gislative framework. To assist us with our scrutiny task, we sought the views of those who work in the funeral industry and also heard from a diverse stakeholder group, including the Muslim Council for Scotland, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Citizens Advice Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service. We received a total of 33 responses to our call for evidence, and we would like to thank all those who shared their views with us. Interestingly, there were no responses from folk on the generality of the bill and its impact on them. We found that surprising, given the potential for the bill to impact on us all. To use the words of the off-quoted Benjamin Franklin, this world nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes. Why the lack of engagement? We believe that this is due to the lack of detail in the bill. How can members of the public or stakeholders be expected to comment on the policy if they cannot comprehend how it will work in practice? There are three key areas where we have requested more detail. Those are the management of burial ground scheme, the independent inspection regime and the proposed licensing scheme. Let us move on to the bill's principal aim to modernise the legislative framework. As we have heard, this is quite old legislation that we have had to deal with and have got to update it now. We have an industry that is steeped in tradition, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but funeral businesses, just like other businesses, have to operate and compete in a modern digital world. Electronic record keeping is no longer a nicety, it is a necessity. Disappointingly, the bill has fallen short of requiring electronic record keeping, and that is why we recommend that it be remedied. The bill largely preserves the existing approach, albeit with some modifications to bring legislation into the 21st century. We consider that the bill could have fundamentally changed the way that the funeral industry operates and, by doing so, send a clear signal on service standards and costs. As we have heard, the bill is a response to poor historic practices in the funeral industry. We welcome the introduction of the inspection regime, however, we consider that the package of measures in the bill can be further strengthened through the swift introduction of licensing. Licensing will ensure that certain standards have to be met rather than relying on existing voluntary schemes and codes of practice where there are no effective sanctions for non-compliant businesses. Licensing itself also has the potential to address rising funeral costs. Funeral industry figures reveal healthy profits in a sector that is continuing to grow. One company's figures' dignity show for crematoria underlying profit as a percentage of revenue was 53 per cent in 2014. Revenue from funeral services was £184 million and underlying profit 36 per cent. Meanwhile, Fraser Sutherland of Citizens Advice Scotland told us in 2014 that it had a 35 per cent increase in the number of clients concerned about funeral issues and affordability, with the average cost of a funeral now being £3,550. Costs of a funeral can vary from street to street in a single town. We consider that a licensing scheme has the potential to require the funeral directors to display tariffs. That, we believe, would make it easier for people to make an informed choice at what is an extremely emotional time for a bereaved family. Costs across local authorities vary widely too. Western Isles charges £694 for purchase of a lair and an internment, while East Dunbartonshire charges £2,785. We found the reasons for that were varied and complex, but cross-subsidy of other services could be a factor. We welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to require local authorities to publish their costs online, as some do currently. We also thank the Scottish Government for providing the committee with an update on its review of funeral costs and development of a successor benefit to the DWP funeral payment. In the short term that I have left, I would like to briefly touch on sustainability of burial grounds. The reuse of lairs is essential if burial is to continue as an option in the future. It will be for burial authorities to make best use of those new powers. We welcome the ending of the sale of lairs in perpetuity and consider the introduction of a new limit of 25 years in the first instance as appropriate. In conclusion, we support the general principles of the bill and we look forward to the Scottish Government addressing the technical points that we have raised. I now call Jenny Marra, seven minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to rise to open the debate on the bill for Scottish Labour and the Labour Party will be supporting the general principles of this bill at decision time tonight. The legislation that has been in place around burial and cremation in Scotland is really outdated now. The minister said herself that the last legislation that we had on this was 1855, the Burial Grounds Scotland Act. This is really our chance to update our law and guidance for all people involved, funeral directors, local authorities and the industry for burial and cremation in Scotland. The act of burial and cremation is such an important time in many families' lives—the sad loss of loved ones. It is very important in our civilised society that we get these things right. I think that the bill comes at a very appropriate time because we know that in recent years we have not always got these things right. It was just last year that we heard about the tragic case of Kieran Williamson, an eight-year-old boy who was crushed and killed by a gravestone that fell as he played with his friends in Cregdon cemetery. The tragedy is unfortunately not an isolated incident. In the same graveyard five years previously, a teenager was trapped and injured by a gravestone. It is estimated that there are over 20,000 stones that are damaged, unstable and potentially hazardous in graveyards across Scotland. I am sure that every MSP in this chamber has to think of its constituency and local community where gravestones are starting to crumble and fall and posing a hazard. The bill comes at a time when we have the opportunity to better manage burial grounds. We have the chance here today to redesign the supply of burial space and the opportunity to put in place licensing codes of practice and regulation. The cases of children and young people being hurt by gravestones is concerning as many of our burial sites have fallen into disrepair. In Burnt Island, a 900-year-old church was granted funding from heritage lottery to preserve the church and graveyard and also the rich cultural heritage that the area holds. Our graveyards can be our heritage. In Dundee, the main castle graveyard in Cared Park was fallen apart in 2013 and it took for historians and local groups to highlight not only the danger that the crumbling stone posed but also a need to preserve local social history and their records. The bill will support burial authorities in managing and maintaining graveyards. At the moment, there is no single source of guidance and a lot of uncertainty about what can be done and by who. We know that, after about 25 years, many graves tend to be no longer visited, unfortunately. If friends and family are no longer visiting gravesites to see the damage that weather and temperature do to stones and memorials, we need another authority to step in to ensure that sites are safe and well maintained. Space is becoming an issue for some local authorities, particularly in the islands. Available land for burial is decreasing. We need to ensure that we have a long-term sustainable plan for burial grounds, including on maintaining the option for burial. Let me turn to an issue that has been addressed by Kevin Stewart and the minister this afternoon. That is funeral costs. The costs of funeral, as we all know in this chamber, from the very good work that the CAB does but also from our own surgeries and representations from our constituents, funeral costs are a worry to many families across Scotland. Figures from the accounts of Dignity, the large American company that owns many of our crematoriums in Scotland show that, between 2010 and 2014, their profit increased by 34%. In Scotland, there are over 1,000 funerals a week. The average cost, as Kevin Stewart referred to, of funerals is £3,500. Some families have to resort to pay day loans to be able to pay for a funeral for their family. At a time of grief and loss, this is a huge burden on those who are already suffering that worry of how to pay for a funeral. Many families simply do not have the money, and some have had to resort to the indignity of unmarked graves. By encouraging openness and transparency in the true cost of a funeral, we can begin to challenge this and make sure that every family is treated with dignity and fairness. It was just last week, where Citizens Advice Scotland called on the Scottish and UK Governments to support those who are struggling to pay for funerals. I welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to speed up its decision on funeral payments and meet the target of processing applications within 10 days. I have heard first-hand accounts of delayed decisions by the DWP on applications that lead to great stress around funeral payments. I look forward to the outcomes of the Scottish Government's forthcoming national conference on funeral poverty and its consideration of the funeral bond scheme, which I am sure could be a help to many. If I can turn to some other issues in the bill, I thank the health committee, in particular, for its scrutiny over the very sensitive issue of baby ashes and crematoriums. Scottish Labour welcomes today that the bill will complete 25 of the infant cremation commission's 64 recommendations. I thank Duncan McNeill, the committee convener, for speaking in detail and very sensitively about the issues that were raised. What happened with infant ashes in Scotland should never be allowed to happen again. We must ensure that women are at the centre of decisions at a very difficult time. I welcome the minister's commitment today to amendments at stage 2 to give women that time to make decisions after pregnancy loss. I am out of time, Presiding Officer. I will close my remarks there. I will continue my closing speech. The Scottish Government's intention in the bill to create legislation that is fit for 21st century Scotland has been generally welcomed because much of the law that is governing the cremation dates back well over 100 years and is increasingly unfit for purpose in today's society. As we know, the Health and Sport Committee, as the lead committee for the bill, focused particularly on the proposals for the burial and cremation of babies, fetuses and early products of conception. It will be appreciated that this is a very sensitive area, particularly in light of the major emotional trauma suffered by many parents who became aware a few years ago that they were unable to trace what had happened to the remains of their offspring after cremation. We are still very much affected by this and we are concerned to ensure that this will not happen to parents in the future. We were very mindful of how people felt and we did our best to take evidence as sensitively as we could. To this end, we received some evidence anonymously via email and telephone and we had a very worthwhile private meeting with a number of bereaved parents who contributed significantly to our understanding of the issues to be considered. The committee clerks were very sensitive in their approach to witnesses and I would add my thanks to them for their painstaking work on the bill and to all the witnesses, but particularly to those who had been personally affected. In the opening speech, I will focus on some of the issues around burial and cremation that are dealt with in the Health and Sport Committee's stage 1 report. In my closing speech, I will look at the bill a little more broadly. Scottish Conservatives will be supporting the bill at stage 1, but there are a number of concerns that I hope will be resolved by amendment stage 2, and I appreciate the minister's intention to bring forward several significant amendments at that time. The discovery in 2012 that cremation authorities in Scotland had different practices for the recovery of ashes from the cremation of babies, and the severe distress that this caused to bereaved parents led, as we know today in Malish Angelini's report on the practice at Mortonhall crematorium, and the establishment of the Infant Cremation Commission chaired by Lord Bonomy, which examined the policies, practices and legislation related to the cremation of babies in Scotland and reported its findings in 2014. As Jenny Marra said, the commission made 64 recommendations, including the appointment of an inspector of crematoria. It is expected that the bill will complete 25 of the commission's recommendations, the majority of which are focused on providing a more constant and robust process for applying for the cremation of babies' fetuses and pregnancy loss. A voluntary code of practice on baby and infant cremations was published last December, and the bill will make this binding on relevant authorities within the funeral industry. A key part of the bill is the definition of cremation, and particularly the definition of ashes, in order to establish a clear, unambiguous understanding of what is meant by the term. Lord Bonomy recommended that it should mean all that is left in the cremator at the end of the cremation process and following the removal of any metal. The definition in the bill defines ashes within the context of Lord Bonomy's definition. It is now expected that ashes will be recovered in most circumstances following infant cremation, and if not, that will be investigated by the inspector of crematoria. The historic practice by some cremation authorities to dispose of ashes without the knowledge or consent of bereaved parents has had a devastating and long-standing impact. It is such an important and sensitive issue that the committee is looking at the bill, thinking that it is crucial that Government policy in this area is set out clearly on the face of the bill and that any aspect of this policy, which is subject to subordinate legislation, should be subject to the affirmative procedure of Parliament. The Government's commitment to amend the bill to this effect is welcome indeed. I do not have time to go into detail on the other provisions of the bill, but I will touch on one or two. In relation to the disposal of pregnancy loss, it is clear that there needs to be a more sensitive and systematic approach across Scotland, treating the mother with dignity and understanding, and setting out clearly to her the various options available and giving her time to come to terms with her loss. Likewise with stillbirth and neonatal death, there is a real need for better engagement with bereaved parents, support in making arrangements for burial or cremation, and help with formfilling at a time of distress and high emotion. Application forms for burial and cremation need to be clear, sensitive and easy to understand if bereaved parents are to be expected to complete them. The development of statutory application forms is welcome, but I appreciate that there are some differences of opinion regarding the detail yet to be sorted out. As I have tried to indicate, there are very real sensitivities around the issues discussed by the Health and Sport Committee in relation to the disposal of the remains of babies' fetuses and early products of conception. The bill goes some way towards ensuring that past bad practice will not recur, although I think that it will need to be refined as it goes through the next stages of the parliamentary process. I look forward to seeing the minister's stage 2 amendments. I will finish at this point, because I said at the outset that I will deal with some other aspects of the bill in my closing speech. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. As you say, I am speaking in my capacity as convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee this afternoon. The committee has continuing concerns about the bill and accordingly agreed that I should contribute to this important debate, but I want to begin by welcoming the Scottish Government's willingness to respond to many of the committee's comments about the bill. The committee raised concerns about the number of delegated powers in the bill relative to its size and considered that more detail should be set out on the face of the bill. Furthermore, the committee was concerned about the number of delegated powers in the bill that permit the creation of criminal offences in regulations and encouraged the Scottish Government to revisit each such power to determine whether the offence could be included on the face of the bill rather than delegated to support legislation. The committee also commented on the selection of negative procedure for a number of delegated powers, which was justified by the Scottish Government on the basis that consultation requirements would provide additional scrutiny. The committee does not agree that the presence of consultation requirements was an appropriate justification for selecting different parliamentary procedures. We are therefore pleased to see that the Scottish Government has been willing to commit to a Mender Bill to respond to almost all of those concerns. Section 651 of the bill provides that Scottish ministers may make a scheme for the licensing of funeral directors premises. Section 661 provides that Scottish ministers may, by regulations, make provision for or in connection with such a scheme. I welcome clarification from the Scottish Government that it is now intended that the licence will be required for each funeral director rather than premises. Our concern, nonetheless, is that the bill proposes to set out an entire licensing regime for individuals who carry on business as funeral directors in secondary legislation. The committee recommended in its report that this licensing regime be set out more fully on the face of the bill rather than delegated in its entirety to subordinate legislation. The Scottish Government's response to the committee's report expresses an intention to continue to provide for licensing scheme regulations, suggesting that this will enable the licensing scheme to be developed on the basis of recommendations from inspectors and allow for consultation with funeral directors. In essence, the Scottish Government is not able to set its policy on the licensing of funeral directors out on the face of the bill as that policy has yet to be fully developed. I have to say that the committee finds this unsatisfactory. I note the comments earlier from Kevin Stewart on behalf of the local government committee that they too would like a lot more detail. This is an important matter and one that will clearly have a significant impact on individuals operating as funeral directors. The approach also clearly contrasts with the approach taken in relation to so many other licensing schemes, including most recently the scheme for licensing of air weapons, where more detail regarding the operations of the licensing regime was set out in primary legislation. The committee recognises that there is room for some matters of detail around the licensing scheme to be left to secondary legislation, but the committee does consider that the majority of these matters should be set out on the face of the bill given their significance. Those people who will be covered by the licensing scheme should be able to understand that scheme and members should be able to understand the nature of the licensing scheme that they are being asked to agree to. I note the minister's earlier comments, but reflect that section 61, which is about inspections, is still very general in its terms, simply saying that ministers made by regulations make provision that in connection with inspections of burial grounds, crematoriums and funeral directors themselves. We could still do with some detail as to what that is going to mean. The committee asks the Scottish Government to again reflect on its approach to the licensing scheme and strongly advocates that it includes more detail of the scheme on the face of the bill. The committee will be interested to hear the Scottish Government's further reflections on the matter and, in light of those further thoughts, we intend to return to the issue later. Thank you very much indeed, Presiding Officer. Can I begin, Presiding Officer, by saying that I actually found this very difficult during the health committee because we were talking about something that is quite close to myself as an individual and as a parent, but what I found difficult was the bravery—well, it was not difficult in terms of the bravery, but what I found was that it was emotive, and those giving testimony at the committee were indeed very brave. It is difficult to talk about the pain of loss without being emotive. I think that the bill is going to go a long way to try to ensure that parents of the future that have lost—indeed, if it encompasses the fact that early loss in pregnancy is included here—is going to go a long way to try to ensure that those who suffer loss are actually going to have the support and, in their knowledge, that—and I find it very difficult with the term disposal of remains. I find it a very difficult term to say even. I always think that there must be a better phrase in or some way. I think that the minister actually said when we are looking at a woman in terms of pregnancy loss, in terms of giving her the time to look at, to choose what can be done, and maybe that is a better way. However, there were a lot of positive things within, I think, taking the evidence. I was gratified to hear the funeral directors themselves coming together and acknowledging that things could be better. The one aspect that will help bereaved parents is that we actually have a standardisation within the forms, because the last thing a bereaved parent requires is a form, a form to fill out, a form that they perhaps would find extremely difficult in terms of that completion. One of the things that we discussed in committee, and I think came out very powerfully in committee, was that funeral directors themselves can help in those areas. They deal with it on a regular basis, and they can take the bereaved parents through the form. At the end of the day, the bereaved parents will have to sign to ensure that the information on that form is correct, absolutely. However, the sensitivity and respect that the funeral directors have is something that gives comfort to those bereaved parents at a time of great loss. The bill in itself has many areas that require tightening up, and I congratulate the minister at the outset for saying that the minister is going to come forward with various amendments at stage 2. That to me is about a Government who is listening to the needs, not just of the committee and the recommendations from Lord Bonomy, but from those grieving parents who came and gave evidence to committee. I congratulate the minister in her sensitivity and, indeed, her respect for the people who came to committee and aired their own views in terms of their own loss. I look forward to stage 2 in going over some of those aspects. In saying that, I am sure that I will still find it incredibly emotional, but it is a bill that requires to be done. Very few of us plan and discuss our intentions when we pass on. Importantly, how we are going to pay for those arrangements. My parents, in exception, have even picked their hymns. They were concerned about the costs of their funeral, and in 2010 they bought funeral plans. However, I realise that many people who do not have savings cannot simply afford to put money aside for a funeral, and there is strong evidence regarding funeral poverty. I am in contact with Dundee's Pensioners Forum and learning from their members' experiences. I welcome the Scottish Government's announcement that it is to host the first national conference to tackle funeral poverty, but I feel that the minister has missed an opportunity not to address the real issue of funeral poverty in the bill. Even the Government consultation document fails to grasp the issue by just focusing on local authorities publishing fees online and cost recovery rather than on the full cost of funerals. I feel that the bill also ought to address the national assistance duty. A good friend of mine, who works full-time but in a low-paid job, was not eligible for the social fund funeral payment and could not afford to bury his mother. Due to the shame that he felt, he did not disclose this until a few months afterwards. He felt a huge amount of guilt and shame at not being able to mark his mother's life in the way that he wanted. He realised that he could not afford the cheapest funeral at the local funeral director and did not know what to do. He spoke to a bereavement councillor and it was only during his fourth visit that the councillor mentioned the national assistance funeral scheme. He was not aware that local authorities had a duty, but they only did it if nobody would claim that he did not claim his mother's body. While he was grateful for the scheme, he felt the stigma of his mother being buried in what is locally known as a popper's grave. He did not know that he could have attended that burial. The Scottish working group on funeral poverty stated in their consultation response that the national assistance funeral scheme is fundamentally not working and needs serious reform. Regarding the national assistance scheme, a number of local authorities in their consultation responses have noted their difficulties with the scheme. People get in contact due to their family financial difficulties, so I strongly urge the minister to look at this and maybe bring forward in the amendment at stage 2 so that it goes further than the current commitments and it fully addresses funeral poverty. Moving on to the proposal about re-using graves, I understand the pressure on burial grounds that land is a fine-out resource. In Angus Council's submission, it noted that 25 to 30 per cent of layers that they have sold have not been used. An analysis of the consultation responses shows that only 37 per cent of respondents are in favour of the proposal. When you look at the consultation responses, it was the convener of the local government committee that said that there was a low level of engagement on the topic. In total, there were only 180 responses. The final thing that I wanted to know is that the financial memorandum is disappointing and overlooks the impacts on local government, especially given the context of local government cuts. I fully support Nigel Dawn's recommendations that we have brought forward when we discussed at the delegated powers and law reform committee. I congratulate Leslie Brennan on what I thought was a thoughtful and informative contribution to which I listened with interest. I enjoy having her sit beside me in the delegated powers committee, which makes a significant contribution. I think that there are a number of things in the bill that are very interesting. The one that I would start with is certainly in relation to the licensing of undertakers. Personal experience of undertakers are people who, on the occasions when I have had to engage their services, have behaved with absolute sensitivity and have done an absolutely excellent job. In one particular case, the circumstances were particularly delicate and difficult, and I thought that they did very well. I just want to go back to what Jenny Marra has talked about, the 1855 burial act. I think that all the provisions of that act are no longer current, although I am not a legal eagle who can say that, but certainly that is what legislation.gov.uk says. It is not clear what has happened to many of the duties, because it looks as if they have been supplanted and distributed across the legislative canon. When the civil registration of births marriages and death started in Scotland in that year, 1855, on death certificates for quite a number of years, the undertaker certified as part of the death certificate where the burial had taken place. Of course, that predated cremation, so perhaps things were a little bit simpler. That leads me to a particular point. Therefore, some of the information about burials is, in fact, available through Scotland's people, which is the general registers of Scotland's site that provides information on births marriages and deaths and other information of interest to genealogists and legal researchers. It strikes me that, when we look at section 10, looking at burial registers, it might be appropriate for the bill to be constructed in such a way that local authorities might use the general registers of Scotland as the publisher and custodian of the information on burial registers, which the act is going to require them to prepare. A lot of the infrastructure is already there. That could still be done by meeting the requirement that people can get free access in the local area. I am not going to engage in the details on that. However, I have a weak concern about publishing details of where burials are, because it does not appear to be time limited. There are some very old graveyards, and we might be creating an almost impossible to deliver duty for some local authorities in old graveyards across the back of the Parliament. We have the new Colton cemetery, which has been on the go for a couple of hundred years. Even the monumental descriptions that the Scottish Genealogical Society has produced—and that is not a register who is buried there only of the gravestones—is a book of more than 100 pages of quite small print. However, I do not know what the state of