i ddwydiadol i Gymraeg y 숫au sydd eisiau yn ddiwyddiadol, ac nafyd iawn i fynd i gael i ddwygwsgog iawn. That ends questions. Members who wish to take part in the debate should press the request. Rwy'n cobl yn gwein feddwl'r frefyrdd. Llan increased emotion. Mr Lamont you have 14 minutes. Thank you very much Presiding Officer and in opening may I move the motion in my name. Presiding Officer early this week I joined with my colleagues and the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Liberal Democrats to pledge more powers for Scotland. The people of Scotland now know that, whatever the result of the referendum there will be change. The choice is won between separating off on our own completely or continuing to share power with gweld y gwsbeth yn ysgrifetig sydd yn ddigwethaf. The debate over more powers for Scotland is an interesting one, whether those powers come to a devolved Parliament or an independent one. It is a debate which has been allowed to dominate Scottish politics over the last period. We should not allow it to distract from the significant powers we already have at the Scottish Parliament. I believe that the key areas to realise our ambitions for Scotland already lie in Hollywood and it is the Scottish Government, which has the power to set these priorities. Education, the ability to teach, train and skill up our young children and young people to take their chance to drive a new changing economy and give those who lose their job the opportunity to retrain for the next one. Health, the means to ensure our sick, our vulnerable and our elderly are supported and cared for with the respect and dignity that we want. Building a Scotland where people have the physical and mental health to take up the opportunities that we would create For them. Too often we spend our time in this Parliament debating about what we can't do and not enough time talking about what we can do. For some time this Parliament has failed to be a forum for radical new ideas on improving educational standards or closing the gap on health inequalities. It will not be that until we get past the constitutional question. Issues over schools and hospitals are still a key factor in the referendum campaign. That's because people will be asking themselves whether a yes vote or a no vote will be best for public services. I believe a no vote gives Scots the best of both worlds. Schools and hospitals delivered by a Scottish Parliament but backed by the economic security and stability of the United Kingdom, allowing us to invest in our priorities. I'm sure that my yes colleagues would argue that there will be more money to spend on the things that matter in independent Scotland. The economics of independence have long been debated by both sides and, as a key area in its campaign, will do so again. Members of the Scottish public, the people who will come together to decide our future in September 18, will have to choose between which side they believe, whose arguments make the most sense and what fits in best with their view of the future. People often be moan having to make a choice at all between these competing arguments between competing facts. The sea politicians setting out similarly contradictory positions, apparently arguing that black is white, and they are left wondering who to believe. They cry for good, impartial information. They want to hear unbiased, unvarnished facts, which will allow them to make the key decision on behalf of their families. Yet there may never have been a vote in Scottish history where people have had more information. In fact, a small industry has been set up to analyse the consequences and ramifications of this imaginary world, which may never happen. The key question that they all wish to determine would be whether Scotland would be better off or worse off if Scotland voted to leave the United Kingdom. The fact that this is debated at all illustrates how difficult it is to pick through the assumptions and predictions that many have tried. Let us look at what some of the experts, the economists and the think tanks, say. The Institute of Fiscal Studies says, and I quote, "...our calculations suggest that an independent Scotland could expect to be running a deficit of around 5 per cent of GDP in 2016-2017, which would be larger than that facing the UK as a whole and would necessitate tax rises or spending cuts. The Centre for Public Policy in the region say, quote, there will be a net fiscal loss under independence looking into the future." City group says, "...with the recent drop in oil revenues, Scotland's fiscal deficit is now significantly above UK levels." The Pensions Policy Institute says, "...a future Scottish Government would need to raise tax, cut spending or accept higher debt." Brian Ashcroft, Emeritus Professor in Economics at the University of Strathclyde, says, "...Scottish Government outlays would rise. That would mean additional borrowing or a diversion of spending from investment in the people of Scotland." Martin Wolf CBE, chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, says, "...to avoid the risk, it would need to lower its debts quite rapidly. This would require even greater austerity than in the UK as a whole." Given its close ties to the rest of the United Kingdom, Scotland could not get away with tax incorporations or skilled people more heavily than its neighbour, so the bulk of this extra austerity would surely fall on public spending. So I believe that a consensus is growing among these financial experts that Scotland would be worse off and there would be less money to spend on the things that matter. On the one side, we have professors, economists, academics, policy experts, all saying the same thing. Scotland would be worse off. On the other side, we have a group of people arguing the opposite, Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney. They say that they like independence, but the last thing that they will listen to is independent experts who examine their plans. Here is the central deceit at the heart of the nationalist case for independence, the belief that the land of milk and honey is possible simply with a yes vote. You want tax cuts? You can have them with a yes vote. You want better childcare? You can have them with a yes vote. You industrial strategy? Just vote yes. Every day, the SNP's offer grows larger and larger, suspending the rules of arithmetic with every promise and pledge. Here is the reality, as confirmed by the leading financial experts and economists who have looked at the costs. If Scotland were to vote yes, not only would the First Government of this newly independent country not be able to deliver the litany of wonderful things that Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues promise every day, they would not even be able to deliver what we have now. Rather than improving public services— After that litany—thank you for taking the intervention—after that litany of how poor we are all going to be, can you tell me what the trade position is of Scotland and the trade position is of the UK? I would love it. If you had listened to what I had said, you will know that those are independent experts. We know how good the SNP is at plucking a figure out of the air, doubling it, pretending nobody else has to do the sums. Your sums do not add up. If Scotland was to vote yes, as I have said, you would not even be able to deliver what we have now. Rather than improving public services in independent Scotland, it would be worse if we cut our ties with the United Kingdom. Let us take the figure supplied by the IFS. The think tank Alex Salmond often quotes when it suits his argument. The IFS estimates, in 2016, if there was a yes vote, an independent Scotland would face an additional deficit of £4.7 billion. Our deficit would be twice the rate of the United Kingdom. It would leave an incoming Scottish Government facing three options. Borrow even more money to run this inflated deficit, but given borrowing costs for a newly independent Scotland would be much higher, that option would not plug the fiscal gap. Of course, if we were in a currency union, we would have to get a foreign chancellor's permission first. Alternatively, the Scottish Government could do something that Alex Salmond has never considered before, and that would be asking business or the rich to pay more tax. Given his key policies for an independent Scotland are to keep the higher tax rate at £45 and to slash corporation tax for big business, there seems a little chance of that. It is more likely to fall on hard-working Scots to pay for his referendum promises. If Scotland's 2.5 million workers were asked equally to shoulder those additional burden through tax increases, it would mean an additional £1,700 tax bill for each of them. It seems inevitable that we would face public service cuts, cuts to schools and hospitals. Rather than having to find all of those cuts— I thank the member for giving way. Can she guarantee that, if we stay in the UK, the Scottish budget will not be cut? John Lennon? Certainly if there is a Labour Government back in power, how desperately the SNP-backed benches are praying for a conservative victory in 2015—always, always, always, their own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Scotland. Rather than having to find all of those cuts, just think what £4.7 billion extra to spend could do for Scotland. £4.7 billion is equivalent of 150 nurses, the equivalent of 125,000 teachers, more than 500 primary schools, 184 secondary schools, 74 hospitals—more than we could ever need. You have to ask yourself why would anyone want to do that to their country? However, this is the proposal that the SNP Government has put to the people of Scotland. Unsustainable borrowing, swinging tax increases or deep cuts to public services are perhaps a mixture of all three. All of the experts agree that one of those three options or a mixture of all of them are inevitable in the first budget of the Government of an independent Scottish state. The Scottish Government's answer to all of its financial problems lies at the bottom of the North Sea, a revenue for which it can uniquely predict. Ignore the experts. John Swinney's magic calculator can make the numbers add up, but even that illustrates the precarious footing in which the SNP Government would place the public services we cherish. This year's GERS figures show that oil revenues dropped by £4.5 billion in the last year, more than our whole education budget. Only a Government is reckless as this. One whose one and only goal is to achieve independence for its people would risk the education of our children and the care of our sick and elderly on a commodity as volatile as oil. We already live in a country where we cannot go to A&E in Aberdeen and you would be best advised not to give birth to a child in wish-all. Now they will have to dramatically cut health spending on top of that. You have to confront the real world, not your fantasy world that you have been living in for the last two years. The party that sided with Thatcher and said that Scotland did not mind her economics, the party that sided with the people who said that unemployment was a price worth paying are now saying that there is no price too high for Scotland to pay for separation, a deficit more than double the rate of the United Kingdom. That will be fine. Losing more than the entire education budget, Amir Bagatell, losing thousands of nurses, Scotland can afford that. The truth of the matter is that the nationalists think that they will liberate Scotland. Instead, they will impoverish Scotland. The truth is that no one joined SNP to improve public services. They joined to separate Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom, and they are so determined to do that. They will say anything about anything else because everything is a side issue to the main event. Scotland's public services faced two futures in September 2014, a future after a yes vote where all the experts agree will face renewed austerity over and above what we currently face and cuts to schools and hospitals as a consequence, or we could face a different future if Scotland votes no. We know that the best future for our schools and hospitals is one where we can make the key decisions here at the Scottish Parliament but backed by the economic security and stability of the United Kingdom. The best future is one where we in Scotland decide what is best for our young people's education and our NHS but share the costs across 60 million people rather than six. Pulling and sharing resources, spreading risk and sharing reward—that is the argument that is persuading the majority of Scots that a no vote will give us the best of both worlds. I now call on Nicola Sturgeon to speak to a move amendment number 10353.3. Mr Sturgeon, you have 10 minutes. I very much welcome today's Labour debate. Joanne Lamont said in her opening speech that one of the key questions in this debate is whether yes or no is best for our public services, and I very much agree with that. This debate is very timely, I would say, coming as it does on the very same day that another senior Labour figure, the vice convener of Unison in Scotland, has declared for yes. Stephen Smiley's backing for independence comes hard on the heels of Pat Kelly, senior Labour activist and former president of the STUC, Jamie Kerr, vice chair of Rhymphyshire South Labour Party and Annam Kaiser, the general secretary of Muslim friends of Labour. All of those people, together with people like Alec Mawson, Charles Gray, Carol Fox and Bob Thompson, understand that independence is the best route to a fairer Scotland. Who knows? Independence may also be the best route to a reinvigorated Labour Party, and on the evidence of today, the Labour Party in Scotland badly needs reinvigorated. Joanne Lamont really could not have picked a better moment to demonstrate how increasingly out of touch she is with her own supporters, but the real reason I welcome this debate is that it gives me, against the backdrop of building momentum for yes, the perfect opportunity to set out again the positive case for Scotland becoming an independent country, to set out firstly the evidence that says that we can more than afford to be a successful independent country. Let's just remind ourselves of the facts in the midst of the doom and gloom and woe that characterised Joanne Lamont's speech. An independent Scotland would be the 14th richest country in the OECD, four places above the UK, so not worse off as the depressing Labour motion says, but better off. We generate more output per head than Japan, than France, than the UK itself. For every single one of the past 33 years, we've generated more tax per person than the UK is a whole. Over the past five years, our public finances have been stronger than the UK's to the tune of £8.3 billion. I'm grateful for giving away. The 14th richest country, does the Deputy First Minister not feel a little bit silly for saying in the white paper that we would be the eighth? The key point here is that the relative advantage of Scotland over the UK is absolutely maintained. I don't know whether the Conservatives think it's silly to point out the inherent wealth of this country. I actually think it's a good thing to point out the inherent wealth. If they spent more time talking up Scotland rather than talking it down, maybe they wouldn't be in the dire position they're in. Scotland can be independent, not at the moment. Of that, there is not a shadow of doubt. The question on the ballot paper is not can. We, the question on the ballot paper is should we? On Monday of this week, the Scottish Government published our draft independence bill. As Johann Lamont has said, on the same day, the Opposition parties made a joint statement on further devolution, and Johann Lamont is right what a contrast. Our bill showed how Scotland, with all