Good evening, everyone, and happy St Andrew's Day. My name is Elaine Smith, and as deputy Presiding Officer, I'm delighted to welcome you to the Parliament and to the ninth annual St Andrew's Day debate. Today's debate and the wider competition that preceded it have been organised, as usual, in partnership with Education Scotland and the English speaking union, so I would like to start by thanking those involved from both those organisations for their hard work and their effort to which culminates in today's event. Thank you very much. Today you're debating in a chamber that usually serves as the place where devolved legislation is enacted and policy matters are debated. This chamber sees great diversity when it comes to debates. Sometimes the debates are very passionate, sometimes controversial and then sometimes even consensus breaks out with all sides agreeing that a piece of legislation or a motion for debate is too important for party political division. Of course, we don't expect consensus today, as the idea is to robustly put your case and to win. As I've chaired several of the St Andrew's Day debates, I'm always very impressed with the extremely high standard of debating and who knows, maybe we've got some future MSPs and ministers among you today. I'm sure we have. As a parliamentary and as a deputy Presiding Officer, I'm also always very happy to lend my support to the competition and I do have a bit of personal experience in debating. I know first hand the skills and the knowledge that can be derived from debating a wide range of subjects and that that can be extremely rewarding and beneficial across many areas of life. As a former teacher, it's also great for me to see so many skills participating and gaining debating skills at an early stage. I know all of our participants today and throughout the competition have been learning and improving their knowledge and skills, but perhaps more importantly, I hope that all the participants have also been having fun and I hope that you continue to do that this afternoon. The unique style that St Andrew's Day debate offers in its pairing of students from our schools and universities is clearly a successful formula as the contest goes from strength to strength. The Scottish Parliament is always pleased to host this competition because it not only affords the opportunity for students and pupils to debate in this chamber, but it also provides us with an appropriate way of celebrating St Andrew's Day. As you will all know, St Andrew is Scotland's patron saint, a tradition that comes from the Orthodox and Christian churches. Saints often become the patron of places where they were born or had been active or where relics remain. St Andrew was crucified by the Romans on a diagonal cross, reported as taking place on 30 November, and hence the choice of this day to mark his life. St Andrew's relics are at St Mary's Metropolitan Cathedral in Edinburgh, and this also provides Scots with a special link to Amalfi in Italy and Patras in Greece, where two cathedrals named after the saint also hold his relics. St Andrew's Day has been celebrated for generations by St Andrew's University students who traditionally get the day off. Scottish Parliament made St Andrew's Day and the official holiday in Scotland in 2007, and the Parliament constituency and government staff all get a holiday. I was being heavily lobbied on Twitter by local school pupils at the weekend who also want a holiday for St Andrew's Day, so I will need to put that case. St Andrew's influence has felt right across Scotland, and in my own area we have a church, a high school and a hospice named after St Andrew. Further afield there are many St Andrew's societies worldwide, and they were originally set up as self-help organisations for Scots who had fallen on hard times. They form a network of Scots who are all united under the saltire across St Andrew, and they include societies in places such as Bermuda, Singapore and Washington DC. Bringing us back closer to home, more and more Scottish towns and cities are using St Andrew's Day as a platform to launch winter festivals and celebrations and to get us all through the dreath winter months. Today, as we look outside, we can see the cold, dreath weather starting already. However, in year it is a lot brighter because the chamber floor has been given over to some of Scotland's most talented young debaters. I wish our finalists all the best of luck, and good luck to everyone else who is going to be taking part, I hope, in the open debate, which we are going to come to later. Basically, all that is left for me to say is that I hope that you enjoy this afternoon's debate and the visit to your Scottish Parliament. Good luck, everyone, and thank you. So, before I introduce the finalists today, I am going to first of all introduce some really important people, the judges. Chairing the judging panel will be Alex Orr, Alex is a managing director of Orbit Communications, a public relations and a public affairs consultancy, and he is also chairman of ESU Scotland. Next, on our judging panel in the middle, we have Kezia Dugdale MSP. Kezia is the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and Kezia was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2011. As well as leading the party, she also co-convenes the Parliament's cross-party group on drugs and alcohol and children and young people to policy areas that she has a particular interest in. Neil Bibby is, sorry, Nick Bibby. I knew I was going to say that, we have an MSP called Neil Bibby. Nick Bibby is the communications officer for the Centre on Constitutional Change based in Edinburgh. As a journalist, he's written for many of the well-known broadsheet newspapers and is an author and editor on the theory of debate. Alex Dawn is a recent graduate in history from the University of St Andrews and is the current speech and debates officer at ESU Scotland. He is the 2015 European debate and debate champion and the Cambridge Intervacity Champion and was a finalist at the 2014 St Andrews debate. The St Andrews debate also encourages pupils to join the judging panel for the debates held throughout this event, and so I'm delighted to welcome Michael Creekin of Holy Cross High School as the last member of our panel of judges. As I said to Michael Earlane, I'm particularly delighted since I, at one time, taught at Holy Cross in Hamilton. So, I now want to congratulate and introduce the four teams that I've made it to the final. The first team are Callum Fairbairn from Falkirk High School and Abigail Van Schalkwick from the University of Edinburgh. They will be known as Falkirk Van Schalkwick. Next, we have Hannah McLaughlin from St Columbus High School and Katie McLean from the University of Edinburgh, and they will be known as Columbba McLean. We also have Luca Del Pippo from Perth High School and Elliott Porter from the University of Glasgow, and that team will be known as Perth Porter. Finally, we have Jenny Purdy from Marr College and Chris Edgar from the University of Glasgow, and that team will be known as Marr Edgar. So, just before we begin, I would like to outline the format of the debate. I will call on the first proposition speaker to speak, and they have five minutes. I will then call on the first opposition speaker to speak, and they also have five minutes. This will be repeated for each speaker. During the eight speeches, I will verbally announce when your first minute is up. I hope—I think that I forgot last year on one occasion—I'm trying to do it right this year. That will indicate that points of information are now permitted. I will also verbally indicate when you have entered your last minute, during which no more points of information will be allowed. When your five minutes are up, I will ask you to wind up, and if you continue further, I will ask again for you to wind up after 30 seconds. Now, as you may know in my role as Deputy Presiding Officer, I'm tasked with keeping the members of the Scottish Parliament to time when speaking in the chamber. As Kezia, I will no doubt attest, and I trust that this debate will follow in a similar fashion. Please use the clock round the chamber for reference, because these will be timing you. After the final speech for the opposition, I will then ask our judges to retire to make their very difficult, no doubt, decision. At this point, I will then open the debate to the floor of the chamber for around 30 minutes. I hope that everyone as much as possible will participate in the floor debate, because there will be an award for the best contribution from the floor as well. The motion for today's final is that this House believes that Governments should prioritise economic equality at the expense of the nation's overall prosperity, which now takes us on to getting the final started, and best of luck to you all. So, I would like to call the first speaker from Falkirk Van Schalkwick to open the debate as the first proposition speaker. Five minutes, please. Perhaps you should have explained that as well, so I apologise.  Please feel free to stand up as Members of Parliament do, so we will start the five minutes. Good afternoon. We will be proposing the motion that this House would prioritise economic equality at the expense of overall prosperity. To define the motion, we believe that a basic income should be provided to all citizens at a level that ensures basic dignity and quality of life. Of course, funding is essential in this debate, so we would ensure that this was properly funded by increasing tax rates on large businesses and high net worth individuals. That would be alongside other policies to promote social mobility and the development of the working classes and projects to expand people's horizons. I will be covering several main points today about why the current system is not fit for purpose in the modern age and leads to significant inequalities and how the Government has a basic duty to ensure a basic standard of living for everyone in society, and about how prioritising economic equality would lead to that being delivered. First of all, I will look at how the current system is not fit for purpose. Currently, we have record levels of inequality across Scotland and the UK. Food bank use is up, people are out of work and there is a widening gap between the richest and the poorest in society. At the same time as people are being forced to use food banks for the basic needs, there are record sales of things such as private jets and boats. That is all because the current capitalist economic system supported by the current Government prioritises individualism over collectivism and concern for fellow citizens. That leads to entrenched inequality and a wealth gap in society as ILD2. The current Government, as many previous, has implemented many policies that are supposed to improve equality in society, but the figures show that they simply have not worked. The other fact is that the main effect of inequality