Episode 4 The Big Questions

Triggering Brexit - who should get a say?

Money for nothing - on the state and slavery,

Today we're live from Hutchesons' Grammar School in Glasgow.

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

This week, the Supreme Court announced its long-awaited decision

over Brexit - the UK Parliament must be allowed a vote to trigger Article

50 before formal negotiations can begin with the European Union.

But while giving a voice to MPs in Westminster,

the court quashed legal hopes of a similar vote in

the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Irish

Now, cast your mind back to 2014 and you may recall that membership

of the European Union was an interesting factor

It emerged that should Scotland leave the UK,

it would have to reapply for membership of the EU

In the event, 55% voted to remain in the UK and 45%

And this year, 62% in Scotland voted to stay in the EU and 38% to leave.

Given this unexpected change of circumstances, morally,

is Scotland still owed a say over Brexit?

It's a very interesting part of this whole debate. These are interesting

times in which we live. Sam, is this about the UK now or is it about

Scotland? I think it's absolutely about the UK and this decision has

to be made plaintively as part of the United Kingdom. Scotland chose

to remain part of the United Kingdom and to have international affairs,

memberships of foreign organisations made collectively as the UK, so

Scotland should have a say. But it's 59 MPs in Westminster should be the

ones making that decision. The possibility of another referendum on

Europe, and put your hands up if you want to say anything, what sort of

assay should Scotland have? There will be debate on whether Article 50

should be triggered, great repeal Bill deciding whether to retain bits

of EU law into UK law and the final deal that Theresa May manages to

negotiate in Brussels. So there will be a say at all stages in the

parliamentary process. Scottish citizens have a right to elect those

MPs. The decision was made to stay in the United Kingdom and the

decision was made to leave the European Union and that's a double

bolt, and that means it's all about the UK? That's right. OK, people of

Scotland, good morning full stop put your hands up, what do you want to

say about this? Lady in the red. Unfortunately I was off work for

five months after an operation so I got to see all the news bits that

came across during the Brexit debate. The fact is a lot of

communities in England and some in Scotland have been left behind since

97, since Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, and people have watched

children remain unemployed for a long time, grandchildren starting to

remain unemployed and are frightened, and I think that gave

impetus to the Brexit Fred. You want change? I do. The political parties

have left these communities behind, they haven't helped them, and it's

the same in America. What's the answer? If I had that I'd be Prime

Minister. But it's the same in America, the bottom line, a lot of

the communities that voted for Donald Trump are still communities

where they have lost their main industry and that has never been

helped. These people have also been left behind and their reaction is to

vote for someone like Donald Trump. So taking it home, is the answer

another independence referendum? The lady, there. Not at all, because we

voted to stay part of the union and leave the EU and that's exactly what

the Democrats should be listening to, that's what we voted for. At

Hang on, you've got the Supreme Court which was under a lot of

pressure from parts of the popular press, they came to that considered

and meticulously judged opinion, they looked at everything stop blue

which the sill Convention, all which we

understood to be a pretty tungsten, muscular piece of machinery that

meant Westminster could not dabble in Scottish Parliament affairs

really, actually it means pretty well nothing. Like much of the

entrenchment of Scottish parliament it could be abolished overnight

right now if Westminster felt like it. So ultimately it is about the UK

Parliament? We've learned something from that knock-back, the weakness

of the mechanism we were told powerful. The next thing is, do the

people who work the Nissan, are they part of the UK? Because they've got

an opt out. What about the people of the City of London? We understand

they are getting a little opt out organised. If there is not a deal

done for Ireland the peace process will falter. Gibraltar probably

needs an opt out. There are deals being done all over the place but

the one place not being given a look in is the one place that voted

sizeable to stay in the EU, Scotland. Membership of the European

Union has always been that the UK is the member state, not Scotland. Why

can everybody else have an opt out? It's not an opt out. They are being

consulted and the government will take into account the interests. The

City of London will remain in Europe. Theresa May has promised to

make a deal that tries to deal with all the different interests as part

of the United Kingdom. Except ours. No single interest can get

everything they want. I think you are being quite unfair. One of

Theresa May's first actions when she became Prime Minister was to come to

Scotland to meet Nicola Sturgeon. They are meeting tomorrow as well.