the confidence and all the powers of an independent nation, could set our aspirations for this nation. Work towards fairness in our society, remove nuclear weapons from our soil. By contrast, what the Opposition parties offered the people of Scotland was a pig in a poke. No agreement on specific powers to be devolved, not even one. No indication of timetable, no say for the Scottish people and no guarantee that anything whatsoever will be delivered. That's not good enough. The only guarantee of more powers is a yes vote. A yes vote to enable the people who live and work in Scotland to decide how this country is run, not just in the areas that Westminster chooses to devolve but in the whole range of government activity, taxation as well as education, welfare as well as health, foreign affairs as well as justice, to take responsibility for our own future, to give us the powers to address the challenges we face and to maximise our own opportunities. Not at the moment, I think that the founders of the Labour Party will be turning in their graves to listen to Johann Lamont today, not just at her opening statement, which I want to repeat just in case anybody missed it. Johann Lamont said, today I join with my partners in the Conservative Party. But what they'll really be turning in their grave at is the depressing, dismal lack of ambition in the Labour motion. It talks Scotland down, I'm coming on to you, Ms Goldie, so be patient. It talks Scotland down in virtually every line. If you knew about the proud history of the Labour Party, you would know about solidarity and co-operation across the whole of the United Kingdom. Not solidarity with the people of Belfast, Cardiff Newcastle, who share the same problems as we do, not separating ourselves off them and blaming them for our problems. I know that the proud history of the Labour Party has been betrayed by Johann Lamont day in and day out, because the only solidarity that she shows these days is solidarity with the Conservative Party. I'm coming to you right now. The dismal lack of ambition in the Labour motion is almost as bad as Annabelle Goldie at a debate that I did with her and Johann Lamont on Friday night, when Annabelle Goldie told the audience what report she thought they should read if they wanted to know, and I quote, just how dependent Scotland really is. Scotland is not dependent but, Presiding Officer, if Annabelle Goldie is right and Westminster really has reduced us to a state of dependency, then surely it's time to do something about that because nobody should rebel in a state of dependency. Just as we should listen to the real lesson from the experts in the studies that Labour motion refers to, because what they show us are the risks and the challenges that Scotland would face if we stay as we are, if we continue to follow the policies of the UK, challenges of demography, demography, inherited debt, public finances—these are the products of the status quo. They are not arguments for keeping things as they are, they are arguments for change. They demonstrate the necessity for this country to become independent, to find our way of addressing those challenges. With independence, Scotland would be a national economy, with all of the tools of other independent states, no longer a region of an unbalanced and unequal UK economy, just waiting for things to be done for us and to us. Independence puts responsibility into our hands. So yes, we have published the outlook for our public finances on independence and in the years ahead. They show that, on all key fiscal measures, our finances in 2016-17 will be similar to or stronger than the UK, not at the moment, and the G7 countries as a whole. More than that, what we have set out is how policies to boost productivity, grow our population, increase participation in the labour market, could boost our tax receipts by an additional £5 billion a year. We have also proudly produced proposals to re-industrialise Scotland, something that, once the Labour Party might have found it within themselves to back and agree with, we have set out how we can use policy levers to strengthen manufacturing, to promote innovation, to encourage trade and investment. All those aims should be the aims and ambitions of every party in here. That is what is so dispiriting about the Labour motion. There is no alternative plan to increase employment, to grow the economy or to get our working-age population growing. Their only solution to the challenges that we face is to leave it to Westminster and hope for the best. That is not good enough. It is the most high-risk approach to Scotland's public finances imaginable. To leave the decisions on our funding to the Treasury, knowing that the Chancellor and his opposite number is planning further cuts, to leave the Barnett formula in the hands of the Treasury, knowing that senior voices in all parties want to cut Scotland's budget by up to £4 billion. What we offer is the alternative to that. The way to secure resources of Scotland and our public finances is through independence to retain the tax raised in Scotland in Scotland, to retain the benefits of our economic policies so that our investment in infrastructure and childcare results in increased tax receipts and further investment instead of disappearing into the Treasury. The simple fact of the matter is that this is a choice between two futures, between hope, ambition and optimism on the one hand and dreary, dismal and depressing outlook on the other. Independence—not relying or being dependent on Westminster—is the best way to secure the future of our economy, our public services and the people of this country. That is why I am proud to move the amendment in my name. I now call on Gavin Brown to speak to and move amendment 10353.2. Mr Brown, you have six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Well, back in the real world, let's look at the document that Nicola Sturgeon was so keen to quote, but less keen to take interventions and questions on. She boasted about what a fabulous document the outlook for Scotland's public finances and the opportunities of independence actually is. She talked about how this document proved that on every conceivable measure an independent Scotland would be richer, would have healthier finances than the rest of the UK. What Nicola Sturgeon did not say and what the document does not say at the beginning and what the document only says tucked away in a box halfway through on page 26 is this. Every single scenario in that document relies on what is called scenario 4 of the Scottish Government's oil and gas projections. Scenario 4 believes that you would get £6.9 billion of revenue from oil and gas in the first year of an independent Scotland, rising to £7.3 billion the year after. On any analysis, that is an optimistic scenario for oil and gas. It is a full £4 billion higher than the central scenario of the office for budget responsibility. It is funny that every time you mention the OBR, you get a scoffing from the SNP and you get Alec Neill of all people saying that they are very reliable that lot and Humza Yousaf shouting out loud. Let us then just take a second to look at the OBR projections. Why would he put his responsibility in an independent body that has managed to get wrong the figures of his own Government in the UK? He absolutely walked into that one because he says that he cannot rely on the OBR. Let us look at who got it right for the most recent set of oil projections for £12.13 billion. The OBR was very close to the actual output of what we got. The Scottish Government will not like this, but it is true that the Scottish Government was out by almost £1 billion despite making the projection three weeks before the end of the financial year. We will take no lessons from the SNP when it comes to projections around oil or anything else for that matter in just a moment. Let us also look for the oil figures for £13.14, because we know that we are at the end of the financial year and we have had the projections apart from the final ones. We know that the OBR's projections for oil for £13.14 again were just about right. The Scottish Government this time was several billion pounds out in its projections. When it comes to having a track record on oil projections, it may scoff at the OBR, but it is far better and far more successful than the Scottish Government projections have been so far. I promise to give way to Chick Brody, so I will do so. I wonder whether he would care to comment on the statement from the Pira energy group yesterday that Brent crude prices will average higher to $115 per barrel. The Economist's Commodity Index produced last week on oil prices that have risen 9.5 per cent in the last year. The issue is this, Deputy Presiding Officer. For John Swinney's projections to come true, we need oil to stay high every single day of that financial year and the financial years afterwards. We need production to remain high and not to go down. They rely on investment costs and production costs being lower than those that are projected. We need T-Roll A6 with every roll of the dice on oil for John Swinney's projections to be true. I noticed that he has not challenged me once on the projections that I have talked about. Every single line in the document relies entirely on it being £6.9 billion in 1617 and 7.3 the year after. Far higher, as I said, than the OBR, but higher even than the projections of the Scottish Government's own adviser in their Fiscal Commission working group, Dr Andrew Hues Hallett, who said that it will be between £4.5 billion and £5 billion. Mr Swinney is £2 billion above even his own trusted expert adviser, who I questioned several times, is that a reasonable estimate? He was absolutely certain that that was a reasonable estimate, which means that Mr Swinney's projection is a hugely optimistic estimate. In those in his last minute, I am afraid—sorry, Mr Swinney. My apologies to the cabinet secretary for that. I will have a chance and I can guarantee to Mr Swinney that I am happy to give way in my final closing speech to him, and he can ask any question that he likes on that. They say that we are going to be better off and richer, but the only way they have managed to do it to make us look wealthier than the UK is to give a high oil projection for every single year. That is not good enough, and we call on them to republish with a central and a cautious scenario for oil, instead of only an optimistic scenario. Willie Rennie to speak to amendment 10353.1. Apologies, Deputy Presiding Officer, for my rather flushed look this afternoon. I have been pitching a tent in the park with Joanne Lamont for wild in the park, I hesitate to confirm. Any member who has not been over to the reception if they have not been over to the reception in wild in the park, I would encourage them to do so so that they can get a tan like mine this afternoon. I wish to move the amendment in my name. Also in the sunshine on Monday, on top of Carlton Hill, all three parties that support the United Kingdom stood united for more powers for the Scottish Parliament. On cue, the nationalists, just like they did on Monday, berated us previously for standing together and berated us again on Monday for doing exactly that. What Monday signified was that more powers were on the way. People need to know that, if they vote no in September, they are not voting for no change but for more powers that are guaranteed. Each party has a detailed plan to back up their commitment. The Liberal Democrat plan is for home rule in a federal United Kingdom. We want this Parliament to raise the majority of the money that it spends so that we can determine our destiny on the domestic agenda while sharing risk with the United Kingdom. What the nationalists cannot accept is that this constitutional option is the most popular constitutional option on the table—far, far more popular than independence—and that is why they deride it so much because they are so afraid of it. We also want to entrench the Scottish Parliament to make it a permanent constitutional feature. The test for us is this. If the Scottish Parliament wants to do something different for the NHS, for schools, for universities, we can do so. If we want to cut taxes for those on low and middle incomes, like the Liberal Democrats in government at Westminster, then we can do so. If we want to increase investment in early learning and childcare, like my colleagues at Westminster, then we can choose to do so as well. All that can be achieved while sharing risk with the United Kingdom. We know from reports that have been published that Scotland will be £1,400 better off each year by staying part of the United Kingdom. That is the UK dividend that has made up a variety of different benefits that the nationalists like to derive, but are the reality of our relationship with the United Kingdom. Maintaining high public spending here in Scotland is something that the United Kingdom can achieve with its broad shoulders. It is able to deliver that, even though oil revenues are so volatile from one year to the next, halving from one year to the next. That is significant because oil would make up such a large proportion of total Scottish income. That is why oil projections are so important. I will give way to Patrick Harvie. I am grateful to Mr Rennie. He talked about the UK guaranteeing the future of Scottish public spending. Johann Lamont in her opening remarks attempted to offer a promise that an incoming Labour Government would not cut the Scottish budget. Would Mr Rennie at least claim the credibility by acknowledging that nobody in this chamber is in a position to make such a commitment on behalf of an incoming chancellor in 2015, whoever they might be? I do not know if that intervention was directed at me or directed at Nicola Sturgeon, because the promises that the SNP makes for the future, as if no cuts will ever be made for it. Of course there is volatility in finances, but what you get with the United Kingdom is the broad shoulders that can deal with the volatility from one year to the next. Because an independent Scotland would be so dependent on oil revenues, the challenges would be ever so much greater. What we would see is the scoffing from the SNP benches about the independent OBR. It scoffed because it said that it was too pessimistic. Listening to the national issue, it would think that the OBR was part of some unionist conspiracy to do down Scotland. What it ignores is that, far from being pessimistic, the OBR is optimistic about overstating the oil revenues. So far from being a dark despondent with its oil projections, the OBR is far too cheery. It is far too much looking on the upside, and now it is confirmed also by Professor Andrew Hughes Hallot, who also agrees with the OBR that the SNP's projections are far too optimistic. He projects that 30 per cent is the difference between his predictions and the SNP's predictions. That is a mistake of £1.9 billion, at least potentially £2.4 billion every single year for the first years of independence. That is a colossal mistake, a colossal overestimate for the problems and the challenges that we would face. I think that we need to have a bit of reality on the SNP benches. I do not blame them for their passion for independence. I recognise that they believe in their cause. I do not criticise them for that. I criticise them for the lack of reality, the lack of honesty about the policies and the costs of independence, the lack of honesty about the benefits of the United Kingdom, and the £1,400 dividend that we get from staying part of the UK. No more scaremongering about the UK. Let's talk about the upsets, the benefits of staying together. Many thanks. Very tight for time today. Mr MacDonald, to be followed by Ian Gray, up to six minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I guess that the most we can say about Willie Rennie's