Y plwy y mae'r cynllun eich cyd-dur�u i'r wybodaeth ym M160068 er rydw i bob Doris yma cai gwaithion o bobdorosio o'r cyllid o'r cyd-durysio? Llywodraeth iechyd wedi'i yn bwrth gwneud ar y cyllid o抓wg ddim yn gallu cyfieithiol, ac mae gennym ni'n gweithio chi wedi ei wneud am gweithio gyda y d walis y rai gweithio? Rwy'n gweithio chi'n gweithio chi'n gweithio i bobdorosio o'r cyllid, mwy yw'r cyllid. my motion on tackling child poverty in Scotland. My motion outlines the deeply damaging impact of UK welfare policy on low-income families in Scotland. UK government policies impact on the summer of Scotland's poorest families, appalling policies such as the benefits cap in the two-child limit, not forgetting its notorious rape clause. It is estimated that those UK policies have pushed 20,000 Scottish children into poverty in the last year and that this year, 25,000 children in Scotland are affected. We all have a responsibility to do all we can to reduce and ultimately eradicate child poverty in all parties and at all levels of government. The Scottish Government action to tackle child poverty, including our £25 per week Scottish child payment, has lifted 90,000 children out of poverty. However, the UK's two-child limit directly undermines that progress. As Citizens Advice Scotland has put it, the two-child limit is actively working against welcome action to meet the Scottish child poverty targets such as the introduction of the Scottish child payment and the mitigation of other UK social security cuts by driving up poverty rates for families and groups identified as a greater risk of poverty. Glasgow North West's Citizens Advice stand in solidarity with those impacted families every single day. I want to thank them for all they do and for sharing the voice of lived experience with me and the advance of this debate, which I wish to share with you. They supported a lone parent to four children aged between 14 and four months. They needed help with energy debt and support to progress a child maintenance claim. No one plans to be in financial difficulty. The parent found herself in financial difficulty when she separated from her husband and became reliant upon universal credit and was only entitled to support for two of her four children. Imagine a UK benefit system that financially punishes a lone parent for a marital breakdown. A financial penalty that targets and removes money and tended to support children in need. In those cases are not uncommon. Glasgow North West's Citizens Advice also assisted another lone parent to four children. They raised from 12 years old to three years old. The cab assisted in applying for health-related benefits for two of the children who had severe additional support needs. The parent found himself in financial difficulty when his wife died and gave up well-paid work to care for his children. In claiming universal credit he was only entitled to support for two of his four children. Imagine experiencing such a bereavement and facing severe financial hardship under a UK benefit system that simply dismisses the financial needs to support two of your children. That is the current UK benefit system. That is the reality of the two-child limit in practice. It is the reality for almost 4,000 people in Glasgow, reportedly the worst-hit council in the country by the two-child limit. 54 per cent of the households in receipt of universal credit or child tax credits in Glasgow were not receiving financial support for at least one child. I am grateful for Mr Doherty's intervention. Would you like to address the issue of my constituent, who is disabled and is poor and is needing the money, who is putting an application to Social Security Scotland back in January of this year and is still waiting for the first inquiry to be acknowledged by the department? Surely he would acknowledge that Social Security Scotland is failing the people who are disabled in Scotland, and would he apologise for that? Mr Doherty will give you the time back. Mr Balfour, I have come to respect much of your comments in this chamber, but that was an appalling contribution. Of course, Social Security Scotland must do all its can and a dignified way to reach out to disabled people and to do our best, and we will do that. To make that representation here this evening, when your party are plunging families into poverty by design is just disgraceful, Mr Balfour. It is the reality for 20,000 children across the country. My constituency of Mary Ellen Springburn is amongst the worst affected. The two-child limit causes disproportionate harm to low-income families and women survivors of domestic abuse or assault. I do not pretend to know what that is like. On that front, let us be clear to the Labour Party. You cannot make a rape clause fairer. There is nothing fair about rape. I am not surprised that the Conservatives did not sign my motion condemning the current UK Government for its punitive benefits regime, which impacts on our most vulnerable families. A motion that also notes calls for the Scottish Government to increase its representations to the UK Government to reverse the benefits cap and the two-child limit. However, I am genuinely deeply disappointed that none of my Labour colleagues in the Scottish Parliament backed my motion. A motion that takes a stand against the current UK Conservative Government. Labour failed to do that. Just let that sink in. We are all well aware that Sir Keir Stammer and the UK Labour Party have flipped on this issue, and that the Labour Party would now retain the deeply damaging and unjust UK benefits regime. However, I know—and I do know, Presiding Officer—that Labour colleagues in this place who are disgusted as I am about the benefits cap, are disgusted as I am about the two-child limit and disgusted as I am about the rape clause. This evening's debate is an opportunity for MSPs in all parties to raise their voice in solidarity against a UK benefits regime that, by design, chooses not to support or most vulnerable. A discredited benefits regime now set to be adopted by Labour should they take power. I ask members to show solidarity, not with the SNP, rather join with us in solidarity with those families impacted by and driven into poverty. A UK benefits regime that undermines Scottish efforts to tackle child poverty. A UK benefits regime that willfully denies families' adequate financial support for children and families' living in poverty. I look forward to the rest of this evening's debate and hope that others across all parties will raise their voice in support of a benefits system that should show respect, dignity and fairness. Thank you, Mr Doris. Given the nature of this evening's debate, I remind the chamber that comments should be made through the chair throughout the course of the debate. I call, first, Jeremy Balfour to be followed by Paul Cain in around four minutes, Mr Balfour. I am happy to be involved in this evening's debate. Social security benefits is an incredible important part of governance, and I feel that often does not get enough airtime in this Parliament. Unfortunately, however, instead of dealing with the failings of his SNP Government, and unfortunately not debating issues that we can change in this Parliament, and simply deflecting away attention from the woeful record of his Government over the last six years on social security. Not at the moment. We are five years on from devolution of social security, the setting up of a social security Scotland. We should be up and running by now. We should be seeing the fruits of the uniquely Scottish system of benefits that work for uniquely Scottish need. We had an opportunity of a lifetime, an opportunity that very few Governments ever get, a blank slate, a clean piece of paper. But what did the SNP do with it? It has created a shambles here in Scotland. Kevin Stewart? I thank Mr Balfour for giving way, and he talked about deflection. I think that the deflection in this debate has come tonight from Mr Balfour, in the fact that we are discussing child poverty and the unfair and cruel practices of the Conservative Government. Social security was always supposed to be a safety net, but that safety net has been removed with the benefit cap and the two-child policy. Does Mr Balfour think that that safety net should be put back in place and that we should do our level best to help children across this nation who are in poverty? I thank the member for his speech in regard to that intervention. I think that we have seen from the UK Government during the pandemic and since the pandemic a Government that has put that safety net in and is there, and the multiple point is working unlike the system that his Government has introduced. Five years on, the DWP is still administrating key benefits in Scotland that should be devolved, including severe disability allowance, which the Scottish Government handed back because it could not deal with it. Five years on, we have seen a 350% increase in the number of complaints being made against Social Security Scotland, each one representing an individual and a family that has had to fight harder for the support and access that they require. To crown it all, there is a small detail of a £1.3 billion black hole in the finances that will open up in 2020-28. I thank Mr Balfour for giving way. I think that he is making an interesting and flawed contribution to a different debate. It is not a debate that we are here this evening to have, but the debate that we are here to have this evening is whether it is fair or just for 20,000 children across Scotland. 4,000 children in the city of Glasgow that I represent for the UK Tory Government by design will not meet their basic needs because the two child can't. Does Mr Balfour agree with that? I encourage interventions to be a little bit briefer. No, I do not agree with him. What we should be debating here in this Parliament is the powers that we have and are simply not using during the incompetence of his Government. The SNP has managed to so grossly mismanage the row out over the next five years. It will have to come up with a shortfall that is roughly the equivalent of the entire GDP of the Solomon Islands.  