David Mundell net with my grassland Derek McInnes, there is an ongoing

dialogue, Scotland is very much part of negotiations. But David Cameron

during the independence campaign, he said, look, if you vote for

independence, when it comes to joining the euro, you're going to

have to go to the back of the queue, so people voted under a false

pretence. No, I don't think so. And that remains the case today. We've

had two clear, fair, decisive and legal referendums. On the first one

the people of Scotland voted to remain in the union. As part of that

United Kingdom they decided to leave. Don't worry John, I've got my

eye on you and I know you are going to burst out of the traps any

second, I can hardly hold you back. Guy Standing, you wanted to come in?

The first thing is, as somebody who was profoundly against the folly of

the referendum, it is one of the worst mistakes are British

government has ever made. The EU referendum? The referendum on Brexit

was a folly. We have to remember that only 67% of the Scottish

electorate actually voted at all, lower than the rest of the United

Kingdom. And in a sense, logically, if you had a separate vote in

Scotland from the vote that should be taking place in the house of

parliament, in the Commons, you would be giving the Scots a double

vote. Because Scottish MPs, most of whom are SNP, will have a vote on

Article 50 and the rest of it in the House of Commons. And I profoundly

hope that they will all stand up and vote against going for Article 50.

We'll see what will happen. But I do think this double vote issue is

something that should be taken into account. I think the big problem is

that the UK constitution isn't fit for purpose for the political

reality that exists now. Even unionists in Scotland believe

Scotland should have a say in the Brexit vote. What does a say mean?

It's about power. You referred to both David Cameron and Theresa May.

First visit she made as Prime Minister was to come and tell Nicola

Sturgeon and Scotland that we were equal partners. The UK judges

unanimously batted the Scottish issue back to the politicians

because they know they can't deal with it. What should have happened

in Britain is that we should be like Australia where an Australian

referendum, each state, all states have to vote in a referendum, if one

state objects or votes no, for instance, it doesn't go through.

There is no English Parliament, that's the problem. I know, that's

why I'm saying the constitution is not fit for purpose. But there is a

political reality here, and the politicians know that, and we are

stuck in a real morass at the moment. And probably the solution is

Theresa May should possibly go to the country and say, let's have

indie rest 2, because Scotland is obviously not happy that

# IndyRef America to. David, I don't think you are up for IndyRef two,

but who is up for that, here? Do you think it would go through?

Potentially would on the basis that the first IndyRef, we started with

10% and got up to 45%. Said the wind is in your sales. Has Brexit helped,

and the Supreme Court judgment of Scotland being excluded?

Potentially. All the Unionist parties were sitting there saying,

you want to be part of the EU, vote to stay, and now we are not part of

the EU. We were given the vote on false pretences. Lets get a word

from you, and then John Curtice. I think the IndyRef idea is a good

one, there was so much misleading information leading up to the Brexit

campaign, Scottish people should have the right to make an informed

judgment. John Curtis, couple of things for you before we get the

current state of Play and opinion on independence as to whether this has

given further impetus to Indyref two and the march towards an independent

Scotland. It just struck me that Simon said the UK constitution is

not fit for purpose. European, the EU rules and regulations, do they

take account of a nation which is part of the member state having a

say in its own future after that nation secedes from the European

Union? The answer is that Article 50 says that a notification for Article

50 has to be in accordance with the country's constitutional procedures.

The European Union in effect will suspect the procedures of the member

state if it wishes to leave. The fact that the European Union is, on

occasion, willing to listen to some state governments, as illustrated in

the row about the trade agreement with Canada when the while in

Parliament was at least in theory in position to stop that deal.

Basically the European Union says it's up to the member states to

decide for itself. Not the substate? It is up to them to decide how it is

going to leave and what are the rules under which it decides. If it

is a powerful substate it can decide. The tiny Faroe Islands opted

out of the EU when Denmark joined in 1973 and that's because they had a

powerful enough government, it could sign international treaties. Spain

will have no truck with substate is for obvious reasons. But it has been

done, there are lots of exceptions. To come back to your big question

which is about the possibility of a second independence referendum. The

truth is that neither side in this debate is in a comfortable position.

The first thing one needs to understand, yet it is true that 55%

of people in Scotland voted in favour of staying inside the UK, but

you have to understand that only 55% voted to stay. In effect that

referendum failed to solve or to settle the issue of whether or not

Scotland should remain in the UK. The only consequence of that

referendum was to make Scotland a much more problematic member of the

UK than it previously had been, so that is the difficulty on the

Unionist side. And the fact we leaving the European Union is a bit

of an embarrassment given the arguments were used in the campaign.

The trouble on the nationalist side, trying to link a second independence

referendum and a yes vote to Brexit is that what we now know is that one

in three of those people who voted to leave the United Kingdom, yes to

independence, actually voted to leave the European Union. And the

nationalist movement in Scotland is not united on the issue of Brexit.

