with twins, regarded as an evil curse, and rescued hundreds. She adopted every pair that she found abandoned and taken one surviving twin girl as her own daughter. LC English was an innovative Scottish doctor and suffragist who wasn't to be held back by tradition. Her dissatisfaction with the standard of medical care available to women led to her becoming politically active and playing an important role in the early years of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. There are dozens more Scottish women worthy of mention, but I want to show especially how far forward we have moved and how much further we can travel in an independent Scotland. Independence is about opportunity, prosperity and a mission for sustainable economy. That word mission has broadened its meaning since Mary Slesser's time, but I am certain that she would understand that we are now striving in terms of a mission for equality. Professor Ailsa Mackay, who died a few months ago at the age of only 50, taught me a lot about making a difference and about how just how tenacious you need to be to be a success in that. Ailsa's voice was crucial to the current SNP Government's decision to commit hugely to extended childcare in Scotland, so encouraging more women to rejoin or join the workforce. She not only changed the culture at Glasgow University, she helped to draw Scottish Government policy on equality and she worked very hard at that. Westminster seems to have a different view entirely. Labour MP Austin Mitchell thinks that women prefer to discuss family and social issues rather than the big issues, like should we invade Iraq? He does not think that there should be more women in Parliament because they would be preoccupied with family and social issues. Women MPs, as he says and I quote, are more leadable and the feminisation of Parliament will make MPs more preoccupied with the local rather than the international, the small problems rather than the big issues and ideas. If he seriously imagines that the big ticket issues of the economy, austerity, jobs, investment, international affairs and the future prosperity are of less concern to women than men, then I would suggest that it is a good idea for him to attend a few yes meetings I have been at. Mr Mitchell is another glaring example of how Westminster is failing Scotland.  So let us look at the last and current generations of political Scottish women, women like Winnie Ewing, Margot MacDonald, Nicola Sturgeon, our very own Angela Constance, her result was Anna Cunningham and the rest of us MSPs, yes I include us all, determined and committed to improving the lives of our constituents and of broader Scotland. Presiding Officer, yesterday I held in my arms a baby girl. She was born in my constituency, her name is Blair Archibald, she was born on American Independence Day the 4th of July, she will truly be an Independence Day girl. I want to especially commend her to our future of Scotland, the one that recognises women and sees that rather than being also rans, we are in there fighting the same causes as men and we are not that different. It is the same issues of fairness and equality that drives us all, the same beliefs and our right to make our own decisions for ourselves. I am confident that Blair, who will be just a few months old when her parents vote on referendum day, will be one of those icons for our new generation of independent Scottish women. We must put women where our ambassadors have claimed that space and I gave you a history of that, a thousand years' worth of Scottish history. But let's do it with a yes vote, it won't happen otherwise. The Scottish Government is committed and I do hope that the Westminster Government answers the Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robinson's call yesterday to devolve equality, but let's not devolve it, let's just make equality independent. So this Government is committed to increasing the opportunities for women to enter the workforce. With the powers that we have, we have delivered real improvements in the quality outcomes, but more can and must be done. A yes vote is the greatest opportunity that we will ever have to transform women's lives for the better through transformational expansion in childcare, improving diversity in public and private institutions and targeting female representation on company and public boards. For Blair and for all of our daughters of Scotland, put Scotland's future and Blair's future in Scotland's hands. Thank you. Thank you very much. I have a little bit of time in hand for interventions. I call Eileen Murray to be followed by Willie Coffey. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is, of course, to be welcomed that the numbers of women employment have increased and that the levels of female act of inactivity have fallen. However, I think that it would be wrong to be complacent about the figures, because I think that there are searching questions that need to be asked about the detail. How many of these women are on zero, our contracts? How many are under-employed? How many are on the minimum wage? How many are self-employed but unable to make a living from what they earn? A discussion that is recently as yesterday morning on BBC Radio Scotland's morning call centred around the statistic that the average woman in Scotland would have to work 14 years longer than the average man to earn the same amount across her working lifetime. It is also wrong and, indeed, I think naive to imply that the barriers faced by women in terms of equality of opportunity are somehow the fault of Westminster and that they can only be solved by voting for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom. Barriers such as gender segregation, where women are stereotypically found in low-paid female occupations, as my colleague Rhoda Grant illustrated, and their underrepresentation on boardrooms or at senior management positions are not just a matter of constitutional responsibility, nor are the additional responsibilities that women tend to face that can interfere