speeches is that at least he did not get the lego out. However, listening to the quotes from other members in this debate, I want to read a few quotes out to begin with. Supporters of independence will always be able to cite examples of small, independent and thriving economies across Europe, such as Finland, Switzerland and Norway. It would be wrong to suggest that Scotland could not be another such successful independent country, David Cameron. I believe that Scotland is big enough, rich enough and good enough to be an independent country, Ruth Davidson. The question is not whether Scotland can survive, of course it could, Alasdair Darling. You will never hear me suggest that Scotland could not go its own way, Michael Moore, and yet today from Johann Lamont we have essentially heard the epistle of where doomed if we become independent. Nicola Sturgeon highlighted a number of Labour members, key Labour members who are backing independence for Scotland. One which she omitted was the Labour MP for Leeds East, George Moody, who has come out and said that Scotland should be independent. How refreshing that a Labour MP representing an English constituency can see independence as the right choice for the nation of his birth and where he grew up? How sad and depressing that the Labour politicians who are in Scotland cannot see past their antipathy toward the SNP and recognise the possibilities that independence could bring for Scotland? Johann Lamont made the claim that we on these benches did not get into politics to improve Scotland but instead to impoverish it, which I think is a rather unfortunate slight to make, but she thinks that we see independence as an end, not a means, which demonstrates a total misunderstanding. She also overlooks the improvements in public services that have been delivered within this Parliament and nobody would seek to say that there have not been improvements in Scottish public life as a result of the establishment of the devolved Parliament, but the point is that devolution can only take you so far. When you have a situation in which you have a Westminster Government that acts against the interests of Scotland, you find yourself in the position of having to mitigate where you can and where you are not able to do so having to simply thow what is being wrought upon Scotland by Westminster. Independence is not a magic wand, but it is a toolkit to improve Scotland, to make Scotland a better place. In 1997, the prospect was put to Scotland that the decisions about Scotland were best taken in Scotland by the people of Scotland on a range of areas such as health, education and justice. That was true irrespective of who the party of government was at Westminster because that was a Labour party in power delivering devolution for Scotland in those areas. They recognised that Westminster did not work for Scotland in those areas and that Scotland should take those decisions. What we seek to do on these benches is simply to extend that maxim, to extend that principle to other areas of policy. Whether that is on trident—I was interested to hear Mr Rennie talking about all the things that we could do in Scotland already—one of the things that we cannot do is rid ourselves of the abomination of nuclear weapons in Scotland. What we could do with independence and the powers that independence would bring is set that right. Whether it is on issues around welfare and fairness, the idea that we have the best of both worlds is an interesting soundbite, but when you actually look at some of the people in Scotland, some of our most vulnerable citizens, people who at the moment have a degree of social protection provided to them through the fact that we continue to control our health service here in Scotland. When those people leave their GP surgeries and enter the clutches of Westminster welfare reform, we are, to all intents and purposes, powerless to help them. We can put in place forms of mitigation where we can and where we can do that, we have done so, but we cannot simply suggest that we are in a position to be able to address all of the adverse impacts of welfare reform. The 100,000 children who will be plunged into poverty as a result of welfare reform, we can do some stuff to help those children, we cannot do all of the things that we would like to do, we cannot reverse some of the decisions that are being taken. I welcome the approach that is taken by the expert group on welfare, in particular the comments around the carers allowance. For somebody who has campaigned for a long time on the issue of carers allowance and in particular the carers allowance, it is very refreshing to see the idea of the carers allowance, which has been one of the forgotten benefits being looked at with great seriousness. It does not behave the Labour Party, as their spokesperson did at the time, to dismiss that very important piece of work as simply being a bribe. The idea is that if you offer something to people that they do not already have, you are offering them a bribe. No, we are offering a substantial piece of policy regarding a very important group in Scottish society. If Westminster parties decide to derive that as a bribe, of course, one of the things they could do is guarantee similar increases in the carers allowance within the current system. The fact that they choose not to do so says everything about how the Westminster system operates in relation to those dependent upon the welfare state. We often hear that it is told that foreign policy is an area where Scotland would not be considered a credible or serious voice. I think that foreign policy is an area where it is not just about your size and how loud you shout. It is about what you say, how you act and the alliances that you draw. I am afraid that I am in my last 40 seconds. If we look at the contribution, the important contribution that nations such as Ireland and Belgium have played in the United Nations peacekeeping missions and nations that are not major players in the defence agenda or the wider international security agenda, we have a strong role to play in peacekeeping. If we look at the important role that Norway played in the Middle East peace process through the drafting of the Oslo Accords, we can see that small independent nations who use the right kind of language in the international scene and who use the right kind of behaviour in the international scene can have a credible and forceful role to play in foreign policy affairs without needing to be large in size of population or one of the great military powers, as we are often told, we are a part of. The great military powers who get dragged into conflicts such as Iraq and look how well that ended up. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is a truth universally acknowledged that in this referendum campaign many voters still feel there is a lack of dispassionate information available about the economic and fiscal position of an independent Scotland and they certainly did not get any from the largely substance-free contribution from the cabinet secretary, but the truth is that every day he sees a growing body of rigorous analysis from academics, think tanks, ratings agencies and major companies independent of either campaign or indeed either government and they are remarkably consistent in their views. An independent Scotland would face a higher deficit and a higher borrowing cost than we do as part of the United Kingdom. Pretty well all of those reports point to higher taxes or greater cuts in public services than anything required while in the UK as a direct consequence of separation and the scale of cuts in public services we would face is pretty consistent too with the most recent estimate coming from the IFS, calculating that the deficit in an independent Scotland would be five and a half per cent of GDP around twice what we would face as part of the UK. That means we would have to find four and a half billion pounds of cuts just to stand still and the answer to Mr Harvey's point is that whatever challenges we face as part of the United Kingdom they would be greater and more acute as a separate country. That is the conclusion of all the analysis. The extra borrowing that Mr Swinney announced that he plans post independence earlier this week would simply be swallowed up and we would still find ourselves having to pay off teachers and nurses by the thousand. Yet those figures do not begin to include the costs of the promises that the Scottish Government has made with no idea how they will pay for them. £550 million to pay pensions earlier, £1.2 billion to pay for childcare, £300 million or so for benefit changes and do not forget the windfalls for big business, £380 million for corporation tax cuts, up to £230 million to cut air passenger duty, £150 million a year for the energy companies to end their environmental obligations and pass those back on to Scottish citizens and taxpayers. Those figures do not include either the diversion of oil revenue to an oil fund on day one, Mr Swinney says, when even their own white paper admits that there is not spare oil money for an oil fund. Nor do those figures include the set-up costs for a new country. I-Cast has estimated £700 million just to set up a tax system. Interestingly, almost exactly the figure that Mr Swinney himself estimated in his private paper to his cabinet colleagues. Those are all sums that will have to be cut from public spending, from schools, from hospitals, from local services. Unless, of course— John Mason. I thank the member very much for giving way. He does portray the most negative it seems. Would he accept that if GDP was to grow by even 1 or 2 per cent, it would cover quite a lot of those figures? Perfect timing, Mr Mason, because, of course, the way out of this would be to believe the Scottish Government's own forecasts, which tell us that there would be suddenly more economic growth. They say that our productivity will jump, our employment rate will suddenly soar, net in migration will double and the working-age population will boom. The Scottish Government says that OBR cannot forecast oil revenues, so, in its place, they have thought of a number, doubled it and added a couple of billion pounds on for luck. They assume that setting up a new country will cost us less than the building in which we now stand, maybe nothing at all. When they are asked, Mr Mason, where those increases in productivity and employment will come from, they do not know. When they are asked where 24,000 net migrants a year will come from, they do not know. When they are asked what the set-up costs for Scotland will be, they tell us they do not know. When they are asked what will the currency in this country be when there is no currency union, they tell us they do not know and will not say. In response to independent analysis, which says independence will mean cuts to public services, to credit agencies who tell us that we would pay more to borrow to bodies, like the pension policy institute, who said today to our committee that independence would jeopardise the affordability of pensions, that the Scottish Government has nothing to offer but a towering edifice of dodgy arithmetic, unfounded assertion and wishful thinking. To paraphrase one commentator this week, it would be pie in the sky, except they don't even have the ingredients for the pie. One of my local activists summed the independence offer up perfectly. He said to me, it is a gamble funded by a lottery. This is a gamble with the highest stakes of all. A gamble with our schools, our hospitals, the jobs of our teachers and nurses, the education of our youngsters, the pensions of our older citizens. Last week, we saw the news that the biggest political bet ever had been placed on the referendum outcome, but the truth is that the biggest political bet ever in this country is the independence prospectus itself, and the stake is the future of our country, the life chances and wellbeing of our people. It is a gamble that we do not have to make and a gamble that we should resoundingly reject come September. It was Samuel Johnson who said, our aspirations are our possibilities. What that means is that if you want to progress, you have to believe that change is possible, or to use a phrase popularised by the radical independence movement, our colleagues in Yes, another Scotland is possible. The Labour motion today suggests that the party has no aspirations. That is very apparent. The Labour are telling us that change is not possible and that empowerment is not possible. I would like to contrast their motion with a number of documents that have been published in recent weeks, which envisage the possibilities of a better Scotland in the future. We had rethinking welfare, the second report of the expert working group on welfare, chaired by Martin Evans of the Carnegie Trust. That set out a vision for a fairer Scotland, for the most vulnerable people in the country, with recommendations on re-establishing a link between benefits and the cost of living, an increase in the carers allowance and the recommendation that the First Government of an independent Scotland should have as its goal a living wage instead of a minimum wage. Last week, the First Minister unveiled re-industrialising Scotland for the 21st century, a document that showed that we could grow our manufacturing output by a third and suggested some very practical ways to deliver that with the powers of independence. For example, through a properly funded Scottish business development bank, simple, more effective tax system and a network of overseas offices designed to boost our exports. Then, on Monday, the Deputy First Minister published the Scottish Independence Bill, a consultation in an interim constitution for Scotland. I must say that I found reading the draft constitution an encouraging and indeed a moving experience, in particular the clarity of the language that was inspiring. It began with a simple statement in Scotland that people are sovereign, and in clause 3 it said in Scotland that people have the sovereign right to self-determination and to choose freely the form in which their state is to be constituted and how they are to be governed. I have mentioned just three of the many documents that the Government and others have published, outlining a vision of the future, in this case of welfare, of the economy and of the empowerment of the people. All of those documents shared an ambition for Scotland. They met Samuel Johnson-Maxim. Our aspirations are our possibilities. Another Scotland is possible, something that the Labour Party used to believe. This motion suggests that they have given up on that belief, given up on ambition and given up on vision. The Labour motion today has no vision for a fairer welfare system. It has nothing to say about growing our economy or truly empowering our people. Instead, the motion talks of the security and stability of the UK, a UK that is paying £1 billion a week in debt interest repayments. That is neither secure nor stable. The UK Government has capped welfare with the support of the Labour Party in Westminster and showing that in the UK the most vulnerable face of bleak future. The motion suggests that the UK is okay while that welfare cap is not okay. 100,000 children in poverty by 2020, as the child poverty action group has predicted, is not okay. A regionally imbalanced economy, in which output in London was 70 per cent higher than the UK average, is not okay. An incoming equality, which is among the worst in the OECD, is not okay either. If that is the best vision that Labour has to offer, the people of Scotland should have only two words to say to them. No thanks. Johann Lamont has well established the case for why the best feature for Scotland is one where it has devolved public services that are delivered by the Scottish Parliament but backed by the security and stability of the United