in society is on the poorest, the women and ethnic minorities, who often cannot fulfil a full role in the economy, may be that they cannot work due to caring for children or other family members. We believe that, if we had a basic income for all citizens, those people, along with everyone in society, would be able to fulfil their basic and full potential. Secondly, we believe that one of the basic and most fundamental rights of all Governments worldwide, including in Scotland and the UK, is to provide a basic quality of life for all citizens. That means a life free from shame of the humiliation of begging. Currently, that is not the case for many people across the country. We believe that that is out of touch with the modern liberal image that Britain has given us. Does giving people who are already in the bottom society a little bit more money actually make them any more equal or a little bit more well-off? Of course, the policy that we are proposing would not ensure total equality, but what it would do is ensure that the poorest people in society have a basic standard of living, and we believe that that is essential for everyone. We believe that the current levels of inequality and the rampant inequality have recently shown that it is only rising across the country. We believe that, as is out of touch with the modern liberal Britain that the country is supposed to be and should be. We believe that current policies that have been implemented by recent Governments such as the decision to cut the 50p top rate of tax have only added to the inequality. We believe that our policy of giving people a basic income would allow people a basic dignity, it would make sure that they have a roof over their head, they can provide basic food for their family and it would ensure that they are free from stresses and anxieties caused by inequality. My third point is to prioritising economic equality to fulfil this duty. It would ensure that everyone in society, no matter what their wealth or age or background, feels part of the society and feels that their efforts are valued. It would ensure that wealth and success are shared equally across society, rather than among the richest few, as is currently the case. That would, far from damaging the economy, improve the economy overall, as everyone could reach their full potential free of the traps of poverty. We believe that the current capitalist economic system in the UK places a burden on the poorest people in society and favours the richest people in society. We believe that the Government has a duty to provide a basic level of living of people who can live in accommodation and with adequate food. We believe that prioritising economic equality would fulfil this duty to all in society and ensure that everyone, no matter what their age, background, income or where they live, could live with the basic standard of living. That should be a given in this country in the year 2015. I would now like to call the first speaker from Colomba McLean to open as the first Opposition speaker, please. Five minutes. Economic equality does not come from when we just tax businesses a little bit more money each year. We are going to prove to you that economic equality only comes when a country is financially stable in the long run and when a country is financially stable as a society and not just on an individual level. I am going to be proving to you on two ways. First, I am looking at why economic stability prosperity equals stability. Secondly, on the reverse, this motion causes instability and the impact that it negatively has on all the workers and people who are trying to protect and trying to help and make their lives a lot, lot more worse in the long run. First, I will start with a tiny bit of rebuttal. What we are trying to do is to show that we have that argument about people being out of work and how they are going to protect those people and get it better. As Cady is going to come on to tell on her case, the point at which the Government has less money as it is, it is much harder for any other businesses to have the incentive to come into a country that is financially unstable due to the fact that the Government is giving it more money to its citizens and not retaining that money as a comfort blanket and security net than going on to explain. That is why we think that that is just wrong. Secondly, the idea of universal income, we do not think that universal income does anything to help people in the long run, because all it does is give them a little bit more money than they already had in the first place. You never get them a quality, it does not spread a quality, you give them a little bit more, but it is not going to ever make them equal to anyone else in society. That does not work. Let us look at my case. First, I am looking at why economic prosperity equals stability. Why does having a surplus amount of money as a Government actually make you a more stable and effective Government in the long run? There is a little bit of money when, in times of recession or crisis, you have a security, you have the knowledge that, in fact, you are not going to have no money to bail out your banks, to bail out your businesses when you have a recession. You have that security of knowing that you are a stable country that has that money. We point to the example of Germany when, in the recession, it was able to have less redundancies and maintain a more stable economy due to the fact that it had extra money in the Government to allow them to not have to cut as many people's jobs, not to have to tackle their economy more, but to keep them in relatively the same places that they were before. On the comparative, Greece, a country that did not have any of that money, did not have any security nets because all they did was borrow money and had no money in the Government, ended up in a situation where none of the people were stable at all, they had no business as wanting to invest, everyone was moving out, the country went into a crippling nation that never is not being able to get back out of that recession because that is the sort of situation that occurs. Therefore, what happens when a recession comes? We think that it proves that the country with more money effectively has the ability to maintain stability in the long run because it has the security of knowing that you are a stable country and not feeling that they do not have the money to back up their jobs. However, why does that matter? First, we think that when an economy fails, it is really bad. When a country like Germany raises lots of capital to stabilise their budget, it actively harms prosperity because companies do not want to invest because their profits will be taxed away. How does your policy actually jail with creating prosperity? Okay, what we think it does is Germany, even if it is taxing businesses more, we think that it has that extra money anyway. At the point of which, in Britain, you do not have that stability because you are giving all your money away to more individuals, you are never going to be able to tax these businesses because you do not have credibility. However, as we look at why it matters when economies fail when recessions hit, we do not think that it is the CEOs of companies that get fired when a recession hits. We think that it is the ground-roots workers who work nine to five days and whose jobs do not really matter in the long run of that company, who do not really have that much of a say in how that company is long and only get like minimum income. At this point, you are actively harming and documenting the lives of those people that proposition is trying to tell you they are defending because you are stopping them from having a job that is ever going to allow them to be financially stable or prosperous because they do not have the opportunity to do so. The point of this is that you have to hint your own prosperity on the fact that your economy is able to support you and give you a job because we think that you do not get that job when companies are less incentivised to come into your country. That is why this cripples the nation. On an individual level, you allow the breadwinners of families to completely stop having a job and not be able to support their family, but you stop that economy on a national level by being able to function and make any money in the long run. Now, let us look quickly at why companies, when companies fail, are extremely bad as well. Even when there is a good nature in the economy, it is worse when a company often fails or comes into liquidation. At this point, when a Government is putting all its money into more individuals and not having that safety net, it is much harder for them to help actual individuals who do not have any money because they have lost their job, who do not have any support to get that because it is a lot harder for a Government to find money that they possibly do not have. At this point, not only do you harm the lives of those individuals, you harm the lives of the rest of their families and all these vulnerable individuals who are never going to be financially prosperous under this motion but only become more and more in poverty and not being able to get out of it at the point at which you lose your job. Because this motion actively harms the lives of all the citizens who proposition want to help and means that you will never get stability in the long run, that stability only comes when you are financially prosperous at a society and a nation, I have never been prouder to oppose. Thank you very much, Hannah. I now call the second proposition from Falkirk Van Schalkwick to give us their views, please, Abigail. Five minutes. Today, I am going to be speaking about, firstly, how this is necessarily going to maximise the ability of individuals to self-actualise and contribute to society, and secondly, how this better actually helps traditionally disadvantaged groups. Before I go on to both of these things, I would like to do some rebuttal, right? Firstly, right, first opposition stands up and they say to you, well firstly, giving them a little bit of money is necessarily going to help. At the point where the money allows them not to queue up at a food bank to put a roof over their head and feed their children, we don't think that that is insignificant in terms of this debate, right? We think it is largely beneficial to a large society in which we don't have large amounts of people depending on food banks, right? Secondly, this idea of, you know, you have instability if you are spending money without a surplus, we just think it is untrue insofar as most major economies do like rely on a deficit, we just don't think it is necessarily true that you need a surplus necessarily to run a really good economy. Thirdly, right, we think this thing that they say, right, that companies won't be incentivised to come to the UK as far as we're giving more people money. So firstly, we think companies are still going to be incentivised