What we have discovered is that there are some people who are

sufficiently upset about the UK leaving the European Union that they

would now back in independent Scotland, but they have been matched

by an equal number of people who are now sufficiently happy about the

prospect of the UK leaving the EU that they would now stick with the

UK rather than a Scotland which would wish to remain in the EU. The

net effect is that we are still at a 55-45 vote. Some have changed their

views, but both sides, the unionist and nationalist communities, are

divided as a result of Brexit. Interesting. What a brain!

APPLAUSE A lot of people watching, everyone

in the UK, they would not have appreciated that particular... Not a

fact you have a brain! That particular statistic, really

interesting. David, leader of Ukip in Scotland, this is... This

programme is not about so much the political and legal, this is about

the moral, the rights and wrongs. Scotland is a nation, Scotland has

been cast adrift by English nationalism and they are no longer

going to be part of the EU. Scotland has to have a concrete palpable say

in its own future. I agree with a lot of what Professor John Curtice

said. You will not win a referendum on it. More importantly, the EU,

when Nicola Sturgeon had her summit, we are quite good chums, I had a

chat with him, he said, we cannot remain in the EU, Scotland entered

the EU as part of the UK, it must leave as part of the UK and then

reapply. It will have to reapply after Turkey and goodness knows who.

We have a 7 billion deficit thanks to the SNP. Wait, what do you mean?

Listen, what do you mean by reapply after Turkey? There are certain

human rights standards Turkey will not qualify for four decades. If at

all. Scotland will. We will have to reapply. We do not have...

APPLAUSE There is no central bank. We will

have to accept the euro which is a catastrophe. Some countries will

crash out in the next year or so. The euro is very unstable. We would

have to accept the euro. We would have to have an international border

50 miles from Edinburgh. Not a good idea. We do four times as much

business with the rest of the UK than we do with the EU. Presidential

is said we have no chance, we have to leave, we decided in the

referendum on Scottish independence to remain British. We subsequently

decided to, in a different way, with the EU, but it was 60-40. That is a

good proportion of the Scottish population who do not want to be in

the EU. It is not a big victory, as Professor John Curtice said. This

notion of Scotland being a part of the single market and the rest of

the UK not being, that is just fanciful. That is unworkable. It is

not. It works in lots of different countries to have different levels

of integration with Europe. All of the Nordic countries have everything

from Finland in the Euro and in Europe to Iceland out of both of

them and they have had one travel area for 40 years before Schengen

was devised. If you have a will politically, you can find it. It is

not present in the UK. The thing to say about what has been analysed by

John and what David picked up on, it is probably right Europe is not the

burning issue that will bring them to want another independence

referendum, but what is possibly is that if we are ignored on as big an

issue about trade and relations with Europe and everything that comes

with that, completely ignored to date in the negotiations, what hope

have we to be heard on anything else? Professor? The moral issues, I

appreciate the politics is compelling. It is a moral issue, are

we being heard? When we talk about democracy, little scientists used

the term deliberative democracy, democracy is the way in which we

settle things by discussion. That is fundamental to what a democracy is

about. The second thing, Liberal Democrat C, we respect the rights of

minorities -- liberal democracy. Both of those have been absent in

most of the Brexit debate. People treat it as a settled issue. I am

horrified by the Bill currently in Parliament which does not say it

will be subject to discussion, it does not say Parliament will discuss

the issues, it says all power will be invested in the Prime Minister.

That is all it says. I think we have to worry here that not just that

Scotland is not being consulted, the population is not being engaged in

the process. What a feather John Curtis was describing is a nation

divided -- Professor John Curtice. We can probably agree. Let us have a

process of discussion and resolution that protects the minorities. You

are right that we need discussion and consultation. The issue is about

whether there is a veto. On specifically Article 50, there will

be days of debate in Parliament, MPs will have their chance to have a

say. The bill specifically is about simply giving ministers the power to

trigger Article 50, not about the future relation with the EU, it is a

very specific thing. It is important not to exaggerate. Do you think

anyone will be consulted on any other aspect on this? Why don't you

accept the democratic will of the majority? We voted as Great Britain.

Did the referendum say, we want to be in or out of the single market?