Kingdom. My colleague Ian Gray has collated all the substantial evidence that states that Scotland would be £4.5 billion worse off under independence, having to find over £4 billion just to stand still. In the time that I have got, I would like to look at the budget lines around education, how that money is spent and, if I have time, I will look at the additional promises that the Government has made. £4.5 billion is the magic number. It represents the money that we need to find. It is also the drop in oil revenue between 11.12 and 12.13. It is also the entire school's budget. I have spent a lot of time knocking doors and taking part in referendum debates, and I have met a lot of undecided voters who are completely scunnered by the way we talk about the country's finances. One side says that they would be £1,400 better off, the other £1,000 with independence. They are stuck thinking that someone is going to run up to them with bundles of £20 notes without realising that those projections are based on 10, 15 years into the future. If economists cannot forecast one year ahead effectively, how can voters take any credence of sales pitches like that? That is why the comparison between oil revenues and schools is such a compelling one. Here is a resource that is so volatile that a dip in its value from one year to the next is enough to wipe out the entire school's budget. The comparison is only valid if the member is asserting that oil revenues are all that he would have available to pay for schools when he clearly would not within a budget. I am merely making the point to the member that this is how undecided voters look at the debate. They are trying to get their head around the finances, and his side sums do not add up to the size of the entire school's budget. That is where the size and security of the UK comes in. The UK can carry that fluctuation in prices with far greater ease than in independent Scotland. The Deputy First Minister, in her motion, references the Government's record of delivery under devolution. Let us look at the detail of that in the context of education. Cash term spending on secondary schools is falling. From 2008 to 2011, it fell by £91.4 million. Real-term spending on secondary schools is falling, too, down 8.6 per cent since 2006-07. Teachers are feeling the pressure, having to deliver more for less. The latest EIS teacher survey delivered just last week and has some startling statistics. Just one in three teachers are satisfied with their work in life. 84 per cent of teachers had varying levels of work-related stress, and just one in 10 were satisfied with their current workload. The resounding message from teachers is that they do not feel heard, they do not feel valued as professionals, and they do not feel that they are getting the support that they require. Meanwhile, educational inequality persists, and it is an issue most dark when you look at the experiences of looked-after children in Scotland. There was a new report from the Scottish Government this week on looked-after children. It would be hard to find it underneath all the other bump on the Scottish Government website, including proposals for a new constitution, but once again it shows the complete lack of exposure and priorities from this Government on this issue. Let's look at the headline numbers. 85 per cent of looked-after young people left school as soon as they were old enough. That compared to 30 per cent of all school leavers. Just 62 per cent of looked-after kids had positive destinations after school, compared to 90 per cent of all school leavers. To the Government's credit, that is a considerable improvement on 2009-10, but there is still a very long way to go. Where there is less good news is on tariff scores. The average tariff score of a looked-after child in Scotland is 86, while it is 407 for all school leavers. That means that kids not in care are outperforming kids in care by a rate of five to one. That is a shocking statistic, but it is not the most damning statistic in the Government's own report this week, because the gap is getting bigger. The tariff scores are increasing at twice the rate for kids as they are for looked-after children. Twice as fast. That matters in the context of today's debate, because education is an entirely devolved issue. It is a Government who set the priorities and make the hard choices—not the dastardly administration 400 miles down the road—this Government. Peter Peacock asked the OECD to investigate Scottish schooling back in 2004. It was a comprehensive and compelling report produced in 2007, showing that we had an inequality problem in our schools. This Government has completely failed to address it. This record speaks volumes about their commitment to tackling inequality in our schools. The EMA is another classic example. Mike Russell boasts about the increased number of school pupils in receipt of the EMA, but denies the fact that they have cut £10 million from the budget and college students are unable to take it at all—26 per cent cut in the EMA. What about colleges? 37 per cent reduction in student numbers. The SNP will say that those numbers are wrong, but they have fudged the statistics by redefining what a full-time course is. Once again, women are disproportionately affected by those changes, and that is before we even get to their childcare commitments, which we and Spice believe cost £1.1 billion, and this Government will not produce the economic model that will tell us where they will find it. In conclusion, this Government needs £4.5 billion post-independence just to stand still, but it is standing still on the big issues such as educational inequality. That tells us everything that we need to know about their values and priority. The Deputy First Minister says that we need to look at the record, while the record on inequality is wafer-thin. Why would it be any different with independence? The Deputy First Minister must close, please, and thank you for closing. I now call on George Adam to be followed by animal gold in six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I always welcome the opportunity to discuss Scotland's future, the positive case for independence, as opposed to the negative reasons to stay within the union, which we continually hear from the Opposition parties here at the moment. There is always a positive idea for us to talk about the values and priorities that an independent Scotland would have, because that is what independence gives us. It gives us the opportunity to be able to prioritise the full levers of power and prioritise the power in values that we have to deliver for the people of Scotland. However, the eyes of the world are on Scotland. We are indeed the talk of the international political steamy at the moment, and quite rightly so, because not only is this such an important issue for the people of Scotland, it is also that we stand between two futures as status quo, with further austerity cuts in Westminster Government that Scotland did not vote for, or the responsibility of the full powers of government, giving us the opportunity to no longer play the blame game, to blame other political parties, to blame other Governments and other places, to take on the full responsibilities of independence and create the type of Scotland that every one of us in this chamber wants. We currently live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet many of our people do not have the opportunities they need, or worse still live in poverty, Westminster's austerity cuts to welfare are making their lives even more difficult. Many of our electorates even have difficulties with dealing with the benefits that they currently have. What type of Scotland do we want with independence? We can create a welfare system that supports our people back to work, makes work pay and provides a strong and decent safety net for those unable to work. I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government is taking on a number of the expert working groups welfare recommendations, increasing carers allowance that was already mentioned by my colleague, Mark McDonald, to the same rates that job seekers allowance for those aged 25 are over, and also re-establishing the link between benefits and the cost of living, with benefits and tax credits being increased each year by the consumer prices index of inflation. However, most importantly abolishing the bedroom tax instead of mitigating against the bedroom tax, making sure that we have the powers to be able to do that, replace the current system of sanctions with one that is fairer and more personalised and positive, as opposed to all of us having constituents coming into our offices and being left penniless because of the current system. That is the type of Scotland that I want to live in. That is the type of Scotland that I want for the future. I respect the passion that the member has for the issues, but why would he not want to have the ambition to abolish the bedroom tax for people suffering under it right across the UK? Why that poverty of ambition? My ambition is to ensure that the people of Scotland have the opportunities to create the kind of country that we want. That is the ambition that I have for us to be able to collectively take our place in the world. It is the opportunity to make things easier for parents to get back to work by transferring money that is spent by Westminster on trying weapons into child care, investing in wanes, not weapons of mass destruction, ensuring that we can actually take that money and ensure that we can build the type of Scotland that is getting people back into work when we can. Our childcare policy is already there by the end of the first budget. We will provide 600 hours of childcare to around half of Scotland's two-year-old. By the end of the first Parliament, we will ensure that all three-year-olds, four-year-olds and vulnerable two-year-olds will be entitled to 1140 hours. Those are the things that can make a difference in people's lives and those are the things that we actually believe will make that difference. Also, independence can give us the powers to invest money raised for enabling more women into work back into childcare. Transforming childcare alongside strengthening employability and skills programme, enabling more people, particularly women, back into work, those are the things that make the difference and those are the things that I passionately want to deal with in this chamber. When we have the powers of independence, we can have that debate instead of having the usual Westminster ping-pong competition where it is Tory one time, Labour the next and it is constantly just blame everyone else, instead of actually taking the responsibility of Government. Ensuring that we can move forward because Scotland currently has a democratic deficit. Westminster will never deliver the future we want because 76 per cent of Scottish MPs voted against further austerity cuts in the 2010 finance budget. It made no difference. It still went ahead. 81 per cent of Scottish MPs voted against the welfare cuts in the welfare benefits operating system. An old friend of mine, an old SNP councillor, who has now left us in Remshire Council for 35 years, councillor Jim Mitchell used to say, you are powerless if you remain within the Westminster system. Indeed, Scotland is powerless if we remain within the Westminster system because we are bigger than that, our ambition is bigger than that and we want so much more. There are indeed two choices we have in front of us. It is quite simple—responsibility, the power to deal with the many challenges that we have with independence for us all so that we can create the type of country that we all want, an exciting new dawn or the continued negativity and austerity of Westminster. Recently, I announced here as a husband, a father and a soon-to-be grandfather, I know what type of country I want for my family and for Scotland. That is why I believe passionately that independence is the only way forward, so give us the powers to create the country that we all want. That is surely something that everyone in here wants for the future. Presiding Officer, I am delighted to take part in this debate because I whole-heartedly believe that the strongest and the most stable and secure future for Scotland is one in which she remains party in the United Kingdom. As a general and positive observation about that partnership, you only have to look at the current news headlines to understand why in a global world global influence matters. That is an influence that, with the best will in the world, no matter how well it was led, an independent Scotland could not replicate. There are many other reasons why Scotland is better off as part of our family of nations. One of the most compelling and obvious is that the United Kingdom allows us to pool and share resources across a population of 60 million people. Without doubt, that is the best way to ensure that Scotland continues to be able to invest in schools, hospitals and other public services. At this point, it is well illustrated when we look at the whole topic of pensions. Put simply, the best way to ensure that our pensioners are supported is by spreading costs across the 60 million UK citizens, not just the 5 million population in Scotland. As Scotland's population is projected to age faster than the rest of the UK, and the proportion of Scotland's population of pensionable age is already greater and projected to increase more rapidly than the rest of the United Kingdom, there can be no doubt that pensions will become less affordable in an independent Scotland. I can hear the SNP backbenchers chirping their usual indignation with Amantra. Everything will be okay because Scotland is oil and this oil makes Scotland one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In fact, I believe that one of the S-Scotland Billboards proclaims what you would say to living in one of the country's wealthiest nations, what we already do is call the United Kingdom. As part of the United Kingdom, Scotland is already a proud and vibrant country in a strong, successful and stable union. Let me just make progress. Can I comment on oil and gas, which my colleague Gavin Brown has so eloquently talked about? Oil and gas is a fantastic success story. According to Mr Swinney's leak memo, it has been essential for funding Scotland's public services over the last 21 years. Even with those revenues, Scotland has still been in deficit and all by one of those years. Those revenues have safeguarded Scotland's public services. The oil and gas sector is an amazing job and revenue creator, and one of which Scotland should rightly be proud of. In an independent Scotland, oil and gas would be a much bigger proportion of the Scottish economy than it currently is in the wider UK economy. That should ring alarm bells, because oil and gas tax revenues have been falling since 1999, a fall in which the UK economy is much better able to absorb. If we look at just last year, those revenues fell by more than £4 billion. Had that happened in an independent Scotland, which would be operating an estimated starting budget deficit of around 5 per cent of GDP, the consequences would have been acute. Either schools and hospitals would have to be shut, or taxes would have to rise. Last year, that horrible dilemma did not arise. Why? Because of the economic stability that has been part of the United Kingdom gives us. Compare that with the fiscal position of an independent Scotland in 2016, when the SNP wants us to leave the UK. This month, both the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies and the Treasury published detailed analyses. Those analyses conclude that an independent Scotland would face more substantial challenges than the rest of the UK. Those analyses suggest that, to continue to provide similar levels of public services over the next 20 years, we would need to increase onshore tax revenues by 13 per cent from the start of independence. Deputy Presiding Officer, I think that people need to understand what the scale of this increase actually is. That would be equivalent to setting a 28 per cent basic rate of income tax, a 26 per cent standard rate of that, and increasing the main duties on alcohol, tobacco and fuel by almost 40 per cent, or growing the economy at a rate that is by any assessment impossible. Presiding Officer, those figures do not even take into account the extra borrowing that Mr Swinney announced this week, nor do those figures include the set-up costs that an independent Scotland will have to pay for. This is not talking Scotland down, this is just providing facts. If providing facts means protecting Scotland from uncertainty and unanswered questions, then nobody is going to stop me giving the facts. If the Scottish Government were saying to the people of Scotland, look, an independent Scotland would face financial challenges and we would lose the safety net of the United Kingdom, and there are difficulties, but the dream is worth the risk, but we are going to explain how we will mitigate that risk. Deputy Presiding Officer, I would have more respect for the SNP's position. Instead, the Scottish Government is completely ignoring the warnings in its own leak memo. It makes sweeping assertion, overestimates revenues, underestimates expenditure and refuses to quantify other costs altogether. I do not think that that is good enough. In a debate of this magnitude, the public is entitled to a lot better than that. I want to protect our public services in Scotland. I want Scotland to have a vibrant, strong, stable and secure future. The partnership of the United Kingdom offers that in striking contrast to the uncertainty that enshrouds the case for independence. Presiding Officer, I too welcome the debate this afternoon, but I express some amusement at the last part of the motion that states that by sharing its resources with its neighbours, it will mean that the people of Scotland enjoy the best of both worlds. That will be the five London neighbours whose aggregate income is greater than that of the five million UK neighbours on low incomes.  