to come to the UK, and so far it is still a massive market for them to break into. We think there are other economic advantages that mean that companies are still going to come in and still operate in Britain insofar as there are these advantages and it is a massive market, right? No, thank you, right? Fourthly, right, they say that they don't think it's necessarily going to give them equality. We think on both sides of the house, equality for these people is poorly done, right? We think at least on our side we give them a basic lifeline on which to exist and a basic standard ability to live and actually maximise their potential, which is what I'm going to get onto now, right? Firstly, right, we think that the duty of the government is to help individuals to maximise their full potential, right? We think at the point we can give them a basic standard in which to live fully with human dignity, right, and allow them to actually live their lives in a way that isn't constrained by poverty, isn't constrained by the ability to be able to feed their children, we think that it is inherent good, right? Secondly, right, no, thank you, people's ability to self-actualise is often dependent on their financial status and what they're able to do, right? Government should ensure that everyone is given some form of economic equality by giving the poor more so that they're better able to self-actualise, right? We think it's an incredibly good benefit that happens on our side of the house, right? We think this is more important than any of the small harms that may arrive on your side of the house, right? Secondly, right, what happens, right, is like we think that what happens under the status quo, this is not just true for the absolute poorest in society, we think that it's also true for large groups of people, right? We think financial states like prevent them disproportionately from doing what they actually want to, right? We think often we probably have more businesses and more people actually innovating insofar as they're not too scared to take the risk to be able to do things at the point where they're given a basic lifeline, right? We think people who are poorer off are less able to take risks, be innovators and create businesses insofar as if they lose their job for doing that or spend less time doing their job, they're probably going to starve to death, right? We also think like often, like some of these jobs are incredibly, like some of these things, people who are on the lower end of the pay spectrum do provide proper services and great services, they're nurses, teachers, things like that, at the ability where they're more able to perform those roles without worrying about being poorly paid or completely on the lower end of the income, we probably have more good jobs that happen. Even the jobs that are necessarily important to the status quo, we still think it's incredibly important, right? We think at the point where we can allow people by giving them a basic income and the ability to be equal no matter what their jobs are, we think they're more able to pursue passions that they have, they're more able to go into things like art, more able to go into certain autistic adventures, right, which otherwise they wouldn't be able to insofar as they are the poorest people in society and often aren't able to because of the financial constraints that exist, right? Yes. I think they might have been innovator and want to create a new business when my economy is unstable and won't support that business in the long run. We just don't buy that giving more people money is going to make an economy unstable, right? Look at all the states that actually exist in somewhat socialist schemes, right? They're completely stable countries, right? We think Scandinavian models work perfectly fine, right? We think that it's completely untrue for them to mischaracterise this debate, right? Secondly, how's it going to better help the use of bondage groups, right? So firstly, right, when nations overall like prosperity exist, it only benefits a small group of people, right? We think it benefits people generally at the top, right? The people that are disproportionately affected are often women and people of lower socioeconomic differences. Firstly, women, right? We think women, like, because of social structures, gender norms and family commitments, they're often in the lower paid part-time positions. They are more effectively disproportionately affected by, like, economic inequality, right? We think at the point we prioritise economic equality and do actual schemes that actually benefit them more. We think we're more likely to be able to actually help people who are like an entire generation that is more like affected by this kind of thing, right? We think also like poorer people generally will be able to actually be more supported under this motion, right? We think at the point where they're given a lifeline and more money and able to have actual equality, right? We think that what happens is they're basically able to self-actualise and actually be able to feel that they are part of society and contribute to society, right? We basically think, right? There is a fairer way of living in today's society. We think the government's role is to ensure that the basic standard of living exists and that people are as able to maximise their potential as possible. We think this motion is the best way in which to do this. If we can prove that it's true, we think that no matter what harms they bring and the minimised harms they bring, I'm not far outweighed by that for all of these reasons that we beg you to have proposed. Thank you, Abigail. Can I now ask the second Opposition speaker from Colomba McLean to speak? That will be Katie. Five minutes, please. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we think to an extent that the Opposition has misunderstood or purposely tried to avoid their main burden in this debate today. It isn't to prove that they can stop one family from going to one food bank because they've given them a bit more of the government's money. It is ultimately prioritising those individuals' lives to cause them some equality by therefore stopping their government and state from being as prosperous.  We have started to prove to you already on Opposition why that is true. We don't think that they can just tell us. They can help one family by their model. They have to prove that there is a certain equality that is reached under their side of the house, and if they don't do it, we win. I'm going to be looking further more at what Hannah has told you in my case. Hannah has already explained to you what happens in terms of jobs and things when you leave vulnerable people open to losing them when an economy fails and when a company fails, as we have looked at in a relatively weak economy, which this will be when they are spending most of their money as they are prioritising it on giving it into living wages instead of otherwise. I am going to explain why we think that it is unlikely that you are going to have those jobs there in the first place anyway, and we are going to engage more fully with their idea of universal income. Before that, we are going to start with summer battle. Closing up stands up on a point of information to Hannah and tells you that we have misunderstood why Germany was still rich, why they taxed lots of businesses heavily. First of all, that is not the only reason why Germany managed to stay rich. It did things such as spending less money so that they had more left over to look after themselves. Secondly, if they want to argue that taxation and having all that money meant that Germany was heavily taxing people and that that resulted in businesses wanting to not stay in those countries and that sort of thing so much, we say that that is exactly what they are doing under their side of the house, some free empty rebuttal to whatever they are going to see in theirs. Then, second of all, we think that it was not okay for them just to like shoot, shoot, like what is the word, poo poo Hannah's analysis when she tells you all of the stuff about how it is exactly the people they want to help under their model when she talks about the vulnerable people who work in companies that fall when at the point at which an economy has less money to support them in an emergency situation, which they will have less money, no thanks, if they spend it all on providing universal income. We think that it is those people that we help. Then, she tells you about people being able to pursue risky or entrepreneurial things in a situation where they do not have enough money to do so in the first place. First of all, we think that that is not the only reason why people feel like it. It is because they think that that company might not succeed, for example, which we reckon is even more likely in a society in which the economy, as Hannah has proved and they barely analysed as to why it was untrue, was stable. Finally, she gives you this idea about minorities and we say the best way to get people into work and have a good time is to have a good job building an atmosphere where we do not get it under their side of the house that we get on ours. Let us look at mine, no thank you. First of all, we think that in terms of what happens when people, why we do not think that people will set up, we think that there are a couple of reasons companies will be disincentivised to set up in our nations in their world. Why is that? Firstly, we think that it is quite risky to put yourself into a country where most of their money is being spent on social welfare instead of a safety net in a situation. Let us look at examples of where that is true. One of the big arguments that we are seeing in the European Union is that it works as an excellent safety net if you are to get into trouble and that other economies can rush in and save you, because having that extra money kicking about is always viewed as a good thing in investors' eyes when they think that it is going to be safe. Secondly, we just think that it is true that when you have things such as minimum wage or living wage, which is significantly more expensive, it is disincentive for people to invest in those countries because they have to spend more money as a result of that. For those reasons, we think that those jobs do not exist. I will take an opening. The UK economy is completely different from the economies in Europe that are currently struggling like Greece. You have more people able to spend money in the economy by having more. I am sure that that is good for the economy. Okay, so we just do not think that it is true that we think that, basically, you can only spend as much as your economy is giving you the ability to. We think that when there are less jobs, for example, we just think that although living wage is fine, it is good that people have a bit of money, whatever. We think that one, that has harms, but two, that is not as much as you would earn