with their employment prospects, such as the likelihood that they will have primary caring responsibilities, not just for children outwith the time they are in nursery or school, but also when they are ill, women are more likely to have to care for sick or elderly relatives. The existence of these barriers is not just that the UK Government has failed to legislate. Jenny Marr described the Genesis of the Equal Pay Act passed in 1970, the Qualities Act, which superseded it, was passed in 2010, and the current UK Government, who I do not often have anything good to say about, included the sharing of parental leave and the right to request flexible working in its Children and Families Act earlier this year. It may be that the legislation is not yet tough enough. In gender, which Mary Scanlon referred to in her speech, she noted that, over the past 20 years, UK Governments have advocated encouraging private employers to adopt best practice rather than requiring them to take action. Perhaps we do need to be a bit tougher on that, and I wonder if the minister would suggest whether, if the Scottish Government was independent, it would actually take a statutory approach if it had those powers. One of the contributors to the radio programme yesterday was a 27-year-old woman who argued that sexism today was worse than it had ever been. As somebody who is considerably older, I would not agree that sexism was even worse when I was young, but we have not made the strides. I would have thought that we might have been able to make over the last nearly 60 years. After all, 100 years ago, women did not even have the vote and had no right to employment after marriage. The fact that we have such a long way to go is disappointing in that time, but I agree with others who have said that it is about attitudes, it is about society's attitudes to women. It is not about who legislates and where. It is much deeper and much more fundamental than that. That has demonstrated in the report on women in science technology engineering mathematics called Tapping all our talents. That was commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012, chaired by the eminent astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The report advises that there are 56,000 female graduates in STEM subjects in Scotland of working age, including me, but only 27 per cent of them are using their qualifications to work in STEM subjects, and that compares to 52 per cent of male graduates. In 2009, there were some 11,000 female graduates in STEM subjects in Scotland who were unemployed or economically inactive. Those are people of working age. What a waste, both of talent and a waste of expensive training, because the STEM subjects are not cheap to educate people in? Maybe the minister has a more up-to-date figure than this from five years ago, and I'd be interested to learn if there has been any progress in reducing this figure. That report also demonstrated, and again parallels what Rhoda Grant was saying in her speech, that the more we went up the ladder in STEM subjects, the less represented women were. At the top level, as professors' heads of research institutes, women were even less represented. The report made a number of recommendations to the Scottish Government, and I wonder if the minister could update those on which he has not referred to already. Shona Robison came to a meeting in April 2013 and appeared to want to take on board the recommendations, so I wondered how they were getting on. One of them was a national strategy for Scotland to address occupational segregation, and that, in particular, had its impact on STEM subjects. The other was the use of procurement to ensure that contractors and suppliers met the public sector equality duty. I don't think that we quite did that in the recent legislation. The minister at the cabinet secretary has referred to the introduction of statutory pay audits, which was part of that report, and the requirement on public bodies and agencies to produce plans to close the gender payback within an agreed timescale. The minister also wanted to see more gender-disaggregated data. The report wanted adequate resourcing for initiatives that have demonstrated success in tackling occupational segregation, and it wanted the requirement on all Scottish universities to bring their STEM departments up to the swan silver standard within two years. It also wanted legislation similar to that in Spain in 2011, passed in Spain in 2011 on gender balance, and a requirement for universities and research institutes to adopt gender equality plans and also the integration of gender issues into the curricula. All those recommendations could be taken forward now within the existing powers. I hope that, when we return to Parliament after the referendum is over, that there will be determination not to blame others for the barriers that women still face in employment in Scotland, but to press ahead with the actions that we can take here and now to remove those boundaries, both with the powers that we now have and with those further powers, which undoubtedly will be devolved to this Parliament in the future, and I do look forward to the further devolution of those powers. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. We're having this debate at a time when the female employment numbers in Scotland at one and a quarter million are the highest they've ever been. Probably more significantly, the employment rates for women are higher in Scotland than in the other countries of the UK, and the corresponding unemployment and activity rates are lower. In the last year alone, female employment numbers have gone up by about 36,000, meaning that those are the best set of figures for women at work in Scotland for over 20 years. Those figures are now helping to push Scotland's GDP to around £28,000 per person, and that is also about 10 per cent higher than what it is in the UK. That is fantastic news for Scotland despite the gloom of economic depression that has prevailed over us for some years now. If we take a look and see what the various reasons for that are, we'll see a number of policy decisions and initiatives taken in Scotland that are all contributing to the very positive figures that we have. The first-ever women's employment summit was held in 2013 in partnership with the STUC and examined many of the barriers facing women who want to work. It will be no surprise that issues such as occupational segregation, childcare and vocational routes for women into work, particularly in science and engineering, featured among those where some attention had to be focused. Funding projects such as women into work to examine progression routes and outcomes for women and extending the Youth Employment Scotland fund to help employers to take on youngsters and younger mums in particular who would otherwise find it difficult to get into work are all helping. The modern apprenticeship programme has seen a huge jump in the numbers of women participating. We are now seeing over 40 per cent of those being taken up by women compared to under 30 per cent in 2008—a very significant and positive change indeed. Encouraging women to become entrepreneurs is another area that came out of the summit and there are quite a range of initiatives to encourage more of that. According to the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, if the numbers of female entrepreneurs in Scotland matched the numbers of men, we could see another £7 billion added to the Scottish economy. The Scottish Government has put up £1 million towards schemes like young age, power of youth, investing women and others, and we will hopefully see new businesses emerging led by women to give Scotland's economy that additional boost. Our Government is also tackling occupational segregation, which sees many younger women not choosing vocational pathways to work, particularly engineering. £4.5 million was announced by the Cabinet Secretary in June to encourage more women into the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We fund the Scottish Resource Centre for Women and Career-Wise Scotland, both aimed at attracting more young women into science, and that will be further developed by the recently announced engineering skills investment plan. If we can also intervene as early as possible, even at nursery and primary school level, to put an additional focus on encouraging younger girls to be interested in science, we will reap the rewards later. Often, by the time youngsters get to secondary school, it can be too late. Gender stereotyping often reinforces the belief that science and engineering are oily rag activities only for the boys, and this is very difficult for young women to overcome. If we intervene earlier and show their reality and rewards of careers in science and engineering, especially for women, we stand a much better chance, and all those efforts will have been worthwhile. Can I mention at this stage the Comaric Engineering and Science Society that has been up and running now for a few years, specifically offering lectures to school pupils and often delivered by women who have reached the top in the world of science and engineering and who have never seen an oily rag once in their working lives? Perhaps the biggest to the other biggest factors in getting more women into work is in how we support childcare and how we get more flexibility into childcare, and what kind of welfare and benefits system we have in place for the poorest people in our society, because we know that women who are single parents are hardest hit if Governments get these wrong. The Scottish Government has made significant improvements to childcare since 2007, and from this month, all three and four-year-olds and vulnerable two-year-olds will get 600 hours of free childcare each year. It will benefit 120,000 children and save their families about £700 a year. The further transformation that will really see a major change to 1140 hours of free childcare in Scotland, equivalent to a whole primary school year, requires control over our own tax and revenues to deliver this. Make no mistake, this is not just about upping the numbers and grafting them on to our current existing system, where many women work part-time and suffer pay discrimination. This is an offer to fundamentally change how childcare works in Scotland that will allow many thousands of Scottish women to fully participate in our economy on an equal footing. In terms of the benefits system, we know that it is Scotland's women who bear the brunt of those cuts being imposed by the UK. It is single female households that lose out the most as a result of UK welfare reforms. Child benefit has been frozen, the reduction in childcare costs covered by working tax credits, the baby element removed from child tax credits and on the list goes. That is why it was a total disgrace when Scottish Labour MPs like Alastair Darling and nine female Scottish Labour MPs voted with the Tories to cut welfare spending, knowing that Scotland's women would suffer the most. Scotland's women deserve better than what they have had to put up with in the UK for years. The Scottish Government has made significant improvements to the lives of women in Scotland and with the additional powers of independence. We can completely transform childcare and tackle gender inequalities. We can help more women into business and industry, and we can protect the poorest women in our country by making sure that our welfare system is fairer and does not impoverish our families. That is a prize waiting after independence. I believe that Scotland's women will bat this positive change in Scottish society. All they have to do is to say yes in September 18. I turn to closing speeches. I call on Alison McInnes up to seven minutes, please. Thank you very much. I ask MSPs to reflect on something for just a moment. What if the cabinet secretary had spent even just a fraction of the energy that she has expended over the years railing against the UK Government on actually challenging our own cabinet colleagues to live up to our ambitions, if only? It