the records on the burials is, so I think that there are significant things associated with that. Private burials, the act talks at from section 16, and that is good. I think that we have got to be careful, too, that local authorities have a duty to act timurously. I have a personal experience of a friend who wanted a private burial, and he knew he was dying, but it took a year to arrange the private burial. He was clinging on to the very end to make sure that he got it. Partly that was SEPA rather than the local authorities, I would say. There are genuine difficulties that I do not offer a solution to. Finally, at section 12, the right to a lair is to someone resident in a council area. I think that we might look at extending that slightly, because I think that it is much more important that the person who died might be in the council area as well. The relatives might all live a long way away, but you might want to bury them in the community in which they died for the benefit of friends in that community. I think that there is a wee issue there. Many thanks. I now call on Malcolm Chisholm to be followed by Willie Coffey. I am focused in particular on the provisions relating to pregnancy, loss, stillbirth and infant loss. I heard a great deal about the poor practices of the past, which the bill must ensure is kept very firmly in the past. I thank everyone who gave evidence to us, particularly those parents who had suffered a terrible loss. I mention not just those who gave evidence on the record, but also the several parents from Sands Lothian, whom I found extremely powerful and helpful in a private meeting that they had with three of the committee members. We can try to empathise with parents in this situation, but we cannot know, and that is why we have to listen very carefully to what they have to say. One of the key things that came across in that meeting with Lothian was the importance of training for staff, because so much depends on that, particularly after the loss, what the staff say to the women affected. That is absolutely crucial. Sands Lothian parents also emphasised the importance of developing specialist roles in midwifery, maternity and bereavement services. I found that very powerful. Unlike the others who gave evidence on the record, of course, they were very concerned about ashes. I think that most of them agree about the definition, but one important point that came across from several of the parents is that we must make sure that it says on the statutory application forms for carrying out a burden. We must make sure that it says that there is an expectation that ashes will be recovered. People were concerned that the policy memorandum emphasised that they might not be recovered, and that was a key point that came across. It was also important to set out policies on the disposal of ashes, and I think that the minister said that an amendment would come forward on that. I think that another issue is the codes of practice, and I wonder whether, in fact, there could be something in the codes of practice about processes and equipment in crematoriums, so that we have the best possible procedures to make sure that the maximum amount of ashes are recovered. On pregnancy loss, I was glad to hear that the minister said that the woman would be at the centre of decision making. We, as a committee, were concerned about the timescales for decision making. I heard the minister say that there could be more time if circumstances allowed. I hope that the flexibility will also allow less time, because we heard that some women, for personal or indeed cultural reasons, might want to make a definitive decision in a much shorter period than the seven days that are prescribed as the minimum period in the legislation. That is an important point. In terms of the death of an infant or a stillborn child, we should remember that that includes medical terminations after 24 weeks, so I was glad to hear the minister say that she would I think that she is committed to achieve confidentiality in those circumstances, because we were concerned about that. NHS Lothian was concerned about the assumption of private family responsibility in those situations, and she said that that is not what happens in practice, so I think that it is important that the woman is supported in that situation in terms of decision making and arrangements. There was quite a lot of discussion about the statutory forms to carry out at a burial. I think that most of the people giving evidence thought that there should be different forms for different circumstances, and the committee was concerned that perhaps the minister can refer to this, and I wind up that there should not be an offence for helping someone to fill in a form, but clearly it should be an offence if misleading or incorrect information is given. Finally, we also made the similar recommendation on the licensing of funeral directors that it should be on the face of the bill, but I imagine that that is not possible, given the timescales, but Willie Reid, who gave very powerful evidence, was very strong on the need for the licensing of funeral directors, and he also emphasised that the register should be kept on electronic forms. Let's make sure, as I said at the beginning, that the poor practices of the past are consigned to the past as a result of the passing of this piece of legislation. Many thanks. I now call on Willie Coffey after which we move to closing speeches. Mr Coffey, four minutes are thereby, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Prophesions for burials and cremations might not be the most eye-catching subject that we deal with in the Scottish Parliament, but it's an absolutely vital part of everyday life. I think that it would be fair to say that the rising cost of these is becoming a concern for the public. Outside of perhaps buying a house or paying for a wedding, paying for a funeral accremation is probably the next highest cost item a family might face in their lives. The industry itself is making some handsome profits, up 32 per cent to £85 million. While the bill doesn't have the power to intervene in the consumer market when it comes to regulation of funeral director service charges, it could perhaps offer some hope for families who in some authorities pay incredibly high prices compared to others to purchase layers and to pay for family internments. In Western Niles, as our committee convener noted, we heard that the cost of buying a layer there and paying for an internment service is about £700, but in Easton-Bartonshire it's nearly £2,800. This isn't to single out and criticise Easton-Barton, but to bring to the attention of the Scottish Government that wide variations like that exist in Scotland, and if we can influence that in the bill, then I hope that we do so. Overall, costs of the average funeral service are about £3,500, which was mentioned by a few members, but when you add on costs on providing a reception or buying a headstone, the cost for families can rapidly increase beyond that. It should be no surprise, therefore, when citizens advice told us that there has been a 35 per cent increase in the number of people seeking help with funeral issues and affordability. I know that our Government is doing what it can via its use of the social fund to help families in difficulty, and the review being undertaken by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Social Justice and Funeral Costs, will hopefully make further progress on that issue. The UK Parliament too might want to also look at the escalating costs of funeral director services to see if some regulation of the industry might be required. The committee had pretty clear views on the proximity issue governing how far a crematorium should be from housing developments, and we felt that the 200-yard distance should be maintained and should apply both ways so that new housing cannot encroach within that distance of an existing crematorium. As I understand it, however, the Government view is that this is best left to the local planning authorities, but I would hope that there is at least an option, an opinion, that this distance should be observed in any guidance notes that might accompany this bill. One of the issues that I raised during consideration of the bill at our committee was on the issue of record keeping and how that might assist families who are keen to know as much about their family history as possible. From time to time, Presiding Officer, I do visit Kilmarnock cemetery and occasionally come across names in the headstones who may or may not be connected to my own family. It might come as a surprise to most people in Scotland, not my colleagues sitting to my left, but there is no information directly linking a person to who is buried in a cemetery in Scotland with the national death record telling us who that person actually was. As the generations move on, the very real risk is that this link can be broken completely with no one surviving who can connect one with the other. I am really pleased to see that the Scottish Government will look at the matter to see if burial and cremation records can be linked directly to the national records for the first time in Scotland. I think that that is a simple but a great step forward and will help current and future generations to be more certain about their own family history in the communities in which they lived. Presiding Officer, in summary, the bill does try to modernise some aspects of the burials and cremation service in Scotland. It does try to assist and introduce modern and consistent practice where it can. Some of the key issues for the public remain, and they are principally the rising costs of few of those cremations in associated services. I hope that when the bill comes back to its stage 2, it will seek to address those concerns in so far as those powers allow us. Many thanks. I will now move the closing speeches. A very useful discussion of the bill this afternoon. There clearly is support across the chamber for its general principles. I would like to touch on the stage 1 report at the local government and regeneration committee, which looked at the parts of the bill other than the issues relating to pregnancy loss, stillbirth and infant loss. I notice criticism of the bill as being lacking in ambition, and it is a comment that a considerable amount of the policy remains to be developed and included in subsequent regulations, making detailed scrutiny difficult. However, there is broad support for most of its proposals. There is agreement with all burial authorities, including private companies, being placed under the same duties and having the same powers. Although there is uncertainties to whether the bill will assist and improve in the management of burial grounds, particularly in relation to safely securing headstones and memorials, I note the recommendation that the bill be amended to require a management scheme for burial grounds. The proposed measures to alleviate pressure on burial grounds by changing practice in relation to purchase-inducive layers appear to be somewhat more controversial, and that will clearly require further discussion as the bill proceeds through Parliament. The proposed duty on burial and cremation authorities and on health boards and private healthcare providers in relation to making arrangements for the disposal of pregnancy loss to prepare records and to maintain such records indefinitely is an important part of the bill. There is a general consensus that, in the 21st century, those records should be in electronic form. Although the Scottish Government agrees that that should be the ultimate aim, it is unwilling to require electronic records at the present time because, in the very diverse funeral industry, there may not yet be adequate computerisation. I personally agree with those who feel that, in the modern world, there should be a requirement for electronic records, and I would support a stage 2 amendment to that effect, also allowing a transitional period to ensure consistency and accuracy within the industry. I also agree that, to ensure best practice, there is a need for a licensing scheme covering the operation of funeral directors and their premises, given that, at the present time, funeral directors do not require any particular qualifications to set up a business or inspection of their premises before being able to work as a funeral director. I think that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and the Local Government and Regeneration Committee are right to call for the making of a licensing scheme for funeral directors and its implementation without delay to be put on the face of the bill. I note provision for ministers to issue codes of practice and to consult on draft codes of practice and the Government's commitment to amend the bill to ensure the approval of Parliament before any draft code can come into effect and that this has been welcomed by the committee. I do, however, acknowledge the industry's concerns about legislating for codes of practice instead of trying to define and introduce a new separate code of standards that would run parallel to that of the National Association of Funeral Directors because of the likely impact of those provisions on funeral costs, which is already, as we have heard this afternoon, a significant issue for the increasing number of people who are finding that they are unable to meet those costs. More work is clearly required on this serious issue and on the transparency of funeral costs, albeit that the bill, I agree, is not the vehicle for addressing those matters. Legislation to modernise the law around burial information is long overdue and the bill deals with some very important and sensitive issues that have caused great and long-standing distress to many bereaved people. It is time that we had modern statutory provision for burial and cremation in Scotland, and, although I agree with witnesses that the bill supports the objective to provide a modern and comprehensive legal framework for that, there is none the less a need for clarification and amendment of a number of important provisions if we are to ensure, insofar as it is possible, that previous poor practices are never repeated. I look forward to further discussions at stage 2, but, in the meantime, I reiterate that Scottish Conservatives will be supporting the general principles of the bill at decision time this evening. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It has been a very good debate this afternoon with a very thorough airing of some of the issues, because the bill in front of us covers a wide variety of different issues for Parliament's consideration. I would like to touch, in my closing remarks, initially on one issue that has not been discussed at length this afternoon, but which has been raised by constituents with the Scottish Labour Party, and I think is worth touching on briefly. I would like to discuss the issue of exclusion zones around crematoriums. The bill has decided that that will remain within the local authority planning process, and that is the decision that we very much agree with. However, I would like to put on record that we have had representations from constituents around exclusion zones and how proximity to crematoriums can affect people, families and their properties. However, we agree that a local planning process, considering all local matters, is the appropriate place for those decisions. Malcolm Trism has been involved in some of the local issues around the baby ashes situation and being on the committee. I think that he raised the important issue of training for staff when consulting with women who have lost babies and lost pregnancies. I think that it was a very important point to be raised in this debate, and I think that it is worthy of consideration. He also talked about the importance of codes of practice in crematoria and standardisation of those codes of practice across the country. He also raised the issue of licensing of funeral directors. Nigel John made an important point about the number of delegated powers that the bill puts forward and the fact that more detail should be on the face of the bill. I trust that those are recommendations from the delegated powers committee that the minister may take up and look at at stage 2. Kevin Stewart made the point about local authorities having to publish their costs. We agree that that would be a very useful way to proceed and glad that it is included in the bill. Willie Coffey and Stewart Stevenson made very interesting contributions to see whether burial and cremation records can be linked to national records. We know that there is an industry in Scotland on genealogy, and we know that there are opportunities from America and Canada for people to come to Scotland to trace their ancestry. I know that, just like the two members said with personal experience of this, at a family funeral in my family quite recently, there was discussion about where great-grandfather was buried, which cemetery in Glasgow, how we got to that information, use of the internet to do that, use of national records, where they should look. It was an interesting discussion, but it is an elucidation of the point that the two members make, that there is an opportunity here both for business but for our social and cultural history that this should be explored. I would like to conclude my closing remarks on behalf of the Labour Party this afternoon by turning to my colleague Leslie Brennan's comments about funeral poverty. I think that she is right that this is an issue that has not been addressed by the bill, and it is an issue that perhaps we will come back to in the next Parliament. Leslie spoke movingly about her friend's situation on the death of their mother, and she made the point that this bill does not really address funeral poverty. Now that the Scottish Government has committed to holding a conference on funeral poverty, and we very much welcome that, but I do not know if the minister would like to reassure the chamber in her closing remarks that she has looked at everything that she can do legislatively to perhaps regulate costs and the industry, and has concluded that she does not have the powers to do that. I would be interested in her views on that. If there are opportunities to regulate the funeral industry to perhaps regulate costs, it might be a bold decision, but given the extent of funeral poverty in Scotland, I think that it is something that we have to look at. I would be interested if the minister has concluded that she does not have the power to do anything about this or her reflections on this. Maureen Watt, to wind up on behalf of the Government, minister of eight minutes. I am grateful to parliamentary colleagues for their contributions to what has been an extremely useful debate. It is welcome that the chamber recognises the need to modernise this legislation and agrees that it is an important bill that will make positive changes. I will of course consider very carefully all the points raised today ahead of stage 2. It is clear that there are some issues debated today, which we will need to consider further, but I am pleased that there appears to be general support for the bill. In opening the debate, I said that few of us relish talking about the subjects covered by this bill, but there are issues that are ultimately unavoidable. The average person organises no more than two funerals in their lifetime. When we are called to arrange the funeral of a loved one, very few of us have much experience to draw on, and we are rarely in the frame of mind to deal objectively with the planning and execution of the funeral process, which is sometimes complex and bureaucratic. It is important that the processes involved are as simple and as straightforward as possible. It should be easy for those making the arrangements to understand the options available and what will happen to our loved ones remains. We should be able to rely on professionals throughout each stage of the process to give us clear, reliable and honest advice and to treat the deceased with respect. We should feel that we have been able to choose a dignified funeral. It has become apparent that, in too many cases in recent years, those expectations have not always been met. The bill will change that by creating a robust and responsive system for burial and cremation that will support consistent high standards throughout every part of the process. The comprehensive modernisation and improvement of burial and cremation brought about by the bill will create a system that is suitable for 21st century Scotland. I am grateful to the number of points that members have raised. Most contributions have been the strengthening of what happens in pregnancy loss. I have said that we want to introduce as much flexibility on timescales as possible. It is under guidelines from the CMO currently around the six weeks, but we will introduce that flexibility so that health workers and others involved will be very understanding of what happens. Throughout it, we must be very conscious of the fact that the women's wishes are paramount and that there has to be confidentiality in what happens. If the women herself does not want to make any decisions, she decides who will make those decisions on her behalf. I was interested in what Duncan McNeill said about cremulation. It is not a very nice word. I will look in to see whether there is some other way of explaining what is meant by that. I assure Malcolm Tism and others that recovery of ashes is something that I am very concerned about. I specifically went to the backstage, if you like, of a crematorium to see how ashes were laid out in trees—remains were laid out in trees, and then that the ashes were recovered to the full extent to what parents' wishes have been expressed. I was interested to hear what many were saying about record keeping. On reflection, I will make sure that electronic record keeping is in the bill as long as we give sufficient time to those funeral businesses that are not currently in a position to do so, given sufficient time to be able to take that on board. I hear what members have said about the licensing regime. The last thing that any of us would want to do is to set up a licensing scheme that meant that further costs were passed on to those arranging a funeral. That is why I have said that the inspectors that are in the power in the bill for me or my successor to a point should be able to give me some guidance on what is required, because we do not really have an overview of how well the funeral industry works or not. We hear about some cases where it has not worked well at all, but, on the other hand, many members have said that they were pleased with the service that they were given by funeral directors whether they were large or small organisations. It is important that we look to taking stock of what the situation is across the whole industry, across the whole country, and to take advice from the inspectors who will be in post to do that. Already, we have seen the inspector of crematoria in post and taking on advice from that person. The licensing, the cost of local authorities, we can currently and in this bill make sure that the costs around that are attributable, that are often put on the funeral costs as a whole, that come from the local authorities are more open and transparent and that people know what the costs are in relation to that. Jenny Marra mentioned the crushing by fallen headstones. I think that the section in the bill about the re-use of layers and bringing to life again old burial grounds is precisely one of the ways that we can make sure that these kind of situations do not occur. However, I think that there is some misinformation about the re-use of layers and it is not intended to re-use a layer that has not been used for at least 100 years. However, I think that the burial grounds where that might be viable is only where there are 100 or so layers that have not been used for over 100 years. It is not about re-using layers that are still being visited, that have not been used in less than 100 years. Of course, we will listen to organisations such as the War Graves Commission. If they have any concerns, the layers will not be re-used. However, it is a way of revitalising old burial grounds and helping to preserve the history that is in those places. Nigel Donne pointed out that the bill was perhaps a bit too bureaucratic in terms of the secondary legislation. I have taken much of that on board. Some of the ideas that we had initially in the bill in terms of statutory duties will be taken out, others simplified and others put on the face of the bill. In terms of the bill, if I move to what Dennis Robertson was saying about the forms of the bill and the standardisation of forms, I think that perhaps when I was in front of committee, there was perhaps a bit of a misunderstanding. Of course, those funeral directors and others will help people applicants with the forms, but in the end of the day, the applicant is responsible. If I could just say to Leslie Brennan that consumer protection is reserved to Westminster and my colleague, Alex Neil, is taking forward what he can do in terms of devolution of power from the DWP and addressing funeral poverty. In closing, the bill will overhaul the legal framework for burial and cremation to create a modern and robust system that will address current shortcomings. At the heart of the bill, we want to modernise the legislation governing the burial and cremation. The bill will significantly improve procedures for burial and cremation and provide a system in which the public can have confidence. By strengthening the legislation, we will create a strong legal framework establishing consistency and quality throughout the system. I will look at what can go on the face of the bill and what still will require to be in secondary legislation, but the bill has been a result of collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders and that will continue to be our approach with the regulations and guidance as they are developed. I do believe that this bill will ensure that procedures are suitable for the needs of modern Scotland. I call on Parliament to support the bill. Thank you. That concludes the debate on stage 1 of the Burial and Cremation Scotland Bill. The next item of business is a debate on motion number 15497, in the name of John Swinney on the Scottish Rate Resolution. I will give members a few moments to change their seats. Members who wish to take part in the debate should press their quest speak button now, and I call on John Swinney to speak to and move the motion depth to First Minister around 10 minutes. I welcome the opportunity today to propose the first-ever resolution in respect of the Scottish Rate of Income tax. The new power represents an important step in Scotland taking greater responsibility for our own financial affairs and to be able to exercise those responsibilities within the context of the budget process. I welcome the opportunity for real debate that this power gives about issues that are of vital importance to the people of Scotland. Parliament is aware that the rate that we set through the Scottish Rate Resolution is vital in determining the funding that is available to support the Scottish budget for 2016-17. Stage 2 of the budget bill was completed yesterday and agreeing that the motion today will allow it to progress to stage 3 after the brief February recess. If passed, the Scottish Rate will come into effect from 6 April and apply to the non-savings non-dividend income of Scottish taxpayers. We need to set a Scottish Rate because, on the same date, the United Kingdom Government will switch off £10 in every pound of income tax in Scotland, reducing our funding by £4.9 billion. We are therefore required to set a rate for Scotland for the first time as part of the Scotland Act 2012 powers. Importantly, unlike the other tax powers in the Scotland Act 2012, the Scottish Rate of Income Tax is not a fully devolved tax. It remains part of the United Kingdom income tax system and its collection will be delivered by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs as income tax is just now. The preparations to enable that to be taken forward have been the subject of extensive involvement of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and dialogue with the Scottish Government to ensure that the necessary preparations are in place. They have been lengthy preparations to ensure that, on 6 April, we have in place the operational arrangements to ensure that tax can be collected and to be utilised to support public services within Scotland. I have listened to what I have described as a very managerial presentation of the issue. We have a very historic moment here. We have an urgent financial situation. Does he not feel embarrassed that he is not seizing the opportunity to put a penny on income tax to invest in education? I just thought that it might be helpful if I shared with Parliament the fact that, when you are changing tax arrangements, you have to make sure that you have the detail correct that we have taken the preparatory work to make sure that we can collect the income tax. It does not bother Mr Rennie because he is going to penalise low-income households, but it should matter to the Labour Party because it is trying to avoid penalising low-income tax payers, but it will end up penalising low-income tax payers as a consequence of their lack of attention to detail. Bruce Crawford? I wonder if he would agree with me that, if it is such a historic moment, as Willie Rennie points out, there are no other Liberal Democrats here to share in that very moment. For the first time, Mr Crawford has made a graceful intervention in the parliamentary debate. For the benefit of Mr Rennie's historical records, in my first paragraph, I welcomed the opportunity to