if you were in a job, right? Here is why all of these things, although things they tell you, fall, right? The biggest issues facing people in terms of why we have economic inequality is things like unemployment. It is things like youth unemployment, for example. We think that when there are less companies and businesses willing to invest in the youth and that sort of thing in a company, it is less likely to happen. Secondly, we also think that you are more likely to give better opportunities and better job opportunities to people who think that they can rise to the top in a business. We think that the problem is that when your business is cut off at the top because the country in which it operates is not one of high fiscal work, it is very disincentive. Finally, and this is the most important part, is that we think that, basically, if you are told that the country in which you are investing will only ever be able to reach a certain standard and a certain height in terms of the money that it makes, that means that you are more likely to set up elsewhere and it does not benefit the people that they tell you about. You do not get any of the benefits under their side of the house and you harm the most vulnerable, you should oppose this motion. Can I now ask the first speaker from Perth Porter to open the case for the closing proposition team, please? Five minutes. The push for prosperity in any policy is the most destructive economic pursuit a Government can pursue. We say that our mechanisms are particularly biased in favour of risky behaviour that are destructive of the economy and that it is critical that we about-face and change our policy drastically. We accept, though, that we slower growth on our side and we accept significant drops to the consumer's utility garnered. We are happy to say that that is better overall for our citizens. Three points. Firstly, one very quick point of characterisation. We think that it is going to be a social democracy and what it looks like and what sort of economy we will have. Next, on to the purpose of wealth creation in our economy, which I think is crucial, and lastly, on the intrinsic instability and destructive pursuits of prosperity-oriented capitalism. What we say first, Edinburgh Bottle, is that the claim that we get from opening is that prosperity exists when a Government has a significant amount of capital in reserve. We say that that is fundamentally not true. For exactly the reasons that the second speaker just conceded, when you tax a lot of people's companies, they are less likely to set up, they are less likely to trade in your company, that's less likely to drive growth. We are eating that harm, we are happy to accept that because we believe that we get certain benefits out of it, but the entire opposition case that we got is predicated by the assumption that you will have lots and lots of excess capital in your economy, in your estate, if you're prosperous. We don't think that's true. On to the substantive material. What alternative do we think we're going to get? First, we think that it's going to look like a social democracy. This will be like Sweden, this will be like Denmark, perhaps like Norway, but we accept that they have a certain benefit of a sovereign wealth fund. We're going to have high wages, we're going to have niche industries, we're going to have slow growth. That's okay. What do we think the purpose of wealth creation is? It is to bring benefits to the lives of your citizenry. We measure this logic by GNI per capita, GDP per capita to some extent by currency. The problem is that this creates an illusion. We do not distribute this wealth per capita, it is tied up in land, it is tied up in valuable goods, it is tied up in dividends paid to shareholders. We think that this is fundamentally harmful. Firstly, because it creates the perception that our country is significantly more wealthy than it is. We think that this is harmful because it changes how government behaves and it leads to the erasure of the poorest people in society that is important. Secondly, we think that there is no significant multiplier of this capital. It is not useful to have capital in banks, it is not useful to our economy that capital is spent shoring up the share price of a company by paying higher dividends. We think that this is fundamentally harmful, no thank you. What would rather see this money being significantly shifted towards the poorest because they are more likely to consume it locally. They do not save as much money because they need to spend in order to maintain a standard of living. They are more likely to spend it locally, providing jobs to people in their local economy. They are most likely to build by cheap consumer goods, a cheap car built in your country, rather than German or Japanese cars. We think that this is useful for creation of jobs in your economy, this is the only way that you get significant economic development. We think that it is slower, but it is extremely valuable. What do we think that you get when you have a particularly equality-oriented economy? We think that the state is likely to pursue longitudinal economic policies. Why? Because when equality is your primary concern, you do not engage in high-risk behaviour. High-risk behaviour leads to inequality. That means that your only thing that you can use to provide growth is infrastructure projects, is long-term projects. We think that these are particularly useful. What do we think—and this is crucial—is intrinsic to any Government policy that pursues prosperity? We look particularly at the UK. We are largely reliant on our financial sector. Financial tools are the only thing that the UK bit make that anyone wants to buy. I will take you in a moment. When does the problem look like it has been solved? When you have given those people universal basic income and gone, okay, that is you now? Or when you can see that people are still struggling and you can help those specific individuals rather than just giving a equal amount of money to everyone? It is fairly apparent that when someone is still struggling, we are happy to have extensive policies, as opening said. We are happy to model our economy, largely like Sweden. Our objective is to have very low inequality. Particular Government actions can be extensive. We really do not care the particular mechanisms. The debate is about whether we value growth in our economy overall, whether we value being an economic superpower or we value a decent life to all our citizenry. We think that it was particularly important. The financial tools that are built in the UK are not based on any actual change in the world. The increased value—because I can sell you a financial tool—does not make the material world change. Therefore, you are more likely to have a market crash. You are susceptible to these crashes because the value is not pegged to anything. That is crucial. Why do you think that crashes are integral to such policies? It is because you only get high returns when you engage in high-risk behaviour. Safe bets are always on lower turn. On their side, the state is explicitly supporting high-risk behaviour. What does that look like? Probably tax cuts to large companies so that it can absorb losses. We will be the lender of last resort. We think that we are also going to deregulate banks on their side. It is probably significantly dangerous at the point at which you say, we want to get rich fast, engage in as much risky behaviour as you like, we will cover you. Why is this harmful? First, if you do have a loss of confidence in your currency, for instance, you are less likely to be able to raise the capital to build infrastructure projects. There is also an opportunity to cost. Every time the state says, I will pay for your losses, that is nurses that cannot be employed, that is railways that cannot be repaired, that is electricity grids that cannot be updated, meaning that people in your country are significantly poorer. You cannot push wealth in a slun sustainable way when you are reliant on high-risk, high-return capitalism. We see this as why countries in the UK are devastated by economic crashes, where countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark weather them reasonably well. They do not rely on high-risk behaviour, they do not pursue prosperity at any great rate. We think that for very, very clear reasons, this economic policy is the only one that significantly benefits your citizens. It is the only one that can be sustainable, it is the only one that provides the sorts of goods that we require. I am very happy to return after many, many years to this illustrious chamber. It has been good fun. I have spent a lot of time training in the Glasgow University of the Chamber on those grounds. I think that I am almost at time now. I thank you all for your time. I would now like to call the first speaker from Mark Edgar to open the case for the closing Opposition team, please. The opening Government case is a relevant to equality, therefore a relevant to this debate. It is simply a case for welfare, i.e., give £200,000 or £20,000 to all poor people so that they do not have to go to food banks. Recognise all of their benefits still accrue if simultaneously you are also given double that amount of money to all rich people, thereby increasing the economic inequality. It still solves their case, so they only care about absolute poverty, not relative poverty. That being true, they should join Opposition on this side of the debate. The case that we are going to bring you from closing Opposition is why the absolute quality of your life is far more important than the quality of your life relative to other people. That is why prosperity should be prioritised over equality. From closing Government, we hear that wealth creation must benefit the citizenry, which is exactly what we are going to attempt to prove as the case on our side. The rest of the closing Government case is essentially trying to cheat the debate by arguing that their side, despite sacrificing the economy, is better for the economy in some weird way. That is failing to live up to meeting his own clash which he set up which was trading off the economy against equality. He then tried to tell you that money in banks is not useful, despite the fact that that is what facilitates mortgages and business start-up loans. We think that it probably is good for the economy. Let us look at why we win this debate from closing Opposition. First of all, we will demonstrate why prosperity improves your quality of life as an individual. First of all, on healthcare, this requires a Government to be able to spend lots of money on its NHS. If you suffer economically, you can spend less money on that.  Your life is the most important thing to you because it is the means by which you experience all of the happiness and all of the pleasure in your life.  