is so often the case with the SNP that they prefer posturing to progress, so I would like to take a moment to further compare the SNP's dismal record on increasing opportunities for women within the powers that they have already got to the positive strides that have been made by Liberal Democrats and the UK Government. We have given more than 2 million Scots on low and middle income a £700 tax cut. 224,000 of the lowest paid, many of whom are women, have been lifted out of paying income tax altogether. However, the white paper revealed that taxpayers in an independent Scotland would pay £400 more each year compared to our plans to further increase the threshold to £12,500. The Liberal Democrats' pension minister, Steve Webb, is overseeing the introduction of the new single-tier pension in 2016. It will address historical inequalities by improving state pension income for those with little or no additional state pension, again predominantly women. The Liberal Democrat employment minister, Joe Swinson, has championed shared parental leave. From 2015, parents will be able to mix and match their time off with their baby. They will be able to take leave together and both be around during the precious early weeks. Going back to work for a short time to maintain skills and confidence will also be an option. This new flexibility will help to overcome outdated stereotypes about who does what, and more importantly, it will enable parents to decide how best to share their responsibilities and manage their career and family lives. It is great news for mums and dads and even better news for the children who will have the chance of a better start in life. Liberal Democrats have also worked hard to increase diversity at the top of our workforce and to promote gender equality on the boards of listed companies. Women now account for 21 per cent of total directorships, up from 12 per cent in 2010. One in five FTSE 100 boards were all male in 2011. Now, 99 per cent have at least one female director on their boards. I am sure that members will agree that that is quite a turnaround in a shop space of time, although there is much to do. We are determined to make it a legal requirement for companies employing more than 250 people to publish the average pay of their male and female workers. That will create pressure from staff and customers to afford women the same opportunity as their male colleagues and reward them accordingly, not 20 per cent less. Pressure to close the gender pay gap and deliver real equality in the workplace. Those radical progressive income and workplace policies have already made a real difference to the lives of millions of women here in Scotland. Furthermore, it reminds us that Scotland has so much more to gain by continuing to work with the rest of the UK, not least because of the economic stability that we have secured. Stability that underpins the positive employment figures that we are discussing today. Only four years ago, we were teetering on the edge of a financial precipice. Now, our economy is growing. We are making real progress on reducing the deficit, and the outlook for growth and jobs is positive. Why is this hard-earned progress so important? Prosperity is key to unlocking opportunities. Because when economies experience difficulties, it is consistently women who are hardest hit. That is why I worry about the impact of £6 billion in additional cuts that the IFS anticipates and independent Scotland would have to implement. I worry about the implications for women, as should you, who are more likely to be low-paid or in part-time jobs. I worry about the implications for women who are more likely to be reliant upon the state, the support that the state can currently provide pensioners, parents and carers. A strong Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom gives us the best of both worlds. It enables us to spread the risks and share the rewards, and it comes with the guarantee of more powers without losing the backup of being part of the larger UK economy. During the referendum campaign, I have had the benefit of speaking to many women on both sides for whom this debate is their first foray into politics. Women who realise that this is the most important political decision that we will ever take—an irreversible decision—women who I hope will continue to engage and enrich our policies and our politics and public life in the future. I also welcome that the referendum has renewed this Parliament's focus upon dismantling the stubborn archaic barriers that women face, but I sincerely hope that, regardless of the outcome next month, we can constructively, collectively tackle those issues with the same level of passion and determination that has been displayed this afternoon. I think that there have been some very interesting points raised in this debate, and it is very appropriate that the main focus is that we debate the politics of the referendum about the key policy issues, which will not only boost the number of women in the workforce, but also raise the quality of their skillset and the attractiveness to them of the labour market. I think that those are the key things, just as much as the actual numbers involved. It goes without saying, as many members have said this afternoon, that women are a crucial part of the labour market, because they bring very specific skills in many cases, many of which can be offered on a much more flexible basis than their male counterparts. Although there have been considerable differences of opinion this afternoon, I think that there are some important areas of agreement. First, I think that there is no question that good quality education and training are the absolute key. We know from the contributions of several members this afternoon that the value of apprenticeships is immense, and many of the themes that underpin the Rood Commission are so important in driving forward policy. In particular, I think that there is a growing need to address the STEM subjects, and Christine Grahame, who is not in the chamber just now, and Willie