The president made it very clear. That is one Guy. One more president

reference and you are out. He is the most influential figure in the

European Union. How long is his post? He is gone now! Simon, there

will be a white paper, what is the problem with that? How many days

will they spend discussing it? Three to five days. The maestro treaty was

discussed for 42 days in the House of Commons. The Government is trying

to ram this through, a battle has been won here by the forces of the

right who have always hated Europe. They are backed up by the rabidly

right wing anti EU predominantly UK press and 37% of our restricted

franchise voted for an advisory referendum in a parliamentary

democracy and all of these facets do not fix together to provide a

solution people will accept and be happy... I am a supporter of Labour

and a member and Jeremy Corbyn is wrong about this, there should be a

free vote and I would urge all Labour MPs to vote with their

conscience. Thank you. Let us not confuse the Bill and the white

paper. I wonder what Mr Schulz thinks about this next debate? I

know he watches every week! If you have something

to say about that debate, log on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions,

and follow the link to where you can We're also debating live this

morning from Hutchesons' Should the state give

everyone a basic income? And should today's generation

make amends for slavery? So, get tweeting or emailing

on those topics now, or send us any other ideas

or thoughts you may 87 years ago, the great economist,

John Maynard Keynes, wrote a book called The Economic Possibilities

for our Grandchildren. One of his startling predictions

was that in the future - that's now - rising living standards

would mean we could all choose to be working much less,

perhaps just 15 hours a week, We all know what happened instead -

some people are working much longer hours, others have no work at all,

and globalisation is taking advantage of the cheapest places

in the world to produce everything. Now other economists are suggesting

that if everyone was given a basic income by the state,

the workload and the profits from capitalism could be

shared out more evenly. Well, Finland is trying this out,

and here in Glasgow, a local councillor wants this city

to give it a whirl too. Should the state give

everyone a basic income? Basic income, how would this work?

Everybody would get this, right? The idea is every individual, man, woman

and child, a lesser amount, should receive each month a basic amount

and that is to be decided by Parliament, as a right.

Unconditional in behavioural terms. The reasons for supporting a basic

income are threefold, fundamentally. Can I just stop you? Why should

everyone get it question what footballers, barristers... Let me

explain in a second when I have said the philosophical and moral

justification. The first is, the wealth and income of all of us in

society is far more to do with the contributions of previous

generations. We have a collective wealth much more than anything we do

ourselves. If you allow private inheritance, we should have a

return, a social dividend, to the collective wealth of society. It is

a right. That is an idea associated with Thomas Paine, socialists and so

on, going back a long way. There is a strong philosophical tradition.

The second reason, the moral reason, is that if people had a basic

income, they would have a greater sense of freedom, what we call

Republican freedom, in the sense that it would mean they have a

greater ability to say no to arbitrate domination by figures,

bureaucrats, fathers, husbands and others. And a greater ability to say

yes if they wanted to do something paying a low-wage but they would

like to do it but they cannot afford it. That sense of freedom is

something that has been lost in the developments you have briefly

described. Alec income in equalities and securities have multiplied --

our income. A healthier society? We are not in a healthy society if a

large majority of feeling quality insecure and it leads to the third

justification. We need a good society in which everybody has basic

security. The psychologists, the economists, they have shown that if

people have basic security in a mental sense, psychological sense,

they have better mental health, better mental bandwidth in other

words, higher short-term IQ, they are able to make decisions more

rationally and they are able to feel less stressed. That is a real need

in a modern open society. The fourth thing which is not so moral but it

is indicative of the crisis is that the income distribution system of

the 20th century has broken down irretrievably. Our wages, our real

wages, in Europe, in the US, Germany, France, the UK, they have

been stagnant for 30 years. They have become more volatile. People

are facing more insecurity. If we continue, we will see populists of

the far right in particular playing on the fears and insecurities of a

growing number of people and that means that because basic income has

become more popular, it is not only robots, but the fear of far right...

Automation, I want to come to that in a second. If you are driving a

big company, by taxing them more, there might be more in automation so

it might be counter-productive. Who likes this? I meant, I don't like

it. OK, let me rephrase that? Who doesn't like it?

LAUGHTER Why not? I think it is very much a

socialist idea and with a lot of socialist ideas, they are not

practical. If socialists understood economics, they would not be

socialists. It is pretty much that simple. It is not a practical thing

to do. Yeah? Mass inequality we have in society, that is the situation we

have got, we have got individuals with money, it is not being

distributed. Stress, as one of our guests alluded to, it is one of the

biggest things. That stress people are in, it is crippling our society.

Unhappy stressful society. Taking it back to the guy in the grey T-shirt.