That needs to, therefore, matter in absolute terms. It does not matter if someone else's life is extended in an extra three years, if your life is extended in an extra two years, that is still a massive benefit from you. However, that costs money and that is money that Proposition no longer have because it has sacrificed prosperity. Second, defence of the realm. When a state is poorer in absolute terms, it cannot afford the same defence budget. 2 per cent of your GDP just is not worth as much money in real terms. No, thank you. That means fewer troops or military hardware, so it is harder to secure your foreign policy interests abroad. That means weaker security services, so you are most susceptible to attack the risk of terrorism increases. That is a direct real harm to everybody in your state. Thirdly, infrastructure projects are harder to finance. Again, that requires raw capital from your Government, and it is unconnected to how equal citizens are compared to each other. Motorways, public transport expansions all require money. On their side of the house, these fall gradually further and further behind the times, because that is something that evolves over time. Obviously, if they enact this policy now, it makes a slight difference every year, which compounds and compounds. In 100 years' time, our railways are completely dilapidated. That applies to a number of public funding things. Education also suffers as a result. I will take a PY now if you want before I move on. No, okay, I will move on. Second point, we also care about equality beyond borders. We are not sure why my economic advantage over someone in Glasgow or someone in Plymouth is more harmful than my economic advantage over someone in Central Africa. From opposition, we stand for a world that is best capable to redress their qualities between states. When we are richer, we are better able to do that. Why? First of all, we can spend more on foreign aid. Again, on our side of the house, 0.7 per cent of your GDP is just a bigger sum of money. That means when it is a smaller sum of money on their side of the house, that means that they can afford fewer vaccinations, they can build fewer schools, they have fewer wells for clean drinking water for people, they have less crisis relief for when natural disasters occur. That means direct significant harm to people who, under their metrics, should be the most vulnerable, who are at least equal to the extent that that is a useful phrase. Elliott. I gave you analysis as to why pursuing prosperity is particularly unstable and most likely to harm the poorest, making them less wealthy than they mean. What is your response to the particular final minute? Our side is prioritising prosperity, i.e. growth. You are arguing that by prioritising growth, you get less growth. That clearly does not make sense and clearly is not what the comparison in this debate is supposed to be about. Second of all, on this point, you are less able to invest in green energy. We think that the places at most at risk of climate change are developing world economies. There are big inequalities between us and them. Why do side propositions not care about those inequalities? I think that a prosperous state is better placed to take the economic hit of investing in slightly less efficient green technology. Thirdly and finally, returning to the defensive point that you talked about earlier, it is harder to perform humanitarian interventions when you have a weaker army on your side of the house, harder to help the most vulnerable people in the world. What have we brought you from this debate? This is a comparison between inequalities and prosperity. When you have prosperity, in absolute terms, you are better off. I have demonstrated why being absolutely better off is far more important to you than being slightly better off in relation to other people opposed to the motion. I now call on the second speaker from Perth Porter to conclude the case for the proposition. Hi, today I am going to explain why the proposition has won the debate, put forth points for economic stability and overall made valid contributions to the debate. The purpose of economic growth, I do not think that anyone can disagree with, is to solely benefit the people of the nation that it is serving. No one can disagree with that, but the fact is that our current economic system doesn't benefit the people. It benefits a very few number of people at the top, no one at the bottom. The very people who work for these companies get a staggering little amount of percentage of the income that the general company makes. Large companies are—sorry—our economy is based on the financial sector primarily, as is looking at Britain. Those companies do not even invest in production anymore, like the traditional capitalist system would. They invest in hedge funds, which essentially produce money out of money.  It is not providing jobs to the very things that they seek out that they claim. When they get in trouble from bad investments that they have made in said hedge funds, they ask for tax payers' money to bail them out.  That has to stop. It is extremely unsustainable. The current system is extremely unsustainable and has proven time to time again. When there is another economic collapse, we absorb that shock, the working people. They do not. The people have trillions. We do. Tax payer money and we bail them out. What happens to the people who are now only surviving on the living wage that you give them under their side of the house when the recession hits and you have no money to help anybody who has lost their job? It is specifically because you used the word when the recession hits that points out the ills of capitalism. When we have a reform, there should not be any recession because everything is proportionate into how much a person works. That is more in the mechanism of it, but we do not have enough time to go over that in depth. I feel that we should look towards countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have proven to us that social democracy works and works very well. They are much more technologically advanced to us and they are much more ecologically advanced to us. They have a better education system and a world-class health system. Those are all things that come of social democracy. Equality is actually positive for an economy, contrary to your beliefs. It is positive because the state can look at longer-term economic plans, such as railways, roads and trams, as we have in Edinburgh. Those things contribute to the economy slowly over time, but they are safe vets. They always contribute to the economy and make a positive impact, but on a slower scale. When there are collapses caused by the current economic system, people lose their jobs or get paid less. You might say that this encourages productivity that will drag the economy back over. That is morally and ethically wrong, being total work harder for less because the economy has failed you. That needs to change also.  Is this what economic prosperity means to you as a 21st century Western power? Food banks, people going to food banks, people going homeless? That is not right and it needs reform. I have some rebuttals. First, we gave you the analysis on why the trickle-down effect does not actually work. You have not supplied evidence that it works at all. In fact, you have actually supplied us evidence of poverty and inequality. You made this absurd claim that life on life while defending the necessity of poverty in a social order is just totally absurd that you can even begin to defend the quality of life while promoting poverty. Contrary to your belief that, for some reason, international aid has slowed down because of economic reform, we could potentially spend more on international aids and all those other things that I mentioned in the current social democracies if we stop spending so much on bailing banks out and bailing big companies out. You get growth in the society in this economic form, but it is not spread out evenly. You hear on the news that the economy is down and the economy is up. That is a good thing, but it really only benefits the top 1 per cent. It does not benefit any of us because we are a fixed wage. You also said that workers can have the aspiration to go to a CEO of the company and become rise to that rank, but that is just not true. I think that you know that it is not true, and that rarely happens in that case. It is actually elected by the shareholders who say that this guy can make more profit because he comes from a privileged background and he knows the business and he knows this guy who is also part of that company. It is almost an aristocracy, and it is not a form of working in meritocracy. Corporatives under the new economic reform do not require greater ownership, so they have more stability in the workers who run it. I thank you for listening to us and I beg you to vote for the proposition in this historic reform. Can I now call the final speaker, please, from my Edgar to conclude the case for the opposition, our fourth Opposition speaker. Five minutes please, Jenny. My role in concluding this debate will be threefold. I would first like to take this opportunity to respond to the opening proposition, then I will go on to respond to the closing proposition, and then I will sum up why the closing opposition should win this case. The opening government are providing welfare. That is what they have suggested. They want to provide welfare to their people in absolute terms, which my partner has already discussed with you. That would mean that their minimum wage would continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller, because the gap between the rich and the poor is continually shifting downwards and downwards and downwards. In response to the closing proposition, any step towards equality will not give us prosperity. Having to rely on a food bank is bad in absolute terms. It does not matter how many other people are reliant on a food bank, you would still be reliant on a food bank. We still think that that would be bad, because just because everyone is equal and they are all relying on food banks, that does not mean that that is a good thing. You should not have to rely on a food bank to get your food. In the equality sense, everyone would be reliant on a food bank. I would like to take this position to sum up the closing proposition. We believe that equality is unattainable. The poor would still be poor, whether or not everyone is equal, because the margin is continually shifting downwards, the rich are getting poorer and the poor are also getting poorer. In the case of morality, we should also look not just to equality within our own states, but to equality between different states. If you care about being richer or poorer than someone in your own country, then why should you not care that the people in Africa are going to be poorer than you or perhaps the people in France would be richer than you? Does that matter? In absolute terms, you are saying that everyone should be equal. Even as a country, we should be equal, but we should also be equal. Everyone should have equal pay. We are saying that everyone should put economic equality before prosperity. That is not to say that everyone earns the same thing, but to say that people earn more fair according to how much they work. In order to do this, this is going to cost the Government more money. Where are we going to get this money from? To continue on with my point, the closing opposition would like to conclude that absolute quality of life is more important than the relative quality of life.  