We will hear a lot, and we have heard a lot about numbers this afternoon, and I will indulge in some later. However, it is about more than that. It is about eradicating the democratic deficit that inhabits our neighbouring worlds and planets. The best of both worlds does not include, in my book, a bedroom tax, a welfare cap, food banks and so much more. If that is the best, then I hate to see the worst. What the motion seeks to omit is the real question. The real issue is ensuring that the people of and in Scotland have full sovereignty over the matters and decisions that affect their daily lives, that each and every one of them chooses what kind of society they want. In continuing the planetary theme, the Scottish Labour Party is afraid that it is a bit like Klingons. It clings on to the hope, the belief that if they stick with Starship Mill Band, they will land as a UK Labour Government again one day. Under every UK Labour Government, there has been a disaster for Scotland. From the coalition of Ramsey MacDonald, the civilising athlete, to the devaluing Wilson, to the winter of discontent Calhann, to the illegal warmongering of Blair and then to the banking recession of Gordon Brown, and now they want to hitch themselves to the Tory party, which Churchill once said was not a party, it was a conspiracy. I did not believe them in 1979, 1980 and I certainly do not believe them now. On democracy, the message to the people of Scotland is that we should no longer accept the position that only 4.1 per cent of the houses of parliament were elected, or in the case of the Lords, unelected and appointed by the people of Scotland, and the Lib Dems should be ashamed of approving that. Real security, Presiding Officer, and the stability of our world lies in our self-determination and national sovereignty. I said, let's talk numbers, so here are just a few key numbers. Scotland is rich not just in its natural assets but in the assets and the skills of its people, in its trading and its reputation abroad. Let me help Mr Lamont now with the question that I posed earlier. Scotland enjoyed a trade surplus of £2.8 billion in 2013 equal to 1.9 per cent of GDP. The UK had a trade deficit of £26.7 billion, 1.6 per cent of GDP. There is a consistent pattern. The member perhaps acknowledged in those figures that 70 per cent of our trade was with the rest of the United Kingdom and explained to me why creating any kind of barrier with our major customer would be advantageous to that trade balance. I am afraid that the dream that goes through Mr Gray's head is that we are putting up barriers. No-one suggests about putting up barriers. Anyway, talking about trading ability, it is quite interesting that Scotland's net trade position in surplus has grown by 318 per cent if one considers the yearly average from 2007 to 2013 versus the yearly average of 1998 to 2006. Notwithstanding the downtime in the Elgin oilfield in 2012-13, Scotland has had a better current budget balance average over the past five years than the UK. The same applies to the current fiscal balance, even allowing for the financial treatment of capital spend in 2012-13. Scotland performs well, and it will get better. It is richer per head than the UK, France, Japan and Italy and the majority of independent developed countries. However, the debate is not helped by some of the positions taken by the Westminster Government based on data produced by the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility. It is regrettable in my view that the OBR has not taken the opportunity to engage more fully with the Scottish Government across taxation and revenue streams. That might have helped to destroy the view of some, as expressed by Alistair Darling in 2010, that, right from the start, the Tories used the OBR not just as part of the Government, but as part of the Conservative Party. It has not helped either that the OBR itself confirms that its methodologies on tax are work in progress, i.e., they are not proven, and that they, in their own words, were unable to involve the Scottish Government in the stage of the process of determining Scottish tax forecasts for confidentiality reasons. I wonder why. That extends also to oil prices and revenues. In its EFO document of March 2014, the OBR itself said, movement in oil prices and the exchange rate means that the price of oil is slightly higher than we assumed in December. That, of course, has been confirmed this week by Pira and the Economist's Commodity Index, as I mentioned earlier. Scotland is a wealthy country. The best way in our return to the democratic deficit is to secure the investment in our schools, hospitals and public services. The best way to handle the challenges, the volatility and the opportunity facing our nation. The best way is to accept the people of Scotland that are sovereign and let them create the Scotland that they wish. Only independence will deliver that. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is always a joy to follow Chick Brody, because I believe that devolution gives us the best of both worlds. It is the best way to ensure a future for our public services, to invest in our schools and hospitals, but it has also been a fantastic platform in Scotland for us to support the expansion of our financial services, our renewables, a market for our food production and the investment that we have seen in that, and support for tourism, all of which have grown and been strengthened with a strong Scottish Parliament working in partnership with the rest of the UK. We can do all of that without the division, without the disruption that would come from the uncosted independence plans that the SNP would take us through. Strong devolution is also about living in an interdependent world where no one party, no one institution is all-powerful, where we have to work together for the greater good, and that is why we need double devolution 2. In our devolution commission, we gave the commitment to support local authorities to address the issues, to act on housing, to act on employability, where our most disadvantaged communities desperately need action to tackle the market failure and to tackle the problems that have come from our Tory-led Government. It is not just about new powers, it is also about funding streams and building up capacity and capability as well. It is also about supporting our rural and island communities, giving them the opportunities to do more. Stronger devolution, as part of the UK, is a much better future for Scotland. On all of the issues that I have just mentioned, the SNP could have acted if it wanted to in the last seven years, but I think that historians will look back and question Alex Salmond's judgment in waiting seven and a half years to have a referendum when he could have got going at the start. We could have tested this issue out seven and a half years ago. In three months of the Labour Government being elected in 1997, we had the referendum, we had a decision and we were able to get on with exercising power to seek the opportunity to tackle social injustice and to build in solidarity. That was the legacy of the Blair Government. No, thank you. In choosing not to act on the bedroom tax in 2013, that decision tells you everything that you need to know about the cynicism of the SNP, who could have used the powers that they had, who could have looked at how they could help local authorities. As we predicted, there was a cost to that year of inaction. It left thousands in debt for the first time in their lives. It meant councils and housing associations diverting scarce cash out of investment programmes from improving their housing stock to support tenants. It left a sting in the tail that councils are now having to address. Those people who paid their bill, who paid the bedroom tax that, when they could ill afford it, were now aggrieved and they are having to deal with that reality, so the SNP could have done more. Our local authorities do not have the luxury of playing with politics. They have to take decisions now in the real world. They cannot put difficult decisions on hold. Social care challenges are here now and increasing. I was speaking to a constituent just on Monday, who has worked as a care worker for 23 years. She is on the verge of giving up because of the pressure, because of the lack of time that she is allowed to devote to the people that she cares for. She believes—I think that she is right—that her hard work is not valued. The work that Unison is doing, highlighting the need to tackle inequality and the work that is done with Renfrewshire Council, shows what we need to be doing. Rather than sticking with a sterile and cynical debate, the SNP would push us into. We need an urgent debate now about how our local authorities provide and improve quality services to the people that need them now. Local authorities need to expand their training. They need to integrate their work and employability, and they want to deliver at a local and regional level to deliver strategies with employers and colleges that will actually work. That is what they need to do. We should be empowering them to do that, not telling them why they cannot do it, not cutting back in the FE sector. At our Scottish Labour councillors conference at the weekend, we had a fantastic set of discussions about the work that is being done now by local councillors, even with the challenges that the SNP has put in their way. Consulting with communities, looking at the tough budget choices, shaping their services and getting on with implementing their manifesto commitments now, despite the centralising and underfunding agenda that they face. There is fantastic work being done in West Dunbarton, Falkirk and Glasgow and Edinburgh to make sure that our young people have real opportunities for training, but there is so much more that can be done. You only need to look at the local government elections over the past 18 months to see that that work is acknowledged by local communities. They do not want their local authorities to be used as a political football. They want people to get on and do the work now. You can see that there is a challenge that is being met by our local Labour councillors. If you look at the number of seats where Labour has won in the past 18 months, we are currently running 13 to 1. 13 Labour seats in the past 18 months versus a single seat by the SNP. Some of those by-elections were caused by SNP councillors resigning from the council. That tells you a story. That story has not been debated in here, but one of the things that I was delighted to do was to speak with Leslie MacDonald and to communicate with Leslie MacDonald, a South Lanarkshire SNP councillor who has been an SNP member for 30 years who has joined Labour and to welcome Neil McIntyre at the weekend, the first Labour councillor ever elected to Ergyll and Bute to serve for Oban South. There is something happening at the local level. People understand that practical commitment to social justice and social solidarity. We need to be doing more to support that, to get off pause and press play. Let's get on to the 19th of September. Annabelle Goldie, when she spoke earlier on today, said that she was giving us facts. That is a very interesting point that she made. Obviously, she can look into the future and tell the future if she is giving us facts in relation to her projections and the projections of the various other bodies that she referred to. She said that the yes side was making sweeping assertions and she implied by that, I suppose, that her facts were not sweeping assertions. I would question the ability of any of us to know what is going to happen in the future and if the OBR, the IFS and the Treasury and all the rest of them are so clever and so good at forecasting the future. Why didn't they warn us about the recession that was going to hit us in 2008? What we need to do in this debate is look at where we are at the moment and we know the truth of the situation at the moment. We know what we have with the United Kingdom. We know that we have austerity. We know that we have come through a recession. We know that we have the bedroom tax. We know that there is more and more of that to come. Those are facts. That is something that we can be very, very sure of. The Labour Party motion talks about Scotland being worse off financially if we go for independence. It basically says that we are currently, and have been for a long time, subsidy junkies. Not only does the Labour Party motion say that, it actually says that if it was true and they believe that it is true, I presume that they are not just kidding us on, but if it is true and they want us to remain as subsidy junkies, what does it say about their vision for the future? Does Boris Johnson know that the rest of the UK subsidises every single Scottish man, woman and child by what was it that Johann Lamont said, £1,600 a year? What about the UK that is supposed to spread the load so that the richer parts help the poorer parts? Do the people in the north of England really subsidise us in Scotland? Does the Labour Party really say that they should continue to subsidise Scotland to the tune of £1,600 per person? The First Minister of Wales believes that we shouldn't. He wants the Barnett formula changed. He wants a cut in the Scottish budget of £4,000 million a year, so we can see where the Labour argument is going. We can begin to look into the future and realise that what Labour is advocating is not a future where Scotland is subsidised by the north of England and other poorer parts of the UK, who, by the way, are suffering because of London and the south-east. It won't