I do not think anyone has exactly what the issue was, it is not the

sort of universal basic income, as I said, I think it is a nice idea and

it would be great if everyone could do that, everyone would love it if

it was feasible for everyone to have a set amount of income where they do

not have to worry about rent, food bills, but I do not think it is

something that is necessarily feasible and we have to look

somewhere else for another idea. Do you like this idea?

I do. I think most of us will accept the current welfare system is a

bureaucratic nightmare. But when we're talking about relieving stress

and anxiety, I have experienced some of that in Glasgow. I'm part of an

organisation which does a tea run every Thursday night in Glasgow.

Speaking to the folk who come along, I hear the stories of some of the

sanctions that they have had. There are no stories that I have heard

that did not appear in I, Daniel Blake. If I can take the point about

sanctions, you want to try this in Glasgow. Let's follow the point so

articulately expressed by that lady, there. You have to also think about

individuals basic needs. If you are thinking about the extra needs that

might pertain in a certain household you will still have to have an

assessment, won't you? There has to be in and -- there must be an

acknowledgement that some people live more expensive lives. If there

was a disability you would have to make an assessment. You back into

the bureaucratic morass. Nothing approaching what we

. Nothing approaching what we have now. I am a socialist. One of the

books I cherish is a book signed by Nye Bevan, it sits in my office. And

he oversaw rapid expansion of the welfare system, the birth of the

NHS, the start of a mass house-building programme. And he did

it motivated by that thought that this, the fear people particularly

experienced during the great depression, what coloured the

thinking of many of the people of his generation. I think it is one of

the great tragedies of our time, the welfare system, rather than removing

fear has become the cause of it. Let me ask you... It is pernicious but

it is more than that, it is about rights, it is about Masters and

servants. Too often when people approach the welfare system for

support they feel like they are approaching a master. Let me ask you

this, the current benefits bill is about 217 billions pound. The

estimated cost of this would be ?304 billion. That's a lot of difference,

isn't it? ?90 billion difference. Who calculated that? Those are

estimated costs I was looking at earlier. How would you pay for that?

You save money on the prison system and you look at the tax system. What

would you do about the tax system? If you want to tackle inequality you

have to do something about assets tax being distributed. Big

companies? One of the discussions in Scotland is around land taxes and I

think that is a key part of this. One of the key drivers of inequality

in my lifetime has been the concentration of asset wealth in

fewer and fewer hands and that needs to be tackled as well. Does this

work? The question of how you pay for it is quite critical for basic

income. The moral judgments are extremely strong, the practical

arguments are strong, we have seen it work with Child benefit. Paying

for it is the issue. We cannot take this to a good and ?17 billion or

however we calculated move that into basic income, because that covers

older people and and sickness and a large number of other things. All

the schemes that I've seen make assumptions about taking money away

from people who got benefits. Nearly all of those schemes leave poor

people know better off, some of them, including the citizen incomes

trust scheme, actually make poorer people worse off. The second problem

related to this is the sheer size of what's needed. If you've got, let's

save the Scottish Greens proposal suggests we'll need ?140 billion in

tax. If you've got ?140 billion to spend on a fairer tax system which I

wouldn't necessarily be averse to, how do you spend it? Would you want

to spend it on this when we're not poor people better off, and not

rather put it into health or education or public sector? What

about investment... In a second. What about higher tax for the big

companies and the dangers some would argue of leading it abroad and jobs

in this country dwindling? I'm not sure that that's a moral argument,

that's about the practicalities of how much money raised by tax. Let's

be clear, the way in which basic income works, what makes it fair is

that everybody is paying tax as well. The difficulty you've got, I'm

afraid, is that in some cases the poorest people and people on the

lowest incomes to pay tax in a way that would not be sustainable. If

those problems could be resolved, I would be much more supportive. I

think it's important to realise that this is a nonsense. What, this

programme? What are you saying? It is a nonsense saying you have two

lower benefits for other groups. Why? This can be conceived as a

scheme that you build up by building a capital fund and realising that at

the current state, not only is our welfare system a total mess that

acts as a disincentive for people to take low-wage jobs, but, for

example, suddenly we are able to afford to pay out ?375 billion in

quantitative easing to give to the banks. How can you say we can't

afford it when we are doing that sort of thing? In this country we

have cut corporation tax. It used to be 52%, then it was cut to 28%. In

other words they only pay 28%. Now it has been lowered to 20%. The

government says it is lowering it to 17%. We may become a tax haven.

Exactly. Don't tell me we can't afford a basic income when we giving

this a way in subsidies. David? So long as we are in the European Union

the idea of it is completely ridiculous because you'd have

everybody turning up on our door stop, you know that and I know that.