Because your quality of life is still going to be better during those two years, and it should not matter if your neighbour was going to live for three years and you were going to live for two, because you would still have two years of extra life.  Prosperity does not equal equality spending more on foreign aid since we have more money on our side, because we have not been giving it away to people. We are not taking all the money and spreading it equally between everyone. We are taking the money and giving people what they deserve based on the job that they do. We are going to have more money to spend on looking after foreign aid in different countries, which is our responsibility as a country to look after people in other countries. We would not be able to fulfil that to a great extent on your side, as we would on our side. However, I would like to conclude my argument with that. Our side believes that equality in the absolute sense is the most important. What I want you to take from this is that it does not matter what other people have, it does not matter whether your neighbour makes £30,000, whether your neighbour is going to live three years longer than you, it does not matter, because you earn what you need and you are going to live the life that you lead. That is why I, on behalf of the Opposition, which is due to oppose this motion. I thank all eight speakers for their contributions to the debate. That concludes the debate, this part of it, and I would now like to ask the judges if they could leave us to deliberate on what I am sure is going to be a very difficult decision. Can I ask you to please return in about 20 minutes or so? We are now going to move to the floor debate. This will last for about 30 minutes. That gives the judges time to make their deliberations and get the results back up to me. I am going to invite speakers from the floor to raise points in relation to the debate and the points that you have just heard. If you want to speak, please raise your hand. If selected, you wait for the red light to come on your microphone and stand up if you can. If not, then remain seated, that is fine. Tell the chamber your name and the name of your school or university before you raise your point, please. That is extremely important because I have got to identify a winner. I would also be grateful if you could limit your contribution to one minute. Please remember that there is a prize for the best floor speech of the evening. If you do not say who you are, your brilliant contribution will not be counted towards the prize. If I could start and see a show of hands, I will try to get as many in as I possibly can in the time allocated. Emma Dunn from Calderville High School. Sorry, could you turn the mic towards you? I could not hear you there, so you are. Emma Dunn from Calderville High School. Emma, thank you. That is for the fourth Opposition speaker, the final one. You said that poor people will always be poor, but then you were on to mention that everyone is equal. I am sure that if poor people are still poor, everyone is not equal, like you contradicted yourself there. You said that poor people will always be poor, but everyone is equal. Surely, poor and rich cannot exist in a society where everyone is equal. Thank you. My name is Fers MacDonald and I am from Perth High School. I have a point of information for the fourth Opposition speaker. You said in absolute terms that everyone is just a clump of atoms stuck together. We do not mean anything. I do not understand how, just because it matters more to me that my life is going to last a bit longer than it matters to Sandy how long my life is going to last. I do not know how that affects whether or not we should prioritise economic equality. I do not see how that affects the Bill at all, and I do not think that it felt like you were filling some extra time. Thank you. You do not have to comment on what the speeches were made. You can also make your own point for the minute. It is unlikely that I will have time to come back to our debaters at the front. If I do, I will give them the opportunity to pick up some of the points, but I may not be able to come back to them. I am going to go over to Young Man at the back at the right-hand side. The microphone behind you is on. Throughout the debate, the fourth Opposition generalised poor people. They said that we will help poor people. Poor people need to help. This will benefit poor people, but you never specified truly what you mean. Do you mean poor people that are employed? Do you mean poor people that are unemployed? Do you mean single mothers? Do you mean anyone who struggles in an ethnic minority? I think that the Government really needs to think through its actions before they do anything or before they even consider to do anything. I think that the fact that you have not even considered fully recognised who you are actually going to apply to proves that you are not thinking this through. If you do not mind, I will go for a hat-trick, so this is for finishing opposition. Sandy Malcolm from Perth High School. We talked about life being the best thing for people in your little speech about rainbows and flowers. I thought, how can you talk about happy, poor people in the current capitalist Government, where political parties such as the Tories, let's face it, pray upon the poor and a bid to keep the rich rich and the poor even poorer? To the left at the back, please. Dominic Miller, Holy Cross High School. There was a really sort of, I think that was touched on briefly earlier, but there is this really weird train of thought with the opposition, the idea that we cannot, that the only thing we seem to be able to focus on as ourselves is that it does not matter what is happening with everyone else. We only really need to be concerned about what is happening with us. I feel that that is really detached. We as a country, we are standing here with people who debate motions deciding what is the best for this country, if we follow the opposition's train of thought that every person should mainly focus on themselves. I am not saying that we are not the centre of our own universe, because I think that every individual person does have the right to pursue and find happiness. However, if the train of thought were the idea that we, ourselves, are more important than anything else in that we cannot and that it does not matter what other people are going through, to start me in a way, because, like I said, we sort of have a responsibility. The people who debate here every day have a responsibility to sort of come up with what is best for our country, and ultimately should not the best thing for our country be, should it not be the benefit of the nation as a whole, and surely that means individual people. The point about the minimum wage, the fact that if we give a little bit width to the minimum wage, that is somehow going to affect us as everyone is going to be going in the food banks. No, they are not, because food banks are a product of recession. Food banks are a result of people who, because there was a huge imbalance between the rich and the poor, people are forced to go into these food banks. They did not exist years ago when the recession was not around, but now it is around. Food banks are appearing everywhere, and it is because there is this mentality that we can only look after ourselves, and that, ultimately, the pursuit of profit over society as a whole is damaging it down—oh, right, I should wrap up, right, sorry. I think that the basic point that I am trying to make is that we are more and more becoming the world, everyone is becoming connected as a whole. If we have this mentality where we can only think about ourselves, how can we look after our own country and, therefore, if we cannot look after our own country, how can we expect to come together as part of a world? Quickly to finish off, to answer the question about where we are going to get all this money, I will tell you that, quoting Russell Howard without the swear word, stop targeting poor people and target companies such as Amazon and Google by getting them to pay the fair share of their taxes. Thank you. I ask everyone else to try and keep to a minute, if possible, right at the back, young woman. The problem highlighted by proposition in the opening speeches seemed to be that we have the society that shuts out people who can't efficiently work, and from that you get like a cycle of poverty, you get inequality. I don't see how that was ever addressed by the mechanism that they gave out. Giving a lump sum of money to a person just doesn't help you with those problems, it doesn't make you more employable at the point that you don't get more employable skills, you don't get better qualifications, you don't get the kind of thing that makes you attractive to someone who's looking for someone to employ, and, therefore, you never get like an income of your own, you never get the kind of autonomy that side proposition want to give people. So it's very best, it seems to be, like a useless mechanism, and at the worst it actually does a lot of damage to those people at the point at which the Government loses actual money and also political capital to help them in other ways, such as improving education and actually addressing the causes of poverty. So no one's really, sorry, my name, UNQA Gryff High School. Everyone kind of accepted that economic inequality is like a cost of prosperity, and I think that's really frustrating because economic equality can be a cause of prosperity because inequality is incredibly damaging to our economy, and you look at the rest of Western Europe, they all have high-speed trains, because its benefit to the wider economy is greater than it could ever be to an individual shareholder. Therefore, if we break down and actually distribute and divide wealth and power within our nation, then everyone actually has the power to pursue their own economic self-interest rather than a few people pursuing theirs at the cost of everyone else. It's not perfect, but that's what I suggest. Thank you. Many thanks. Right at the back, please. Yes. Oh Jesus, that's loud. Okay, hi, I'm Freddie Gilmour from St Columba's, and basically what we got a lot of from closing proposition was this idea that sort of in reply to what opposition was saying about how we need to sort of help inequality, you know, multinationaly between us and more like less developed