Rwyf i'n gwych, a'r next item of business is the member's business debate on motion 9621 in the name of Tom Arthur on the carer positive employer initiative. That debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons. I call on Tom Arthur to open the debate, around seven minutes please, Mr Arthur. As MSPs, we regularly have the privilege of meeting an extraordinary range of individuals, groups and organisations. Amongst the many who make up the rich fabric of our society, there are certain groups and individuals who, to me, and I imagine for all of us, are a humbling experience. Those who serve in our fire police and other emergency services are forces in the veterans community. Those who work in the front line of our health and social care services and our unpaid carers. Our carers make up 17 per cent of the adult population of Scotland and it is estimated that 4 per cent of those under 16 are unpaid carers. The diversity of Scotland's population is equally reflected in the diversity of our carers community. The student who balances school while caring for her mum, the elderly husband who meticulously and selflessly organises his wife's self-directed support, the single mother raising three children who each have additional support needs. Those are but a handful of the experiences that are shared by the 788,000 people in Scotland who are caring for a relative, friend or neighbour. Each one of those carers makes a profound impact upon the lives of those that they support. In doing so, carers make a massive contribution towards the delivery of care in Scotland. The value of the care that is provided by unpaid carers equates to £10.3 billion per year. To put that into context, that is an amount equivalent to almost 80 per cent of our NHS budget. That is being provided by barely 15 per cent of the population. To put it simply, society as we know it can only function because of the selfless dedication of unpaid carers. The care that they provide is irreplaceable. However, as well as providing care, many carers also make a significant contribution to Scotland's broader workforce across a range of professions. It is estimated that more than one third of carers combine care with work. With the 270,000 working carers comprising more than 10 per cent of the entire working population of Scotland, with the total number of carers in Scotland expected to reach £1 million within the next 20 years, it is clear that our working carers will become an increasingly important part of Scotland's overall workforce. That is why it is vital that our workplace environments are supportive and understanding of the needs of carers, not just for the carers of today and tomorrow but also for Scotland's wider economy. The carer positive initiative both recognises and assists employers who seek to provide a supportive and understanding environment for those employees who are carers. That support can take many forms, such as telephone access, health and wellbeing support, leave arrangements and flexible working. Small differences can have a huge impact. However, without the right type of support in the workplace, working carers are at risk of stress, burnout and even leaving employment altogether. That, of course, can have a significantly detrimental impact on both the carer and the people who they care for. However, it can also have a very negative impact on the employer who loses a skilled member of staff. However, with the right support, employers are able to retain carers. That can lead to reduced absence, lower levels of staff turnover and an overall reduction in recruitment costs. The good news is that all organisations, regardless of size or structure, can become carer positive. How does an organisation— Ruth McWire. Tom Arthur for taking an intervention. I wonder whether you agree with me that if employers do not provide flexible carer-friendly workplaces, they are missing out on a huge pool of talent. It is not just about supporting people, but about accessing the talent and skills of folk who have caring responsibilities. Tom Arthur. I absolutely agree with my colleague, and I will illustrate some of that later on in my remarks. As I was going to say, the question is how does an employer or an organisation become carer positive? It is actually very simple. It is just about fulfilling five fairly basic criteria. Those are one that there is a good understanding of the meaning of the term carer, and measures are in place that allow for the identification of carers, including support to self-identify for those who may not be aware that they are carers. Two, that they recognise carer policies or procedures. Three, that there is workplace support. Four, policies, procedures and support are effectively communicated to all staff. And five, that carers are supported to engage with other carers. Once an employer achieves carer positive status, organisations can then progress through three levels, moving from engaged to established and finally to exemplary. The ways in which the criteria are met and progression achieved will, of course, vary between organisations, reflecting their different sizes and structures. This flexibility allows employers and carers to work together in the design and implementation of policies and procedures within the workplace that work for them. The carer positive scheme is designed so that all organisations will be able to meet the criteria, and there are now over 90 carer positive employers across the length and breadth of Scotland, covering close to 300,000 employees. Carer positive employers can be found in a range of sectors, including financial services, energy, food and drink, charities and social enterprises, local authorities, health boards, colleges and universities, Scottish and UK Government agencies and even MSPs—not to mention the Scottish Parliament, of course, and the Scottish Government. That means that there is now a solid evidence base highlighting the advantages of carer positive and a wide range of examples of best practice and how to achieve accreditation and progress. I wish to place on record my thanks to members of the Greens, Labour and Liberal Democrats, as well as my own SNP colleagues, who have supported the motion today. I would also like to express my gratitude to Carers Scotland, in particular to Simon Hodgson, Sue McClintock and Fiona Collie, who are in the gallery, for their support ahead of this debate. I am pleased to advise members that I will be hosting a drop-in session with Simon, Sue and Fiona, between 2 and 4 this afternoon in committee around free, and I would encourage members to spare five minutes to take this opportunity to drop in and learn how they can promote the carer positive scheme to organisations in their own constituencies and regions, and, importantly, to learn how to become carer positive employers themselves. Three in five of us will become carers at some point in our lives. Carer positive is an initiative that is relevant to all of us. It benefits both working carers and employers, supporting and enabling working carers to gain and retain employment, and it contributes towards inclusive growth. It is a scheme that deserves the widest possible uptake, and I look forward to seeing more organisations and MSPs becoming carer positive employers. We now move to the open debate and speeches of around four minutes, please, and I call Jamie Halcro Johnston to be followed by Kezia Dugdale. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I congratulate Tom Arthur on bringing this debate to the chamber today. Carer positive is an initiative that I hope members from across the political spectrum can get behind. It has been incredibly welcome to see a greater focus on the needs and challenges that carers face from across all of the parties in recent years. The motion before us today highlights the economic value of carers and the work that they do. This cannot be stated enough when we consider the provision that is made for carers directly through the state, as well as through initiatives like that. To focus on my own region briefly, the last census found well over 40,000 people involved in administering unpaid care, a significant proportion providing over 50 hours a week of care a week. That is likely to be an underestimate of the actual true fact. In some ways, our region is typical, but it is not difficult to imagine the extra strain that sometimes distant essential surfaces can cause. It is equally easy to predict that care would be far more difficult for the public sector to deliver to people in community settings in areas such as the Highlands and Islands. I pray to the great many carers from across the Highlands and Islands and across Scotland. When we present figures, they can often mask the thousands upon thousands of individual situations that they represent, the range and diversity of people who are in employment and yet undertake often extensive caring responsibilities. Each is unique, but many of the stresses and the strains are shared and, unfortunately, commonplace. When employer support carers within their organisation, it provides a benefit not only to them and the carer but to the person receiving care and the wider society, too. I would echo Ruth Maguire's point about being able to access a great pool of talent within the caring community. Carering for carers is in all of our interests and is rightly a key aspiration for parties across this chamber. The law mandates a number of employment rights that can be enjoyed by carers, including significantly the right to request flexible working, the right to time off in an emergency and the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 to guard against discrimination. However, there remain a range of steps that employers can undertake voluntarily to make their organisations even more accessible, inclusive and welcoming to people with caring responsibilities. That is where carer positive comes in. Much of what is needed is raising awareness. Often, caring responsibilities can be hidden with people's home and work lives kept separate. However, there always remain circumstances where the two clash. That is why it is positive that businesses maintain policies and procedures that ensure where this occurs that support is in place. I note from some of the published material that most of the existing awarded organisations under the scheme are public sector or third sector bodies. That includes, I am pleased to say this Parliament itself, having received its recognised status back in February of last year. I would ask the minister today if it may be possible to outline what the Scottish Government can do to encourage the uptake of the initiative among private sector companies, the private sector companies with which the Government has regular dealings. It would also be interesting to know how many businesses are currently working with carer positive with a view to becoming awarded bodies at present. Once again, I welcome the initiative and the work undertaken by carer Scotland. I would encourage the Scottish Government to look at where it can build on the connections and what influence it has to embed career positive attitudes among employers across the length and breadth of Scotland. I call Kezia Dugdale to be followed by Graeme Dey. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I congratulate Tom Arthur on securing this debate. I consider Tom a friend, so I always like to follow his work. I also participate in this debate this afternoon as a forthcoming new member of the Economy and Fair Work Committee, of which this is what we are fundamentally debating—the role of carers in the economy and their ability to access fair work. It is worth repeating some of the economic statistics. We know that carers contribute £10.8 billion to our economy. We know that one in seven workers in Scotland have some sort of caring responsibilities, yet, as we heard from Tom Arthur, currently only around 287,000 employees are actually working for companies that are covered by the carer positive scheme, so there is a tremendous amount more work in progress that we can make in this regard. I have to confess, Presiding Officer, that I have not heard about the scheme until I noticed Tom's debate today, so everything that I have learnt about it I have learnt in the past few days. The similarities are striking with the living wage accreditation scheme, especially when you look at the benefits to the economy. Much of the argument around the living wage was made around the fact that it would reduce absenteeism, reduce the turnover of staff within organisations and drive up productivity rates. Those are all arguments for the carer positive scheme. It is worth remembering that one of the best advocates for the living wage in the early days was a private company, just to pick up on the point that was made by Jamie Halcro Johnston. It was PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the first major private sector employers to adopt the living wage because they believed that it was good business sense. There are many ways in which we can progress the case for expanding the carer positive scheme in that regard. In order to become a carer positive organisation, you need to be able to do five key things. You need to be able to identify carers within your organisation. You need to make sure that your HR policy reflects and mentions carers. You need to provide various workplace support. You need to increase your communication awareness and training around carers. You need to have various mechanisms of peer support in place. As we have heard from Tom Arthur, there are three different scales at which employers can operate, starting from being engaged, then to established and then exemplary employers with regard to the carer positive scheme. I had to have a look in Edinburgh, the area that I seek to represent, what organisations, what employers were currently carer positive approved. I was delighted to see that in that first stage in the engaged category there is Edinburgh City Council, there is indeed the Parliament itself and the University of Edinburgh. When you work your way up to who the established carer positive organisations are, NHS Lothian, Standard Life, who were also a great champion of the living wage in the early days and the Scottish Government, appear in that second category. Finally, in the exemplary category, there are not as many organisations as I think we would like to see, but there is the big energy company, Centrica, who have their headquarter functions here in Edinburgh. Having only just learned about the scheme, I will endeavour as a Lothians MSP to do everything that I can to promote the scheme and contact employers large and small across the Lothians region to see what I can do to encourage them to participate in the scheme. Equally, I am a living wage accredited employer as an MSP. I will now, after Tom's challenge, make sure that my office as an MSP is also carer positive and I will start those steps this week. Finally, it is worth recognising that, although we know carers make a tremendous contribution to the economy as employees, there are many carers who cannot work, who desperately want to work. I am mindful of a young man who came to my surgery back in October who is desperate to work but just cannot find an employer who is willing to cope or deal with the reality of his living circumstances. We will get that right when that young man is in the workplace and I will continue to do my bit to make sure that that happens. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank my colleague Tom Arthur for bringing that motion forward for debate. First, carer positive is a great initiative that we should be celebrating and promoting. Secondly, it affords me the chance at the conclusion of this debate to meet with Sue McClintock and Simon Hoskin from carer positive and collect my carer positive certificate, as my office has joined Tom's as being accredited as carer positive. I am delighted to be the second MSP to be accredited. I would be even more delighted if he had not beat me to be in first mind, given that I am competitive, if you understand. However, it is only right that Tom and I are backing up words with actions. It is right and proper that the Scottish Parliament is doing that as well. Members may recall that, in February last year, I hosted an event here at Hwyrood to showcase the initiative at which the Parliament was presented with its carer positive engaged level accreditation. The Parliament has demonstrated that it has in place a number of policies that support staff with caring responsibilities. Regular development conversations with staff, line managers, are encouraged to ask about wellbeing and any support that staff member needs. Support resources are available to staff, including train counsellors, who can provide expert emotional guidance. The human resources office also raises with external organisations such as Vocal, which supports carers in Edinburgh and the Lodians. I am pleased to learn that further steps have been planned for this year. A carer staff network, which will be open to all building users, is in the process of being set up here. That will provide a space for carers to share their experiences and assist the organisations in developing its understanding of the needs of staff with caring responsibilities. Once the network is set up, the Parliament will work towards the exemplary level of the award in 2018. I hope that members will join me in acknowledging the efforts of Anil MacKenna and Philippaard Booth, who, along with other members of the Parliament staff, are delivering that. More than that, I hope that they themselves will commit, as Kezia Dugdale has, to joining the initiative, because, as MSPs, we ought to be leading by example. Let me be honest here that, although I have always supported the initiative, I have previously voiced concerns about the challenges facing very small offices and businesses in becoming carer-positive environments. Those concerns might be hesitated before taking this step. There are some circumstances in which a very much outward public serving setup I thought an MSP's office could find itself conflicted, but it readily became apparent that, through common sense, since co-operation and dialogue, it could almost almost find a way. Interestingly, of the now 90 carer-positive employers in Scotland, 28 are defined as small employers, i.e. those with fewer than 50 employees. There are admittedly a large number of the small employers' work within the carers or voluntary sector, but the list also includes public sector organisations such as the Scottish Roads, Works Commissioners and private companies such as Moan and Aqua, UK Ltd and Interweight Ltd. Being a small organisation does create challenges, but assuming that clintock carer-positive has not designed a one-size-fits-all scheme, being accommodating does not mean that you are unable to provide a proper level of service to your customers or constituents. At the heart of that, the key point is communication and flexibility, cutting both ways, the same of which can be said of the benefits. The results of a carer employee survey recently found that 92 per cent of participating organisations saw better staff retention, 88 per cent experienced lower-absence rates, 61 per cent witnessed improved recruitment and 69 per cent observed higher productivity. There is a hard cash illustration of the benefit to employers, the wider economy and the public purse 2. Centrica, one of the five employers who have received carer-positive's highest status and one of the founding members of carers for employers, estimates that the direct cost to an employer of losing a working carer is between 100 per cent and 150 per cent of their annual salary. Across the UK, that amounts to a cost of around £1.3 billion a year to the economy, and when lost tax revenue and additional benefit payments are taken into account, that rises to £5.3 billion annually. In other words, there is a solid financial as well as moral case for pursuing carer-positive policies. The last of the open debate contributions is from Jeremy Balfour. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I would also like to thank Tom Arthur for bringing forward this important debate. Unpaid carers are unsung heroes. As of June 2017, as we have already heard, there were an estimated 788,000 unpaid carers in Scotland. We make a massive contribution to reducing the burden on the NHS, the social care system and relying on friends, neighbours and relatives. In fact, Deputy Presiding Officer, if it wasn't for a carer today, I wouldn't be standing here because I need help getting addressed every morning unpaid done voluntary. In our role as MSPs, we have all met with carers who tell you that it can be a positive and rewarding experience to know that you are helping someone else. But they will also tell you that to help a husband, a wife, a partner, a child comes and can often be difficult and upsetting. It can lead to greater stress, worry, isolation, depression, anger and guilt. The blurring of boundaries is am I a carer or am I a father, am I a carer or am I a husband? Carering can also put a strain on financial pressure as well. Often you have to cut down on your work, juggle work, cut out things that you like doing, perhaps in regard to sport or other activities. Supporting carers to manage the sometimes difficult job of balancing work with caring responsibilities can deliver real benefits to employers, as well as helping individuals and their families. The carer positive employer aims to encourage employers to create a supportive working environment for carers in the workplace. I welcome the wide range of employers who were consulted before this came forward, a strong partnership between public and private, between voluntary, and I hope that it will have a lasting success across Scotland. Employers' supporting initiative recognise that, in addition to being good employment and by supporting their employees, it also gives them benefit as well. Often, if you lose a carer from a workforce, you damage not only that individual and that family but you damage that company or that organisation. An example of that is the Scottish Court Service, who recognises the need to retain staff who are skilled and experienced, providing help through their carers policy and acknowledges that achieving a good work-life balance makes sense for everybody. I hope that the Carers Scotland Act 2016, which will come into effect on 1 April, will again help people to be supported in what they do. Carer positive is a win-win-win. Again, like Kezia Dugdale, I have to confess that I did not know a lot about the scheme until Tom Arthur's motion came up. I hope that, later on this afternoon, I will visit the session that he is holding and to look as an employer to bring this forward in my workforce. I hope that other organisations will do the same and other MSPs will do the same. I welcome the award and hope that we can continue to develop similar initiatives that teach conices of population changes, provide practical solutions for support and recognise, most importantly, the contribution that was made by Carers. We have, in fact, another contribution in the open debate, Fulton O'Greggor. I apologise to the chamber, but I have not intended to speak by pressing my buttons, so I thank you for letting me in. I will also make a declaration that I am the parliamentary liaison officer to the health secretary. I want to thank Tom Arthur for bringing the debate to the chamber and also pay tribute to Fiona Colline and others in the gallery who I know have done fantastic work in this. As I said, I did not intend to speak, but when I heard the debate progressing, I decided that I would chip in. I was remembered of my own experience. I thought about carers in the context of not just being a carer once in their