continue if it is true and, of course, it isn't true and they know that it isn't true. Dr Simpson. I can perhaps enlighten him in the field of health that the north-east of England received higher health funding than Scotland in two of the past five years, so there is a redistributive effect throughout the entire United Kingdom. Does the member support the redistribution of their alleged £1,600 per person to Scotland? Does he accept that that money should be redistributed from Scotland, because the ultimate aim of their assertions about the rest of the UK is that everybody should be receiving the same across the whole of the UK, because that's how you would balance the budget, that's how you would have fairness within the UK? If the member doesn't accept if he is saying that he wants Scotland to remain part of the UK so that we can get a higher level of funding than other parts of the UK, then I think that their whole argument is based on a false premise. Scotland is a very, very wealthy country. Can I just read out one or two things to you? We have a £13 billion food and drink industry, a £7 billion financial services industry, £3 billion in life sciences, £6 billion in creative industries, £10 billion business services, £17 billion in construction, £9 billion in tourism, £9 billion in chemical sciences, £5 billion in aerospace, £4.5 billion on whisky and, oh dear me, on top of all that, £1.5 trillion on oil and gas. Then we have 10 per cent of Europe's wave energy potential and 25 per cent of Europe's wind and tidal energy potential. Scotland is a wealthy country, but Scotland's wealth is not being spread out evenly across the country. The 10 per cent at the top under the UK has 900 times the wealth of the 10 per cent at the bottom. I want that changed. The members and Labour, the Liberal and the Tories, obviously don't. Thank you so much. Richard Simpson, to be followed by Rob Gibson up to six minutes. I intend to talk mainly about health, but I cannot resist saying to Dave Thompson about the concept of redistribution. If I may give him a further example, 40 per cent of inheritance tax is actually paid within the London region, and yet it is distributed across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is about taking in from where we are wealthy. Scotland is now the fourth wealthiest region. We have moved up from eighth to fourth under devolution. Why would we want to jeopardise that? If he does not understand the concept of redistribution, then I have not the time to teach him today. The challenges in health are for the yes campaign to explain what possible advantages there are to patients through independence. The union provides many advantages that will be put at risk and will over time degrade our current advantage. The NHS is fully devolved and has been so since the Parliament came into being. It is based on an approach that is now agreed across all five parties, that of collaboration and co-operation. We have our highly respected medicines consortium, our evidence-based signed guidelines. We have higher levels of consultants, we have higher levels of nurses, we have higher numbers of beds. All those are underpinned by the fact that we receive more funds through the Barnett formula, as the north-east of England does, based on need. The Barnett formula was not based on need, but the continuation of it, because it was a formula that was expected to reduce us to even Stevens over the years, but it has moved to something different. Can he tell me, then, which part of the UK gets less and is suffering because of the way things work? London gets less because London is wealthier. What do you not understand about the concept of redistribution? The biggest challenge to Scotland's current preeminence and health will be that independence will come about indirectly. Currently, we have five medical schools. That is far more than we require as a country. The students from England pay substantial tuition fees for medicine and, indeed, for all other forms of higher education. It adds to the bill that Ian Gray added up, and there are a few more figures to be added to it. One of it is £140 million on university fees, which we will lose if we become independent, because we will not be able to charge an independent EU country those fees. Over time, the how-it-reports prediction that we should have our medical student intake will happen, and we will have too fewer medical schools. Under the union, we have had five schools because we are part of the union. The current situation in the UK is also that Scotland punches massively above its weight in terms of medical research. It is competitive, and I stress the word competitive, research applications result on us getting 14 per cent of the funds—£257 million pounds—from the UK Medical Research Council. No, I must make some progress. Population share would only be 8.3 per cent, and I think that even the SNP has to accept that as a fact. The £83 million raised from UK research councils by the University of Edinburgh equals a third of its overall research income—£21 million pounds—from the Scottish funding council out of £121 million in research funds. Without the medical research councils on a UK basis, we would have to pay for that ourselves, so we will need to add that on to the bill in this fantasy land that we are being presented with. That applies to the other 13 research councils. The other 13 research councils we also punch well above our weight, 13 per cent or so. We might be able to afford that. Maybe we could, but we would not be winning those research applications in competition with the rest of the UK, and that means that over time the quality of our research is likely to degrade. Similarly, I have personally no doubt that we will eventually gain entry to the EU, but any delay in membership could interrupt the horizon 2020 funding as well. On research, the whole thing is a downside. Of course, the nationalists will promise to match that research funding, but again, we do not know quite where from. If it does not just apply to the research councils, the welcome foundation and other charities will not fund in the same way. If you do not believe that, look what happened to Aira. When they pulled out the lost medical research council funding and welcome only funds 50 per cent of the projects in Aira, not the 100 per cent that they do in Scotland. There are lots of other things that are on the downside. We would have to set up a whole raft of agencies, and the biggest disappointment to me is that we have had absolutely no indication of the costings of those. Do we set up a separate human tissue organisation, a separate organ donation organisation, a separate health professional council, a separate general medical council, a separate general dental council, a separate nursing and midwifery council? There are 277 agencies that we are going to have to set up on our own, and we have no idea from the SNP or the S-campaign what the costs of those are going to be.   Then we come to the issues of what way we do share. For example, one of the newest innovations is the proton beam therapy. It costs between £50 million and £100 million each. There is going to be one in Manchester and one in London. If we are independent, we may still get access to them, but we will certainly not get access at marginal cost. It will be at full cost. I have asked the S-campaign and any speaker today to tell me one advantage in health terms of being a separate and independent Scotland, because I cannot see them at all. Thank you so much. I will now call on Rob Gibson to be followed by John Mason up to six minutes, please, Mr Gibson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This debate at its heart is discussing how we should fund top-class public services. It is talking about ensuring a high level of investment in our schools, hospitals and public services in Johann Lamont's motion. We also have amendments that are one-tax obsessions about oil. They ignore the opportunities and the flexibility that there is if you talk about independence and the kind of taxation policies that an independent Scotland could contemplate. I want to return to the offer that was made last Monday by the unionist parties, because one of their great supporters, Ben Thomson, said that the headline in the story was taxing issue at the heart of devolution pro-union parties failed to address. He said in the Herald, when people are looking for genuine vision, the pro-UK parties are in a position to offer it, but too often in politics compromise is a byword for agreeing on the lowest common denominator. It would be tragic if that were the case here, as the lowest common denominator proposal would only give us an extra 5p on income tax, with no welfare powers or permanence to the Scottish Parliament. Our country, he said, needs so much more. It needs so much more that we should use the ideas about independence and taxation to actually say how we can support these public services, and here are some ideas. I do not suppose in the days of new labour and its followers that they read the Jimmy Reid Foundation. Investing in a good society, five questions on tax and the common will is a document that contains suggestions that are carried out in a moderate way in many northern European countries and others. It is suggesting that we need higher wages, and from higher wages, we get higher taxes. It talks about reducing tax evasion. Is it more easy in a small country than in the UK? We will look at the success of HMRC and ask yourself, could we do worse? To generate new tax and income from wealth, from land and property, and just think about the devolution offer at the present time in terms of tax. I deal with the rural economy. We have the Scottish Affairs Committee in London suggesting that we need to have reform of land reform, but they do not think that they can convince any UK Government to end tax evasion, to stop tax havens, and they are arguing that that is not a possibility in the present circumstances. Labour is silent on these issues when it talks about land reform. It has an empty quote. The Jimmy Reid Foundation goes on to talk about generating greater income from Scotland's natural resources. When you look at the way in which our natural resources such as energy have been mismanaged, we know that we can get more money from those and the tax from the development of those industries that have been denied to us by this current situation. That is why I would suggest that the reserved tax powers and the many arguments that we hear from the pro-union parties are never going to deliver for Scotland on the basis of that wealth that my colleague Dave Thompson talked about. I will take an intervention from Iain Gray. Iain Gray. I am genuinely puzzled by that because the prospect is on what she stands, and the Government supports and tends to reduce the taxation that, for example, major energy companies provide. How would that get us more tax from them? You do not read the whole story. For example, in Ireland, with a lower co-operation tax base, they are taking in far more than we are in Scotland at this particular time. As the First Minister said, in response to the way in which the arguments of the pro-union parties have been put, with independence we can design, tax and economic policy to attract and maintain HQ functions to Scotland by implementing an industrial strategy for Scotland, by working together in a social partnership to improve wages and by tailoring policy to make the most of the huge comparative advantages that we have in key growth industries. The very industries that I talked about earlier when we were talking about the ways in which we can raise tax in an independent Scotland. The obsession with trying to say that we cannot is based on the fact that you are not prepared to look at the opportunities that independence opens up. That is why I think that pitching in the Jimmy Reid Foundation remarks are one of the things that help us in this Parliament to see that there is a better way, not better together, but better with independence. This debate shows what a long and weary journey the unionists propose. On 18 September, we can start a voyage of opportunity with a yes vote, safe in the knowledge that Scotland has a sound economy and that can only be made fairer through independence. When I started looking at the wording of the Labour motion today, I have to say that I thought some of the wording was a little bit strange, so let's look at some of the wording. Early on, it says that the best future for Scotland is one where its devolved public services are delivered by the Scottish Parliament. Well, presumably we all actually believe that devolved services should be delivered by the Parliament, but the question is which services should be devolved. I guess that there are three options. Either it is the same services that we have at the moment, or perhaps it should be fewer services such as education going to Westminster, as has been suggested by some of the Labour people, or perhaps it should be more powers, and if so, which powers should it be. I think that the motion might have carried more weight today if there had been even a suggestion as to where devolution is actually going. I have seen billboards saying that more powers are, quote, guaranteed. Now exactly what kind of guarantee is this? Is it written down somewhere? Was it in the Queen's speech? Or is this just an assertion with no actual substance? It seems to me a no vote is therefore hugely uncertain for all of us. There are probably three options if there is a no vote. Firstly, things carry on much as at present, because folk at Westminster are fed up thinking about Scotland. Secondly, since prevails down south, people realise that they have narrowly escaped losing Scotland and they hand over substantial new powers, for example, complete home rule, which I do not think Willie Rennie believes in nowadays, although his party used to, but that is what happens roughly in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, where they do everything themselves except defence and foreign affairs. Presumably the third option is for the people down south to say that Scotland has had its chance, it is time to teach them a lesson and we will cut their budget by £4 billion or whatever. All of those are possibilities, but we really have no idea which would prevail. Presumably there would be a debate on that within the three UK parties, or four if we include UKIP, and a lot might depend on the 2015 Westminster election, but for Scotland voting no is a complete lottery. There is no certainty and no guarantees. At a couple of independence debates that I have been at recently, the example of Quebec has come up. There there have been two no votes and the uncertainty has gone on and on. At the very least, a yes vote would deliver certainty, we would all know exactly where we were, and we would get on with it. By contrast, after a no vote, uncertainty would continue and that would be hugely damaging for investment and jobs. Will the member at least acknowledge that the people in Quebec have rejected independence, have rejected another referendum and actually told the Government, which was quite popular, decimated their vote because they were threatening another referendum? They are saying no to a never-endum, as the people of Scotland will. The people of Quebec and every other nation or province or anything have the right to make their own decisions. My point is that, if you vote no, uncertainty continues. If you want certainty, the only way to have certainty is with a yes vote. We have another phrase in the motion that talks about the UK being secure and stable. Is that an assertion or is there any evidence that the UK is strong and stable? The UK is clearly not strong on the world stage anymore, either militarily nor economically. What country with £1.5 trillion in debt, still