countries. Their answer to that was kind of we don't have the money that we could put into helping to develop these countries due to the fact that we're bailing out large multinational companies. So my question for them, I have two questions. Firstly, under the motion, under the mechanism, essentially what you would be doing is opposed to taking that money and then putting it into helping to develop developing countries, you would in fact just be taking it and redistributing it between citizens of the UK, so we don't think it actually helps developing countries. And secondly, we think that when you're not bailing out a country, we think that, no, not a country, a company, we think that company fails. And what happens is firstly, you lose all the jobs that have been created in the UK, so we think that that's going to lead to high unemployment and high inequality due to the fact that people are out of jobs and they need welfare, but that's all being spent in this lump sum. And secondly, we think that that company isn't able to expand and able to actually invest in those developing countries and help the economies there and create jobs there, so, okay, bye. Thank you very much. Okay, yourself, yeah, we've had your hand up for some time young man. My name's Adam McElroy, I'm from St Maurice's High School. I'd just like to make the point that economic equality is impossible as long as we have a monetary economic system. The monetary economic system survives through inequality, thrives off of it, there is no value in money if you don't have scarcity and inequality, and therefore you can't have an equal system if you've still got money. So my advice to us as young people would be to look at an alternative, it's our moral responsibility as young people of this country to try and build a better society for ourselves, and the best way to do that is to look at alternatives to a monetary economy when you'll be fairer for everyone, not just the big companies and big businesses. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to participate? Yes, next to, was it Adam, sorry? Next to Adam. Luke McPhee, I'm also from St Maurice's High School. I did catch your name. Luke McPhee. In regards to the proposition, if everyone is to have equality in terms of income as they suggest, would that not perhaps be proposing a more communist approach, which has been renowned for being somewhat ineffective throughout history? Risking our capitalist society, which we are able to benefit from our motivation and prosperity?  Should they spread it out equally? Should they give a little bit to everyone or should they invest it in something like the NHS, where the NHS can focus it on people who really do need it at that time? I also feel that the word equality is a word that is badly used. Equality doesn't mean that everyone gets the same thing, it means that everyone gets what they need. I didn't see any other hands. Would anyone else like to make a contribution? I suggest to the Opposition that equality and overall prosperity are not mutually exclusive, because as a nation we are all more prosperous if everyone in our society is able to live with dignity. I think that it's important in this debate to focus on what type of equality we want and what type of equality is the fairest for the many at the bottom of society and the most powerful and the most influential to help them. I completely agree with the Opposition that growth is much more important than a much lower economic standing for everyone, but the issue is about how that money is spent. We need to make society a fairer place, and the only way we can do that is through real social mobility. We only achieve that through investing in education. Ultimately, that's why equality of opportunity is much more important than the equality of outcome that the Opposition brings to the table. Rorya Elric Edinburgh University. Thank you. Okay, so what I want to do is to spell the myth of the Scandinavian model that is something that comes up in debating and Scottish politics quite a lot. The reason the Scandinavian model works is that we have a good quality of life not for economic reasons, but for social reasons. Women get a benefit because you provide free paternity leave so the husband can take time off work so the woman can get back to work or you provide free childcare. By giving a lump sum, that's not going to solve anything. In fact, in most Scandinavian countries, you have an incredibly high cost of living. We see that when you're trying to have an economy that runs quite low in terms of surplus, then there's going to be a high cost of living. This lump sum is not going to affect the poorest people in society more because they're not going to be able to save this money because they're going to have to spend it on literally living. What we need to do to bring a Scandinavian model to Britain is to have these social reforms rather than the economic reforms. That's why I don't think that we can get a Scandinavian model under the model given to us by side proposition. Liam Folley from Clifton Hall. I feel that the opposition contradicted themselves with their last two speakers. The fourth thought brought the point that only your own life is important to you, that it doesn't matter if someone else gets £30,000 a year if you're getting like 25 or something that's more than usual. At the same time, they brought the point about how, if we didn't do this, we would be able to give foreign aid to other countries. Do you not feel that a country should deal with its own huge problems and inequality instead of dealing with someone else's problems before that? I'm back to speakers that I've already called and I've conscious I've done that once before at the front here. My name is Carla McTugol. I'm from the University of St Andrews. I would just actually like to voice an agreement with the opening government case, which I feel like has been few and far between, and especially the mechanism of the living wage, because I think it is a bit frustrating that the opening opposition team seemed to treat the living wage and the amounts of money that that would be as something that was inconsequential. But I think actually in real terms what it amounts to is those that are coming from impoverished backgrounds. It allows parents in particular maybe to say, I'm not going to have to take that evening job that I'm doing part-time, because now I no longer financially have to do so. What does that mean? Well, it means particularly if they have young children that they are able to invest that time now into preparing good meals for them, to be able to watch them more carefully, to be able to help them with their homework. People say that, oh, we want to necessarily just invest in education. We don't think the living wage helps with that. But actually, you can see that particularly among younger age groups that academic performance is mostly tied to the support that children receive in the home, and it's not necessarily connected to what school they're going to or the help that teachers can receive. There's a certain role that parents play. They know their children best. They're able to be able to now put resources in to say, look, we think you're doing really well at this extracurricular programme in school. We're going to now be able to give you the money that you need to be able to pursue that further. We think these are the ways over the long term that you're actually able to level the playing field to be able to say, look, we're going to better the chances for these young people in the future to be able to compete with those that are coming from affluent backgrounds. We think universities in particular, which are now one of the greatest ways to be able to get into the job market, is to be able to say, look at these extracurricular activities that these children have been engaged with, or say, look at the academic performance that they've been able to achieve despite the school that they're coming to, or despite the background that they're coming through. I think that people have belittled maybe the long term impacts that you're actually getting out of the government case that I would support the proposition. Thank you very much. And so back to two speakers that we had before. I think it's Emma. You're better to lift it up, Emma. Thank you. This is for the first proposition speaker that you mentioned, and I think it was like the first 10 seconds of your speech that you wanted to give the same income to everyone. I think that that's a very communist ideal, that you want to give the same income to everyone, and maybe you've come across wrong, but so you do want to take the people that earn big amounts of money, do you want to take that off them and give everyone the same amount of money for the same job, whether or not one job may be harder than the other? I think that it might have come across more communist than you wanted it to. Thank you very much. I just have a wee question for everyone who used the term growth in their speech. As far as I'm aware, growth was a word that was first used by Milton Freeman in the 1970s. It had never been mentioned before that, and as far as I can ascertain, it doesn't have a distinct purpose other than to be used as a propaganda tool. So if anyone could give me an answer to that, that'd be great. And if there's no-one else who wants to contribute, well, there's three more people who want to contribute now. So very quickly, shelf at the back and then down to the front. So hi, this is mainly for opening opposition. They basically said that when you introduce things like a living wage, a really high minimum wage, it sort of discourages companies from coming into the UK and investing their businesses there and starting their businesses there. But do you not think that that same argument was used against actually introducing the minimum wage in the first place and companies weren't deterred, like nothing happened, and it was used against the introduction of the living wage earlier, like last year or something, and again, nothing has happened. So also there are a lot of other things that encourage companies to come to the UK, like the fact that it's a highly lucrative market, like the fact that people are regaining their confidence in actually spending and putting money into the economy. So, yeah. Thanks very much. So two final speakers, you've spoken before, yes? Just to make, yeah, at the front. Remain with your name, sorry. Sandy Malcolm from Perthhouse School. I don't know if it's made, but I don't really feel like either side's really acknowledged that it's the plural of government in this, in the motion. It's how this believes governments should prioritise, and I feel like both sides only really touched upon our British government, which is obviously a capitalist, and they need to really translate how this notion would be introduced in other countries that are more like communists, like China. We should really be thinking about other countries as well as just Britain itself. Many thanks, and yes, young women. The status quo that the opposition support capitalist incentives isn't working. Rising levels of inequality have continued, especially over the last 30 years of individualistic governments. Why does this change in the op models? Do you support this? Thank you to have your name. All right, sorry. Catherine Birch, Clifton Hall. Okay. And finally, young man, you've spoken before. Remain with your name. Toby Appleyard, Clifton Hall. I mean, this part was made throughout the debate, but if you're supporting to put in this wage, which for all these, you know, poor people, I've already taken issue with the word poor, but would you not agree that this money could actually be better spent in helping our society? Surely things like our struggling NHS, people mentioned Scandinavia and their governments and what makes them so good.  