No, no, no. We coming out of the European Union anyway. You can't do

this, where do you get the money from? It's just simply not

practical, it is airy fairy nonsense. I have shown in my book

that you can afford it. For example we have a care crisis, right? I'm

all for reform. Wait a minute everyone! Everyone is talking across

each other and people at home can't hear what is going on, you can't

hear each other and I can't hear myself think and if it carries on

I'm leaving. Leslie. The caring thing, at the moment there are lots

of people that would like to do caring jobs but they can't afford to

do that because it's such low wages, they then get into the benefits

trap. There are all sorts of reasons. Now the way we have got

care friend at the moment, we can't afford to be putting out the full

paid nurses, doctors and so on that could deal with people. Can I ask

you something? This is a pump primer for people to have the freedom to do

caring things and that's what we need. Can I ask you something? In an

independent Scotland, presumably you would like to have a system like

this, universal basic income, in an independent Scotland within the

European Union you would also buy into freedom of movement, so would

everybody who came to this country from Bulgaria, Estonia, wherever,

come to Scotland, would they be entitled to this basic income, yes

or no? Here's the strange thing, if Glasgow gets the go-ahead it's going

to have a pilot. Fife is having a pilot. Who else question mark

Barcelona, Amsterdam, Finland. All those countries are in the EU. So

freedom of movement would be entitled to the universal basic

income? At the moment that is the case because you have a means tested

system. If you had a basic income system, whatever rules you or we

might like to apply, you could apply a simple rule by saying only when

people have been in the country for several years with they qualify for

the basic income, and treat the needs of migrants separately. Is

that a good system? Only when they have been in the country in for a

few years. I'm rather liberal when it comes to matters of immigration.

So I think that is something, I don't deny that is a difficult

thing, but why I support a pilot in Glasgow is because we need to figure

out how to work out the practicalities. You have heard from

some people speaking against it that this is not practical, it's pie in

the sky, people were saying that about the NHS and it has worked out

rather well, I think, for all its flaws. What this is about, a

comprehensive system, for me it's not about the rise of the robots,

it's about the relationship between the individual and the state. And

changing that relationship from the state being the master to setting

people free. I'm fed up with the political right owning the word

freedom, I want the political left and socialism to be about freedom

and I think this can deliver freedom. If I can make one more

point. We've only got 30 seconds left. The care system is in crisis

and I'm glad this has come up, 60,000 carers in this city and they

are expected to volunteer, they are forced into it effectively because

they love people. And they are told that if they manage to care for 35

hours a week they would be lucky enough to get 60 odd quid. That's

not taxable, morally, -- that's not acceptable morally in any shape or

form. I know you are something of a fan of Donald Trump, would you like

to see us take a leaf out of his book and turn our backs on

globalisation, Scotland first? I think Donald Trump is irrelevant to

this. Globalisation, Donald Trump, isolation. The social system needs

to reform, it's got to be sorted out, it's a mess, especially in

Scotland, the SNP government made a dog 's dinner of it. We need to sort

it out, nobody disagrees. What we want to see is people at the bottom

end of the taxation system taken out, that's what we've been

campaigning for. People on low incomes should be taken out of the

taxation system altogether, that makes sense, that's logical. You

still have a poverty trap problem. You don't deny that the unlimited

number of people coming to the UK, you'd have queues at the border of

people trying to get in. We are going to have to leave it there but

we have a very interesting debate forthcoming. For now thank you very

much indeed. Thank you for coming in and expressing so clearly what that

was all about, very intriguing. Strong arguments on both sides.

You can join in all this morning's debates by logging

on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions and following the link

Or you can tweet using the hashtag #bbctbq.

Tell us what you think about our last Big Question too.

Should today's generation make amends for slavery?

And if you'd like to apply to be in the audience

at a future show, you can email [email protected].

We're in Southampton next week, Leicester on February 12th

235 years ago, 133 African slaves bound for Jamaica were deliberately

drowned in the Caribbean by British sailors aboard the slave ship, Zong.

They were chained together at the ankles, weighed down

with metal balls and cast into the deep.

The ship's owners could then claim compensation

A few weeks ago, the Jamaican government chose the Zong massacre

to represent the high human cost of slavery and to reassert its claim

that the UK should formally apologise and make financial

reparations for running a slave colony on the island for 200 years.

Glasgow, where we are today, was just one of the ports to profit

London, Bristol and Liverpool did too.

Should today's generation make amends for slavery?