That is the choice that they have to make because of their incompetence. That will leave more people in my area and across Scotland in poverty. We have to ask how did we get here? We can be certain that the situation is not helped by the lack of accountability and reporting that we see from Social Security Scotland. The Social Justice and Social Security Committee got a letter during recess. David Wallace proudly announces that they are unable to report on the times taken between the submission of relevant documents and the decision being made on a benefits application. With that lack of oversight, it is no small wonder that we are seeing so many complaints. Do not be mistaken, Deputy Presiding Officer. This is a mesh and it is a wonder that the member has the nerve to bring forward his motion to this Parliament. Parting coming on the performance of other Governments. Mr Balfour, can you resume your point of order, Emma Harper? I am sitting here listening because I am not participating in the debate this afternoon, but Bob Doris's motion is about tackling child poverty, not attacking Scotland's social security system, which is doing a great job. I am curious about the issue that he is speaking about today and how it relates to the motion. Ms Harper, for your point of order, there needs to be relevance. Mr Balfour has been linking the comments that he has been making to the motion in relation to poverty. I am satisfied that he is within the standing orders. Jeremy Balfour, if you could be winding up. I will seek to wind up by concluding in regard to this. Maybe we need to focus more on our own responsibilities within the social security system to make sure that those for whatever reason and wherever they live in poverty—I am afraid that my time has gone. However, the Scottish Government does not want to focus on its shameful record. It wants to blame everybody else, whether it is the UK Government, whether it is other parties that challenge them, whether it is individuals who have the strength to stand up and say, this is not working for me. They want to throw mud at others rather than clean up themselves and clean up social security in Scotland so that those who are in poverty can get their money. My advice to the Government would be to get your own house in order, then you might have some credibility to speak. Thank you, Mr Balfour. I could also remind the chamber that the minister responding to this debate will be responding remotely and therefore interventions may be sought remotely as well, which will be indicated on the screens. I call Paul O'Kane to be followed by Collette Stevenson again around four minutes, Mr O'Kane. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank Bob Doris for bringing the debate to the chamber this evening, because there are few issues as pressing and as important as tackling child poverty. It should be the focus of far more of our time in this chamber and far more of our collective energies in working on the solutions to tackle it in all its root causes and all its facets, because the life chances of our young people are crucial to how we thrive as a society and as a world. It is clear to me that we need changes of approach in order to lift more children out of poverty, both at a UK and a Scottish level. I am proud that the last UK Labour Government lifted 2 million children and pensioners out of poverty and 200,000 children in Scotland alone. We did that through fundamental reform of the social contract, introducing the national minimum wage, introducing tax credits and revitalising support for families with children across the UK. The next Labour Government will focus on doing the same. Growing our economy, spreading wealth to all parts of this country and fixing the economic carnage unleashed by the Tories, delivering a new deal for working people, strengthening workers' rights, ending zero-hours contracts and delivering a proper living wage, ensuring that everyone is paid enough to live on without having to solely rely on benefits to supplement poverty wages. I would like to make some progress. Fundamentally reforming the universal credit system and introducing a child poverty strategy that will ensure that driving down child poverty runs through every aspect and every policy area of government and delivers a proper safety net for those who need it and ensuring that people can pay their bills, particularly their energy bill, and not fall into a debilitating cycle of debt. I welcome on to speak about debt in more detail and the crucial work done by organisations such as Abelawyr in this regard. I thank Mr O'Kane for giving way. He talks a great deal about what a future Labour Government may do. I wonder if he could comment on Sir Keir Starmer's statement that he wants to make the two-child benefit cap fairer, the rape clause fairer. Can I ask Mr O'Kane how what he thinks could be done to make that fairer? Mr O'Kane will have heard me refer to the fundamental reform of universal credit that is required. We need to fundamentally change that policy because it does not work. The social security system does not work. It needs to be changed. 40 per cent of claimants are in work. That is why we need a new deal for working people. We need better wages. We need a national minimum wage that is a real living wage that will lift people out of poverty and we need to crucially get people back into work. I will give way in a moment if Mr Doris allows me to just make a little more progress. In 2017, this Parliament unanimously backed the Child Poverty Act 2017, which set legally binding targets to reduce the number of children experiencing the effects of poverty by 2030. However, we know that in that last decade 40,000 more children have been pushed into poverty in Scotland. 39 per cent of those children from ethnic minorities are now living in relative poverty and the percentage of babies has gone from 27 to 34 per cent. Mr Doris's party has been in government, so I will give way to him if he has something to say perhaps in that regard. Mr O'Kane, I thank you for giving way. The number of this debate is that any future government, Labour or Tory, will they abolish the two-child limit, abolish the rate clause, abolish the benefits cap? That is pushing 4,000 children in Glasgow into poverty and 20,000 children across Scotland into poverty. A straight answer to that is something that my constituents deserve to know and the people of Scotland deserve to know. Fundamental reform. I am talking about fundamental reform because that is what I believe in, but you cannot make unfunded spending commitments because you then working people will pay the price. Let me remind Mr Doris perhaps of the SNP's position on the abolition of the two-child cap. Shirley-Anne Somerville said that it is not our policy. Mr O'Kane has taken interventions from both Mr Stewart and Mr Doris. I think they owe him the courtesy then to listen to the response and the remainder of his speech. Mr O'Kane and you should be beginning to wind up shortly. She said that it is not our policy to alleviate the two-child cap, so there is perhaps a straight answer for Mr Doris's constituents. I did have more to say on debt because Aberlour in her briefing for this debate, which I thought was an excellent briefing, pointed to that vicious cycle of debt that is pushing people into more and more poverty. We need to take action. All of us in this chamber, as MSPs, need to take action to support our local authorities and our national institutions to be able to alleviate that debt and ensure that people can get out of poverty. To draw to our clothes, I will begin where I started. Lifting children out of poverty must be a relentless focus, but tinkering of the edges won't do. We need to fundamentally change how we approach our economy, how we approach work, how we approach our social security system to ensure that, as we have in the past, those systems will once again improve the life chances of all of our people. I now call Collette Stevenson to be followed by my comara around four minutes. I am grateful to Bob Doris for bringing this important debate to the chamber. It follows on well from last week's programme for government, where Humza used to reiterate his mission as First Minister to tackle poverty and protect people from harm. Right now, child poverty is way too high. In Scotland and across the UK, though Scotland is the only part of the UK with statutory income targets on tackling child poverty, recent statistics show that 22.6% of children in Scotland live in poverty. I would like to make progress, thanks. In Labour-run Wales, that figure is 24.4%, and under the Tories, more than 30% of children in England live in poverty. Social security has an important role to play in tackling child poverty, and, thankfully, this Parliament now has powers over social security, albeit that they are limited. The Scottish Government has introduced 13 new benefits, seven of which are only available here in Scotland. That includes the game-changing Scottish child payment worth £25 per week per eligible child and a supplement payment for unpaid carers. Back by an investment of over £400 million, the SNP's bold Scottish child payment is estimated to lift around 50,000 children out of relative poverty this year. However, in the past five years, the Scottish Government has also had to spend more than £700 million mitigating the effects of cruel Tory policies like the bedroom tax. With that money, we could instead increase the Scottish child payment by over £7.50 per child per week, so the Scottish Government's missions are being held back by having to protect people from the worst of Westminster's policies. I would, however, argue that the Scottish child payment is also a mitigation, since it protects people from the UK Government's poor minimum wage well below what is required for people to live, and their cuts to universal credit of £20 per week. Changes come in, says Labour, so let's consider their track record. When they were in the Better Together gang with the Tories, Labour told Scotland to vote no. They said that they would keep Scotland in the EU and that Labour would one day become the UK Government and build a fairer society. We are now nine years on from that referendum and what has happened. We have had four more Tory Prime Ministers and Scotland was dragged out of the EU against our will.  The Scottish Government's measures to tackle poverty are bold and ambitious, and they are lifting children out of poverty. However, it is clear that whoever it is in Downing Street, some things will never change. Scotland will have to put up with abhorrent policies and mitigate where we can. That is no way to run a country. If anything, this is a prime example of why Scotland must become independent by getting rid of the broken Westminster system and equipping this Parliament with the full powers that it needs, we can eradicate poverty once and for all. I appreciate Bob Doris' personal commitment to the issue and share his moral affront at child poverty. The shape of our economy in Scotland determines that one quarter of children in our country grow up in grinding daily poverty. It is an affront to every single one of us. It is not saved by social mobility, which has collapsed in Scotland in recent years, where access to higher education is still significantly more difficult for those young people from the poorest backgrounds, particularly to universities and courses, which determine the highest earnings and to the professions. If we are to address that, we have to build an economy that ensures greater equality instead of accelerating divisions. The truth is that we have had no transformative governments of the left in the last 13 years. Instead, we have had middle-class populism and right-wing ideologs. The trust government's economic vandalism should be no greater example of the consequences when we make accelerated, unfunded spending commitments and crash the economy and working people at pay across this country. The public services and benefit payments that we require rely on it. We have a responsibility as political parties to maintain public support for tax and social investment. The SNP front bench in recent days has been keen to twist the words of Anna Sarwar when he said that the devolution era has spent its time preoccupied with how to spend money rather than how to generate it. To me, that is a statement of the obvious. Partly is a function of the legal responsibilities that we have that have now expanded, yes, but it is also a Government with a narrow view of political economy. The outcomes for a huge proportion of the population will always be determined by what the Government allocates rather than what people can achieve. We do have a sclerotic economy in this country, with many of the challenges that predated the