life, but maybe that carers would be in and out of that position. I thought that myself as a young 18-year-old, and through my early 20s, I helped as a family unit caring for my gran, who unfortunately passed away in the year 2000. However, I took that opportunity to pay tribute to her, because it was actually her anniversary on Tuesday. I was reminded of that as a family unit caring for her, and we all had our different roles to make, whether that was simply going over to make some breakfast or lunch or whatever else. However, I even thought that my brother and I were teenagers at the time, so my mum and dad were having more full roles. I was kind of reminded of that. Also, the case work that we deal with when people come in and out of the office disease has almost become common. I do not know how other MSPs feel for people to come in now with a carer, as it is for them to come in individually, whether that is a surgery or coming into my local office to meet with us. Inevitably, as you are chatting to focus, people recognise that, as well as dealing with the query, they might be able to talk about their own situations. What has struck me is the inconsistencies in how people are supported at their work. Some people say that they are really well supported here by my work, so that they know of my carer, my aunt or my sister or whoever. Other people say that we are not very supported at all. It has been a real struggle to get here today. I have only got half an hour, I have only got 20 minutes. I think that that is a really great initiative that can maybe help if it progresses to deal with some of those inconsistencies. As Tom Arthur pointed out, it is much about supporting the individual and the organisation, so I think that that is really good. I want to also mention, as Kezia Dugdale has done just a particular case, a person that had just came to my surgery recently.  I was absolutely shocked to hear that they are really struggling to get a shift pattern that would work for them both. They are coming at a lot of difficulties with that. Even when they are needing time off, they are not getting paid leave or such. I have just various difficulties, and I will get the relevant information to the ministers to take that possibly forward. However, I will ask the minister and the Scottish Government if they will commit to pursuing all sorts of organisations, including ones such as the prison service, for example, who I did not see on the official list, to sign up to carers positive as much for them to get support about how they are treating their employees as well as being able to treat employees. I have significant caring responsibilities, and I will leave it at that. I thank you again for letting me in and for Tom Arthur for bringing this debate to the chamber. A very good initiative. Thank you very much. I now call Eileen Campbell to respond to the debate around seven minutes, please, minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As others have spoken about, this has been an important debate not only for recognising our unpaid carers but to help to raise awareness of carer positive to employers across Scotland, large and small. I, like others, also thank Tom Arthur for bringing this debate forward. I echo the words that he used to describe Scotland's carers and paying rightful tribute to the irreplaceable and selfless dedication of carers across Scotland. I also welcome carers Scotland to the Parliament and recognise the work that they do to promote this important scheme and initiative carers positive. While caring for a loved one can be a positive and fulfilling experience, there are stresses and challenges that many carers face every day. Jeremy Balfour and Fulton MacGregor spoke with real experience about how that can impact on people and families' lives. Likewise, from my own family experience, my mum relies heavily on the respect that she got from crossroads when she was caring for my grandad when we and my sister were both very young. Because of the value that we attach to the unstinting commitment carers have to the ones that they love, this Government is absolutely committed to enabling carers to continue to care if they wish to in better health but to also have a life alongside that caring role that they have. We have invested around £136 million from 2007 through to 2017 towards a number of programmes supporting adult carers and young carers with our partners in local authorities, health boards, the third sector and the national carer organisations. The views and experiences of carers have also been crucial in helping to inform our programmes and initiatives. Most recently they have helped to shape the new legislation that extends and enhances the rights of carers to support. I want to take a moment to speak about the carers act as there are important links, as speakers have already mentioned, to the intentions of the carer positive scheme that has been discussed today. We have brought forward the carers act, which takes effect in April this year, to ensure that all of our carers can be better supported and that they are able to realise their own personal outcomes. The new adult carer support plans and young carer statements will identify each carer's personal outcomes so that their eligible needs are supported. That may include their wishes to, for example, remain in work or undertake studies or training. Local authorities must also establish and maintain an information and advice service for carers. There are a number of areas that that must cover, including income maximisation for carers and information about carers rights. It is clear to me that the outcomes being achieved through carer positive can complement the provisions in the act. I encourage integration authorities to consider schemes such as carer positive when undertaking their duties under the new legislation. There are an estimated 788,000 carers in Scotland. 56 per cent of carers aged 16 or over are also in employment or self-employment. In the authority of my own constituency, that equates to around 18,300 carers who are also in work. I have heard from some carers who struggle to look after their own health and wellbeing and, as a consequence, their loved ones' wellbeing, too. The financial impact of reducing the hours that they work or giving work up altogether can be life-changing. Nationally, around 35,600 carers have reduced the number of hours that they work, and around 22,600 have left work altogether. With some of the unfairness of the social security system being delivered by the UK Government, their situation can quickly become more challenging. We believe that it is unfair that the support carers receive in the form of carers allowance is the lowest of all working-age benefits. That is why we are increasing carers allowance to the same level as job seekers allowance from summer this year. Of course, supporting carers to balance work and caring responsibility helps to improve family finances, but there are other positive impacts of the carer positive scheme. As caring responsibilities increase in intensity, carers are at risk of becoming isolated. It can be difficult to maintain or foster social networks and pursue hobbies or interests. Being at work and among colleagues can be invaluable to a carer's health and wellbeing. Carer positive is reducing socialisation and creating carer-friendly communities across the country. It is clear that, since its launch in June 2014, carer positive is making organisations reflect more about what can be done to better support employees who are also carers. Maurice Corry I thank the minister for taking the intervention. My capacity as a chairman of the cross-party group for armed forces and veterans community is a very apt subject that we are discussing today in debating. Can I ask the minister to consider the care support that the armed forces veterans organisations provide to veterans in Scotland? That can amount to some 200 cases per month for some of the larger veterans centres in Scotland. Will it be good if the minister could consider those organisations under the carer positive initiative? Aileen Campbell I think that there are always ways in which we want to enhance the offer through carer positive. If the member wants to write to me with some of the details of that, I am happy to look at that and share that with Carer Scotland and others, my officials, as well, about whether or not there are areas that we can make improvements. I am certainly encouraged that, so far, 90 employers have been recognised as being carer positive, covering around 295,000 employees in Scotland. However, as Tom Arthur and Kezia Dugdale rightly noted, there is clearly much more that we still need to do. The list of employers who are carer positive also includes the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government, third sector, public and private sector organisations. As members may be aware, I recently wrote to all Scottish public bodies to encourage them to participate in the scheme. I also wrote to MSPs in November, so I apologise to the members who have come left field if they did not receive that, but I am certainly happy from my perspective to ensure that we can pass on any knowledge and information to any members who wish to sign up. Certainly, in response to Jamie Halcro Smith's points, my officials are also working across Government to engage and establish better links with the chambers of commerce, making sure that we up the number of private companies who are embracing carer positive. I also congratulate Tom Arthur as the trendsetter for this, alongside Graham Day, and my ministerial colleagues, Gene Freeman and Marie Todd, who have been recognised as being carer positive employers. As I have also done, I hope that members across the Parliament visit the carer positive website and apply to participate in this important scheme. Carer positive is not only, however, benefiting carers. As Graham Day described, those organisations who have taken steps to become carer positive recognise the business case for supporting staff to remain in post, retain their skill and experience, and that can reduce staff turnover and associated recruitment and training costs. Inclusive growth is a key element of this Government's economic strategy, and we will support and encourage employers to maximise the benefits that come with treating workers fairly. It is right, as Kezia Dugdale did, to set carers positive within the context of fair work practices. We are committed to driving up employment standards. That is why we launched the Scottish Business Pledge and appointed an independent fair work convention, which published its framework in 2016. Despite employment law being a reserve matter, the Procurement Reform Scotland Act 2014 enabled the Government to publish statutory guidance on addressing fair work practices in procurement in October 2015. That makes it clear that a positive approach to fair work practices can help to improve the quality of services, goods and works. Public bodies must now consider, before undertaking a procurement exercise, whether it is relevant and proportionate to include a question on fair work practices, including things such as the living wage, which can be evaluated as part of the competition, and carer positive is contributing to that positive approach. I thank Carer Scotland for its hard work and development of carer positive. I hope that employers across all sectors in Scotland take steps to become carer positive, and we will continue to work closely with Carer Scotland to explore how best to increase take-up of the scheme and how to support existing carer positive employers. I am grateful to all MSPs for their commitment to do what they can to promote that initiative. Finally, I thank Tom Arthur for bringing forward that motion and for his clear passion for making a difference in that important issue. That concludes the debate. The meeting is suspended until 2.30pm.