increasing year by year, could actually be called strong or stable? I think that Japan's got a few problems as well, and they've got a population problem too. It also talks about the motion about pooling and sharing resources. To be fair to the motion, what it actually says is that we are allowed to pool and share resources, not that pooling and sharing resources is actually happening. Our members opposite-telling me are going to tell me that people in the east end of Glasgow, who in the winter are having to choose between eating and heating, are in some way benefiting from the pooling and sharing of resources. When rich companies and individuals pay little or no tax, pay expensive advisers so that they can pay even less tax, how is that pooling or sharing resources? Of course we should care about poorer people in Newcastle or Liverpool, or in Lisbon or Paris for that matter, but how does it help a poorer person in Glasgow to know that they are on the same boat as their counterpart down south? That is pooling poverty. It is not pooling resources. If we say to someone in Dire Straits in my constituency, yes, we could help you to have a better life, a proper minimum wage and better housing, but we need to hold you back in poverty because we can't also help all the other poor people in England and all around the world. How does that help anybody? Are we or are we not the Scottish Parliament? Does that not mean that we should be doing our best for the people of Scotland? Surely it does not mean that we deliberately hold back the people of Scotland because we cannot help everybody else around the world. It is arguable anyway whether the left in Scotland—I am sorry, I have run out of time last minute—is arguable anyway whether the left in England might benefit from Scottish independence. That was a point that Tony Ben and Tarik Alley disagreed on. The weekend after Tony Ben died, Tarik Alley was in Glasgow, and I heard a fascinating interview with him on Radio Scotland. His argument is basically that if Scotland becomes independent, we have the opportunity to set an example to the rest of the UK, to show how a socially just country can operate within the British Isles, and that could be a beacon example to the rest of the UK. I welcome the fact that we have had this debate this afternoon. I am disappointed that the Labour Party wants to hold back the people of Scotland from a better future, and I am delighted to support the Government amendment. Many thanks. Now we move to closing speeches. I will find myself once again reminding members that they should be in the debate for the closing speeches, those who have taken part. Mr Rennie, six minutes. We are often accused on this side of the debate of being negative, despondent, running down Scotland, not believing in the ability of the Scottish people to do more. What we have heard, speech after speech, on that side of the chamber is a tirade of negativity about the United Kingdom. At a tirade, I heard John Mason talking about a lottery, a debt, pulling poverty. How much more negative can you get? To believe that somehow to draw a line on the map will automatically deal with those problems is naivety in the extreme, and it is something that I would have thought better of John Mason. I like to be positive about the UK. I think that those who have shared a platform with me will have heard me talk about the many positive reasons, and I am a convert to the referendum. I think that there have been some benefits from us being able to explore the strengths and weaknesses of our nation, the fact that we can look at the things that I think we often take for granted. I will give you three positive reasons. The first is the shared currency, the single currency and the single market. That means that we can trade right across the United Kingdom with limited barriers. Somebody who is doing their business in Ochtarmerchdy can trade with somebody in Lansen in the south west without limitations. We have also got an energy market that means that 30 million consumers across the UK can help us to drive forward our renewable ambitions in Scotland and keep energy bills lower than they would otherwise be. An energy union that benefits everybody across those islands. And a research union that means that the brilliant researchers in our Scottish universities, what, four or five in the top 200 in the world of the universities are here in Scotland, those researchers get 50 per cent more funding as a result of our pooling arrangements with research councils across the UK. I think that there are positive reasons. I know that there are positive reasons because the nationalists tell us so. Those are the things of the United Kingdom that they want to keep. The longer we get into this campaign, the more things that they discover that are good about the United Kingdom. I wish that sometimes the campaign would go on forever and then they might be eventually convinced about the absolute benefit of the United Kingdom. But I fear that the campaign has been going on for too long already. I will take an intervention. The fundamental problem is that, William Rennie and often his colleagues on the no-side mistake independence for isolationism. Independence is about choosing how you enter into relationships with other countries and co-operation with other countries on the terms that suit you and the terms that suit them. The impression that is created is that every other country around the world, including the rest of the United Kingdom, will agree to the nationalists every demand. Every single thing that they demand of them, they will automatically agree to. The benefit of the United Kingdom means that we are locked in. We have a guarantee that the good things about the United Kingdom are guaranteed to remain. His option, Mark McDonald's option, means that it is not guaranteed. They cannot demand of others the things that we have just now. All the great benefits of the United Kingdom would be under threat as a result of his proposition. Mark McDonald, I have to commend him for his work on carers. I genuinely think that he has done some great work on that. However, I am sure that he will be disappointed by the white paper when he talks about welfare, because I have heard him many times in the chamber condemn the United Kingdom Government for the £2.5 billion-pound apparent cut in the welfare budget. However, I have had a good look at the welfare proposals in the white paper, and there is not one more penny for welfare. Not one more penny is going to be spent in the first year of an independent Scotland, so so much for this evil Government imposing wickedness on Scotland. If they cared that much about it, they would be increasing the welfare budget, not keeping it the same—exactly the same—as Ian Duncan-Smith is proposing for the first year of independence, as it would be. I think that Rob Gibson's speech was quite interesting, because he showed the ability to face so many different ways at the one time. He talked about the Scandinavian model of achieving Scandinavian services, but on American tax levels. That is the kind of contribution that he made. He went on to praise the Irish corporation tax levels, not just cut by three pence, but on behalf of if Rob Gibson would have his way. I find that a bizarrely interesting contribution. I am not quite sure what the Jimi Reid Foundation would make of it, because I am sure that it does not endorse cutting corporation tax in half, as Ireland has done. I look forward to the next meeting of the Jimi Reid Foundation to see what it will say about Rob Gibson's idea of a socialist Scotland. John McAlpine's contribution was also quite interesting. He talked about Samuel Johnson and all that we needed to have his belief. If we could solve all the problems in the world by belief, it would be in a much, much better place. However, the world is a little bit more complex than that. Of course, we have to be optimistic. Of course, we have to believe that we can change things, but we have to look at the reality. The one thing that is depressing about the SNP's offer on independence is that they are point-blank refusing to set out what the first few days, first few years of independence would be like. We do not have any idea about the set-up costs for independence. In fact, they are refusing to give any answers. They say that it is too difficult to answer the question. They are able to answer every single other question on the upside—never answer any difficult question. Let me return to the Scottish Government's finance paper, which was published just a few short weeks ago. In referring to it in her opening speech, the Deputy First Minister said that we would grow the economy in an independent Scotland and that we have set out policies in the finance paper to show how we would grow the economy. The paper does nothing of the sort. The paper claims in the Scottish Government, of course, press release claim that we would get an extra £5 billion a year in revenues by 2029-2030 and £2.4 billion by increasing productivity by 2.5 per cent every single year instead of 2.2 per cent. That does not show you how you will grow the economy. All that says is that if you increase productivity by 2.5 per cent every year between now and 2029, you would anticipate to get £2.4 billion extra a year by that point. That does not demonstrate at all how you might do it. They say that we would get an extra £1.3 billion a year by increasing the employment rate by 3.3 per cent points. However, it does not demonstrate at all how you are going to increase the employment rate by 3.3 per cent points. It simply states that if you were to achieve that, you would get an extra £1.3 billion a year. The same about their comments on immigration. They do not explain how they are going to do it. They simply say that if you had higher immigration, we would get an extra £1.5 billion a year. They add them together to get a nice £5 billion figure, but it does not explain at all how you are going to do it. It simply says that if those were actually to happen, you might get an extra £5 billion a year by 2029 and 2030. I think that it is about time that the Scottish Government explained how they intend to do that. Do they have any ideas or suggestions on how they are going to do that, or are we relying once again on pure assertion? Mr Rennie, in his closing, talked about set-up and transition costings, and I think that that is important, too. Again, it is something that the Scottish Government has shied away from on more than one occasion. There is an entire chapter in the white paper, pages 337 to 351, dedicated to transition, but not a single costing about how that might be done and the actual costs in setting up various bodies and departments. The official written position of the Scottish Government, as per the white paper, is left blank. Are we to assume that the set-up and transition costs would be nil? We have the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Secretary saying that it would be too difficult to tell us what transition costs would be, and we had the First Minister in a statement to the press saying that about £250 million sounds about right. I do not know which one is the official Scottish Government position at this stage, but it is certainly not going to be £250 million. I think that there is a duty and an obligation on the Scottish Government to do their best efforts to let us know what is their best estimate of what a set-up and transition cost would be. The reason that the £250 million simply is not credible is this. If you look at page 146 of the draft budget for 1415, there is a budget line for Scotland Act Implementation. Implementing the Scotland Act 2012, which the Scottish Government and the SNP say is a marginal act, which does very little to give Scotland greater powers, but over the course of three years implementing what they describe as a marginal act is going to cost £53.5 million according to the Scottish Government's own figures. If you look at the Scottish Government's own figures for the set-up costs of Police Scotland, turning eight police bodies into one according to Audit Scotland, who took their figures from the financial memorandum of the Scottish Government, between 2011-12 and 2014-15, the total costs of implementing that reform would be £147 million. Between the setting up of Police Scotland and the implementation of the Scotland Act 2012, we are at the best part of £200 million. That is why it is simply not credible to suggest that the set-up costs for an entire country would be in the region of £250 million. That is why I think that we deserve answers from the Scottish Government on this absolutely critical question. John Swinney, in his leak paper, said very clearly, undoubtedly, there will be a cost associated with setting up and running the necessary institutions, and in some cases, those are likely to be significant. He also said that work is currently under way in finance to build a comprehensive overview of the institutions, costs and staff numbers, which I will draw together and provide an update to Cabinet on in June. If that was the right thing to do two years ago, then I asked the Scottish Government why it is not the right thing to do now. Why are we not being given transition costs? In closing, I reiterate what we said at the very start of the debate. We call on the Scottish Government to republish their financial paper with a central estimate for oil and a cautious estimate, not just the optimistic estimate. And we ask again that they publish transition and set up costs. I thought Mr Rennie made a strange remark for somebody who is supposed to be an advocate of devolution, and as he would have it in this debate, an advocate of further devolution or double devolution, as Sarah Boyack characterised it. I am looking forward to finding out what double devolution happens to be. Mr Rennie said that the position of the Government was essentially that you could draw a line on a map and think that problems can be sorted. If Mr Rennie takes that view and thinks that that is not the way that we should proceed in policy terms, why is this Parliament here? Why have we got responsibility for health? Crucially, because the line has been drawn on the map and we have that control, we are able to do things differently in Scotland on health. I do not think that any of us in this Parliament disagrees that we should be doing things differently in health, because none of us would want to go down the route on healthcare policy that the United Kingdom Government is currently embarking on, but, of course, I will give way to Mr Rennie. The difficult question is that Mr Rennie is saying that, by separating off, by not having a pooling of resources any more, that suddenly we will be able to solve all the problems that his colleagues have highlighted today. I believe that local decisions are good decisions, but partnership is a good thing as well. That is something that he seems to ignore. That brings me on to the next point that I want to make, which is—well, it is well seen—where that was roundly endorsed from. It brings me on to the next issue that I want to raise, which is about an issue. The bedroom tax, for example, a line on the map has been drawn and we have addressed the implications of the bedroom tax in Scotland. Mr Rennie even voted for the budget to support that. If Ms Marra wants to make an intervention rather than mutter, then we will have an intervention, but if she is just muttering, we will leave her to mutter in the corner. Back to Mr Rennie, who voted for the budget on the basis that we had tackled a number of issues, one of which was tackling the bedroom tax, which was supported by my muttering colleagues over in the Labour Party into the bargain. Let me develop this point. If what that says to me is that there is a different policy position and attitude here in Scotland that we want to resolve