Government in this place that are still unaddressed, let alone the headwinds of economic change of net zero and even some of the opportunities that might present. Mr Edoras' speech was in part firmly aimed at Labour, and I can understand why he takes that approach. I am happy to address that head-on. The scourge of child poverty that holds back this country is a malignant legacy of collective moral failure, and it will be a defining purpose of any Labour Government, just as it has always been a defining purpose of any Labour Government. A Labour Government will work to lift children out of poverty. It always has. The last Labour Government lifted 2 million children and pensioners out of poverty, and 200,000 of those children in Scotland. Mr Marra, I really appreciate you giving way for your comments and regarding myself, but I am deeply frustrated that this motion, at its heart, seeks to do something very simple to put pressure on a UK Conservative Government who is wed to the rape clause and two-child limit, and asks Labour to join the SNP to defend the 4,000 children in Glasgow and 20,000 children across Scotland that are suffered because of that. Can you do that this afternoon? I associate myself entirely with the contents of the motion. There is very little in there at all that I disagree with. The challenge that is faced by any incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in this country is that we have to have the money to be able to pay the bills. I have to say that when Mr Doris wants to talk about the hypothetical Government that might face us in the future, line 1, page 1 of his own manifesto is to cut £13 billion out of our yearly budget in Scotland. Goodness only knows how we can address it, and that is the fact. Presented in the GERS figures commissioned by this, if you are talking about the hypothetical situations that are going to be faced, you have to have responsibility for your own policies, Mr Doris. It is incredibly difficult to see how those issues can be addressed under the proposals that are brought forward. No, thank you, Mr Stewart. However, the fact that child poverty has soared again since Labour left office in Holyrood in Westminster is a bitter reminder to all of us of how important a Government focused on a better economy and a fairer country is. It tells us the regrettable truth of too far too often neglected that progress must be re-won every day, must be re-won in every year, that there is no final battle for social justice and we can and we have retreated as a country in recent years. Frankly, I hope that we have no part of any political party that does not take this issue incredibly seriously. We must base our approach on the allocation of resources that we have, not those that we might wish to have. The horror of the ideological fantasies of the Tory Government has crashed us out of Europe, they have crashed our economy and they have crashed our public finances on the rocks of economic reality. There is nothing in this motion that is wrong. There is only one way of making progress. I now call Maggie Chapman to be followed by Mary McNear in around four minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to express my deep thanks to Bob Dorris for securing this debate and to all the third sector organisations that have provided such wise and helpful briefings to us. This is clearly an emotive subject and it ought to be. There is no more heartbreaking sight than a hungry child, a homeless child, a child excluded from opportunities to play, to learn, to explore the wonders of a world so new to them. But it is not enough for us to stand and weep or to shout at each other and point fingers. We can and must look with clear-eyed honesty at what we know about child poverty. It causes, however hard some of those might be to hear, and it solutions. One thing we do know is that most children are not in poverty alone. They are part of families. As the cabinet secretary reminded us last week, women's poverty and children's poverty are inextricably linked. Women make up the vast majority of single parents, barriers to employment limit their family income and they overwhelmingly act as poverty managers for their families, going without basic meals so that their children can eat. Growing up in a family that experiences poverty can have lifelong effects on children's health, mental and physical, on their relationships, education, livelihoods and wellbeing. Recent research by UCL describes the relationship between poverty and adverse childhood experiences. The trauma of those experiences can and often do stay with a child for the rest of their life and pass down to generations beyond. Children are part of communities in which poverty is shared and commonplace. Bob Doris refers to those in Glasgow and in my region of the north-east, too. We have areas of very high multiple deprivation. Those include parts of Dundee, Bucky, Peterhead, Fraserburn or Baroth, and it includes Tory in Aberdeen, where health professionals have testified to the vital importance of Synthetix Park in alleviating the heartbreaking effects of poverty and exclusion. For those children, yesterday's council decision to lease that park, their only green space for development, was a terrible blow. I don't forget either that the standard indices aren't so efficient in identifying rural poverty. Children in Aberdeenshine and Angus know poverty too often in particularly difficult ways, and they need our attention and our commitment. So what do we know about solutions? I think there are three broad categories. First are policies that directly benefit children by increasing their family's income and reducing its costs. Those include, of course, the Scottish child payment, access to affordable childcare and the effect of helpful families in debt and those who are struggling to cope. They include free school meals, free bus travel, rent controls, and they must include help for both families and unaccompanied children seeking asylum. Second are policies that improve the physical and social infrastructure of children's lives, education, housing, transport and environment, and also economy and finance, as others have already alluded to. We have tools to test how far these are really working to reduce child poverty. It's essential that we use these at the right time, that we pay attention to their findings and make changes where change is most needed. Finally, there are those measures to change the political and legal environment in which children grow up. The incorporation of the UNCRC, the Scottish Human Rights Bill, and mainstreaming of human rights and equalities have the potential to be transformative so that children in poverty are not simply objects of charity but subjects of dignity, of robust and enforceable rights. Of course, we face barriers that are not of our own making, of Westminster hostility, of the limits of devolution, of lowest common denominator politics, so I implore all members here of Westminster parties to do all they can to influence those parties' policies, most urgently the cruel two-child limit and the bitter benefit cap. For Scotland's children deserve and need not only compassion and care but solidarity, justice and action. I congratulate Bob Doris for securing this important member's debate on child poverty. Child poverty is holding back too many in Scotland so we must do everything that we can within our powers and resources to reverse that position. I welcome measures set out in the programme for government and its focus on tackling poverty. £405 million will be invested in the Scottish child payment this year, helping over 300,000 children across the country. We know that that is a lifeline for many families, especially during the Westminster imposed cost of living crisis. It is now paid at £25 a week for elbow children and we need to seriously look at how it can be increased in future budgets. The expansion of universal free school mail provision for all pupils in primary 6 and 7 will also help many families with the cost of the school day. I have quite a lot to cover, so I will get it back, Presiding Officer. I agree with Maggie Shatman's remarks about the importance of free school mail. Would she agree that it has been very disappointing that there has been a long delay in P6 and P7s getting that roll-out? That has affected many vulnerable children because the Scottish Government has delayed it for a number of years. Can she explain why that delay has happened? I thank the member for that invention. You know the reasons why the infrastructure is not there and it will be soon, but I really thought that you would be standing up to tell us how you support the two-child policy, and it is a born rate cost to prevent that. It is now paid at £25 a week for elbow children and we need to seriously look at how it will increase in future budgets. Increasing eligibility for best start food payments will mean that around another 20,000 people will access it when their income thresholds are removed in February. However, as always, the programme for government has to deal with the consequences of damaging Westminster decisions. Since 2017, the Tory's cruel two-child benefit cap has cost families in Scotland £341 million, and the Scottish Government's mitigation of cruel and incompetent UK Government policies has made a real difference. Indeed, an estimated 90,000 children have been lifted out of poverty. The two-child policy and its rape clause deny children the basics and humiliates and traumatises women. It is no wonder that the Scottish Association of Social Work describes it as inhumane. We recently witnessed the spectacle of one of the laps carbonistas trying to airbrush it out of debate, but we will not allow that, especially not when debating child poverty.  An extremely sad state of affairs and evidence that nothing much will change in the area of welfare policy if Labour replaced the Tories. Labour have you turned on so many previous pledges to reverse Tory policies? We previously had new Labour, but they are now behaving like the new Tories. They are now planning to keep universal credit, abandoning a previous pledge to scrap it, but they do not seem keen on the First Minister's call that Westminster should use its reserve powers and introduce an essential guarantee to the value of universal credit. This is supported by the Trussell Trust and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Universal credit is flawed and its design is holding many families in poverty. The Child Charity Abilure has highlighted work by Professor Morag, trainer of Herotwark University. That sets out the scale of the DWP direct benefit deductions from low-income households. More than half the receipt of universal credit have at least one deduction by the DWP from the monthly allowance to cover debts to public bodies. More than a quarter have multiple deductions from overall monthly income, and it was reduced on average by £80 to cover those debts. I-back calls from Abilure from a auditorium on these deductions to help to give struggling outcomes and give households a chance. I hope that that call can get support across this Parliament to conclude. The Resolution Foundation has said that this Westminster term of Parliament is on track to be by far the worst for living standards since the 1950s. That cannot go on. There needs to be a more just and compassionate path taken. Given the object failure to achieve that by all political parties who aspire to govern at Westminster, it is clear that only with the full powers of an independent Scotland will that path come to fruition. Tackling child poverty was outlined as the national mission of the Scottish Government. Yet most recent figures shows one in four children in Scotland continue to live in poverty. Children who grew up in poverty will continue to experience far-reaching consequences of a childhood below the poverty line. For many children, growing up in poverty will impact on their physical and mental health and well-being. It will have an effect on their education and ability to learn and develop. It can significantly reduce their life opportunities and experiences. The Scottish Government needs to address this and ensure that support for children is available across all areas where poverty may have affected their lives. Children who grow up as part of minority groups such as disabled households, black and minority ethnic households and single parents households are disproportionately affected by poverty. 