propose the first ever resolution in respect of the Scottish rate of income tax. Of course, I have been responsible for many historic things in this Parliament, not least of which the introduction of the first Scottish taxation in 300 years of land and buildings transaction tax. I was the author of the historic Concordat with Local Government, of which I am very proud and of which I remain an ardent supporter in every respect. Here I am for my hatrack of delivering the historic introduction of the Scottish rate of income tax. Today, I am asking the Scottish Parliament to agree a Scottish— Oh, well. I am delighted to offer Mr Finlay an opportunity to speak in Parliament. It will be interesting and no doubt fruity. I view the Scottish rate of income tax as a progressive power. Clearly, people on higher incomes will pay comparatively more than people on lower incomes. Do you stand by that? Mr Finlay must spend all of his time just working out how to sit at the back benches, hurling abuse at people left, right and centre. He does not pay attention. Of course I stand by those remarks, but what I am not prepared to do is add to the burden of low-income households who are wrestling with difficult decisions. It is really not that terribly more complicated than that. Today, if I can get round to the historic moment, I am asking on this historic occasion the Scottish Parliament to agree a Scottish rate of income tax of £10. In short, Scottish taxpayers will see no increase in their income tax next year. That is the right decision. It is a decision that takes into account the challenges that are faced by members of the public. It takes into account the fact that this power requires us to increase—if we were to exercise it—the income tax for every band of taxation would put a disproportionate burden on the incomes of low-income households. I am not prepared to do that as part of this budget. The decision comes ahead of any of the powers that we might obtain from the current Scotland Bill that is being considered by the United Kingdom Parliament. As we have previously announced, we will set out how we will use the further income tax powers in the Scotland Bill by the end of this Parliament. Before then, we must resolve the fiscal framework and remain focused on delivering a framework that is fair for Scotland, fair to the United Kingdom and faithful to the conclusions of the Smith commission. I will not agree anything that fails those tests. The setting of the Scottish rate of income tax is inextricably linked to the structure and the measures in the budget. From the time that I made the £10 proposal in the draft budget, my main priority has been to protect our lowest income taxpayers at a time when household budgets are under pressure. Despite Westminster's cuts, the budget that is currently before Parliament includes record funding for our national health service, protection for front-line policing, protection for college budgets and significant investment in education, including higher education. We have proposed what I would accept as a challenging but fair settlement for local government, delivering £250 million of new investment in health and social care, protecting high quality school education, maintaining teacher numbers and continuing the freeze in the council tax. In a move that I hope all parties across this chamber can welcome, it will also deliver the living wage for care workers. Those actions and many other measures supported by this year's budget will help to grow our economy, reform our public services and, crucially, to protect household incomes. At the heart of the debate on the Scottish rate of income tax has been the decision of this Government to act to protect the incomes of low income, the lowest income taxpayers within Scotland. That would be directly attacked by any move to increase the rate of taxation from 10 to 11 pence. After a week of debate and consideration of this issue, I hope that this afternoon will be the moment when the Labour Party sets out for us the basis on which they think, and they are confident that they can deliver some form of protection for low income taxpayers as a consequence of their decision to increase the Scottish rate of income tax. If the rebate that they have talked about is a tax relief, then it is, in my view, outside the powers of the Scottish Parliament in relation to income tax as conferred by the Scotland Act 2012. If it is a social security payment, then that appears to be outside the competence of the Parliament as defined in the original Scotland Act 1998. So there are very significant legal questions that have to be addressed by the Labour Party in the contributions that they are going to make to Parliament this afternoon. Secondly, there is a question of whether the rebate can actually reach members of the public and if they have allocated sufficient resources to do so. The estimates that I have done have shown that a million taxpayers, workers and pensioners, could be eligible for the £100 rebate, which would therefore cost £100 million, which is more than the Labour Party said they have allocated for this particular challenge. Thirdly, the Labour Party must tell us how much this is going to cost to administer. It costs over £40 million to administer council tax reduction and housing benefit in Scotland, and the Labour Party believes that that can all be delivered for £1 million. I think that that tells us how much detail has been gone into by the Labour Party on this particular issue. The only conclusion that I can draw is that it is unlikely that anyone in Scotland would receive the rebate that Labour is talking about. That is a posturing intervention from the Labour Party. It is not a credible plan for Government from a party that is not even fit to be in opposition. It is crystal clear that when it comes to the taxation of newly qualified nurses or newly qualified teachers or police officers or fire fighters or office workers or bus drivers or shop workers, it is not the wealthy that Labour is targeting. Labour is targeting working people, busting a gut to make ends meet. This Government will not punish those individuals. Our budget is designed to support the creation of a strong and sustainable economy, to reform public services and to tackle economic inequality. Our commitment to maintain the Scottish rate of income tax at £10 in the pound enables us to give the support to individuals to do exactly that. It is a budget that mitigates the worst effects of the United Kingdom Government's welfare cuts and the austerity agenda, including £38 million to the Scottish welfare fund, up to £343 million for the council tax reduction scheme and £35 million to ensure that nobody pays the bedroom tax. It allocates £33 million to raise attainment, funds £600 of free childcare for all three and four-year-olds and vulnerable two-year-olds and invests over £1 billion in higher education. It is a budget that increases the resources available to NHS boards and invades an additional £250 million in integrating health and social care services. It is a budget that protects family budgets by freezing the council tax for the ninth year in a row, and it is a budget that provides meaningful pay rises for our lowest-earning public sector workers, including through our commitment to the Scottish living wage. That is the difference between this Government and those parties that argue for a tax increase. We want to give the low-paid a pay rise, they want to give a tax rise to the individuals who are involved. This Government is on the side of working people supporting them in their efforts to make ends meet in their households. We will not increase their taxes, we will invest in public services and protect household incomes. I move that the Parliament agrees the Scottish rate of income tax for the tax year 2016-17 at 10 per cent. I now call on Jackie Baillie. Ms Baillie, you have seven minutes or thereabouts. Today, this Parliament makes a decision for the very first time about the Scottish rate of income tax. Real financial responsibility has come to this Parliament, and with it come real choices that speak to who we are and what we value. Today, we have a choice. We can choose to use our powers to end Tory austerity and invest in our country's future, or we can choose to do nothing and preside over hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts. We choose to use our powers. This is something Nicola Sturgeon used to believe in. She used to say that more powers meant fewer cuts, but now her SNP Government will vote with the Tories tonight to continue the cuts. It could be so different. If we choose today to reject the do nothing proposal before us and instead say that we want to set the rate of income tax, just a penny more than George Osborne, we do not just stop council cuts. We can stop cuts to this year's Scottish budget altogether. We can increase it in real terms by over £100 million. I have heard SNP members ask why we are being asked to pay for Tory austerity. Presiding Officer, talk about missing the point. We are being asked to pay not to have Tory austerity. What about the cuts to come in years 2 and 3? Hidden from sight, because John Swinney does not want to tell us how bad it will be, but make no mistake, if the SNP votes for the status quo tonight, the cuts for 2016-17 will be as nothing compared to the future. They will be John Swinney's cuts. I will give way in a minute. I have heard extraordinary claims from SNP members, including Kevin Stewart, over the past few days, denying that the cuts are being made at all. The First Minister said that it is reprofiling. Kevin Stewart said that spending was increasing once we strip out the technicalities. John Swinney said that it is simply an accounting change. It is not reprofiling, it is not a technicality and it is not an accounting change. Those are cuts that started at Westminster and continued by the SNP in Scotland. Kevin Stewart I remind Ms Bailey that Labour MPs trooped through the lobbies in the case of Commons to vote for austerity. She mentioned the status quo, and I think that her backing of the status quo with her Tories is one of the reasons why we are in the mess that we are in now. Jackie Baillie Can I simply say to Kevin Stewart that when the cuts hit his constituents in Aberdeen, it will not be a technicality. When he walks through tonight, when he votes with the Conservatives, we will be absolutely clear on whose side he is on. Presiding Officer, you may recognise this from earlier today. Let's look at John Swinney's own council, SNP-controlled person, Kinross. Those are the budget documents, which I'm sure he's had time to read. On their agenda, cuts to childcare, cuts to early years teachers, cuts to maths and English teachers, cuts to the range of subjects that pupils can take, cuts to local charities that help children, cuts to supply teaching budgets, so that, if teachers are off, classes will need to be cancelled and even schools close. That's the reality of cuts in SNP Perth and Kinross. Now, a raft of experts from David Bell, of course. Of course, what Jackie Baillie has got there is the work of council officers to put up, well, well, you see the Labour Party gaffoz. That's what's called detailed work. Where's the detail of the Labour Party about implementing their tax proposals? Are we going to get anything of that from Jackie Baillie today? Do you know what's fascinating about this? It is typical SNP distraction from the piles in the Cabinet Secretary's own backyard. Now, he might not listen to me. I understand that. A raft of experts from David Bell to the IPPR have told him he doesn't need to cut. They've told him there is a fair alternative. Now, if he won't listen to them and he won't listen to me, will he at least listen to those being affected by cuts in his own local area? Now, John Swinney says he's concerned, of course he is, about the £19 a year low-paid workers would pay in extra tax. Can he tell me how much extra a year council tenants in his local area will be paying as a result of the cuts proposals put forward by his council? No, he can't. There you go. It's £73 a year. So it is, Presiding Officer, the poorest, the youngest, the oldest—indeed, anyone who uses public services who will suffer because of John Swinney's refusal to use the powers that he has. Now, on Radio Scotland, John Swinney suggested that the poorest would face double the extra tax paid by the richest. Let me just remind you what he said. For an individual who's on the national living wage, the amount of tax that they would pay would increase by 5 per cent—we heard that from the First Minister—but somebody earning £200,000 would see the amount of tax that they pay increased by 2.6 per cent. So I'll take an intervention from John Swinney now. If he can tell me what those figures are in cash terms. Dr First Minister— Jackie Baillie should be able to word that out for herself. Dr First Minister— No. Let us see the issue that matters. The issue that matters is the impact on the pay packets of individuals, and that will be a disproportionate impact on the low-paid individuals in society. Can Jackie Baillie understand that point? Ms Baillie. I absolutely can. I suggest that the cabinet secretary calms down because this is worth listening to. For the low-paid worker, they don't want to hear this, which is why they shout louder, but I think that it is instructive. For the low-paid worker, that 5 per cent figure represents £19 a year. For the person on £200,000, it's an extra £2,500 a year. That is 132 times more than the low-income taxpayer would pay. I have to say for someone on a six-figure salary to tell low-paid workers that he is protecting their incomes when he is really protecting his own is just plain wrong. This is a progressive power, John Swinney said so himself. Our £100 payment, which is deliverable and affordable, protects the low-paid workers and makes them fairer. Order, unless you must be late. There are SNP MSPs who believe that this is the right thing to do. I ask them to search their conscience. Think of the opportunities that children will miss out on. Think of the thousands of jobs that will be lost. Think of the impact on the future prosperity of our nation. It sometimes seems that when the SNP decides how to vote, the only reason that really matters is whether Labour supports it. We have seen it with tax credits, we have even seen it with organ donation this week, and that is truly depressing. I implore the Scottish Government not to let personalities and politics get in the way of doing the right thing today. Reject that motion, reject the hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts that it lays at the door of our schools and choose the alternative. Choose to invest in our children and the future prosperity of our country. I now call on Gavin Brown. Mr Brown, I can give you about seven minutes. Presiding Officer, thank you very much at the risk of being accused