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I am absolutely happy to confirm that, and I will come to that in a moment.

This is not easy. In prioritising certain benefits, we necessarily need to take away from others. That is the reality of government—hard decisions must be made and defended. That is the predicament that the UK Government now finds itself in. It is taking decisions to balance the budget. Unfortunately, a number of decisions that it has taken, such as the cuts to PIP, are at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

As the Glasgow Disability Alliance pointed out in its briefing for the debate, under the additional qualifying criteria for PIP that are suggested in the green paper, disabled people who are unable to fully dress themselves, unable to get in or out of the shower without assistance, unable to feed themselves without assistance or unable to go to the toilet without supervision may no longer qualify for PIP. In 21st century UK, that must be unacceptable.

Closer to home, we have a Scottish Government that simply seems to be unwilling to deal with the fact that there are difficult decisions to be made. As other members have pointed out, it has been forecast that, by the year 2027, there will be a £1.3 billion deficit in the Scottish social security budget. We are yet to hear anything from the SNP on how it proposes to address that deficit. Social security and welfare are teetering on the edge.

We must have a grown-up discussion on how we will address the looming crisis, which will mean having to lay aside partisan self-interest and dogmatic adherence to ideologies in order to look at pragmatic solutions. It will mean giving up the benefits arms race, in which each party promises more and more unsustainable budget increases in the hope that they can push the consequences far enough down the road that someone else will have to deal with them.

As other members have pointed out, we should instead be promoting economic growth, which would have the dual effect of raising more revenue to sustain lifeline payments while decreasing the number of people who rely on out-of-work benefits—the rising tide of growth lifts all boats. A number of speakers—Liz Smith, Craig Hoy and some from the Labour benches—have pointed to the changes that are set out in the green paper on being able to go in and out of employment. Those are welcome, and we need to take them forward.

As a brief aside to that point, I note that a talking point that seems to be becoming more of a concern in many corners of the Scottish political landscape is the plan to cut disability benefits such as ADP and PIP in order to instead get disabled people into employment. Let us be clear: those benefits are not means tested. They were never intended to be income replacement benefits. They are paid to help disabled people so that they are in a position to take part in society.

In many cases, without PIP or ADP, those people would never be able to go to work or leave the house. Able-bodied people do not require help to get up in the morning and get ready; I, and many others, do require help. Many disabled people would not work without such help. As I have said, those benefits are not an income replacement; they are a field leveller. I hope that we can dispense with the idea that ADP and PIP are in any way linked to income or employment.

If we are to avoid a true crisis in social security, we must start having grown-up conversations about how we make it both generous and sustainable. I agree with the cabinet secretary when she says that social security is a social investment, but we need it to be an investment that we can afford. On a number of occasions, members and the cabinet secretary have failed to say where the money will come from to pay for the looming deficit.

My party and I are committed to being part of the solution, and I am open to being involved in cross-party talks to come up with one. I hope that we can have a much more constructive debate, perhaps after next year, on where social security goes in the decades ahead. We cannot remain where we are; we must be bold in our thinking and protect the vulnerable but also protect the budget that we all need to look after.

I agree with the cabinet secretary that social security is a social investment, but a social investment has to be paid for. We have a £1 billion deficit coming down the road. If we are to continue with such policies, which budget does Collette Stevenson suggest that money is taken from in order to pay for the social security investment? Is it education or transport? Which budget would she take money from to pay for such reforms?

We all want more people to be in employment, particularly those with a disability. However, does Paul O’Kane recognise that getting more people into employment does not necessarily mean a reduction in ADP or PIP payments? The point of ADP and PIP is to help those with a disability to get into employment, thus there would not necessarily be a cut in ADP just because more people were in employment.

I understand that a review of the adult disability payment in Scotland is on-going and that it will issue its report this autumn. Does the cabinet secretary think that that is an opportunity for us to have a whole look at the ADP, its criteria and how it could work better for disabled people in Scotland?

Many vulnerable groups are negatively impacted by the cuts, including families living with Huntington’s disease, which is a hereditary and currently incurable neurological condition. Edinburgh is served by Huntington’s disease specialists employed by the Scottish Huntington’s Association, who proactively support patients and carers in the community with a view to preventing crisis situations from arising. That service might go.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that cutting preventative spending such as that is short sighted and a false economy? Will she work with me and all stakeholders to ensure that that extremely worrying prospect does not come to pass?

I appreciate that the minister had a tough appearance at the Education, Children and Young People Committee this morning, where she was repeatedly unable to provide a timescale for the introduction to Parliament of the Promise bill. I give her another opportunity to redeem herself by stating simply when a bill on the Promise will be laid before the Scottish Parliament, so that the Education, Children and Young People Committee can finally scrutinise the detail.