39 per cent of children from black or minority ethnic families live in poverty in Scotland. I know I wouldn't because my colleagues have taken enough and I have got a lot to cover. A recent report by the CPG poverty outlined that those from black and minority ethnic communities will also face even further poverty related stigma than others. The Scottish Government approach to tackling child poverty must address this. Children born into improverised area will eventually face significant hurdles in their life. In 2019 it was reported that a boy born in Mirhau's currently has life expectancy of 13 years less than of a boy born in neighbouring Cramond. This is still the reality for many children living in poverty and we have yet to see any significant improvement from the Scottish Government. Inequality of access is also a major issue affecting children living in poverty. Sorry, I've got a lot to go through. In several communities in the Lothian region there are incredibly long waiting list for council run swimming lessons due to the demand of overreaching supply of swimming pool facilities and teachers. Private lessons are very expensive and are simply out of the budget of many lower income families. This means that children across Scotland are losing out on vital water safety skills and opportunities to have fun and socialise with friends. Once again, it is the lower income families who are losing out. Presiding Officer, the Scottish Government must do more. When high levels of children in Scotland who have parents under the age of 25 live in poverty, the Government must do more to support young parents and ensure that their welfare system does not fail them. It must do more to combat the disproportionate effect that poverty has on BAME and other minority groups. It must do more to achieve its national mission and eradicate child's poverty. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much, Mr Chowdry. I now invite MR Roddick, the minister, to respond to the debate minister for around about seven minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank Bob Doris for securing this debate and to those who've contributed. I think it's fair to say it's been a very passionate debate and I can assure members that being virtual today has not prevented me from hearing all the things they've been yelling across the chamber. Of course, I'm speaking today as a Government minister, but I know as an MSP that all of our caseloads are still full of people who are struggling with the impact of this cost of living crisis. Not only has it entrenched poverty for those already struggling, but people who never expected to be in dire financial straits are now begging us for help. That's why it's right that tackling poverty and protecting people from that harm is one of three critical and interdependent missions for this Government, alongside our focus on the economy and strengthening public services. Scotland's ambitious child poverty targets were unanimously agreed in the chamber in 2017, and this Government continues to drive forward action needed to deliver a fairer future for the children of Scotland. Both last year and this, we have allocated almost £3 billion to support policies which tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis. Mr Balfour earlier claimed quite incredibly in this debate on child poverty that the UK social security system is functioning and Scotland is not. Scotland's child payment has lifted 50,000 children out of poverty, while welfare cuts from his party are keeping 30,000 in poverty. I don't know what his definition of functioning is, because this is certainly having an impact, but it's not one that I want to see. I will take an intervention. Jeremy Balfour, thank you. Would the minister acknowledge that most of the benefits that here in Scotland are still being paid for and run for by DWP? In fact, it's DWP that are keeping money in people's pockets, not by Social Security Scotland. I would agree that it's the DWP that's keeping children in poverty in Scotland, and I hope that what I heard there from Jeremy Balfour was a call for further benefits to be devolved to Scotland, where we can manage them more responsibly. Sadly, if the UK Government met the British Government ambitions, we'd be in a very different place right now and having a very different conversation. I say sadly because there's no clear route to me that I can see any UK Government in the near future matching our ambitions. From trying to mitigate those harmful welfare reforms to watching as the UK fails to implement helpful measures like the Scottish child payment, we are fighting against the tide, because in the last five years the Scottish Government has spent £711 million mitigating the impact of Westminster welfare cuts alone. The two-child limit alone is affecting 80,000 children in Scotland, and it's removed over £341 million from Scottish families since 2017. The latest statistics confirm the families of almost 2,600 children across the UK were forced to disclose details of rape in order to receive support for a third or subsequent child. I really cannot get my head around the Scottish Labour position since we returned from summer recess following some visits from Keir Starmer, because I'm now hearing colleagues who have spent two years telling us to do what we're already doing but do it faster and with more money excusing and apparently adopting U-turns on welfare, on climate change and more from their leader in Westminster who took an interest in getting Scottish Labour in line as soon as it looked like there might be some success in London. So it's clear that the UK Labour is now the party of continued austerity, of keeping the two-child cap, scrapping free-school meals. The Labour Party has completely abandoned plans to even address child poverty, never mind eradicate it. Mr O'Kane's comment, repeated later by Michael Marra about being unable to make unfunded commitments, might carry more weight if his colleagues didn't show up every week demanding unfunded commitments, but I would also point out that we know exactly how many people are impacted by this. We know that this has cheated Scottish parents and parents out of £341 million since its inception. It's not numbers that are missing here, it is political will and consistent principles from Labour. I'll give way to Mr O'Kane. The minister said in her remarks that a future Labour Government would do nothing to lift child poverty, but she agreed with me, however, that raising the national minimum wage, the level of the living wage, banning zero-hours contracts, rights for workers from day one, increased sick pay, a fundamental reform of universal credit and the entire UK benefits system would fundamentally lift child poverty. It would lift child poverty just as the previous Labour Government lifted a million children out of poverty, 200,000 of which lived in Scotland.  I do not believe that all of my Scottish Labour colleagues, many of whom I know share this drive to tackle child poverty, can be happy with their policies being overridden and shouted down in the media like this, and they truly have my sympathies for that because that is exactly the sort of imbalance of where power lies and where it should lie, that the SNP has been highlighting throughout our history. If anything can demonstrate to unionist parties the need for Scotland to have the ability to make its own decisions about its own issues, it should surely be this bizarre and disgusting challenge from their London bosses. I will turn back now to what the SNP is doing. Modelling estimates that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty this year as a result of this Government's policies, with our poverty level nine percentage points lower than it would have been otherwise. That includes an estimated 50,000 children who have been lifted out of relative poverty by the Scottish child payment. We cannot fall into the trap of simplifying not just the drivers of poverty but the things that are keeping people trapped in poverty, stopping them from getting out of difficult cash flow situations. Scotland already has the most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK, supporting families and helping to give children the best possible start in life. Our programme for government sets out ambitious commitments to delivering a significant expansion of targeted childcare provision focused on tackling child poverty and supporting more parents to take up or sustain employment. I know that the inquiry currently being led by the Social Justice Social Security Committee will provide real insight, the type of necessary lived experience input that Bob Dorris described in his opening remarks. We are investing £752 million this year through our affordable housing supply programme and will introduce a housing bill to deliver a new deal for tenants. We are also making £108 million available for the delivery of employability services. We will continue to use all the levers at our disposal to promote fairer work practices across the labour market in Scotland. Of course, we recognise the wider, less tangible drivers of poverty. We know that poverty is generational, that it affects minority groups to a greater extent than others and that it is cyclical. We know that opportunity is limited more for some than others and that the cost of living, the cost of literally remaining alive, is different for different people. Maggie Chapman made this point well, children are not in poverty alone and tackling gender and disabled pay gaps and entrenched inequalities is necessary to tackle child poverty. That is not as simple as launching a fund or creating a new payment, it needs societal change but that is what we are attempting to lead in the Scottish Government with work on an immediate priorities plan for disabled people, launching an anti-racism observatory that can provide an evidence base for making policy that is actively anti-racism and incorporating international human rights treaties as far as possible within devolved competence into Scots law. We know that there is hard work to do in overhauling attitudes as well as public sector policies and that is the hard work we are committed to doing. The Scottish Government will continue to do everything within the scope of its powers and limited budget to tackle poverty and support those in greatest need, strengthening that support where we can. Thank you. Thank you Minister, that concludes the debate and I close this meeting of Parliament.