in this Parliament that takes us in a different direction to the rest of the United Kingdom, we should be able to do that on all of the issues that concern us as a Parliament. We are able to do that on health, we were able to find it, and eventually, by successful negotiation by the Deputy First Minister, to get there on the bedroom tax, but why should we not be able to do that on a whole range of other issues? I will give way to Mr Greene, if he wants to. On the face of it, I agree with much more what Mr Sonny is saying. We supported his budget on the basis of the action that we agreed he would take against the bedroom tax, but I cannot miss the opportunity to ask him why we are now three months past the point where he agreed that he would have dealt with the bedroom tax, made the money available to local government and made sure that nobody was paying it and that he still hasn't put the system in place yet. As usual, Mr Greene walks into the brick wall that I put in front of him. The reason why we cannot put all of the provisions through this Parliament is that we are waiting for Westminster to allow us to do so. That is the number, the problem, Mr Greene. Of course, if you want to slap into another brick wall, here we go. I agree. I sat in Mr Sonny's office and we agreed an alternative way in which the outcome that we both wanted could be achieved. If he chooses, if he prefers the constitutional grievance to helping the poor tenants suffering the bedroom tax, that is his choice. There is not a single local authority in the country that is limited in its ability to tackle the bedroom tax today. There is a legislative process that has got to be completed upon which we are dependent on Westminster to take forward. I gave Mr Greene the assurance that we would abolish the bedroom tax in Scotland by the route that was reliable and dependable, and that is precisely what this Government is going to do. That brings me on to one of the points that Joan McAlpine raised, in which she questioned the notion that has been running through this debate about the offer of security and stability in the United Kingdom. It is a similar issue to the bedroom tax issue, because on the information that is available to the Government now through the publications of the child poverty action group, it is estimated that, as a consequence of UK welfare reform, the number of children in poverty is going to increase in Scotland by 100,000. I am doing the achievements that have been made over a number of years to remove children from poverty. According to the Better Together argument, we should just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that is the price of the union. That is what we get from the issues that have been determined by Westminster. The whole argument for me is about whether we are prepared to sit in this Parliament and debate the issues, or whether we are going to acquire the powers to do something about those issues, to coin a phrase from Mr Gibson in his contribution from Rob Gibson, and to tackle the obsession with what we cannot do, which is the obsession of the UK parties in this debate. Scotland is capable of resolving those issues and determining a better future. Both Mr Gray and Mr Brown have set out arguments about the papers that we have produced and said that we have not evidenced what measures we would take to try to improve economic performance. Let me set out a few of them. We have set out that we would use the tax powers that come with independence to support innovation, to encourage and incentivise tax credits for research and development, to ensure that we can create higher value employment and economic opportunities in Scotland. We have said that we would provide more effective capital allowances to encourage investment in manufacturing companies, where there is a lack of activity in the UK perspective. We have set out the approach that we would take on encouraging new export initiatives to support small companies to get active in the international markets. We have set out our proposals for the reintroduction of post-study work visas to encourage trained people from around the world to live here in Scotland. Of course, all those measures fit into the projections that we set out as a Government about improved economic opportunity that would come about. As we have set out in the financial projections paper, I will do that. Can he tell the chamber why he has the only set out one oil scenario on which his entire financial paper rests? I do not know what papers Mr Brown is reading, but I have a paper in front of me. There are six oil scenarios on page 13 of the oil and gas bulletin. Can he read and get to elementary contributions to the parliamentary debate? The point that I was making to Mr Gray and Mr Brown about economic improvements is that a 3.3 per cent increase in Scotland's employment rates could boost Scottish tax receipts by £1.3 billion. We have increased Scotland's employment rates since, in the period running up to 2 March 2014, by 3.5 per cent over the period four years previously. Population numbers—Mr Gray was poking fun at us about population numbers—the 10-year average increase in net migration in Scotland is 22,000. The Government's projections are based on 24,000. It is a modest enhancement of the existing net migration levels that we have into Scotland. Is it Mr Gray following the debate in this respect? One final comment to address the points that Richard Simpson made, which was about not one single advantage for health being set out by my colleagues as a consequence of independence. Let me give him one very clear example. If a UK Government decides to continue to slack—it is not if it decides to slash public expenditure in the future—the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberals are all signed up to austerity to slash public expenditure in the United Kingdom. What will that do? As a consequence of the Barnett formula, it will reduce the block grant in Scotland, put further pressure on health and education. That is the price of staying in the United Kingdom. We need to get out of austerity, and we need to use the resources of Scotland for the maximum benefit of the people of our country. Thank you. I now call on Drew Smith to wind up the debate. Mr Smith, I would be obliged if you would continue until 5 o'clock. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This has been a warm afternoon, and some contributions have certainly benefited from the heat. Over the past two years, and indeed since I came here in 2011, I have often reflected on the question that will finally be answered by the Scottish people in September. One of the most fascinating things that I have found is the need for those who support independence to explain to themselves, but particularly to those of us who are saying no thanks, why we hold the view that we do. We are told by the nationalists that Nicola Sturgeon set out more of this this afternoon and repeated the same old lines, that it must be because we do not understand the issues. We have not thought enough about independence. It must be because anyone who believes in the UK must be a Tory, or because they are being told to do so by someone else in London, or simply because we are all too fear. None of this—I am sorry to disappoint—is actually the truth. In any debate, it is useful to examine the arguments of the other side and to try to understand why people disagree with you, rather than to characterise their position for them or to abuse them for holding it. In terms of characterising others' position, I do not think that we will ever have a better example than the speech that we had this afternoon from Chick Brody. It is said that nationalists want Scotland to be a normal country, and that means that we must be independent. However, Scotland is already a normal country, and we can choose to continue to be a normal country that works together with our closest neighbours. Neither side of this campaign has a monopoly on normal people who support their view. Mothers and carers who support union over independence are normal, and indeed all the polls tell us that they are the majority. I oppose independence fundamentally because I do not believe that it will be in the best interests of Scotland, or if the rest of the UK, and specifically for the people that I am in politics to try to represent. I suspect that many people who take the opposite view from me actually do so for identical reasons—the same motivation, but the opposite conclusion—and that is where the political debate should be. The case that Labour has put before the Parliament and the issues that are highlighted in Johann Lamont's motion take us to the fundamentals—whether or not ordinary people will be better or worse off. That should not be based solely on an economic analysis, but it is the territory where I think that politicians most usefully assist the public who are after all going to be the decision makers in all of this. The debate needs to be returned to the issues of substance, rather than simply imagining answers to questions that were never asked. Building up straw men as Mark McDonald did in slogans and promises without price tags. There are very real and serious questions, which those who promote independence have completely failed to answer on the currency most notably, but on Europe, public finances and jobs too. Annabelle Goldie made the point that asking those questions is not negative. Denying that those questions are important or asserting that definitive answers have already been given when they have not, it just does not help them. When the questions are denied or diverted, it leads the rest of us to the conclusion that, for some, independence is desirable whether or not it makes Scotland a better place. It suggests that many of the things that are put forward as reasons for independence are not reasons at all. Instead, it is independence that is the reason for the policies that this Government promotes. I understand that nationalism might not be the starting point of everyone who supports a yes vote, but I suspect that it is still a major driver for many in the SNP. Scotland, free, no matter what, no matter the cost, is a view that I fundamentally find unattractive. It leads me to the worry that, when it comes to the detail, too many of the policies are not properly worked out at all. To the concern that some on the yes side will, in fact, say anything to get over the line in September. We have seen more of that this afternoon. The Trident funding pledge prize that has become a part of every one of those debates has to go to George Adam today, who told us that what was apparently announced as a self-funding childcare policy is now to be funded by cutting trident. I want to turn to some of the other issues that have been raised this afternoon. Members like Kezia Dugdale, Richard Simpson and Sarah Boyack, who have set out their concerns about public services, should Scotland decide to end devolution and the basis on which we pull and share our resources across the whole of the United Kingdom. Members on this side have argued that Scotland can enjoy the best of both worlds, with a strong Scottish Parliament focused on both the defence and improvement of our public services, while also being backed up by the strength and security of being part of a partnership with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The member accuses others of empty slogans, yet he has just trotted out best of both worlds and pulling and sharing resources. Can he tell me that the people who live in poverty—he just now in Scotland—are at the sharp end of welfare reform. Which world exactly do they have the best of both of? I think that no one is denying that slogans can be helpful in politics. The problem is that, when your politics is only a slogan, the evidence that we have heard from many of the experts who have looked at Scotland's public finances have told us two things. First, that an independent Scotland would begin from a worse financial position in the rest of the UK. Secondly, if our existing public services are to be maintained, never mind the many promises that have been made for how much better everything else will be, we will either need to make cuts, raise taxis or both. Our calculations suggest that independent Scotland could expect to be running a deficit of around 5 per cent of GDP in 2016-17, which would be larger than that facing the UK as a whole and would necessitate tax rises and spending cuts. There will be a net fiscal loss under independence looking into the future city group. With the recent drop in all revenues, Scotland's fiscal deficit is now significantly above UK levels. The Pensions Policy Institute has said that a future Scottish Government would need to raise tax, cut spending or accept higher borrowing. Johann Lamont was absolutely right. There is an arithmetic and a credibility gap. First, between what the Scottish Government claims about the public finances of an independent Scotland and most of the other independent assessments, and secondly, between the promises that are made that would entail more spending and the money that is to be raised to pay for them. We have no credible costings for a radical expansion of welfare benefits, no long-term costings on childcare, and no costings work has been done at all on the expenses of setting up the institutions of a new country. At the same time, the Government has pledged no rises in personal taxation and cuts in corporation tax. The Scottish Government's own much-admired Professor Stiglitz has said about that policy. Some of you have been told that lowering tax rates on corporations will lead to more investment. The fact is that that is not true. It is just a gift to the corporations increasing inequality in our society. I think that I would rather prefer Joseph Stiglitz's lectures on redistribution to that, which we heard from Dave Thompson. Labour has today sought to debate the risks to our public services, which we believe exist because of the Government's failure to present a case for independence, the experts are saying that our fiscal position will be worse because of independence, the experts are saying that taxes will have to go up or services will need to be cut, we know that there will be set up costs associated with independence, we know that there are costs associated with the policy promises that the Scottish Government is still making, yet we are told that everything will be better, more money will be spent and we will pay for it by cutting taxes for big business. It is difficult to believe what the SNP is saying, and since the line appears to be say anything, it is easy to deduce that they do not believe it themselves either, because if we take them at their word, the only common sense conclusion is that the costs will have to be paid elsewhere, schools, hospitals or other public services. Following the most recent downgrading of oil revenue estimates, the independent experts are predicting a bigger fiscal gap in the first year of independence, and I have heard nothing this afternoon that explains to me why it is that all those independent experts are maliciously making these estimations, it is just extraordinary. There are many points to be debated on the pros and cons of independence. In terms of the debate, there is a variety of interesting legal arguments to pour over, there are those like Joan McAlpine who will be fascinated and excited by the business of draft constitution writing, there are those who are already with the Scottish Government, who passionately believe that Scotland should be free, no matter what, no matter the costs, but there are many more who are looking for a real debate about what independence would mean for them, for their families, for their jobs, for their local hospital or the school that their child attends. As Parliament approaches our summer recess, Labour