Hello and welcome to Prophecy Files. We're glad that you've joined us today and I hope that you will take time to share out this broadcast on your social media platform because each one of these prophecy file updates that I'm bringing to you is of great significance in the time that we're living. Over the past couple of weeks I've been dealing from the Scripture of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and the spirit of Antichrist that we are seeing invading our culture, our society on a massive scale. I want to share some Scripture with you today as well as some articles from the headlines that are pointing toward that kind of activity and the seduction of the very spirit of Antichrist. First from the headlines, this article from Germany as German churches are beginning to resume their services, they have made the rule that no singing will be allowed as the coronavirus restrictions are beginning to be loosened. The article says that Germany now allows the church services to be able to resume in a limited capacity on this past Sunday as we are taping this and now they are saying that the strict set of rules is prohibiting worshipers from singing in the church over fears of the coronavirus being spread easily throughout the congregation.  Well for them the livestock, the cattle, the lamb, the sheep, all of them were part of the worship experience of sacrifice under God, a blood sacrifice. And Moses declared that there is no way that we're going out to worship without our sacrificial animals. That would absolutely negate the opportunity of worship. Well as it is right here in Germany, to stop a congregation from singing praises unto God because of the fear of a coronavirus being spread is akin to what we're reading right out of the Scripture. From this article in the United States, this article reads, Nazi-like measures in Kansas City policy requires a list to be kept of people attending in person to church services. This is unbelievable. A new order in Kansas City, Missouri requires churches to record the names of congregants who are attending the in-person services. It goes on to say that the mayor has issued the 10-10-10 rule last week on the city of a soft opening of the economy but enforces the social distancing practices meant to stop the spread of coronavirus. The rule treats churches the same as non-essential businesses requiring lists to be kept of people who spend more than 10 minutes on certain premises. The new policy, which specifically is about churches as well in-person religious gatherings as it reads, including weddings and funerals, may resume subject to the 10-10-10 rule or limited to 50 people outside provided a social distancing precautions are followed and event organizers maintain record of the attendees. This, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing more than what has been seen in the past just like Nazi Germany under Hitler keeping the list of church members so that there can be an enforcement upon the members. Are they going to send police officers to those members that may have gathered too close, closer than six feet? My friends, this is certainly playing into the very plan of the Antichrist and the spirit of Antichrist that is in our culture today. Here's some good news for you that you haven't been hearing in the national media and international media for that matter. Israeli scientist nabs a U.S. patent for the coronavirus vaccine design. This was as of April the 21st, 2020, and the article reads, in the case of the novel coronavirus, the RBM is part of its spike protein, which in the major viral surface protein that it is used to direct how the virus engages and interacts with cells in the body and to bind to the receptors like a key, this professor who founded this, the key that has to fit into a keyhole. Now this professor has declared that he and his team who have been working on the coronavirus, listen to this, since 2004, around the same time of the SARS virus and other viruses that were breaking out during that time. And they've been working diligently on the vaccine and on this virus to break the code, if you will, and have successfully filed this patent with the United States government. They've been working on the coronavirus, they said for the past 15 years, and they've developed a method of reconstructing and reconstituting the RBM feature of the spike protein in SARS, in the COVID, and subsequently now in this COVID virus, according to the university statement. In this article, Israel vaccine development for coronavirus, a number of Israeli scientific teams are currently working to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Earlier this month, and this is as of April, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research reported a significant progress toward a vaccine, a source familiar with the institute's activity told Reuters, the news agency that other media outlets that and other media outlets that trials were already underway on rodents without specifying which type. The Miguel Research Institute in the northern part of Israel have been working on a vaccine for COVID-19 in early March, and the scientists have said that they have successfully developed a new vaccine for a deadly virus affecting poultry and are now working to adapt the vaccine for humans. So we should pray for those that are looking for this vaccine and are doing the research. And I find it extremely interesting that it is the nation of Israel once again, who are the by far the greatest holders of Nobel Peace Prizes. Now we find that the vaccine and the scientific research coming out of Israel now to be able to bless the world and bless the nations. Well, all of this is certainly playing into as we read some of these articles of the Nazi-like activity in Kansas City and the squelching of religious services here in the states and the protests that you've been seeing around the country that have been demanding that the opening and reopening of America businesses and churches for that matter should take place. And I will tell you once again as we've shared with you over the past few weeks that all that the government and scientists can do is look at the data, look at the research, look at the statistics and the science behind all that's taking place, share with us the numbers as you see every night continuing by the media to invoke fear into a society by watching the numbers and the death toll take place, just like they did during World War II. This fear mongering and pushing fear is all that they are able to do. It is in direct contrast to the church's position that we walk by faith, not by sight. Now I want to share with you for just a few moments left in this program here on Prophecy Files about the seduction of the Spirit of Antichrist from the book of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. The Bible says that there would be a great or a great falling away from faith and trust in God. Consider this passage of Scripture from 2 Thessalonians. We've been here now in the past few weeks. Let no man deceive you by any means for that day or what you're talking about Christ's return shall not come except there come a falling away first. I'm finding that many Christians, many believers today, even those that are believing and saying that they have great faith in God are struggling today with the fear that is taking hold of our society and our world and being able to say I'm going to step out in faith in the face of this pandemic. There is certainly a war that is going on in the souls of many people because they have traded their faith in God for self-reliance and the falling away that the Scripture speaks of is creeping into our society and into the church. This is an hour and right here at Pace Assembly we have decided as the leaders of this church have gathered together to discuss the reopening and taking all the precautions that we need to do but we have come to a point of the crisis of our faith and pastors and leaders are making decisions when it's right for them to open up. No one should look down on someone because they may not step out right away but I believe we're at the crucible. I believe we're at the threshold of the necessity of churches taking the lead in America and around the world for that matter to step out in faith and say that we believe and trust God in the face of this pandemic and with the very spirit of Antichrist that is creeping in on our society and inside of the church. The true followers of Jesus cannot be double-minded about this. This is the core of what this crisis is really all about. Will I trust God? Will I have faith in God in this very critical hour? I remind you that believing in God and believing that God exists and trusting in God are two different things. Many are going back and forth on this issue of fear and faith and I understand the element of fear is very strong right now but we must be a people of God that are putting our complete trust in God and in Christ and in crucify. The cross is a double cure salvation and our healing and that's the reason why we must know the difference between believing in God, believing He exists and actually trusting in God. Something happens whenever the terrorist attack took place in 2001 in America that took the lives of thousands back in that particular time that even Congress rushed to the steps to begin to sing God bless America. Prayer meetings were held in massive stadiums as people gathered together. Now here we are with the collapsing potentially of Wall Street and this global pandemic and suddenly it's back to trusting in what man can do and what science can do and what the individuals that are bringing statistics and technology can do instead of trusting in God. Now this is partly because listen carefully this is the seduction of the spirit of Antichrist working right now. This is partly because when people could have gone to church and could have prayed and could have believed to be able to strengthen their faith in God for the times that would come and now we're in they allowed other things to take first place that is the seduction of the very spirit of Antichrist. Now listen this is a crisis of faith that we're in right now. This is an attack without a doubt and I'm not talking about just the virus I'm talking about the spirit that is surrounding it that's causing fear to ramp up like we never have seen before in our lifetime. This is the attack of the spirit of Antichrist that Paul said was already at work even in his time already at work in the world trying to persuade believers that it's okay to be a Christian to a point but when it really gets tough trust in self. Ladies and gentlemen this is how Christians get seduced by the spirit of Antichrist so there are some identifiers I want to share with you quickly that you can see as the spirit of Antichrist is overcoming in many places in our world to the degree that governors are signing guidelines and strict rules to list out those that would gather too close together including in churches. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 2 and 10 that they receive not the love of the truth. The spirit of Antichrist moves in when God's truth is no longer loved or appropriated and the Bible says the results of that in verse 12 of that same chapter is that all might be damned who believe not in truth they didn't love the truth. Now I want you to look very carefully with me in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 5 verses 1 through 3 says this run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and how and seek in the broad places thereof if you can find a man if there be any that executed judgment that seeketh the truth and I will pardon it God says and though they say the Lord liveth we believe him surely they swear it falsely oh Lord are not thine eyes upon the truth thou hast stricken them listen now but they have not grieved thou hast consumed them but they have refused to receive correction they have made their faces harder than a rock and they have refused to return listen carefully Samaritan's purse came into New York City to set up their tents the doctors and the nurses and the volunteers there to be able to help people in the middle of this crisis in the very epicenter in the United States in New York City now the LGBT community has said according to the article that we no longer want this bigoted organization of Samaritan's purse to be in the city even city councilman saying now that we've gotten past the crisis we don't need them anymore basically they're saying now that we have achieved what we need to we don't need your help you Christian bigots ladies and gentlemen this is the spirit of antichrist at work right now this passage of scripture from Jeremiah 5 is about Israel God's people and God is saying to them he's saying go find me just one person who has the heart for the truth any one of them and I will pardon them but you won't find one Jeremiah God says these people say that they love me but they don't receive my correction they don't grieve when I reprove them God says to Jeremiah they no longer tremble at my words so follow this I want to give you three signs of the seduction of the spirit of antichrist that are indicators of a falling away as Paul prophesied in two Thessalonians of what's happening right now in our world here's some indicators the first seductive sign of the spirit of antichrist is the loss of love for the truth when you forsake the assembling of yourselves together I realize it's a very challenging time and many people that may be more susceptible than others are finding online services or drive-in services to be better for their health and I completely understand that but my friends I've had people that have decided even now and pastors are seeing it that you know what we may not need to get back together again or for fear they're not planning on even showing up again they'll just do their thing on Sunday as if it's in any other day or any of the services that show up this is the spirit of antichrist if there is a lack of desire to go back to church if there is not a longing a love for God in his word then the passage of scripture from Hebrews 10 and 25 to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching is fulfilling in our time do you look forward to being in God's house with God's people or does the preaching and the worship seem boring and no longer matters to you it's no longer important if that's the case then you're being seduced by the antichrist the very spirit of antichrist I should say God is forever right now shouting from heaven that the closer you get to my coming the more the perilous times are happening the more important it is for you to be able to assemble yourself together here seduction number two the seduction of the loss of love for truth is when the message causes you to think of someone else's sin rather than your own when you hear prophetic sermons and messages preached when you hear reproof coming from the word of God from your pastor from the evangelist or the prophet do you think of 12 other people that need this more than you do or do you say something in your heart like boy I'm glad he's not talking about me ladies and gentlemen the Bible says thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee it's important for us in the time we're living to pay close attention to the word of God and love the word of God no matter who is preaching it if it's the gospel and the spirit of the Lord is dealing with my heart he is searching me right then to find out if there is any kind of loss of love and and drifting or a falling away the Bible uses the term falling away but the other word that is used there to describe it is a departure now departure as we know it in an airplane for for instance is a slow process that takes place from people standing in the terminal to get on board the plane to backing it out to riding out to the runway and then the taking off it is not something that's so sudden it's a subtle drifting a seduction of the spirit of antichrist here's the third seduction that I would submit to you the third seduction is when the word of God when it's preached when the message is brought it literally strikes anger in the heart of an individual rather than humbling us before God here what the word says in Proverbs 15 and 10 correction is grievous unto him that forsakeeth the way and he that hadith reproof shall die what a strong word from Proverbs if you hear the word of God a reproving sermon it's time to apply it Lord search me with that word right there I I may not even realize what's inside of my own heart as the scripture says so let that word come into my life and if there's any area in my life let me humble myself and say God do that work inside of me don't respond like the spirit of antichrist would do inside of your heart and say that word is too hard that preacher's too angry let me submit to you this that any preacher who is a passionate godly shepherd right now might even seem like the message is very strong hard and some even might call it angry but he's not angry with you he's angry with what the enemy is doing satan is doing in our land the spirit of antichrist is doing in the land and that passion that you see from your pastor and you should see it in fact I recall reading when Abraham Lincoln said that I want my preacher to preach like he's fighting bees when he's preaching in other words he was saying I want a passionate pastor who believes in himself enough to put his whole heart into this and I can assure you that it's not just about preaching or gathering a crowd we're living in a time right now my friend when it is life and death for eternity look at 2nd Thessalonians 2 and 10 once again it speaks of the spirit of antichrist where the bible says and with all deceivableness and unrighteousness in them that perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved that's the key in verse 11 and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie and that in verse number 12 that they all might be damned who believe not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness but look at what Paul said to close out that chapter in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 13 but we ought always to thank God for you brothers loved by the Lord because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the spirit and through the belief in the truth he called you to this through our gospel that you might share in the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ look at verse 15 so then brothers stand firm and hold to the teachings we pass on to you whether by word or of mouth or by letter may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word my friends there is hope because I can tell you that in the midst of a falling away that I'm seeing right now in the seduction of the spirit of antichrist in our world there is also a great harvest that is taking place there is the hope of the fact that the last day harvest is being gathered together and Jesus Christ without a doubt is ready to return to catch away his bride I submit to you my friends in the middle of all of this pandemic and in the middle of overreaching evidence of the spirit of antichrist in our world there is the spirit of the Christ who is lifting truth in this hour I would encourage you today my friends to stay close to God in the word and in prayer and in the fellowship and assembly of reopening of churches around this world and make sure that your heart is in love with the truth of God's word in this very critical hour we encourage you and pray for you today to stay strong in the Lord and in the power of His might because I believe that Jesus Christ is about to return I want to thank you for joining us for Prophecy Files today and I pray that it's been an encouragement to your heart and to your life share it out right now and let it be a blessing until the next time remember Jesus Christ is coming soon


One area has surprisingly not been mentioned at all and I'd like to start with you and get the comments and that is China's decision to militarize coral reefs creating really militarized zones for your jet fighters then under the extended economic zone claim claiming your sovereignty extends Hundreds of nautical miles beyond that and then up with your airspace Ignoring a decision by the Court under the law of the sea that the Philippines brought How do you justify that kind of provocation and How do you how would you expect others to react? I mean the US? I know I was on the defense policy board with Obama We recommended and he did and mr. Trump has continued it to have our warships go by that to make it clear We believe it's international wars. So how do you justify this? It seems to be a highly provocative action Could you pass the microphone right right behind you? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that's almost from Japan I have a burning question to our son and mr. Kim Donald Trump. I loved North Korea to test short to mid-range missiles Which are very difficult to even intercept by Aegis or pack three so exposing to the threat increasingly neighbors like Japan and South Korea the point is is Japanese government taking some actions vis-à-vis the United States or just holding breath and Same question to mr. Kim about Korean government. Okay, great. Thanks, and then this gentleman in the front row, please Thank you very much Yoji Suzuki from Japan like ambassador Kim. I spent many years in the Japanese diplomacy not necessarily in the field of security and like him I Step aside on the sideline recently My intention is not to get into some sort of debate with ambassador Kim, but I would make few Observations on by a bilateral relationship I would using his expression Qualified that we're not on the edge of a divorce, but certainly our marriage had a bumpy Stages and it's another bumpy sort of tense period, but I Think there's a bit of a difference in perception between Japan and Korea on this issue And I think it's not that bad, but I would at the same time say that in spite of a fairly close public sentiment the relationship between our two leaders are quite difficult at this moment and I think the point is that as you said Japan and South Korea to a large extent share common interest and Of course, I mean even we can say we share to certain extent common destiny because we understood the same threat In the past I think We are two countries had the wisdom of somewhat even having a difficult Relentionship on historic issues hit this aside somewhat separate this from the vital security issues And this is I think exactly what the two leaders should be doing right now To identify the longer-term interest common interest for both of us and not sort of jeopardize this at the expense of this what you qualifies as as retaliation Right, what I think we qualify as a Normalizing the export control of some material used for semiconductor production because we suspect that these Semiconductors produced in South Korea ends up in the hands of people with not necessarily appreciate. All right. Thank you very very much So sorry, no, I have a question. Well, I mean one question. Just say the question quickly then Yeah Some of you have referred to Donald Trump And Kim Jong-un talking as opposed to move But I think this move actually as some of you have alluded Lifted somewhat the pressure on North Korea on sanctions as the question. Yes, so I'm saying had Donald Trump not met Kim Jong-un and had this sort of easing of the sanction did not take place Would it have been More conducive to produce a better move constructive move on the part of North Korea, which is an excellent question But thank you. So we are almost we are basically out of time So I'm gonna ask you to come down the row 30 seconds each.  I'm going to address the question regarding the island in South China Sea It's a big contribution. I I'm not expert at this area, but the basic factor is these islands is not some territory of any International recognized A sovereignty land if they are distributed built. It's not Peninsula of Crimea, okay, it's not part of that So from Chinese perspective, they regarded these island Belong to China part of that. So obviously from their perspective, they put some weapon for self defense I don't think it's a big deal But you look at the which country occupying most number of islander not China Other country, but why US only targeting China, right? That's the country also US So far have not a pool Congress not rectifies the the law United Nations see law how have legitimate reason to So strongly against China. That's something Very strange. Okay. It's it is something you and Mr. Issa might want to discuss more later, but let's but let's go to Doug Well, just to follow up on Stu's question the I've always assumed that China had moved on the islands initially because other states that were claimants in the same area Had similarly put some facilities and China wanted to be sure it was left in the bargaining not out of the bargaining How it became so militarized as a separate question Of course, we were going to do freedom of navigation operations through that region with all parties When the Secretary of Defense asked me my advice I said put in five comparable facilities at low cost with seabees on five Philippine controlled islands nearby so that the military effect would be nullified and then do launch and diplomatic initiative by running constant freedom of navigation Exercises the issue of response in China is left to the military sector Not to the diplomatic sector foreign ministry is frozen out the military gets to call the shots That should not be in our interest. We want to get the diplomats involved My proposal would have been start serious negotiations on fisheries agreements in that region They're being rapidly depleted. Everybody's got an interest in conservation of those capable Fisher resources and we could put it in the hands of some neutral parties to take the lead But it would be a diplomatic way of getting at this issue without militarizing it Thank you. Mr. Kim North Korea's launch of short-range policy missile is clear violation of UN Security Council resolution, but Korea government didn't Condemn such launch because President Trump said it's just small missiles and I Don't think the the President Trump met with Kim Jong-un was wrong as I said earlier the timing was wrong There was strong international sanctions regime against North Korea. We should have allowed the time for these sanctions to take effect Thank you. Miss Ali Yes, I think that the Most recent North Korean trials and errors we've got the short major missiles and SLBM. It's suddenly provocative But I my own view is that the deep set still deterrent stalemate on the core Korean Peninsula supported by superior conventional nuclear capability you know antagonizing side Might be a little difficult to shake off So I think that the order these trials and errors will provide for Manoeuvrability certainly for the regime. I think that still deterrent stalemate. I think we'll Stay for the time being and I think it's very important also to think of you know You as Japan relations as needed, you know, so it's important to develop these relations And I don't I don't think it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's very important. And also at the same time Japan needs to build a you know Rural space Relations with China as well as developing, you know partnerships broader than in the space smaller Region so all these things matter those provide for critical metrics great. Thank you. So thank you to the panel I wish we had more time And this also gives me an excuse or a pretext before To thank TLE the organizers all of you your patients the incredible Song name I You know, I think all of us understand the work that goes into this meeting. So let's give them a round of applause


It's a paper by Goriand Alaghi, if you could do like this and shaft that are Goriand's billboard, and if you will give the talk. Thank you. Let's turn this on. So yeah, like was introduced, this talk will be about quantum fully homomorphic encryption, so fully homomorphic encryption of quantum data, with some added property and verification. But before I dive into the topic, let me first pose a somewhat broader question, namely, what's the future of quantum computing? Now I only have 25 minutes, so I won't answer this question in full detail, but by now we've reached kind of consensus that quantum computers will come at some point, and we see already also this cryptography conference that we're focusing on post-quantum secure cryptography, but also people in the quantum algorithms realm are building on useful quantum algorithms. So we know that they're coming, but especially in the beginning probably we won't all have quantum computers in our homes. They require very expensive hardware to run, maybe very precise lasers or some very super cold refrigerator, something like this. So a more realistic scenario, at least for the beginning of quantum computers, would look a little bit like this. I think that at some point several places around the world will probably be able to say that they have a universal quantum computer. With universal quantum computer, I mean a quantum computer that can hold a sufficient number of qubits and that can perform any quantum computation on those qubits. And there will be probably lots of other people around the world that are interested in using these quantum computing centers, and maybe you already see where the homomorphic encryption here comes in. They will want to send their data over to these quantum computing centers to have some computation performed on this data, but they will have some guarantees. The first one is of course that their data remains private. This is what homomorphic encryption will give you. A second requirement is that it's recently efficient. I mean with efficient I don't only mean that they don't want the whole computation to take too long, but there's a second aspect here that these clients in blue dots, they don't want to have to do a lot of work themselves, both in time-wise, but also in terms of the amount of quantum memory data themselves need. They might want to only run this on a classical computer. They might be content with having a small quantum device that has limited functionality or some higher error rate, but in these terms you want to consider efficiency. And lastly, they want to check at the end of the computation that whatever they get back is actually a result of the computation that they wanted to perform. This is what I call verifiability and this is what the focus of this talk will be on. So today I'm first going to introduce the framework a little bit. We all know hopefully homomorphic encryption here, but I want to emphasize what changes if we're talking about the quantum scenario. Then I want to walk you through a already known classical application of fully homomorphic encryption, namely constructing zero-knowledge rules. And the reason that I do this is because it becomes very clear that also in these sort of theoretical applications verifiability is a very important aspect. And then in the last part of this talk I will talk about our contributions, which include definitions of what this verifiability means formally. We give a construction of a quantum fully homomorphic encryption scheme that has this property and we show one application in the quantum setting. So classical fully homomorphic encryption consists of these four algorithms which are all well known by now. You have some key generation, some encryption that takes a plain text x, produces a psychotext x bar. I'll always denote psychotext with a bar over them. Then some evaluation function that given an evaluation key, some description of function f and some psychotext produces a different psychotext and this whole thing is homomorphic if at the description whatever this psychotext decrypts to is equal to the function of light on our input. And well, it's possible to construct a scheme that's fully homomorphic and it's homomorphic that works for all functions under some computational assumptions. This was first shown of course by Gentry in 2009, very famous result and after that lots of improvements have been made, mostly on efficiency. And also by simplifying these computational assumptions. What changes have we moved to a quantum setting? So quantum fully homomorphic encryption. What I understand of quantum fully homomorphic encryption, the things that change is now instead of having classical plain text, classical data, we have quantum data that we want to encrypt. So we have some quantum state sigma, we want to create some quantum ciphertext and that also of course means that instead of evaluating a classical function f we don't want to compute some quantum circuit c. But the main idea remains the same that this thing needs to be homomorphic so that the decrypted output is equal to the circuit of light to the input. And so far the developments in this field have been pretty similar only a few years behind. So quantum fully homomorphic encryption is also possible in a lateral form under computational assumptions and it's worth mentioning that these computational assumptions they're the same assumptions as any classical scheme that it uses.  