Coffey have both said very important things about STEM subjects, and the difficulties that are encountered by science and the technology industries in attracting sufficient women, notwithstanding some of the successes in programmes such as Girls Into Energy, which is sponsored by Shell UK. I think that if we have a look at the SQA returns over recent school sessions, there remain concerns about the drop in numbers taking subjects such as physics. In the last five school sessions, there has been a problem. In mathematics, in which numbers have remained largely unchanged for boys, that is not the case for girls. Again, there has been a very significant drop in the last few sessions. At this point, can I also flag up some concerns about the Scottish baccalaureate exams, which I believe fundamentally have the potential to do something about this trend? At the moment, we have an exceedingly low take-up rate for the Scottish baccalaureate. Indeed, it fell. We have only got 136 entries across the whole of Scotland for this session. The cabinet secretary said in a parliamentary answer to me just a couple of weeks ago that the Scottish baccalaureate was never intended to be a high uptake award since it was primarily in place to meet the needs of our most able learners. I question the wisdom of saying that, because I think that the whole point about baccalaureate exams is their interdisciplinary approach, most especially when it comes to dissertation work on practical disciplines. Those are exactly the skills that we hear many employers are looking for in their STEM graduates. The whole premise of the baccalaureate discipline is to have added value on that interdisciplinary front, and I think that that is something that we need to think about very carefully. That is happening also at the same time when we see subjects like geology coming out of the SQA examination diet altogether, and yet it is one of the burgeoning disciplines when it comes to Scotland's thriving technology industries. I think that there are serious issues there. We need to do much more on the training aspect, which we all agree is so important to women in the labour market. Secondly, I think that we have had some common agreement that many women are looking for much greater flexibility in the labour market, and that, after all, is the reason why there is cross-party agreement about the need to provide more and better quality childcare. It would, of course, help—I think that it was Rhoda Grant who made the point—if the economic modelling that had been done by the Scottish Government had been factually accurate, because it was based on a theoretical trend, not on the specific labour market circumstances that apply to Scotland. Rhoda Grant was quite correct in pointing out the problem of that. Child care matters in terms of its availability and its reasonable cost, but it also matters in terms of its flexibility. On that score, I think that it is so important that we do something about that availability on the flexible level. Jane Baxter referred to issues in Mid Scotland and Fife about that, but we have a group of campaigners in Glasgow just now who are making the very point that you cannot have the Scottish Government's policy on full childcare provision unless we also harness the private sector availability of these private public partnership mixes and nurseries. It cannot be delivered by the dependence on the state sector. We also need to take on board the fact that in some of the state-funded nursery places they do not have that flexibility, because it is only up to three hours a day, and in some cases they do not cover school holidays. I think that there are a lot of issues that we need to look at. Finally, I think that the third area of relative agreement is the huge role that colleges have to play in tackling that problem. One of the great success stories of colleges, since the changes that took place in 1992, is their ability to cater for a wide diversity of courses—full-time and part-time—many of which are particularly suitable to women. However, as has been made clear this afternoon, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than the fact that the recent college cuts have disproportionately affected women. I do not want to hear any excuses about measuring part-time places against full-time equivalent. What matters is measuring against the trends of the years of exactly the same measurement further back. On that basis, the Scottish Government knows that the message is not a good one. I think that there are lots of things where we agree on the principles behind the policies that we have to develop to ensure that women are not only much more available in the labour market but are available on a flexible and on a basis that allows their own individual skills to flourish in a way that perhaps we have not been able to do before. The recent employment in GDP figures make it very clear that Scotland is doing very well as part of the union, benefiting from the combined economic policies of Holyrood and Westminster in a way that Jenny Marra and Alison McInnes have both referred to. It is essential to have those economies of scale that are important to investment and to jobs and which will provide that economic security that allows local economies to develop too. The potential boost in female participation rates is huge, providing that capacity can be stimulated. That is why we will be fully supportive of the unionist amendments in the name of Jenny Marra and Alison McInnes. I thank you and I now call on Jackie Baillie around eight minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This has been an interesting debate. I have always believed that when women come together across this chamber, we can make a huge difference. I am of course reminded as I see Angela Constance across the room that she and Shona Robison were promoted to their current posts a mere four months ago. I congratulated them at the time. They are of course very intelligent and capable women, as all women in this Parliament are, but they have