You don't believe in the boogeyman you should the saga of Michael Myers and Laurie's droid isn't over What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overlord here? So yesterday David Gordon Green and Danny McBride had an interview with Collider to share some details on the upcoming Halloween kills and Halloween ends with Halloween kills. We know what's coming out next year in 2021 or Next year 2020 and then Halloween ends will be coming out the year after in 2021 to completely wrap up the series That's what I wanted to talk about in this video how they mentioned the fact that this would be their last iteration So when asked about the chance of this being the end of Michael Myers Danny McBride had this to say He stated the following I think Ultimately Michael Myers is such an iconic character that no one besides Carpenter is ever going to have ownership over him This will be our chance at the table to play with these characters And I'm sure that when we're done other people will come in and do the same thing or have their own Reinvention Michael Myers is iconic enough to allow that He's like James Bond where you can have different different actors and different filmmakers He represents something so simple and scary that he can be translated by lots of different people With that statement I do like to kind of agree to a dig I want to agree to a certain extent with that statement. I think that Once this is done. I'm hoping nobody ever does touch this property ever again I believe Blumhouse and Universal they own the rights to the property. So if anything were to ever happen It would be up to them. I'm hoping they never decide to touch this property again What I would hope they do with it in the future after these next two films is that they just Re-release the original movie to see how that performs in theaters do something similar to how Disney deal with the Lion King a few years back Just come out with some merchandise to remember what where Because Blumhouse is one of the top Top Production companies putting out some of the some of the best horror films of recent memory with get out and a lot of other Stuff that's come out in recent years such as Parallel activity the original film and I talked about the entire series with that one They've been more they've been more attached to some of the more well noticeable names Or well recognized films have been coming out in the last few years So I would hope that they can use Michael Myers to kind of build their brand Not in the sense that they need to make more sequels, but then they can always remind themselves of We also have ownership of this Remind people of who Michael Myers was and how this property this franchise paved the way for the movies that you see today And how so many movies and TV shows are still being influenced by still to this day I mean somewhere down the line once I would say I would probably like to see another Reinvention of it in probably I'm gonna be honest probably another 30 to 50 years I think Michael Myers is time for him to like just hang up his knife and Put I think it's time for these old slashes kind of just be put to bed. So like Jason Freddy Michael Chucky I love them to death. I'm always game for another movie of ones coming But I can do without and I really do think that Michael Myers has reached his lifeline And it's time to time to go away for a bit. I understand that he just came back I do understand that what I'm saying is I don't think this return should be something that should stick For the next several years, and I'm glad that's not what's happening We've had we have a return that started in 2018 and it's gonna end in 2021 So that's spreading across three to four years four years. I believe Which is a good run versus having the other films which spread over 20 years because the big gaps in between each film of course But I just it's glad to know that they have an end in sight Whereas before we didn't know what was going on. They were just making moves off the fly. There was different production teams I'm glad that they have this sentiment on the character with Michael Myers I do think anyone can come along and tell their own version of the story if and when they please That doesn't mean any and everyone should I would have my doubts and probably trust a few more people with For few more people than others in the film make filmmaking industry I'm looking forward to see what this how these two films play I'm looking to see how they end it because I do think Michael Myers needs a definitive in that makes it not something that necessarily Makes it clear that he died but something that it still Goes out with a bang That's a big right that gets a big round of applause for the fact that they In it the series in a way that stays true to the characters intent and it also is like a callback to the original movie That inspired everything that we've gotten today leading up to this last movie Halloween ends that will be coming out in 2021 So with that being said and knowing that this could be the end of Michael Myers How do you guys feel about that? Are you excited that the series is going to be coming to somewhat of an end? With David Gordon Green and then McBride anyway, I'm hoping that these two once they end this series I'm hoping that it stays gone. I hope it stays dead The reason why I'm hoping that is because you have to end certain series at some point some characters You cannot just keep making sequels to their stories over and over the world so they'll outstay their welcome Certain characters just have a shelf life and that's really what I think Michael Myers has because he is like an abs The absence of motor we're not supposed to have any idea what he's doing So then by you then furthering sequels You're gonna have to now stretch your narrative to keep explaining why are you making so many sequels? And now you're gonna have to make excuses for why this story is still continuing You're gonna have to explain all this other stuff And that's what happened to the old sequels and why they have gotten so much flack over the years But that knowledge and knowing that this could be the end of Michael Myers as we know it How do you guys feel about that? All the Michael Myers fans Halloween fans? How do you feel knowing that Halloween in which comes out at 2021 could in fact be the final chapter in this franchise? Are you excited about that? How do you think it will end? Let me know all that down in the comment section below in the description I'll have links on my social media accounts on my Facebook Twitter and Instagram You can mention me there to let me know if you have any movies news or views You would like me to cover in the future if you haven't already when you do subscribe make sure you turn on post notifications So you never miss a video but with all that in mind guys. I will see you in the next video


The symphony is one of the most majestic and significant forms of classical music. It's also one of the most hierarchical. Imagine Beethoven composing his ninth symphony when he was deaf, so he heard all that music inside his head, wrote it down, in bad handwriting on manuscript paper, delivered it to a conductor who learned it, taught it to an orchestra who then delivered it to people around the world. So it was from Beethoven's mind to millions and millions of people over the centuries. We're trying to imagine the symphony as a completely opposite process, as one of the most bottom-up processes that you can imagine. At the Media Lab over these last six years, we've invented a form called city symphonies. The idea is to create a portrait of a city, to do that with music, but also by listening to the city and understanding what it is about the actual sounds in that city that tell its story. And then we invite everybody in the city to collaborate with myself and my team at the MIT Media Lab to create this piece. Since everybody in the city has different views of what that city feels like, where it's been, where it's going, it's a fantastic method for connecting people with a common theme and common purpose through sound to make something together. I'd like to share with you now one glimpse of these city symphonies. This is from Symphony in D, which we created for the city of Detroit. You'll first see a bit of a trailer, which shows something about the making of this piece, and then you'll hear a little bit from the world premiere performance. In full disclosure, there is an orchestra on stage. It's the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. But in a rather different form, the orchestra is combined with all these sounds of the city and with many people from Detroit who I met during the project. So you'll see middle schoolers playing with electronic instruments, techno artists, chorus from a nearby church, African drummers, electric bass players, all kinds of different people who normally wouldn't be on stage with an orchestra. So maybe a new kind of music, a totally new kind of process, a symphony made by a city for all of you to hear. I hope you enjoy it. Not done yet. If you don't recognize the genius in refusing to be generic, if you still can't tell the difference between the boom and the bass, you've never been to Detroit. But don't worry, we'll still be here when you decide to learn.


My name is Charlotte Magai. I grew up in Ukuru, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi and was orphaned at the age of 10 years. At 16, I became a teenage mum and had to drop out of school to figure out a way to fend for myself and my daughter. My very first job was selling chako. It was also the only fuel I could afford. So my daughter and I kept suffering from respiratory tract infections and when she turned two, she suffered a severe pan injury caused by traditional stove. This sparked my interest in providing better cooking technologies for my community. I founded Mukuruklin Stoves, a social enterprise that recycles waste metal to manufacture improved cook stoves targeting underserved markets to help mothers keep their children safe, save on fuel consumption and reduce household air pollution. In Kenya, over 22,000 deaths are attributed to household air pollution every year and the numbers just keep rising. Mili women and children are the most affected since they spend most of their time cooking using inefficient stoves. The virtues of replacing traditional stoves with open fires are very well documented from reducing exposure to hazard asia pollutants, lowering band risks in children under the age of five, reducing fuel consumption costs and even cooking time. However, while the market in Kenya for improved cook stoves is one of the most mature, affordability and accessibility still remain two of the primary barriers to adoption at scale and millions of households persist with unsustainable methods. Mukuruklin Stoves offers a twofold solution. First, we manufacture improved cook stoves using recycled metal and then we partner with local women business owners to distribute our cook stoves to the very last mile. Our competitors include international cook stove brands, NGOs and open fires. Compared to international brands, we are 75% cheaper. Compared to NGOs, we are simply more accessible. And compared to open fires, we decrease 90% more toxic smoke. Our customers are mostly women aged 17 to 50 years living in rural and urban slums. They earn $40 to $100 monthly income and spend one third of that on fuel consumption costs. On average, they have three children under their care. Since 2017, we've sold over 70,000 clean cook stoves impacting the lives of over 350,000 Kenyans living in poverty and enabling families to make savings of over $7 million in fuel consumption costs. With a management team that is made up of experienced and highly skilled women and a board comprised of industry experts and previous financial investors, Mukuruklin Stoves has the potential to impact the lives of over 2.5 million Kenyans living in poverty if only we are able to triple our production