of giving a managerial contribution. I want to start by saying that we should pay tribute to all the work done by the Scottish Government and HMRC over the past couple of years since the passing of the Scotland Act to make sure that we are in place and ready for income tax to be devolved at least in part on 1 April. A huge amount of work has been done by both sides. They have tackled it very successfully and it shows you what can be done if everybody puts in the right amount of effort to do the best thing for Scotland. I want to say that it is refreshing to get back to some of the bread and butter issues of politics, and it is refreshing. It is like going back to the good old days of 2007 to 2011 when the Conservative Party and the SNP were good friends. We worked together to do the very best for Scotland. I am extremely heartened, because despite the political pressure, despite the challenges being faced on John Swinney and on Nicola Sturgeon over the last week or so, I have to say that the passionate defences given by both of them today—both at First Minister's questions and just a few moments ago—I do not think that I have ever heard Nicola Sturgeon or John Swinney quite as passionate about any political issue as opposing this awful tax increase put forward by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. I am happy to give way to Lewis MacDonald. I am very grateful to Mr Brown. Would he, in light of what he has just said, concur with the impression that I have formed that the script followed by Mr Swinney and Mr Sturgeon is all but identical to the words spoken by David Cameron in the House of Commons about this policy last week? Presiding Officer, I am almost in danger of agreeing with the Labour Party on a point as well, which makes it a very unique debate. At the end of the day, we now have some kind of new taxpayers' alliance with the Conservative Party on this side of the chamber and the fiscal Conservative Party taking up the bulk of the middle of the chamber. That has to be good news for a progressive, competitive and outward-looking Scotland, which is entirely what is required. We did not reach this view lightly, I have to say. My tax-cutting instincts were gnawing away at me. They were gnawing away at Murdo Fraser 2, and we did give serious consideration to proposing a tax cut. Having reviewed all the evidence that came through to the finance committee, having listened very carefully to a number of submissions, we have settled on the view that it is correct to keep it at the same amount, and we will take great pleasure in voting alongside the Government come decision time today to keep it exactly as it is. While I was hugely impressed by the contribution of Ben Thomson, who argued for a two-pence tax cut, he did it extremely well and was extremely persuasive. However, in terms of paying for that tax cut, I think that the consequences were politically unpalatable at the time. His suggestion was an increase in council tax, but, nevertheless, he was pretty persuasive. There were those who suggested that he tax increase NHS Health Scotland, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and one or two others, but, by far and away, the largest number of contributions—ultimately, I think, the most persuasive contributions—were those who were saying that the tax should remain the same at the moment. They were concerned about acting too quickly. They were concerned about complexity for employers, about the mobility of labour and all at the same time as the economy being in recovery mode. For all of those reasons and for all of the points put forward by the various witnesses, we believe firmly that the correct decision is to keep tax the same. I want to throw out a challenge to the Labour Party here and all seriousness, because if we are going to propose tax changes, particularly in very short order, particularly creating a new tax policy over the course of a weekend, then I think that there are serious questions that do need to be asked. What behavioural analysis has been done by the Labour Party on the implications of a tax increase across all of the bands taking place in just a few weeks' time? There will be economic consequences. If high earners, for example, alter their behaviour, we could face a challenge. We only have 11,000 additional rate payers in Scotland. If there is some kind of shift from even a small percentage of those, there is a big impact on the overall tax take. The finance committee, when we looked at this carefully, concluded this in our report at paragraph 43. The committee recommends that it is essential that future decisions on taxation policy are fully informed by relevant behavioural analysis. We did not take that decision lightly, but I say to those in the Labour Party who speak later and those who close what behavioural analysis has been done. Do they think that they would get all the £490 million that they have suggested, or will they only get a smaller fraction of that, which means that some do not add up at all? Any spice paper was not their original work. In one of their papers, the suggestion was put forward that the impact of a 1p change in either direction would be £345 million, not the £490 million that has been suggested. If that turns out to be correct, that creates a hole in the budget for them, too. We oppose this increase low in principle. We do not think that hardworking people in Scotland should be paying more in tax than the rest of the UK. We think that you would put an additional burden particularly on the lowest incomes, which I think would presently challenge not just to those individually and to those as families but to the economy and the wellbeing of Scotland as a whole, and we think that it sends out entirely the wrong signal to the world. The first opportunity to be given a tax power, the first thing that we do in an almost unthinking fashion is to put that tax up. For all of those reasons, we reject the proposal put forward by the Labour Party and its friends in the Liberal Democrats. We support the position taken today by the Scottish Government. When it comes to decision time, we will be supporting the income tax rate resolution. We now move to the open debate. Mark McDonald followed by Willie Rennie. My colleague Bruce Crawford pointed out that, despite Willie Rennie saying that it is a historic occasion, no other Liberal Democrats had come in. It appears that they have gone home to their constituencies to prepare for dinner. Willie Rennie said earlier today that the First Minister should get on the phone to Aberdeenshire Council in relation to education spending, and perhaps he should have got on the phone himself to Aberdeenshire. As the leader of Aberdeenshire Council has informed me today, the Liberal Democrats put forward a motion for the budget today, which would have resulted in £430,000 less than the administration budget being spent on education. Willie Rennie, I will give way to Mr Salmond. Alex Salmond. Did I hear that correctly? Are you saying that Willie Rennie was complaining about the education budget while his colleagues in Aberdeenshire Council were proposing to spend less on education? Even by Rennie's standards, that is incredible. I can only say what is in the spreadsheet for the budget that was sent through to me today. I also received another piece of information today. My constituency office was in receipt of a letter from Kezia Dugdale today, saying to me that she wanted to make a personal appeal to me ahead of today's debate. I am pointing out that she believes that the estimated cuts to Aberdeenshire Council are £14 million. I thought that I would look back at the press and journal of the 25th of January 2016, which announced to you fanfare that Aberdeenshire Council had managed to come up with £20 million of savings in just one week. Indeed, the council leader Jenny Laying said that crucial services such as schools, housing and care homes would be protected along with jobs. She said that our finance team has also told us that we can save money by looking closely at our departmental budgets. We also believe that we can mitigate cuts to services by looking at non-critical areas of spending. There we have it that Aberdeenshire Council is able to make £20 million of savings without having to touch the front-line services or jobs that the Labour Party is telling us are the only things left to find savings from within. We undertook a great deal of consultation in the finance committee in relation to the Scottish rate of income tax, and at no point in that process, either in the taking of evidence, the discussion of the report or the voting on the finance committee report, did the Labour Party at any stage indicate that they supported a change to the Scottish rate of income tax beyond being set at £10. Only two days after the SRIT recommendation was put into the finance committee report, the Labour Party had changed their position. Either they did not know what their position was going to be when they agreed to the finance committee report or they were simply misleading during the course of that process. However, at any point in the process, Jackie Baillie in nine minutes of exposition failed to outline how it would work. It is how that rebate would work, because the detail matters. It matters to people who you say you will be protected from a tax increase by a rebate. If people know one how they are to go about claiming it, is there to be data sharing between HMRC and councils? What would the cost of that be? Will people have to present pay slips in order to receive that rebate? Will there have to be means testing? What happens if people's tax codes change during a financial year or if people receive overtime payments beyond their salary? All of those details are important and all of those details matter. The simple fact is that, when the people of Scotland look at the Labour Party, they see right through them. Willie Rennie to be followed by Neil Findlay. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This is a truly historic day, a hat-trick for Mr Swinney, but an utterly miserable response. The language that was being adopted by Mr Swinney and his colleagues on the back benches was similar to the language adopted by those on the right. Almost tax as theft was the kind of language that was being adopted. The only people who were happy in the chamber this afternoon were the Conservatives, who were clapping away enthusiastically throughout Mr Swinney's speech. In fact, when Gavin Brown was speaking, the SNP benches were squirming away. Gavin Brown was eloquently setting out how the two were coming together in the taxpayer's alliance. If we look at the facts on this, John Swinney is adopting many of the tax policies that George Osborne has adopted. In fact, he is undercutting him in many areas. We have not just heard about income tax today, where he is matching him right down to the last penny, but he is also matching him on second homes. Undercutting on air passenger duty, undercutting—not just now—undercutting on the council tax. Even George Osborne is allowing the council tax to go up, but not John Swinney. I was expecting a condemnation from Gavin Brown on that front. What we have seen here is the SNP not living up to this truly historic day. It is a great opportunity to address the urgent financial position that we face. There is a £500 million cut being faced by our councils—£500 million. However, the SNP does not want one single thing. It sits down and does not take any opportunity to change the climate at all. For powers that they have argued for, for their whole existence, they have been living for this day. What do they do? Absolutely nothing. How disappointing, how despondent, how miserable is that? While we see in this historic day greater flexibility for John Swinney to do as he wishes, with the amount of money that we are spending here, he imposes a vice-like grip on local authorities with £408 million of fines. £408 million of fines if they do not abeym right down to the last penny. One pound increase in council tax results in a £408 million. While he has greater flexibility, he is tying down local authorities. I want to move on to the progressive aspect of it, because it is quite clear that John Swinney is so desperate to do nothing that he is just spinning a story about the tax. If you look this year on tax compared with next year, thanks to the tax thresholds going up, we now see somebody who is on £100,000 will pay 30 times as much as somebody on the median wage. That seems progressive to me. You would have to earn over £19,000 to pay any extra money next year compared with this year. We have also seen that, as a result of a penny for education, hypothecated for education, 12 per cent of the richest people in this country will pay 42 per cent of that extra revenue. That seems pretty progressive to me, and I would have thought a party that claims to be progressive would be adopting that policy, too. They also ignore the social benefits of the £475 million investment. It is all as if it is going into a black hole and nobody would benefit from it, but we will see an expansion of nursery education. We will see a big boost to a pupil premium. We will see the reversal of cuts to colleges. We need to close Mr Rennie's cuts to schools. That will have a transformational effect. It is something that we should be enjoying celebrating today that we can undo the damage, but the SNP sit and do absolutely nothing. I remind all members that you have four minutes, Mr Findlay. Throughout the history of the Labour movement, socialists, trade unionists, co-operators and others have campaigned for and delivered or helped to deliver publicly funded services that are paid for collectively through taxation, so that those without wealth and power to buy services privately can access quality education, housing and social services, etc. However, those services are under an all-out attack through a combination of Osborne and Cameron's Grind and austerity and John Swinney's austerity plus. My own council in West Lothian, despite being named council of the year in the UK in 2006, has under the cabinet secretary suffered consecutive cuts amounting to £100 million. It makes me want to weep to see what has been done to public services across Scotland. 