always been intelligent and capable women, so one cannot help but wonder why they were not promoted before this. The suspicion at the time was that this was less to do with recognising talent, it was simply about the referendum. Although there will be some cynical people in this room, not me of course, Presiding Officer, who believe that the timing of this debate has more to do with the referendum, I always welcome any opportunity to debate opportunities for women. To be frank, we need to move away from just debating the issues and the warm words to actually coming up with action. That action needs to be across a wide range of issues that collectively start to remove the barriers from women's participation, whether it is in education, training, employment, family life or indeed civic life. Scottish Labour has always been motivated by a very deep and abiding belief in gender equality. We have delivered the twinning of parliamentary constituencies to ensure that there were equal numbers of men and women standing as candidates. That was not easy to do, but we delivered 50-50 representation for men and women as Labour MSPs in almost all of the Scottish Parliament elections. I will work with the other parties to encourage them to do the same, because it is not just enough for us to be here, it is what we do that makes a difference. Working across the United Kingdom, Labour's progressive politics delivered the 1970 Equal Pay Act, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, the Equality Act of 2010 and much more besides. However, when you see, for example, that the gender pay gap remains persistently high, then there is clearly more still to do. However, I do not believe that it is simply a constitutional issue. I believe that it takes political will. Any progress on increasing opportunities for women is absolutely welcome, but my frustration to be frank in the past few years has not been characterised by increasing opportunities, but it has been characterised by opportunities missed. The reduction in college places is an opportunity missed. The loss of 140,000 college places, as many people have referred to since 2007-08, undermines the Government's own objective to ensure that we have the training and skills for the long-term needs of our economy. There is no doubt, as Jenny Mayer pointed out, that this disproportionately impacts on women with 85,000 women affected. Then there is the payment of the living wage. Here was another missed opportunity. The procurement reform bill could have delivered the living wage as part of the £10 billion that is spent each and every year in public sector contracts. It could have delivered that to 400,000 low-paid workers in Scotland. 64 per cent of them are women. That is 256,000 working women that the SNP said no to. There was no action on zero-hours contracts, no action on equal pay audits, all things that I know the cabinet secretary would acknowledge would have made a positive difference to women and all things that the SNP said to women, no, you cannot have it. In all those cases, they did have the power to do something about it. The cabinet secretary and members of the SNP make great play about not having the powers to do something, as if that is an excuse for not delivering progress. Progressive politics does not need constitutional change, it needs political will. When the suffragettes were fighting for votes for women, that was delivered by political will not constitutional change. The minister has only recently arrived in the chamber but is insisting on interrupting from a sedentary position. Excuse me, Ms Bailey, I would prefer if no one interrupted from a sedentary position, please, Jack Bailey. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The minimum wage that some members of the SNP slept through, helping low-paid women delivered by political will not constitutional change, creating the NHS, helping families across Scotland and the United Kingdom delivered by political will not constitutional change. Let me turn to childcare, raised by Mary Scanlon. Let me say that it is an economic issue, not a women's issue. This is something that you have power over now. The Government focus on hours at the expense of quality and flexibility, but it does not deliver for working families. There is an inherent dishonesty about the SNP policy when there are no costings for their childcare proposals. They do not appear to have done the modelling and they have certainly not published it. They have delayed the date for childcare provision for vulnerable two-year-olds. Of course, it relies on 104,000 mothers becoming economically active, but guess what? There are only 64,000 mothers that fit the bill, so it just does not stack up. 40,000 women are posted missing, and I look forward to the SNP policy that encourages more pregnancies to make their sums add up. However, there is another area in which the Scottish Government has the power to act now. How about delivering more women in the boardrooms of Scotland's public bodies? About five to six years ago, I will be corrected on the timescale, the Scottish Government set a target of 40 per cent of applications from women. That is just applications. They failed to meet even that. Less than a third of board members in Scotland are women. Some public bodies have no women at all, and all those appointments are made by the cabinet secretaries. Why have they not delivered? I am much more ambitious than just wanting 40 per cent of applications. I want to see bums on seats, which is why Labour is committed to 50-50—I am just checking that, I am allowed to say that. Labour is committed to 50-50 on all public boards, and we will act to deliver just that, because it takes political will, not constitutional change. Check Brody is a very brave man. He was only one of two men to speak in the debate. Mr Brody talked about the alpha male. Off-camera, he was pointing to himself. Let me say as gently as I can to him. That is probably a triumph of hope over experience. His admiration for the talents of women was absolutely evident, and I look forward to him supporting a female First Minister, whichever party that might be from. I think that I am in my final minute, Presiding Officer. Women in Scotland are smart. I think that Check Brody would agree with me on that. We need to get beyond the warm words to judge how they should vote in the referendum. They will judge the Scottish Government's record, where they had the power to deliver for women, but decided not to do so. What a missed opportunity. Clearly, the SNP's priority is simply to win women's votes for the referendum. What we want to do is to win women's votes to actually change their lives. Thank you very much, and I now call on Angela Constance to wind up the debate. Cabinet Secretary, you have until 4.59. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I say that this has been a very consensual debate? In case you are wondering which debate I have been listening to, I think that the majority of us agree on the destination. I suppose that the difference of opinion rests on the route that we take and on the journey that we take towards achieving equality. I have always been of the view that there is nothing inevitable about gaining equality under any political system, but I think that some arrangements are more adept at delivering equality, and I think that some arrangements are more inherently democratic. There is a point about who makes decisions and where those decisions are made, as well as how you use those powers of independence. I am not pinning my hopes on the right man being in number 10. To be frank, I am too old for that. Secondly, that has not worked very well for Scotland today. For more than half my lifetime, Scotland has had a Prime Minister in it number 10 that has not reflected the democratic will of the people in Scotland. Jackie Baillie That would be fine if it was not for the fact that you have the power to make decisions over things such as the appointment of women to public boards in Scotland. Given that you have the power, given that you are the one making the decision, why has not the number of women increased? Of course. The proportion of women on public boards in Scotland is at 38 per cent, and we need to be far more ambitious than that and to achieve that. It is also this Government, unlike the UK Government, that took on the public sector equality duty, applied it to the public sector as we were able to under the Equality Act 2010. We have done that, introduced a suite of measures, unlike the UK Government, who is south of the border. The whole thing remains on a voluntary basis. We are doing what we can within our powers. The fact is equality remains a matter reserved to the Westminster Government. I hope that the cabinet secretary has stopped your moment. If members are not taking an intervention, other members should sit down, but they will be told to do so by the Presiding Officers if they remain on their feet. Of course. I look forward to having support from Jackie Baillie and Ms Marra. Behind that letter for them to put their shoulders to the wheel and the letter that Shona Robison has sent to the UK Government, in a moment, has said to the UK Government, give us the powers over equality now. It will only take six months, and that would allow us to make speedy progress after a yes vote, because we are ambitious on this side of the Parliament. Indeed, we are impatient. I am sorry, Ms Marra, but to say after 44 years of the Equal Pay Act 2010 that yes, it has some time to go, it has some pace to go. That is a wee bit of an understatement of the year. The cabinet secretary is so committed to women on public boards. Why is it that her Government appointed 10 regional college chairs out of 12 appointments, only two women? That is a matter of public policy and public appointment. Why only two out of 12? Yes, indeed. The very important issue about that was certainly in terms of the applications that were received from women outperformed on the basis of those applications, but where there is an issue, and I am sure that we are united about this, is that there is much more to be done in terms of ensuring that talented women can progress, they know about making applications, they are supported in making applications, and nobody is disputing that we cannot do more now. I am always up for challenge and debate about what more we can do with our powers and resources now. I have no issue with that debate, but that does not preclude the need for more powers, more opportunities and more resources to becoming to this Parliament for us to be deciding on our own terms how we pursue the equality agenda. If I can say to Jane Baxter and Dr Murray and priests to inform them that Athena Swan in universities has went up from university universities to universities to universities to universities, they should, of course, might want to look at the guidance letter from Michael Russell to the Scottish Funding Council, which is a challenging name about occupational segregation within courses and in their workforce at a senior level. The issue with regard to the wood agenda where the recommendations are that, for the first time, the Scottish Funding Council and skills development in Scotland will have realistic but stretching targets and will have to report annually on that. We will, of course, come back to Parliament in the autumn to report more fully on that as we will with our consideration of the working together review. Before I move on, I also want to thank Rhoda Grant, Christine Grahame and others for making the mention and plugging away for carers and their contribution to the economy. We have to remember that unpaid work makes a huge contribution to our economy, and that unpaid work is pointed out by many of the briefings that are provided by women. It is important that we reflect on the games of devolution. Successive Scottish Administrations have helped to narrow that historic gap in performance with the UK across a range of economic indicators, whether it is output, productivity or employment. Our economy is strengthening,