capacity and reach 10 new counties. With every stove earning us $5 in extra revenue in carbon credit sales, we will be able to provide over 100 manufacturing jobs and partner with 1,000 local women business owners, putting us so much closer to achieving our goal, which is to eradicate household pollution and energy poverty by accelerating the adoption of improved cook stoves using recycled metal and then partnering with local women business owners. Thank you. Hi, I'm Eduardo Adela, Executive Director of Revolu Solar, a non-croft basin in Rio with a mission to promote the sustainable development of low-income communities through solar energy. Brazil has a huge potential for renewable energy, but we depend on hydro, which has social and environmental impacts on local communities and biodiversity, and it is strongly dependent on the rain. In a climate emergency situation, rainfall is more unpredictable, making Brazil live one of the most severe water and energy crisis in history as energy prices rose more than 150% in the last decade here. Low-income communities are the most impacted by this situation, and on the other hand, solar distributed generation not only solves the environmental issue, but also empowers the consumer. It's more accessible, as well, as prices decreased 90% in the last decade and it leads in job generation. Our solution, which we call the solar cycle, includes energy, job training, and education. We install single and community solar systems combined with energy efficiency in an energy-as-a-service model with monthly accessible prices. By 2022, we have 100 kilowatt in operation, 55 families, two schools, three small businesses with 96% of payment rate and an average of 40% in energy savings for them. And all the installation and maintenance is made by the community as we have a job training program for locals with 60 residents of four communities already formed and working as solar installers. And we overcome a challenge of lack of awareness with the technology, with educational and cultural activities. And we have a challenge of financing to this new model, as well, that we overcome with successful pilots like we did with the first solar energy cooperative ever in a Brazilian favela in 2021. And to achieve scalability, we are working on standardization, digitalization, and network action adapted to these local conditions. And all the price money will be reinvested in the project and with the visibility, it will be very important for our next step that is to expand the solar revolution on a national level this year, including Amazon region, making a strong contribution to the SDGs until 2030. Thanks. This came for the price. It's been very important for us to make viable our first nationwide replication that we are doing now, we began on July, in the Amazon region, indigenous community there. The pilot project involves installation in the community school, the job training for local residents as solar starlos, and also solar energy introduction workshops for children, youth, and adults in the region. And our vision for the future is to replicate this model to other communities there and also to expand the benefits of solar in the community and incorporate the learnings in public policies and to expand the solar revolution in Rio, Amazon, Brazil, and Latin America. Thank you and I wish you a good farm. BUS's outdated, strained power grid is either a turning point or poise to fail under new stresses from EV charging and the intermittency of renewable energy sources. In 2021, we saw power edges for millions of people as a result of historic extreme weather events. Climate change will only continue to exacerbate these issues as we aim for a more sustainable future that requires increased electrification and EV adoption. At Electric Fish, we have a solution. Our patented product, the 350 square, is a modular battery pack that integrates extreme fast vehicle chargers capable of delivering 100 miles of range in just five minutes of charging. We go live on sites using just a low voltage interconnection which doesn't require any permitting and siding upgrades. And when not charging EVs, we can provide backup power to the site or the grid itself through a bidirectional energy connection. Our battery integrated charging systems are able to store cheap, clean power supply from the grid, shifting this power over all hours of the day to cut carbon emissions and delivering valuable grid and utility services to local communities. With this, we fully utilize our chargers even when there are no electric vehicles queued for charging. So in Chor, we've put these chargers in locations where we can provide the highest impact. We've developed a data intelligence tool called community resilience score or core score. It predicts ideal locations for our units based on traffic flow, EV adoption, community demographics, grid architecture, infrastructure gaps, likelihood of power outages and climbing vulnerability. This tool helps us de-risk our installations and also provide equitable access to reliable backup power. Electric Fish is largely supported by grant funding that allows for components and purchase but not for salaries. With the prize from Stanford Global Energy Heroes, we were able to hire a team of developer interns over the summer to help build out our core score siding algorithm. This software helps with equitable siding of public fast charging infrastructure and backup power. And this team specifically was able to partner with a utility in the Midwest to build custom maps that will aid in this infrastructure siding. We'll be doing an additional pilot for our hardware next month in Detroit. Thank you.


Thank you, Mr. Brown. So let me try go to meet you good So I would like to thank you for a warm welcome. I I wanted to visit Iran for a long time But the good thing about having children is that they grow and my two daughters two years ago said the perfect place Daddy to spend our August is Ireland and Scotland and After some convincing I we went and it was really a wonderful idea So I had the opportunity to spend one week here and we went To Sligo to to the West Spent two days here in Dublin and and it really although the crisis of course has already started I was asking where the polls I Heard the places called the Blinsk also, but there are already fewer them. They said well They're gone they back to the back towards and as you mentioned 20 years ago. I was a Young advisor to the Polish government at that time and this transition story Takes unexpected turns for instance last year. I was able to meet my former head in the Ministry of privatization where I worked in Poland Janusz Lewandowski who is now the commissioner in charge of the budget of the European Commission And on Sunday, I mean we're going this weekend for an official visit to to to Warsaw and to Poland and On Sunday night. I have a dinner with Lashik Balcerowicz who is one of the great figures of transition I would say overall and Here's somebody who had a big imprint on our transitions alone who in the in the UN overall complex He helped us quite a lot. He was quite famous when he was in Belgrade Talking a lot many many things. We didn't understand everything, but he was always very interesting. So It's a great pleasure to be here and I would like just to tell you Some elements about where Serbia and to some extent what where the bus Western Balkans are I have to be careful because sometimes we from Serbia are being not always welcome to talk about other countries as well and Please see it as really a care for a region because there is an increased realization I would say also in the Balkans that it's difficult to be successful if If nobody else is successful around you. So that's why we warmly welcome the accession of Croatia to the European Union in July of 2013 This does not mean that we have sold every open issue with Croatia But if there's one bilateral relation which over the last few years has really improved is it is the one between Serbia and Croatia I had to tell you with Slovenia for instance We will be very hard pressed to find a single open issue and as a symbol When three months ago a Serbian juice maker nektar Purchased what used to be the leader in juice making next Yugoslavia fructal This was a vindication in a way in a very direct way of the European idea over a nationalistic idea Let me illustrate in the times of the breakup of Yugoslavia There was Serbian national saying that we are taken for a ride by the Slovenians Our great fruit and it is great fruit in Serbia may make no mistake and eat our raspberries. They're the best We send them to Slovenia. They're transformed and then we pay dearly For those Slovenian juice and so we are being exploited by Slovenia within this Yugoslavia And you have to boycott their products And so when our juice maker took over fructal, I asked, where are you? Nationalists, what do you have to say now about this? now fructal or Slovenia company is in Serbian hands and by the way Slovenia has already invested almost 2 billion euro in Serbia with more than 500 companies present in all directions And they are really considered as domestic together We're stronger Together we have a chance facing the multinational companies, not that they're enemies But sometimes it's good also to have some decision-making capacity at least in the region So when the Slovenian company Gorenje, which is producing and it's already I would say a world brand Decided to locate yet a third or fourth factor in Serbia This is also recognizing the relative place one can have in this value chain to mutual benefit So before I tell you about what politicians have to talk about which are problems that we need to solve Let me tell you that not everything is going poorly in the Balkans Many destroyed relations have been improved many I would say things are being mended and If one looks at what people listen to You would say there has been there will be a This weekend a singer from Sarajevo, Dino Merlin Who was under the shells during the shelling of Sarajevo and he made at that time statements, which were really strong He without one single Second of advertisement filled in three and apparently four times the Belgrade arena, which is 25,000 people Ordinary folks who want to listen to him because he's a great singer and then when Russia cut the tap on natural gas was it three years ago My president was very active. We kind of found some reserves in in Hungary and In Germany were grateful to them And I have to tell you that the ordinary people really felt good When we're able immediately to share that gas also with our Boston friends Because yes, the boss next were the biggest victims of the previous Conflict National people tell you but then in the second world war it was the Serbs and it's true It was the Serbs biggest victims in the second world war But what is coming? I would say more and more to the fore and here I see the main role of Europe useful role as Some say the last positive utopia Definitely under stress right now But this idea that put basically Germany in France definitely not to wage war anymore and for us in the Balkans joining the European Union is a way Also to make sure that it happens never again That we be together on the same table and we saw many differences through discussion not through weapons and So that's I think why when you as you mentioned in 2008 There was debate within the European Union whether Serbia should sign the SA a because marriage was still in the Hague in the end there was a consensus to sign the SA a and Then there was some legal innovation suspended immediately. I bet you it wasn't possible illegally, but Apparently everything is possible in Europe Some people are saying no Serbia has to prove it's true democratic and it should not be allowed to move closer to Europe Before it demonstrated that by capturing knowledge and had it encourage it at that time We were of a different opinion We said by having a true European agenda you will be strengthening the