So we have improvements in classical FHE both in terms of assumptions or in terms of efficiency these directly translate into these schemes. And again we're still focusing on making these things more efficient and here I want to emphasize again that efficiency I don't only mean time but it also means quantum resources of the client. Ideally the client can be completely classical. So applications of fully homomorphic encryption while in my introduction I really gave you kind of a classical application, this sort of well-known story around it, outsourcing of computation but also in theoretical realm classically we know lots of applications of fully homomorphic encryption there's multi-party computation, functional encryption private information retrieval, zero-knowledge proofs and much much more. And in the quantum setting we don't know many applications yet it's a younger field of research so we're still figuring out whether these classical cryptographic primitives also follow in the quantum case whether they're even meaningful. And while we're trying to do this we've figured out that there is some crucial property that classical fully homomorphic encryption the client has automatically that our quantum fully homomorphic encryption scheme didn't seem to have. And this is verification.  So just a very short introduction into zero-knowledge proofs, classical zero-knowledge proofs Suppose you have some NP-hard problem for example satisfiability you're given some formula phi and you want to know does phi have a satisfying assignment is it satisfiable? And some mysterious all-powerful being comes along and says oh I know it's satisfiable but you're like okay that's great can you show it to me or can you convince me that it is indeed satisfiable should I just believe you when you say this of course not. And then this other, this stats tells you well I do know a satisfying assignment W I'll call this the witness but I'm not going to tell you I want to keep this a secret so now you appear to be a sort of impasse like you want to be convinced that this formula is satisfiable but this other person is not willing to tell you a satisfying assignment so how can you ever be convinced of this and zero-knowledge proof kind of gives a solution to this it's an interactive protocol between the two of them such that at the end Alice is convinced that the cat knows a witness but she doesn't know anything about the witness so how do we build this using FHE this is already a known construction was described by Boris Barak in 2012 so this prover, the cat, he knows a witness let's start with trying the following he just encrypts his witness using the fully homomorphic encryption scheme and sends over the encryption to Alice now Alice is going to set up kind of a challenge for the prover she does the following privately she flips a random bit B and on the witness, the encrypted witness that she just precedes she evaluates the witness check function the witness check function is just a function that returns 1 if it's a correct witness and 0 if it's not and she stores the result in a sci-fi type C bar then what she does is she multiplies B with C bar so she evaluates the function to multiply with B on C bar and this resulting sci-fi text D is what she sends over to the cat and now we see that if this W is indeed a correct witness then C bar will be 1 so D will be equal to B B times 1 is B whereas if W is not a correct witness then C will be 0 always so D will always be 0 and now we ask the cat to send back the decrypted form of D so if it was and then with this result we accept his proof if and only if D was equal to B as we just saw if he sent a correct witness then D does indeed contain B so we can just do this if W was not a correct witness then this information that she sends to the cat is just an encryption of 0 so in order to win this game he has to basically guess the random bit B and this is probably hard so from this thing we can see that indeed the cat cannot really cheat but the verifier can in principle we have no guarantee that she actually these computations that she did here in ciphertext D, D bar we have no guarantee that they're actually the result of these computations maybe she's just sending back the first bit of W and the cat is just decrypting it for her and she learned something about W and this is not what's supposed to happen so let's go back a little bit and try a slightly different method so instead of the cat sending over the decryption of D he just commits using some bit commitment scheme to this decrypted value but he doesn't reveal it yet he first asks Alice give me a proof of your FHE computation and I think of this as a transcript and in principle she can always do this she can just give a list of all the steps that she did in her computation so she says ok I received this ciphertext from you then I flipped this bit and then I performed these actions that are described by my evaluation algorithm just step by step she can give a sort of proof that she arrived from W bar to D bar in a sort of legal manner and then the cat just checks this transcript he just also reviews these steps and if it's ok then he reveals D and then Alice does the same the same check again and this instruction shows that with some more encryption we can use this to construct zero-knowledge proofs but it's crucial that the cat can verify Alice's evaluation so this is what we just saw that verification of computation is crucial in applications both practical in the sense that you want to as a client you want to know whether the computation was performed was actually the computation that you wanted to be ready for if you want to construct other cryptographic proofs such as zero-knowledge and classical FHG kind of has this verification automatically like I just argued you can just give a transcript all the steps are kind of deterministic you might need some randomness to perform it but if you just say this is the randomness that I used maybe it was predetermined then anybody can check this but then once I'm setting things are a little bit different because maybe Alice needs to perform some measurements during her computation and as you may know in quantum setting if you measure a qubit this qubit collapses and there's some inherent randomness in there so she makes right in her transcript I measure this qubit and then I got a zero as an outcome please believe me like there's no way you can check this you cannot just get a complete description of the quantum state that ever joined in her computation it's just not possible so here it's slightly more different difficult and we have to think a little bit about how to approach this so now I get to our contributions first of all we have to define a little bit more formally what do we mean with verifiable quantum for the own more encryption and more specifically we give a semantic definition which I'll get to in a moment which is sort of intuitively grasped what we want and we also give a verifiable definition in terms of indistinguishability games in security proofs but it's not so intuitive to see why it captures what we want but we show that these two are equivalent and finally I want to mention but I don't have time to go into it too much that we also have to rethink compactness a little bit here because usually compactness states that at the definition time the amount of work that the client has to do cannot depend on the size of the function or the circuit that you're evaluating in this case we want to verify that the evaluator did some kind of circuit so at least we need to read the circuit description so we come up with a slightly more subtle definition that allows the client to do some amount of classical work but the amount of quantum work that has to do it at least has to be independent of the circuit and there are some more subtle keys there but I don't have time to go into it secondly we give a construction of a verifiable quantum for the own more encryption scheme as ingredients this construction uses any classical for the own more encryption scheme that is that is post quantum secure because of course we're in quantum setting now we use a classical authentication code MAC and it also uses some quantum authentication code and worth mentioning with this quantum authentication code is information theoretically secure so the only computational assumptions that we need to come from this top two ones and also the scheme that we end up with is leveled and this is because we our evaluation key is a quantum state and sort of consumed during the computation so we need to know in advance some upper bound to the size of the circuit but this also means that we only need a leveled classical authentication scheme and finally we show an application which is kind of like a group of concept it's not a new result but we show that using classical authentication programs and a scheme that has this QFG with verification you can super easily build quantum one-time programs the previous proof of this was quite complicated with like 40 page paper and we get with much simpler construction so this is a sort of proof that this QFG with verification captures some powerful primitive so before I delve into the into the definition of quantum for the own more encryption with verification or verifiability I want to talk about some related topics you get a little bit of inspiration and some feeling about what it is that we exactly want and the first topic is quantum authentication in the quantum setting authentication implies encryption so if you have an authentication code for a qubit that also necessarily means that your qubit is also encrypted and in this sense we can view quantum authentication as a kind of verifiable homomorphic encryption within quotation marks that only works for the identity circuit so this cat, he can encrypt a qubit, give it to Alice and once he gets it back he can verify that she performed the identity circuit, in other words she didn't touch it and there are several quantum authentication codes out there, they're all information you really can secure and we're going to use this last one, this trap code because it has some nice properties concerning measurement of ciphertext but one step up from this is quantum computing on authenticated data so this starts with authenticating your input and evaluating some function on it together, so the cat who has the input and encrypted it talks to Alice and during the computation they kind of go back and forth and maybe the cat gives some extra challenges to Alice that she has to respond on, Alice gives some proof immediately that she's still holding the right state that kind of thing and in the end it has some verification that whatever he gets back, whatever he ends up with is the correct output of the computation and of course on the other side of the spectrum we have what I already mentioned fully homomorphic encryption