And if so, how? Sandra, when we walk through the streets of Glasgow and

many of the other great maritime cities of the United Kingdom, what

kind of misery is etched in the Stones?

If you look in the centre of Glasgow, you can see the proceeds of

transatlantic slavery and how that benefited the economic growth of

this city. It is interestingly mentioned London, Liverpool and

Bristol. Both London and Liverpool have formally apologised for their

contributions to the transatlantic slavery and placement of Africans.

Can you make judgments on the past? Slavery is endorsed in the holy

books, in the Bible, the Koran. Can we cast judgments on the past

estimate absolutely. Even the debates we have had already today.

-- the past? We learn from the past and it is what helps us change the

future. Have we got anything to apologise for? Absolutely. It is not

about as an individual having a link to slavery but we have reaped the

rewards of slavery and colonialism in this country. The UN, the

committee for the elimination of racial discrimination, they have

said that the Scottish Government that those historical moments in our

history should be compulsory within the education system and currently

they are not. The slave trade, conservative estimates say 12

billion people were taken from Africa, some of the more Afrocentric

historians say it was a lot more, it could well be a lot more, what about

the people driven off the land in Scotland, the Irish potato famine,

the massive Arab slave trade and Africans trading Africans? It is a

very complicated situation. What is not complicated is that slavery was

about property and ownership. If you were an enslaved African, you had

absolutely no rights, you were treated... Is completely different

to any other kind of servitude happening at the same time. It is

arguable. Michael Fry. Slavery was a terrible and horrible thing but the

fact is that in the past, it was not against the law. There is nothing in

the Bible, for example, that condemns slavery. The dues were

slaves in Egypt and God sent the plate but it was because they were

Egyptians. St Paul says that in Jesus Christ is neither slave nor

free. It did not matter what your social status was. But it is not a

condemnation of slavery. It accepts that slavery is a fact of life, as

slavery was a fact of life until the 18th century. You are talking about,

you jumped from the law and straight from legal situations to using a

faith group, the Bible. When you think about slavery, you are correct

when you say it was enshrined in law and that is the key thing, it was a

loud, like it was OK to treat people inhumanely. I personally feel we

have to understand that as a country we allowed that to happen and I

think there is still a lot of... Michael. It was a global thing.

Should the whole 21st-century, everyone living in the 21st century,

apologised to everyone living in the 18th century? This is ridiculous.

And what difference would it make? I think it would make a big

difference, particularly looking at the city of Glasgow and the amount

of people who are black minority ethnic who live in this city, just

over 12% and it is growing, I think if we invested in the fact these

people contributed and their ancestors, including my own,

contributed to the history of Scotland, contributed to the

Enlightenment, I think that is an important... What about other

countries? Because of British pressure, partly, they made it

illegal to have slavery in Saudi Arabia, in the Yemen, in the early

60s. The Arab slave trade, there are many countries that should

apologise, many countries who profited. We are in a very difficult

situation. One of the issues of Scotland is, we talk about the

Enlightenment, Scotland and the abolition movement, yes, the

abolition movement helped to stop slavery, but it did not look for

equality, it did not want the enslaved African people to be equal

in human terms. That is something this generation has the opportunity

to address. Human rights was in nascent form, the concept was barely

recognised. Nice to have you back on the programme. I try my best to be

fair and I accept everything, this is about Jamaica, the Caribbean, I

would turn it around and say ?10 million Jamaica received from

building prisons, perhaps that should be put into hospitals? When

we spoke to a lot of Caribbean people, we did a survey and over

2000 people said they would rather money, if there is money left in the

pot, by the time it came to me, I would get 50p, that we would

transfer that to hospitals, infrastructure in the Caribbean. We

are talking about Jamaica specifically or the Caribbean, an

apology was sort of received from Tony Blair but it was not quite, I

am sorry. We all know legally, once you say sorry, the lawyers will come

out. It cannot be done. I regret it happened. What about the... The

massive scar on our society of what happened in the past, it casts a

long shadow in the wake we perceive ourselves and in the way we regard

the other. That is in the past. Why should the 20th-century young people

have to apologise? What I would suggest people do when people ask

people like me who work in the Caribbean community, this is what

most of us would like, yes, an apology, and this is what we would

do, build schools, infrastructure in the Caribbean, something like that,

and you talk about history, the BBC had a brilliant programme last year

about black history, that was fantastic. Things like that, we need

to see them in schools. Education. We have museums in certain countries

already, in areas, Liverpool, Bristol, that is the kind of

thing... We are in complete agreement about that. If you go into

the George Square, there are 12 statues there, all of the statues

had a direct link or in direct link to slavery. Those people and even

the streets in Glasgow, the plantation owners, the business

owners, they are the people who are celebrated. It is about looking at

it differently. It is not about saying not having that street names

but giving the real history of who those people are. It is about

acknowledgement and awareness. I find the moral stance quite

appalling. I do not believe in this transfer of moral sponsor political.