pro-european forces You will strengthen the strands in society that really see I2I with European values Through this path, we will strengthen also the civilian control of the deep power structures of secret police and army This is the view that prevailed and that view allowed Let me just recap what has been done after a pro-european government was formed in 2008 Three days after we ended up and yes only eight years down the road after the removal of Milosevic by appointing Ahead of the secret police which really shared those values European values to find cartridge and Then yes, it took too much time This may to find Ladic and in July Haddish and that way all the 46 entities were found Arrested and extradited to the HRA bureau. We did not do it because of this conditionality We see the reconciliation as one of the most important business that we have in the region And so my president went twice to Sabrinica. He didn't do it as a marketing trick. He did it through a heartfelt and also Real politic point of view We will not be able as a Serbian people as a Serbian society as a Serbian state to be successful if we don't have reconciliation with Bosnia That's why also the resolution in our parliament last March did not only have Apologies on this terrible crime. It was also a place where we affirmed the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Zygóvina as One of the main elements of our foreign policy We are against the breakup of Bosnia We are against the breakup of Macedonia We are against the breakup of Serbia and we're against the breakup of Kosovo. We are against all breakups We support the territorial integrity of all countries. We expect others to respect ours And there is no valid reason why Serbia should be the only Democratic country first world war a full member of the UN to be broken up against its own will and yes with Ireland we have this difference and Just half an hour ago. We had a very interesting discussion about How maybe the good Friday agreement would have some lessons for us power sharing Making sure that even as some MP said after 700 years of conflict and blood There was a capacity to face the real situation and to see also the other side of the problem We see the Udi as a way to look at only one side of the problem One reality, which is the Albanian reality of Kosovo But then ignoring the other reality, which is Serbian And so if there are today barricades in the north of Kosovo, it is because there is Also people who do not consent by being ruled by Pristina in the way that Kosovo Albanians didn't consent to be ruled by Belgrade So the solution is to find a settlement a Settlement in which everybody in the Balkans everybody in Kosovo will feel secure and we see a future for themselves So this is why in September of last year we backed together with Ireland and all the members of the European Union All that recognize but also the five non recognizers of Kosovo a Beginning of a dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina Then all institutions in Kosovo started to fall down the president resigned the prime minister resigned their elections Then a new president was elected and after a few days he had to resign There was a new president and then in March finally we started the dialogue. We waited seven months for it to start Some progress was made and then in July and fortunately after an embargo there was Forcible one-sided attempt to change the reality on the ground in the north of Kosovo By sending the shock troops to Rosu and transporting Without this being negotiated and agreed upon with the local Serbs As in Belgrade or the international community and I can tell you that it was done without the knowledge of many European and other countries to try to impose a new situation on the ground This is actually what has led to this tension and all along because it is of course easy To commit to peace when things are peaceful my present in the middle of this crisis said Serbia will not return to force and And politically this is not necessarily the easier way, but this is our policy and We believe that after this attempt even those who maybe thought that there is some I would say Potential in that type of approach have to realize that you cannot Pretend to facilitate trade and then lead us to a situation where there are barricades barbed wires and bullets flying That's not the way forward and maybe some had as an idea to go the same way on the tribunal in the north of Kosovska Mitrovica or maybe to ask for people who actually are not sharing typically our political stance. I'm speaking of the Leaders political leaders of the Serbs in the north of Kosovo But nevertheless one has to admit that they have a legitimacy. They have been elected by people So there are no Paral institutions in the north of Kosov as some people say in the sense that there is a need to be parallel to something What you have in the north of Kosovo is Serbian institution that exists for dozens and dozens of years, which does continue And it will be a twilight zone to try to think that one can cancel the hospitals and the education and cultural aspects and the municipalities When trying to replace them by institutions that will not have Legitimacy that they will not have consent and indeed we're back again to the need to come back to the negotiating table and to a settlement This is why it's important to reconnect on the dialogue This is why it's important to act upon the proposal that Belgrade has made on how to man The so-called Gates one and 31 and I know I'm talking to a very sophisticated crowd And you know what I'm talking about those are the two Administrative points where there's an attempt to instill both you likes that is acceptable as long as it's neutral also with the Kosovo Albanian Customs our proposal is to have an integrated management with Serbian officials being present as well and I believe that the latest statements coming from Pristina Ogre and I have to be cautious because one should not be Optimistic until things really realize that next Monday in Brussels when the meeting takes place between The negotiators of Belgrade and Pristina under the auspices of Robert Cooper We might be getting really close or completely to the solution in order to unlock those two border those two Points and then to have blockade stopped and then to have trade flow again By the way Once the agreement on the customs times which was one of the elements of the dialogue was agreed on the same of September There were resistances by the Serbs in the north But in the end of the day when Pristina and Belgrade agree on something with the support of the European Union those agreements stick and On all the other border points There is a flow of goods and in fact the Serbian goods. There's about 400 million euro worth of Serbian goods placed on the Kosovo market. They're back They've been closed for for a boycott Some countries in the region sometimes a little bit clumsily Have tried kind of to push out the presence of brands that people in Kosovo know already for decades But that wasn't to be and that also shows that this reality economic reality is here with us to stay And so to sum up on the issue at hand before I move on to other topics maybe slightly easier To sum up on Kosovo Indeed as was the proven after 700 years I understand the conflict here in Ireland The only way forward is to have a settlement which recognizes that Sometimes there's a need to share power sometimes there's a need to combine in an original way to realities to legitimate goals on the same territory and I would say that that's definitely what Serbia wants We know we cannot join the European Union before the issue of Kosovo is settled the settlement cannot be for Serbia Recognizing the Udi Today or tomorrow you will not find a democratically elected leader of Serbia that will be signing on that dotted line But this does not mean that the solution is not possible And where we look forward is support from Ireland Yes, Ireland in particular because of this history And no parallel is perfect. I'm not saying. Let's have good Friday for the Balkans And I'm not saying let's have the two Germany solution 1972 for the Balkans And I'm not saying let's have the South Tirog for the Balkans. I'm not saying let's have the those islands where all islands were with sovereignty share between Finland and Sweden are necessarily applied, but there is ample Examples if one really looks forward and is trying to have a European compromise solution Rather than trying to have one nationalism win against another one next step Monday The board the the integrated management of the points reopening it coming back to the table Implementing and this week on Tuesday our government approved the enabling sub legislation for The civil registry agreement that was reached. We will do more this week And then demonstrate to Ireland and our European partners that we mean business We mean business when we say we would like to through this dialogue So firstly everyday issues including those which are in the opinion, you know that in order to get Beginning of the negotiations. There's issues about energy Telecom mutual recognition of diplomas and a couple of other things But actually our goal is then is to move on to even more sensitive territory and to make sure that everybody has a European future in in the Balkans now about the region you mentioned Boston has a going I Already discussed a bit about Boston has a going up through the human aspect because that one should not be lost We like the same music We the same Chewabchichi People again anti-intermarry Singers cross borders TVs are ever more regional and People visit each other more and more on the political level Serbia is a co-signature and a guarantor of the Dayton agreements Serbia is Committed to the territorial integrity of Bosnia Herzegovina and will not support any move trying to break it up Serbia the same time Is committed to making sure that any changes in the makeup of Bosnia Herzegovina is agreed by all three communities The attempts that we have seen maybe from time to time To try to use the leverage of some parts of the international community To change the makeup of Bosnia Herzegovina very specific state. Let's face it Are doomed to fail unless They are preceded by an agreement by the three communities We cannot have it both ways having a democracy and then having Political leaders that are elected by those communities and then trying to refuse them legitimacy in order to negotiate What is actually their everyday life and of the people who elected them, which is the functioning of Bosnia Herzegovina? There's no doubt That not everybody within Bosnia Herzegovina sees eye to eye on how Bosnia Herzegovina should function But the only way forward is again to find a Way forward and Serbia really looks forward to the formation of the Bosnia Herzegovina government Because we hope that that country also will be able then to deposit its letter of Asking a candidate status to be granted and we were very happy When Bosnia Herzegovina one year after Montenegro Serbia and Macedonia was allowed to have a visa free for their citizens And I would like to remind you that one of the things we heard because of this lingering doubt about what the real intentions of surveys So people said we will watch you. We don't want you to use the visa free travel of Serbia to be leveraged on Bosnia Let me translate in English We don't want you to give passports to Serbian Serbs in Bosnia We want Serbs in Bosnia to be able to travel free visa free with their Bosnia Herzegovina passport and that's okay with us This is completely Logical with our policy and the dual citizenship between Serbia and Bosnia is limited to a few hundred people so sometimes we hear from Maybe some other politicians in the region that Belgrade is trying to destabilize Sarajevo through Banja Luka What may I just not putting into question the creation policy toward Bosnia Herzegovina just to remind you to the fact that Crots in Bosnia vote for