60,000 job losses, no pace team, no task force sent in to help council staff who lose their jobs, education, social work, environmental services all cut back and only last week we saw the nauseating spectacle of the education secretary posing for photos in a library in the same week she voted for another half billion cuts, which will inevitably mean that many of those libraries will close. As politicians, we have a decision to make. Do we sit back and do nothing and watch lifeline services cut, or do we do something about it? This Parliament was not established just to pass on bad decisions from elsewhere. It was established to be a bulwark against them for parties to work together to protect and improve our services, not to make them worse. In the circumstances that we have witnessed, there is a political choice to be made. More austerity, more cuts to vital services with the low paid and the poor suffering most with, as Dr Angela Hagan told the welfare reform committee, women disproportionately affected or we can take action using the powers of this Parliament. We have made our choice. We have chosen to say that there should be an increase in taxation of one pay, not only a progressive move but a redistributive move too. As the IPPR said, the poorest 30 per cent of households would see increases in income and the richest paying significantly more now. It also said that for Scotland, matching the UK Government's plans would reduce tax for the rich but not for the poor. Now, Government ministers are realising they are on the wrong side of the argument, resort to scare tactics, with talks of tax bombshells and tax grabs, language straight out of Tory HQ. The public services are the services that civilise us as a society. It is those services that no thank you, that educate our children, that care for our elderly, that look after the vulnerable and keep our streets clean. I find it utterly immoral that politicians on six-figure salaries mislead and scare the poor and the low-paid into believing they will worse off when not only will they be financially better off but their families will be better off too as a result of improved services. It is the double standards that make things worse, rightly demanding no detriment in negotiating over the fiscal framework while imposing detrimental part after part local government. If the cabinet secretary wants proof, he is on the wrong side of the argument. He only needs to look at the grinning faces of Murdo Fraser, Alec Johnson and Ruth Davidson at decision time tonight when the SNP joined with the Tories and put in the knife into more local government jobs. John Mason, followed by James Kelly. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have to say that it is an honour to speak in this first debate where we are actually setting SRIT. As has already been said, the Finance Committee spent a lot of its time during the budget study this year looking at the Scottish rate of income tax. As I said in the budget debate, I am coming from a position where I would like to see more taxation available to this Parliament in order to provide better public services and to help to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. It is worth looking at the current income tax rates in the UK and Scotland, and let us remember that NIC is effectively in income tax as well, although it gets less publicity. At the bottom end, you go very quickly to paying £20 income tax plus 12 per cent national insurance, which is 32 per cent in total by the time you get to £11,000 a year. At the top, you pay £45 income tax and only 2 per cent NIC, giving it 47 per cent. Our whole income tax system goes from 32 at the bottom to 47 at the top, so we have a pretty hopeless and non-progressive system to start with. It seems to me that if we had control of income tax and national insurance, we could and should have a much more progressive system, perhaps starting at 10 per cent at the bottom and going up to 60 per cent combined tax and NIC at the top. Right now, we face a decision for just one year for 2016-17. Should those working on those low wages paying 32 per cent at the moment, at the marginal rate, have to have that tax increase to 33 per cent, I think not. We did look in the finance committee as to whether we could raise SRIT, and the first question was whether SRIT was progressive or not. I continued to believe that SRIT is progressive. However, the reality is that it is not progressive enough. Clearly, a lot of people on lower incomes would be hit hard. That point came up both at the finance committee and at the Scotland Bill Committee in 2011 or thereabouts. When we asked Lib Dem and Conservative ministers would they allow us the powers to make a more progressive tax system and they absolutely refused, so it is a bit rich now coming from the Lib Dems that we should be doing something about it. We do have the Labour and Lib Dem proposal to raise tax by one pence, and I think the Lib Dems at least stay had thought about it before they said it. Certainly, Labour did not mention it at the finance committee, as has been said, and on the surface it does seem attractive that we could get another £400 million or something like that. Labour suggests a rebate of £100 million for those at the lower end, but we still do not have answers to the questions about the practicalities of that. Could the local authorities handle this system? At what cost would that be? £1 million? £40 million? We do not know. Would those who needed most help be properly targeted and receive the money? Or would there be such a bureaucratic burden for them that, like pension tax credit, a third of the people missed out on what they were entitled to because of the horrible system involved? Would such payments actually be taxable? There may be answers to those questions, but the reality is that neither the finance committee nor, I suspect, anyone else has really looked thoroughly at those points because they were not raised before. The SDUC and other witnesses at the committee supported keeping the Scottish rate at 10 pence, and one of the reasons for that is that we should be getting more powers in a year's time. The question is not that we are stuck with SRIT forever and ever, but can we live with it for a year until we get proper decent powers that allow us to be more progressive as we go forward? Yes, I would like to make income tax more progressive and raise the rates for those who can afford to pay, but the powers that we have for this year are just too blunt and it is too much of a risk to damage those at the bottom. James Kelly Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. There is no doubt that this is a debate where there are real choices on the table. When we vote at half past six tonight, we can vote to pass £500 million of spending cuts on to our local councils and our local communities, or we can take the alternative route of going down the labour option of protecting public services, investing in education, investing in young people and supporting our communities. Not only has the response of the SNP to this been disappointing, but the quality of their debating points has been very poor. What we have seen is the SNP scare machine in full operation. I have heard that the front of that machine has been Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister's questions. She has repeatedly put out the myth that people on low pay of £11,000 would be adversely affected by that policy. That is simply not true. We need honest debate, not dishonest facts like that. I am always grateful for James Kelly's debating tips. In the spirit of honest debate in the past two and a half minutes, I will explain in detail how the rebate system would work, because those low-paid people whom he is promising it to deserve that at the very least. James Kelly? What is your message to the SNP in this discussion?  Where is your ambition? Why do not you stand up to the issues? Where is your ambition? Can you see when it comes to half-pass six tonight? Mr Stevenson, can you see when it comes to half-pass six tonight? Think of the classroom assistants in your constituency who are going about out of a job. Think of the teachers who do not have the photocopying facilities for the kids. Think of the parents who are watching the investment drained away from their schools. See if you can discover a backbone, then do not support the SNP motion before you have passed six tonight. Come on, Ms Adamson. Clear, Adamson. Okay, assuming that this whole idea is legal, assuming that it can be delivered for one-fortieth of the cost of other civil exercises, and assuming that you are in the unlikely position of actually having to deliver this policy, can you give a guarantee to the people on the lower income how long it will take from the point that they apply for the rebate? Given that there is no infrastructure in place, what are the lowest-paid people in society most likely to be dealing with their finances on a day-to-day basis to do it in the months it will take while you implement a five per cent slash on their income? James Kelly. Thank you very much for your speech, Ms Adamson. What would you say in terms of Labour's? You need to bring your remarks to a close, Mr Kelly. Let me make this point after that speech. In terms of those in low pay, this policy will benefit those on a minimum wage of about £81 a year. Those on a living wage of about £51 a year. That will help the very low-paid in our community, and it will help our councils, teachers, parents and pupils, and it will invest in their future. Make sure that you vote down the SNP motion tonight at 1.5 past 6. Patrick Harvie. Well, what a day for the Parliament's sound system to be on overcharge. It has not really helped the atmosphere in the chamber. Many points have been made about the historic nature of the decision that we are about to make, the first decision on substantive tax powers that this Parliament has had, and I'm afraid I just don't buy that. Since 1999, this Parliament has had the ability to make tax policy at local level to provide for the local services, and we just haven't done it. Session after session, we've been deadlocked for one reason or another. Greens, since that first Parliament, have been advocating radical changes to local tax policy, and even in the 2011 election, when we saw the Tory cuts coming down the line and John Swinney came to us all and said, look, we're going to have to implement a public sector pay cap because the alternative is to lay people off, we were willing to say, let us raise revenue and let us do it at the local level. I'm pleased to see that other parties now say that it's time to raise revenue. I still say that we need to be willing to raise revenue if we want to protect our public services and the people who deliver them from those cuts. My view is that we have to continue to make the case for doing that at local level. We've seen a continued constraint, anewr tightening grip of national tax policy against the local flexibility that used to exist, and just as we predicted in 2011, fees and charges now represent a larger proportion of local council income than the council tax, the least progressive way of funding those services. I'm afraid I don't have time, and that's what is going to be continued. So Greens are advocating this year in the 2016-17 budget a tax-raising package roughly equivalent to what the Labour Party believed they could put forward. We proposed that through an amendment to the land reform bill looking to raise revenue from derelict and vacant land. The minister told us that this can be done with existing legislation, so let's get on with it. We also propose unfreezing the council tax and using the council tax multiplier to ensure that high-value properties that are under tax at present pay their fair share. The consequence of that would be, of course, that lower-value properties would end up paying less. We believe that this is the better way to raise revenue to protect public services. When Kez Duckdale spoke very eloquently about the value of education in the Labour Party debate this week, she cited the views of Stiglitz and Piketty, both of whom have advocated that wealth taxes need to be part of our tax base. While I'm afraid that to continue the council tax freeze and raise income tax would narrow the tax base on income instead of wealth as well as shifting further from the local to the centre, I think that that's the wrong direction to take it. Doing nothing is not the only alternative to an income tax rise of a penny in the pound, as Labour and the other Dems suggest. Doing nothing is not the only alternative. Greens have put forward radical and local alternatives that would raise the revenue that we need. However, if two things were different, I would be at least willing to look at the income tax proposal. If I was convinced after listening to everything that I've heard that in a little over six weeks for the start of the new financial year we could have a system for delivering that rebate in place, I might be willing to listen. If I was convinced that the means of preventing very high income individuals from dodging the taxes, I might be more willing to listen. I'm not convinced that those two criteria have been met, and therefore I continue to say that it's raised revenue at the local level and include a revenue raising from property wealth, not just from income. Thank you. We move to wind up speeches. Gavin Brown, no more than four minutes, please. Right. Presiding Officer, thank you. I think that it's actually been a pretty interesting debate today. I think that we've had some pretty woeful and dreary speeches from the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats just determined to increase the tax burden on the people of Scotland, and we've had, I think, some excellent speeches from the SNP benches today, putting forward some good, solid, conservative values and analysis. We had Mark MacDonald, too. I hadn't realised he was quite as right of centre as he is, telling us how easy it is to make £20 million worth of savings in a council over the course of a week without hitting front-line services or indeed jobs. I look forward to having a cup of coffee with Mr MacDonald later to discuss how we can do a bit more of that at councils up and down the country. Why not give way to Mr MacDonald? I'm grateful for Gavin Brown giving way, however I wouldn't wish to take the credit, because that great right of centre rhetoric about how easy it was to make £20 million of savings was not my rhetoric, it was the rhetoric of the Labour leader of Aberdeen City Council. That's the first time in Mark MacDonald's life he has not wanted to take the credit. Probably the last, I suspect, so I would like to congratulate him on that. I would like to thank John Mason for his contribution, for quite rightly pointing out that national insurance is an income tax by another name in so many ways and pointing out that when you combine national insurance with income tax, we are a heavily taxed country already and there is no need to increase income tax any further. I think that he was right to focus on the bureaucratic mess that could be created by the Labour Party's determination to bring through a rebate. Why not give way to Mr Mason too? I appreciate his point that people at the bottom end are highly taxed, would he accept that the people at the top end of tax too low? He can't even take credit where he's been giving it. I thought he made an excellent contribution all the way through his presentation. Please, Mr Mason, don't spoil it with interventions of that nature because it does