where there's no interaction needed during the evaluation but there's also completely no verification at the answer and our goal today is to combine these last two things or the best part of these last two things to have a homomorphic encryption scheme so no interaction needed but to be able to verify the result at the end and as an ingredient we'll use this quantum authentication scheme so how do we do it how do we find verification due to a routine we replace the decryption function by a function called verdeck for verified decryption and this function rather than just taking a key and a output ciphertext it also takes and something that I'll call proof this is a classical object so no quantum state but it's just some think about the transcript for the classical case and it produces an output ciphertext and some accept or reject flag and as a sort of we kind of assume that if the flag is set to reject then this output state is just some dummy state like all zero states for example and the real image now kind of looks like this so we start with an input state sigma and some side information this is just some extra thing that might be floating around possibly entangled with sigma but let's not worry about it too much this is encrypted the encryption is sent to the adversary Alice and she produces a state that she claims is the result of her homomorphic evaluation and she events to it this is some classical thing this is why it's like double wires I mean classical state with this she events some kind of proof that this is actually the correct output of the computation then this magical verite function comes along and produces the output state and accept reject flag and the real or the ideal world that we would like to mimic is the following just the circuit c is applied to the input whatever comes out well c applied to the input this is the quantum notation for this and there's some simulator that just acts on the side information just like Alice would and it's accepted and it's all fine so we say that a QFG scheme is verifiability if for any polynomial time Alice there exists a simulator such that for all the inputs all sigma and all side information whatever comes out here is indistinguishable and you may notice that this is not achievable because what Alice can do she can just throw out the input and force a reject she can just put an empty proof and the simulator is not able to simulate this so we have to give the simulator a little bit of extra power by saying that the simulator can also force a reject so you can also choose to output reject and then the output will just be discarded and replaced by the study state so this is our semantic definition of verification we also give an indistinguishability gain that encapsulates the same thing I have a little bit more time so I will go into the idea of construction just to give you a very brief idea of what's going on so how do we actually build a verifiable QFG scheme well we need to specify encryption evaluation description so for the encryption we start with just authenticating our state using the trap code the trap code versus follows you start with a single qubit the one you want to input and you apply some quantum error correcting code so this builds in some redundancy and you have your like several qubits that together encode your single qubit then you hide these qubits in between some traps so these yellow and red ones they're dummy qubits but they're just dummy qubits that are in state 0 for example in state plus they input them in random positions and only you know where your real data is hidden and then on top of that you apply a quantum one-time path which is like a quantum equivalent of a one-time path so it completely hides all the information and the reason that this is authenticating is that if somebody would like to manipulate the data say perform an x operation which is like a not operation then you would first have to guess a sufficient number of these blue positions and then apply x to all of them for example or at least to depending on the distance of the error correcting code apply an x operation to many of them without accidentally setting up one of these traps, one of these dummy codes when we're decrypting we'll remove the quantum one-time path and check whether these traps are still untouched and if they are then we'll say ok this is rejected so in order to manipulate this state you kind of have to know where these traps are and otherwise it's super impossible oh I should have mentioned that the secret key contains both the key to the quantum one-time path and the positions where they are this is the secret part of the encryption and now as an additional thing we encode the secret key so these secret things with a classical FHG scheme and a message authentication code and we just give this to the evaluator so the evaluator still doesn't have any information about the reading of these positions but he has some encoded another thing here and the reason that we do this is for the evaluation I just argued that we want to change this authenticated state but we want them to we want them to perform computations on it so if you cannot do anything then we don't really have anything so what we give him is we give him the power to change the keys so if you wanted to for example do this knot operation here what you would do is just apply the knot everywhere set up some traps but then flip the keys for the one-time path so that the traps are kind of restored then you can update the key again to let it be 0 again and if he has the encrypted information about the secret key then you can do this homomorphically and in this way you can manipulate the data but you can only do this in the allowed ways because at the end we will check whether all of these FHG key updates are legal so if he says I'm going to perform an X-gate I have to put it in a transcript otherwise he just cannot register so our method here is to ensure that during the whole computation we have an authenticated state always with a certain key that belongs to it and this key is updated throughout the computation the evaluator does this for us but we check at the end whether he did this correctly and notice that this means that our check is also completely classable because this transcript is completely classable but on some rights our contributions consist of formalizing what verifiability means in quantum fully homomorphic encryption we give an explicit construction of a scheme that has verifiability and we prove that it's secure under computational assumptions and that it has its verifiability property and we give an application to show how you can construct quantum one-time programs in classical one-time programs verifiable QFHG and of course the obvious future work is to figure out which of the all these other applications of classical FHG carry on in quantum thank you question in the background to come back to your 40-valve example because your knowledge I don't see fully how you can apply the verifiability of the HG because of the definition of the verifiability of the HG which verifies the two curves one step but in the 0HG work what was crucial was that it was secreted and permitted to verify so that's a good point so the application that I showed to zero knowledge actually means that there's some sort of separation there's some verification that you can do first and then there's some decryption that you can do after this was of course an application in classical realm so there you can separate this we haven't figured out how to do a zero-knowledge from quantum to quantum production yet we think we have construction but we haven't proven it yet but in our scheme this verification decryption step is also kind of separated because well the verification involves this checking of this transcript and then only if this accepts we do the decryption the reason that we put it into one algorithm is that the decryption also requires some additional check there because it still measures the drafts so we didn't want to separate this into two separate algorithms because then we would have a decryption function that could still choose to reject so there are some details to figure out there but in principle it shouldn't be a problem for the application okay but so far it's just the motivation but not something that's all right you solved the one-time problem yeah we solved the one-time problem and we have a candidate for zero-knowledge for Q and A but we haven't figured out the complete project but we think it might be a future thing my first question please go back to the construction your steps sorry this one yes yes only the third step are quantum all of the steps are quantum so this blue dot in the beginning it's already a qubit so this first step is a quantum error correcting code involves creating extra quantum states and entangling them with your qubit and this all quantum this second step is not really a quantum step it's just scrambling your qubits with storage kind of thing but it's not really a computation and this third step is also a simple quantum computation but all of these steps are relatively sort of the quantum operations that they require are relatively simple so the hard type of gates for example what we usually think the T gate is a hard type of gates to do on quantum computer the client doesn't have to do this but yes you're right the client does have to do quite some quantum work in order to improve the state you mean for all the quantum gates it satisfies the application yes so our homomorphic encryption scheme can do universal quantum computation that's your question that was question 2 then you said you had 2 questions any other question ok if there are there is still one question there is a problem if you ask the lines there is a second one one approach that I would think of in general if I have a QFHE you said the problem is I can't just reveal my transcript because I have these measurements what would happen if the n-crypto yeah well at least would instead of doing measurements just purify the computation and that is a proof sent over the rest of the purified state would that also be a QFHE scheme it might be possible to construct a scheme a scheme like that for our specific scheme this is not really possible because for the evaluation of this T gate which is one of the gates for the universal computation the evaluator has to perform measurements and the result of those measurements are classical outputs that she then then injects into the classical FHE scheme and she uses this to do the key update dependent on the key she has to do other so there's lots of other so it might work the evaluator is the proof of the right to make measurements but it will work yeah I think it might be possible but it would become a very big superposition because of how these T gate gadgets work it's sort of depending on the encryption she chooses to do lots of measurements and if it would I think it would branch out pretty big yeah there are no further questions that's it thank you and all the other speakers again