the election for the Croatian president Serbs from Bosnia do not vote to elect a Serbian president Crots from Bosnia vote to elect people in the Croatian parliament Serbs in Bosnia do not vote for to elect people in the Serbian Parliament all crats in Bosnia received creation passports 2,400 Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina out of two 1.5 million have received a Serbian passport. So Serbia Neither Croatia are trying to destabilize Bosnia and in fact the improvement in the relations between Serbia and Croatia is a very positive development for the stabilization of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Of late after the elections of last year, Mr. Bakir is at Begovic having been elected as a as a leader of the Bosniaks He also made several statements for the need for compromise and for way forward and My president Boris Tadich who by the way Cracked a little joke when he met the three Members of the collective presidents of Bosnia Herzegovina in Sarajevo He said hey, I'm the only one to be born in Sarajevo here because he was born in Sarajevo actually and This is this is the Balkans. I'm half Montenegro Boris Tadich his father is from Serb from Montenegro. His mother is from Croatia We are mixed still and again, I see the mixing happening still happening and so I can tell you that for Montenegro, for instance There has been I would say all that has been a very difficult thing Because you have according to some estimates up to 200,000 Montenegro's living in Serbia I gave you just a few examples of people from Montenegro in Serbia and Serbs in Montenegro Adelaide's census in Montenegro in September 44.6% of people said they were speaking Serbian and about a third express themselves as being Serbs We are closed. Nevertheless Serbia was the first country to recognize an independent Montenegro after the referendum of 2006 and We look forward to Montenegro Hopefully at the December summit getting at the date and not a date for a date because that's yet another creative idea That has been toyed around currently For those who would like not a single country from the Western Balkans to start negotiations soon There are such countries in Europe by the way To have a real date with a day and a month for next year to start negotiations because After the reforms they have conducted we believe that they deserve it and now let me move to the fight against organized crime and corruption Before I finish with the economy knowledge economy One of the most important thing that happened over the last two or three years was that Serbia together with the other countries of the world in particularly United Kingdom in the United States and then With help from the region we broke the back of the most dangerous drug cartel of our region the sharish brothers They're either behind bars or on the run. We captured 2.5 tons of cocaine in Uruguay together with the DEA in Sokka I heard today in the parliament here that one of the Main concerns is heroin usage here in Ireland mind you by fighting and Being recognized by those international partners as a true partner in this fight We know that we're helping a common European cause to making sure that the Balkans are not a transit route for drugs for human Trafficking and other terrible things So we need to work together in order to take the stain out of the good name of the Balkans Is the mafia a balcony tradition? I'm going to I'm going to surprise you no Unlike maybe in other European countries There's never been a social tradition of parallel institutions Social services done by the mob to the people kind of trying to make up for the deficiencies of the state or trying to get allegiance For long-standing influence in society. No, there is organized crime. It's a direct Reflection of the conflicts of the 90s the wars the economic sanctions that led to trade being illegal To the smuggling of oil and cigarettes where people made huge amounts of money But those are the things that are being Currently severe and I think that the last two or three years have been seen a very big progress And that progress was to a large degree allowed by agreements We have signed in March last year with Croatia and then with Montenegro in September Which are showing that the Balkans are not a safe house for criminals That the old saying now that mafia's in the Balkans Collaborate way better than states is being turned upside down as it should that states collaborate much better In order to fight the common problem Does it mean that we have already taken care of organized crime and corruption? No But let me tell you The situation is way better There is no situation anymore. Let me illustrate how it looks to our people Let me so don't always living in Belgrade People would go and say you see this cafe It belongs to you know, or you see this nightclub You see this villa on the most luxurious part of Nobisad Well, the cafe today is United Colors of Benetton The nightclub is closed And the villa now is a social institution 350 million euro worth of assets have been first frozen and then seized when people condemned We don't take off-shoring as an answer when there's suspected Organized crime links. It is up to that a lawyer who is positing as a nominee To prove that the money is legitimate with which it was bought no Liechtenstein or other offshore will do It's too easy. We are not going to be taken for an offshore ride of course, it's easy said and done but I think we've made a lot of progress and If you ask our people is the corruption that will tell you yes, and I believe that in Serbia There is still significant problems with that But the situation is actually better than most people would have a feeling of but then then again as as as I would say also In this part of your will say the proof of that pudding is in the eating It's really in the proof of people being able to do business with us with anybody without anybody asking for A fee or bribe or trying to have their favorite consultant as those things go Now the economy. I'm really sorry that Ireland invested only 65 million euro to Serbia We received 17 billion euro over the last 10 years This year is going to be despite the crisis the ninth year in a row of us getting more than one billion US dollar of FDI This is more than 5% of GDP every year And after the first wave which was for non-tradables the telecom the trade the real estate Insurance and the banking of the last three years we have moved into more Irish territory tradeables using Serbia as a production site for exports and that's where our SAE is useful That's where the regional trading Arrangement of the Balkans that held up in terms of trade better than even our trade with the European Union over this crisis The fact that we have since the 90s an Agreement with Russia allowing Serbia to be the only non-CIS country to have a free trade zone with Russia an Opportunity that is being used unfortunately not enough by Irish companies But used by German Italian and other companies an advantage that will be losing when joining the EU But up until then if at least 50% of the added value is produced in the region not only Serbia You can export customs free to Russia a German Pharmaceutical maker Stada for instance is doing precisely that and many other companies as well So we have the same thing with Kazakhstan and after the visit of my president to Ukraine last week I hope we're gonna have the same thing with that country as well We have after discussion we had with the head of Michelin in Belgrade actually in Davos you mentioned that was That's what I was used is used for They told us that had we had a Free trade zone with Turkey they could expand the tire facility They have in Serbia with the within the border close to the border with Bulgaria. That's what we did We negotiated in one year a free trade zone with Turkey And now Michelin is doubling its capacity for that factor to serve that very big market Which is expanding quite fast. There are opportunities in Serbia in the Balkans Turkey for instance is finishing in 2013 a tunnel on the Bosphorus for freight trains This is going to open because right now you need to to put the train in two or three pieces on barges not easy With this of course, it's marketed as going from, you know, Berlin to Beijing Maybe not as far but at least to Turkey the Middle East and Central Asia That's definitely opening a new ecologically responsible in cheaper route for Certain types of trade and of course for Serbia. It's very important to be on the transit line That's why we're investing and that's why we'd like to have the opportunity in the connecting euro facility proposed by the European Commission for the multi-financial perspective 2014-2020 to be used for such pan-european projects as it were you might not know it but our Daniels strategy was made by an Irish consulting firm. This is some of the surprising ways of Of the European integration But with 588 kilometers of this biggest With the Rhine River of Europe We have a big stake in the new macro regional strategy of the European Union on the Danube and finally what we hope is with An attractive fiscal system and here we took more than one page from an Irish tax book And also invest in 400 million euro for science and technology infrastructure right now And looking at ways and I was with a mr. Cunningham was in Kyoto He's been advising Irish governments for 30 years more or less on education and knowledge I've been trying to download everything I could download from him for years now And I know that probably it looks really hard from a doubling today. I understand some students were in the streets yesterday but You know we look and we see the problem that happened with this speculation But believe it or not You are a model for us We look at the improvement at the education level the capacity to create a workforce that has the skills to work with some of the most advanced Companies in the world the way Ireland used its diaspora and the links with other countries and I can tell you if There are two countries that we are looking as a model right now. It is Ireland and Slovakia Ireland because of high-tech in Slovakia because of the automotive industry Congratulations to them without any tradition in that area. They are now the country producing most cars per head in the world And in two weeks We will be opening the first car factory to be opened in Europe in five years the Fiat factory in the city of Kraguev That's for a new model Going up to next year to 250,000 Cars per year. That's a 1 billion euro investment. So I hope I was not neither too long not too short Yes, there are two problems Those problems are much more tractable than the ones we had 10 years ago They are more tractable than once we had five years ago Because of the crisis. I'm afraid there are certain problems that have become bigger over the last few years Serbia has a debt to GDP of 44% of GDP and a budget deficit which is 4% and a fiscal responsibility law Taking us down to 1% in 2015. We're going to do that This being said we have a private debt and you mentioned before we came to this room that It's too easy and simplistic to separate public and private debt if something goes wrong with the private debt It goes wrong, but although I have many questions about rating agencies I have to report to you that standard and poor upgraded Serbia this year We're the only country in Europe that was upgraded From BB minus to BB and the OECD Upgraded us from a very low category 7 to category 6 and we're the only country in the world to have been upgraded by that organization So there is potential The region has the potential to be the fastest growing piece of Europe the way that central Europe was in the past decade This crisis has muddied a bit the map and the and the perspective But still the the basic elements are there. So Thank you very much for kind invitation and I'm more than happy to answer any any questions And I'll be here no less or no more open once we move into You know your house rules