him no credit whatsoever. I'm genuinely a little surprised by the SNP but pleased by its approach to taxation over the past couple of weeks and when it comes again to decision time today. I have been told as a young man that it turns out wrongly that the SNP were a high-tax party and it turns out on the strength of today that that doesn't appear to be true because not only are the front benches saying that we should keep taxes at the same level as the rest of the UK, we have the back benches saying it too. Since this issue arose two weeks ago, nor a single SNP MSP, either in debate, in public or in private, I have to say, have suggested that taxes should go up. It's not just the front bench that, like the taxes to be the same level as the UK, it's the entire back benches too, which gives me hope for Scotland going on forward. There was a quote in closing a number of years ago from Alex Salmond when he was First Minister that he approved of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. What I didn't realise was that the entire SNP membership approved of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. As I said in my opening contribution, we will be voting with the Government tonight and we are very pleased that tax in Scotland for income tax will not be higher than the rest of the UK. We have reached a historic moment. A few minutes from now, the Scottish Parliament will vote for the first time on the Scottish rate of income tax. A few weeks from now, the Scottish Government will collect it. For those of us who have supported devolution as a process, not an event, that marks another significant milestone. For those who have argued that this place could only be a proper Parliament with powers to raise money as well as to spend it, this is more than a milestone, it is a moment of truth. There are members across this Parliament who have been here from the beginning and they may perhaps share my sense of this Parliament as an institution that has grown and matured over those years. Fighting to be heard in its infancy, jostling for space as it grew, learning to do new things as its confidence developed and now, in its middle teens, taking ever greater responsibility for funding its own expenditure. This surely is the coming of age, the point at which we can make meaningful decisions about how much money ministers have to spend, the point at which tax rates set in this place have a direct impact on the population at large. On this side, we celebrate that new level of responsibility, those new powers, because we know what we want to do with them. Now that the devolved Scottish Parliament is coming of age, it is doing so just in time to do the job for which it was intended. Of course, the Conservative Party again holds the levers of power. It is as committed as ever, as we have just heard, to cuts in spending and cuts in taxes, but this time it is faced by a Scottish Parliament with the powers to defy austerity and to express the will of the Scottish people if we so choose. So is this the time of Alaba, Gubra, or is it more a case of Wee's leaked cowren, Timorous Beastie? Sadly, the motion before us is indeed a mouse and a very timid one at that, because John Swinney asks us to do nothing with these brave new powers. Instead, he asks us to vote for a Scottish rate of income tax of £10p in the pound, the same rate set by George Osborne at Westminster, not to break with the Tory austerity but instead to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in passing on their austerity policies to Scotland's schools and public services. That is disappointing enough in itself. After all the rhetoric about austerity for Mr Swinney and his colleagues, this was the first best chance to show that they really meant it, but they have fallen at the first hurdle. Not only that but, as we have heard, they have spoken with great passion against the very prospect of increasing taxation in order to protect public services, greater passion perhaps than ever before. I thank Lewis Macdonald for taking intervention, and I have listened carefully to what he has had to say, but can Lewis Macdonald tell the chamber exactly what the details of this rebate are going to be, please? I would be delighted to do that. Once we have heard from the SNP, do they support the principle of raising tax to meet austerity or not? Order. Let us hear Mr Macdonald's. By speaker after speaker from the SNP benches, is there so embarrassed by their taxpayer's alliance with the Conservative Party that they will not address the principle at all but only go on endlessly about the details? It is not just the fact that they will not defend a policy of progressive taxation, it is the fact that they go through such extraordinary torsions in order to denounce those of us who believe that progressive taxation is the right thing to do. I listened once again to Nicola Sturgeon at today's First Minister's questions, apparently denying that income tax was progressive at all. Teachers and nurses, she said, would be much worse off than she would be since their tax rise of £140 would be twice as bad statistically speaking as the First Minister's own tax increase of £1,447. If there was ever a case of someone earning a six-figure sum, arguing against tax increases on the basis that really penalised someone else more, well, this was it. I have no doubt that the support for that argument on the SNP benches will have gladdened Tory hearts once more. Indeed, the only fly in the ointment was that Gavin Brown almost gave the game away when he suggested that the flaw with Labour's proposals was that the income tax might scare away some high-tax paying citizens from Scotland.  It is the only point on which the Tories do not agree with the SNP. The Tories recognise that income tax imposes a greater burden on those on higher salaries. The SNP wants to pretend the opposite. You need to bring your remarks to a close. There is a choice before Parliament at this historic moment and a choice especially for those who are not Tories but who voted with the Tories last week. We can postpone using any of our new powers into the indefinite future, or we can use them now in order to stop the cuts being delivered by John Swinney on behalf of the SNP Government passing on the cuts that were laid down to him by Westminster. We on this side are proposing that we should resist those cuts and that we should do so in the way that we have described. I hope that others will vote accordingly today. I welcome this opportunity to close this historic landmark debate. It has been a very interesting debate, a very spirited debate. Of course, Gavin Browns looks to me as if he has had a very enjoyable afternoon as part of the debate. It has not been obvious to me that Gavin Brown and I have been on much of the same wavelength when it has come to taxation. The Labour Party's guffawing is misplaced. Mr Brown has been far from at the front of the queue in applauding the tax decisions that I have taken on land and buildings transaction tax, where I had the first opportunity to set a tax in Scotland in 300 years. I related it to the ability to pay and deliver progressivity, where nobody, not even the Labour Party, had attempted in the United Kingdom to deliver progressivity. We should be a bit sceptical about some of the rhetoric that we heard from Mr Brown on this question. The one bit that I am pleased about is that the Conservatives have returned to the position that they occupied in 2007 to 2011 as being the lobby fodder of the Scottish National Party Government for our decisions. It is a very welcome return to the position of the Conservative Party. John Mason made a fascinating contribution to the debate, because what I thought John Mason did was that he looked at the actual cash impact of this on individuals in low-income households. He did not try to pretend that there was an easy answer to this issue, which the Labour Party has been trying to do. John Mason confronted that issue and recognised the difficulty that an increase in taxation would be and face to individuals in low-income situations. He made the point, particularly in relation to the speculative rebate about which we have heard a great deal, that the difficulties of making sure that people in low-income situations actually secure the benefits to which they are entitled. That is a common problem that exists for people in low incomes, and it seems to be being casually disregarded by the Labour Party as part of this issue. The other thing that has been casually disregarded by the Labour Party is the actual fragility of incomes of individuals who are in low-income situations in our country. Jackie Baillie marshaled the difference in cost between a tax increase for people on higher incomes versus lower incomes, and her numbers are correct in that respect. However, those are also my numbers about the proportionate increase in the tax bill of individuals at lower levels of income being double the impact on individuals at a higher rate. The casual disregard for the actual impact on the incomes of those individuals has demonstrated that the Labour Party is not on the side of low-income households in our society. Leslie Brennan As Mr Swinney is commenting on casually disregarding, he seems to be casually disregarding the personal allowance. Thus, it takes nearly a large proportion of the people out of paying any tax if they are under £11,000. The ones between that, we are offering a rebate, which seems to be casually disregarding. What Leslie Brennan just confirmed is that the Labour Party is quite happy to increase the taxes for people who are earning just £11,000, and I am not prepared to do that as part of this budget. Now, as Leslie Brennan also said to me, of course, there is the rebate. In nine minutes and 23 seconds of beautiful oratory to the Parliament, Jackie Baillie said this about the rebate. This is the level of detail that Jackie Baillie said to us, it is workable. It is workable. That was it. Mr Kelly, when invited by Clare Adamson to tell us in his speech how the rebate would actually be paid to members of the public, Mr Kelly did what he always does in these situations. He just shouted back irrelevance to the question raised by Clare Adamson. Mr Rennie criticised my managerial style, but I am sorry about my managerial style. On 6 April, I have to make sure that people can have their tax collected and I have to make sure that if there is a rebate going to be paid, it can be paid. On the basis of what I have heard from the Labour Party, there is not a scintillie of legal or operational basis for paying that rebate. Meanwhile, back in the real world, when people in low pay may be losing their jobs, losing their care support for their mothers, losing the opportunities for learning in their schools, do you not accept that council services disproportionately support people in low incomes? That is what £500 million of cuts mean to just to push the tax on them. That is precisely why the Scottish Government is investing £250 million of new money in health and social care to support the delivery of those services. John Lamont talked about the real world. The real world means that if a party makes a promise to deliver a rebate on 6 April, it has to be capable of being delivered, and there is not a scintillie of evidence to suggest that that could be done. What we have to accept to avoid anybody misleading the electorate of Scotland—Mr Finlay was giving us a lecture from his high moral standpoint on the back benches there—is that we should not be misleading the people. The Labour Party is misleading the people. If their proposal went through, taxes for people earning as low as £11,000 would go up, and that is a penalty for low-income households in our country. That is the acceptance that Mr James Kelly also accepted in his speech that individuals on low incomes would be adversely affected by this situation, and this Government will have nothing to do with it. Mr Finlay said that in the course of this debate there would be grinning faces of Ruth Davidson, Murdo Fraser and Alec Johnson. I just pose Mr Finlay and his colleagues the question. What were they thinking when the Ruth Davidson, Murdo Fraser and Alec Johnson were standing shoulder to shoulder grinning away in happiness at the better together alliance, really not worried about the smiles of the— No, you are winding up, Deputy First Minister. I cannot allow Mr McDonald to interrupt the grinning spectacle of the better together alliance. The Labour Party sold out the poor in this country by getting into debt with a price for it. The Labour Party should be ashamed of themselves. That concludes the debate on the Scottish rate resolution. I now put the question directly to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15497, in the name of John Swinney, on the Scottish rate resolution, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Do we move to vote? Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 15497, in the name of John Swinney, is as follows. Yes, 74. No, 35. There were no abstentions. The motion is, therefore, agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of motion number 15260, in the name of John Swinney. On the financial resolution for the Beryl and Cremation Scotland Bill, I call on John Swinney to move the motion, Deputy First Minister. On the decision time to which we now come. Today's First Minister's question time, I made a comment that I now understand to be unparliamentary. If that is the case, then I withdraw the term attributed to me. However, at the same question time session, the First Minister described Labour's support for a modest tax increase on those airmen over £20,000 to end the Government's austerity, as I quote dishonest, and went on to accuse Labour off and I quote perpetrating a contract. I therefore withdraw the term attributed to me that the Parliament finds unparliamentary, and would instead substitute it with the term used by the First Minister today. Mr Findlay, can I say this to you? You have been a member of this Parliament for almost five years. You know that the word liar, the word that you used at First Minister's Questions and was recorded by the independent official report, is unparliamentary. I note what you have said and I will consider the matter further. We now move to decision time. There are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is at motion number 15607, in the name of Paul Wheelhouse, on the Community Justice Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to, and the Community Justice Scotland Bill is passed. The next question is at motion number 15608, in the name of Maureen Watt, on the Beryl and Cremation Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next question is at motion number 15260, in the name of John Swinney, on the financial resolution for the Beryl and Cremation Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. That concludes decision time. I now close this meeting.