Surely we could be putting that money into this if you truly want to achieve what they've achieved. Thank you. So I'm going to return to our teams at the front very briefly. Given a lot of the comments that were aimed at your own contributions, does anyone want to volunteer to make any final comment from the opposition? Nope. Done enough. That's fine. Proposition. Will you have been accused of communism various times? I would have had great fun defending communism outright. Can we do that next year? Well, I don't think I'll be here because there's election in May, so very much doubt if I'll be the deputy president officer. Whoever it is, I'm sure it will be passed on to them that that contribution has come from yourself. I can't remember who it was, but someone said to me that with all that money go to international aid. It would also go to other things, like our NHS or education system, our welfare system. If you turn away, we can't hear you. Sorry. But democratically appropriated. Someone mentioned how companies would go bust and people would lose their jobs. Corporatives do not require shareholders or a CEO or such, so they take the hit of a global reform if there were a global economic recession, if there were to be one much better and bounce back from it much quicker. Someone mentioned communism. That's just not true. Free market capitalism is retained in a social democracy. It's just a more fair way of promoting everyone getting the same way to excel to their best ability and be successful in a free market economy while not just keeping the elitist elite. The Scandinavian model follows everything that has been suggested that we should do. We have said that this is the model that we would like to follow. That's all I have to say on the questions. Thank you very much. I'm going to do a quick comfort break while I'm waiting on the judges to give me the winners. I'm going to ask if you need to go out of the chamber, could you see one of our assistants who can help you with that? We'll just have a comfort break for five minutes or so. Thank you. I'm sorry if I take a few minutes just to get this right. I don't want to make any mistakes. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves for a moment or two longer. Thank you all very much for your contributions. We've heard some strong views on the topics, very well argued, and the quality of debate has been absolutely fantastic. I'm really impressed and applaud everybody for your efforts. It's now time to announce the winners of the 2015 St Andrew's Day debating championship final. When I call your name, I'd be very grateful if you could join me and Kezia Dugdale on the chamber floor here to receive your prize and we'll also take a photograph before you move back to your seats. First of all, I can ask Kezia to come forward, please. The first prize of the evening goes to the best contribution from the floor, and this was the one that I had the honour of choosing. It was really difficult. There were some excellent contributions from the floor, which of course the judges didn't hear, but you may be able to watch them later. My prize for this is going to go to Adam McElroy from St Maurice's High. The second prize of the evening goes to the best pupil judge of the day, and that, of course, is Michael Criekin from Holy Cross High School. The third prize in this category goes to the best school speaker of the day, and that is Hannah McLaughlin from St Columba's School. So this is a bit that I better get right. After a really well fought final, the runner-up of the 2015 St Andrew's Day debating championship goes to team Mar Edgar. The winner of the 2015 St Andrew's Day debating championship goes to team Perth Porter. I can now invite Simon Christie on behalf of the English-speaking Union Scotland to say a few words, please. Simon. Deputy Presiding Officer, members of the Scottish Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to thank this, our quite wonderful Scottish Parliament, for allowing the St Andrew's Day debate to take place. I particularly like to thank Anne Donald and Joanne Kendall of the Parliament's events team, and indeed, Lynn Robertson and the team at Education Scotland for their incredible support of this event. I'd also like to thank the judges for the final. Alex Orr, Nick Bibby, Kezia Dugdale and, of course, Michael Criekin. Many congratulations to you, Michael, in this very first prize for best pupil judge of the day. And indeed, all the students from the great universities across Scotland, not only for judging and speaking in the earlier rounds and who make such an invaluable contribution to the work of ESU Scotland, not just at this event, but across all our schools' competitions. Thank you all very, very much indeed. The astute, amongst you, will have recognised that I've missed Alex Don from the judging panel for the final. Many of you in the student debating community will know Alex as a very formidable, formidable debater indeed. However, I would like to thank him for his very hard work in his role as speech and debates officer for ESU Scotland in making this day possible. Ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to thank the school champions. Who are they? Well, they are your wonderful teachers, your debating coaches, who in addition to their responsibilities to fulfil the national curriculum find the time to help you discover the essential life skills which can be gained from debating and public speaking. They help you to increase your ability to articulate your point of view. They train you to analyse important topics that affect not just our society but the wider world. They train you to listen and hopefully to understand. We hope that you have enjoyed today, and when you return to your schools you will wish to either start or continue to gain the benefits of debating. For if you do, then we believe that you have very, very bright futures ahead of you indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. And those of you who've been at this debate before when I've been chairing it, you notice that I usually managed to make one small mistake, but this evening I've made a big mistake. Can I ask Kezia to come back out and join me, please? Because I've missed out a prize winner. Can I announce the best prize for the best university speaker of the day, and that's Chris Edgar from the University of Glasgow. Best to last, my best, as they say. Can I now invite all the winners and the judges to join me on the chamber floor for a group photograph, and just before you do that, can I say thank you to everybody for your efforts? I'm going to wish you all a safe journey back home, and please listen to the instructions from the events assistant as you leave the chamber. Congratulations to everybody, and thank you all for attending. Thank you, and good night.


Hello everyone, I'm Sean Boyd, public information officer with Cal OES here in Ridgecrest. Well Cal OES as well as a multitude of other agencies are working feverishly here in Ridgecrest and in Trona to get life back to normal as soon as possible. A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake has hit Southern California. July 4th kicked off with a bang in Ridgecrest, California as the first of two major earthquakes hit. A 6.4 then a 5.4. They turned out to be four shocks to the third which struck the next day with a 7.1 magnitude rocker. Type 1 engine company strike teams that were deployed into Ridgecrest. The state operation center in Sacramento activated at its highest level, bringing in well-trained and experienced emergency managers to help coordinate the response. Initial damage was extensive, but it could have been worse. There were no fatalities or major injuries. Many homes were knocked off their foundations. You can see how far this one dropped. The door is about a foot below the deck. Both quakes took their toll on the fellowship hall for our savior's Lutheran church. City engineers and code enforcement inspected the damage to the structural supports and deemed it unsafe. Hopefully it's going to be something that we can repair. It might be cause prohibitive, which would be really sad. And Highway 178, the main route between Ridgecrest and the town of Trona. The highway was buckled during the recent earthquakes here, the 6.4 as well as the 7.1. The section behind me had shifted completely over to the left. There were about four or five locations, three behind me and two more further down on the highway. Caltrans and contractors made quick repairs of the damage, reopening all lanes. In Trona, water systems were knocked out by community emergency response teams or CERT, along with the Guard and many volunteers, set up a station where residents could pick up cases of bottled water. They also brought in 5,000 gallons of potable water where folks could fill their own large containers. Back in Ridgecrest, engineers inspect the hospital from top to bottom for damage, both large and then not so noticeable. It's performed very well. There's been some minor mechanical damage. It's created water leak and water damage, but all in all, it seems to be going to be fine. A town hall on Saturday brought everyone together. Nearly a thousand people packed the Kerr McGee Center, and the media was there en masse to get the word out. This has been, I know, a difficult time for each and every one of you. Open communication, community resources, and knowing that local, state and federal help is there till the end. I think there was some relief at the end of the meetings, like, okay, well, they're not just leaving us. All these people came. Now they're just going to leave us and we're going to be forgotten about. So if you'd like more information on the efforts to bring life back to normal here and in Trona, be sure to follow all of the social media platforms for both Cal OES, Kern County, Ridgecrest, as well as San Bernardino County. They'll be updating all of the efforts, and with all of the information you need to know, that could help you return your life back to normal. In Ridgecrest, I'm Sean Boyd for Cal OES News.