The SS guards in the concentration camps could have said to the Jewish

children they were shovelling into the gas chambers if the children

said, what have we done? They would say, you have done nothing, but you

are morally responsible. That was the necessary argument. Do you

believe in amoral transference of guilt to contemporary Germany? --

amoral transference. It is not my subject area. I am here to talk

about... It is a moral issue and part of it. David Coburn, the shame?

Not my subject, I cannot understand that. I am not going to make

comparisons with the Holocaust. I felt that is what the question was

asking me to do and I am not in a position to do that. The

transference of moral guilt. Slavery is an appalling thing and it still

is and it is still happening and I think instead of worrying about what

happened in the past, although you should never forget what happened in

World War II, we should be worrying about modern-day slavery and we

should look at the Taliban, for example, who want to win slave

women. I am a feminist and I believe in ladies' writes. Leslie taught me

about that at school. You were at school together? Yes. I want young

girls to get the same opportunities to go to school and not be paid

servants in the household. We worry about that. Until 1923 in North

Africa, there was still slavery. It was the Royal Navy... The Atlantic

slave trade was incomparably evil. The Royal Navy suppressed the slave

trade. William Wilberforce in Parliament got rid of the slave

trade. One of the first countries in the world. That should never be

forgotten. Let me get people who have come here to specifically talk

about this. What about the role of religion? Can you condemn people in

the 18th century for believing the Bible? No, we cannot condemn them

for believing the Bible. Slavery endorsed in the Bible. I would like

to point out, using the fact that the slave trade happened in the

Bible to justify it happening is out of place because the Bible as a holy

book has to report it as it is. The fact some people... It does not

justify it. Abraham and others... Hang on, New Testament as well? The

fact all of these things happened in the Bible does not mean the Bible

condones it. We can understand people for inferring it does.

Slaves, about your earthly masters, in singleness of heart, as you obey

Christ, in order to please them... This is disgusting. It is not

condoning the slave trade. There are things we are doing today, today we

do not see anything wrong with it, what was going on in their mind?

That is what happened. In the Bible, the fact the Bible reported it, the

downside of the people we refer to as the Saints, they had their dark

side. Looking back, the slave trade was wrong then and it is still wrong

today and it will be Brom tomorrow -- be wrong tomorrow. Hands up in

the audience, gentlemen there in the black. Quick points. The thin end of

a very big wedge. This happened eight generations ago. Nobody here

is responsible for that. Around the same time of the Highland

clearances, human being is were replaced by sheep. Not as brutal in

anyway, but it was in its own way brutal. People were evicted and they

would have died in the process. They came to the lowlands. Should

Scotland be suing England for that? We have done terrible things, human

beings. What would you like to say? I think we are quite wealthy a

country and we got there based on a lot of the slave trade. I think we

do owe a lot of what we have now to these nations that we have abused

and I think that we do owe them something. The trend is wealth of

this nation, much of it was built on the slave trade to this day. It was

built on hard work and usually by people underpaid and sometimes in

this country and in others. Tobacco, cotton. Thanks to Wilberforce and

Parliament, the Royal Navy suppressed the slave trade. The US

still had massive slavery. We were suppressing it. Britain can take a

very high... Guy Standing. We must make an apology because the slave

trade enriched our country, much of the wealth we have today is because

of slavery. I also think we ought to be paying more attention to current

day slavery and devoting more resources as a reflection of the

moral commitment to fighting existing slavery. It is not

appreciated how many contracts the British Government makes with

countries that openly sanction having slavery.

APPLAUSE One of the most beautiful findings

we have had with our basic income pilots in developing countries is

that it has enabled a number of people who have been slaves in debt

bondage for generations to be able to fund the purchase of freedom and

that is one of the most wonderful results we have seen in Africa and

India. Michael Fry, ten seconds, how careful do we have to be about the

definition of a slave? We have to be very careful indeed. For example,

Glasgow was not built on the slave trade, it was built on trade with

colonies which had slaves on their plantations. Thank you very much for

that clarification. We have to leave it there.

As always, the debates will continue online and on Twitter.

Next week, we're in Southampton, so do join us then.

But for now, it's goodbye from Glasgow and have a great Sunday.