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the finance secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the allocation of additional funding for health and social care, in light of the Edinburgh integration joint board’s reported plans to end funding for its third sector grant programme. (S6O-04494)

Research by Young Lives vs Cancer shows that children with cancer wait an average of six months for disability benefits in Scotland, leaving struggling families without support. Will the First Minister remove the three-month qualifying period for children with clear medical evidence, ensuring that financial aid starts at diagnosis, so that no child in Scotland faces additional hardship at an already overwhelming time for them and their family?

Shelter Scotland’s report can be summed up in one sentence: the SNP has failed Scottish children. Our country is gripped by a housing crisis, which is forcing thousands of vulnerable people out of their homes and into a system that is unable to handle the workload.

As has already been mentioned this afternoon, more than 33,619 households were assessed as homeless in 2023-24, including 15,000 children. Take a moment to think about that: there are 15,000 children without a safe place to call home. In the past 15 minutes of this debate, we have heard not one practical solution from the Government or its members for how that is going to change. That number should shame all 129 of us and it should shame the Scottish Government even more.

In my region, here in Lothian, the picture is as bleak as it is on the national level. There were 3,600 children in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh in 2023-24. As Mr Simpson pointed out, that figure is larger than the total number of children in temporary accommodation in the whole of Wales during the same time.

The Government must stop talking and start acting to protect the most vulnerable in our society. For too many years, it has continued to oversee a worsening situation. Make no mistake, what we see in Scotland today is a modern-day scandal.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child has the right

“to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.”

As Mr Rennie pointed out, the Government has not sought to amend, only to add to, the Labour motion before us. It is happy to accept that it is in breach of the convention, not just once but over and over again.

Not only is the number of children in temporary accommodation unacceptable, but, as we have heard from other speakers, the conditions in the accommodation are often unacceptable: mould, damp and heating systems that do not work during winter months. That is unacceptable.

We have a housing bill, which we will debate tomorrow in the Social Justice and Social Security Committee but which will bring almost no benefit to those children. The Government has refused to look at amendments that would improve the bill. It wants to discourage people from renting accommodation; we will see fewer properties being put up for rent in the next years because of what is in the bill.

It is even worse than that. The only way to solve the problem is to build more houses, yet what have we seen under this Scottish Government administration? There has been a fall in house building in Scotland. Unsuitable accommodation, a lack of house building, and no willingness to listen to experts and change the housing bill—the Government should go away and think again, not for my sake, but for the sake of the children here in Lothian and across Scotland.

It is a real privilege to take part in the debate, and I thank the member for lodging the motion. I, too, welcome all the people in the public gallery. They have brought the average age of this Parliament down dramatically in the past half an hour.

I will just make one negative point at the start: it is disappointing that not all parties are in the chamber for this debate. If we truly respect young carers, there should be total cross-party support.

I, along with other members, have had the privilege of attending the Scottish young carers festival on a number of occasions. For me, it has been interesting to listen to their experiences and hear what happens in their part of Scotland. It is important that we give people a break, whether it be through weekends away, a summer holiday or a pizza on a Tuesday night. However, we have to go further and recognise that school is often a difficult place for carers.

On my last visit to the carers festival, I was struck most by the different practices in different local authorities. There does not seem to be a co-ordinated approach to how children who care for another sibling, a parent or someone else in the family are treated. I appreciate that this goes beyond the minister’s portfolio, but I think that it would be helpful to get guidance on what should be in a school statement. Are we putting enough emphasis on this sort of thing in job applications? Young carers often do have empathy, compassion and resilience beyond their years, but it comes with challenges that are not often recognised by schools, employers or society in general.

I want to briefly reflect on two points from my personal experience. When people provide care or are being cared for, it has an effect on the whole family. Whether it be a sibling or a parent, the effect does not just stop with them. Having spoken to my siblings, I know that, because of the time that my parents had to give me, they sometimes felt short-changed or that they could not have the same experiences. They are fairly resilient and have come through that, but we must look at this in a holistic way and recognise that caring for somebody in a family affects the whole family.

Secondly, we must recognise the number of unpaid carers who are simply not recognised. It brings us back to the point made in the opening speech in the debate that we do not really know how many unpaid carers there are in Scotland. Indeed, I suspect that we will never find out that number.

This morning, at breakfast, I told my two daughters that I would be speaking in this debate and that I might mention them. When they asked, “Why are you mentioning us?”, I said, “Well, you go far beyond what your colleagues at school do, whether that’s helping me untie my laces, putting on my coat or doing other things.” They do not recognise themselves as young carers, and I suspect that there are lots of people in our communities who provide care but who perhaps do not appreciate what they are doing and are not looking for recognition.

Finally, I thank all young unpaid carers for what they do. Without them, our society would not function. We in the Parliament and across Scotland need to respect them, not just with words on a Thursday afternoon but with action that makes a difference for them.