Scotland’s Ageing Population… and how to pay for it

Hello and welcome to a Hollywood Sources podcast special. You join us at Standard Life House in Edinburgh. As we consider the challenges of an aging population in Scotland, we're here in association with Phoenix, the retirement savings and income business. To yes, consider the impact of Scotland's aging population and Luke, we've got a bunch of lovely people with us as well. Hello, lovely people.

It's a very delicate round of applause. But thank you very much for being here. Lots to get through this evening. Scotland now has more than a million people aged 65 and over. There are fewer than 750,000 people aged under 15. The shift towards starting families later and having fewer children means Scotland's total fertility rate is at its lowest point ever at 1.3. And so that's way below the level of which population replaces itself.

That is the backdrop for our conversation this evening. To look at how far behind we're falling when it comes to personal savings for old age, for example, to assess the demographic challenge on looking after older people as well. And is politics, are politicians, do they have the answers? Are they the ones to whom we need to turn? To dig us out of the, well, the slight mess that we're already in, which might get worse. I'm Calla McDonald, also though, on the Hollywood Sources podcast. More importantly, our Jeff Aberdeen, who was Chief of Staff to the First Minister, Alex Hammond.

as a quieter applause as you go. It's like a golf crowd in here. They're worried about putting us off. Also here, Andy McKeever, who was Director of Communications for the Scottish Conservatives. Oh, wow. James was absolutely devastated. That is the first time Andy's ever been cheered. It's because they all know you're secretly a Lib Dem.

That's apparently not so secret anymore. Gosh, I'm quite taken aback by that. Not as much as me. Not as much as me. It's great to be here with you all. One thing to say then, yeah, we want your contributions throughout the evening. Ask your questions, make your points. We've got some experts in the room, take part, offer your commentary, you know, criticize, correct, add. Put your hand up, we'll come to you at any point. I do just want to say, actually, that if you're feeling particularly shy, you can also watch at us.

I know, we're very modern. It's very, we're very, very 2001. The number is all triple three, 404-6507. Save it. You can message us any time, especially if it's critique of Andy or Jeff. Right. It's good that you remembered this time, man. Well, I've had to run down this time. A couple of weeks ago, I forgot the WhatsApp number on the podcast. In my defense, I'd been up all night reporting on the US presidential election.

Can't be some slack here, right? Andy, let's come to you first for that comment. Set today in context for us the demographic challenge for Scotland. Broadly, we'll get into specifics. Broadly, what are we talking about? I think, broadly, this is probably the biggest problem the country has that nobody actually talks about because it's easy to leave it for the next guy, to be honest. But I think that you look at the fact that we have a proportionally reducing working age population

proportionally increasing non-working population. If you look at our state expenditure, broadly speaking half of everything we spend goes on healthcare or welfare and it's increasing all the time. So this is really a vicious cycle and we are not doing very much about it and we're also not growing.

You layer that on to poor educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and you then look at us being in a bit of a spiral, to be honest, where at some point somebody has to make an intervention to change the game. And at the moment, I'm not clear who is making that intervention or when that intervention is going to come, but it has to come at some point because things don't look good. Geoff, just to build on that, why is it important, this conversation?

Am I on there? You can all hear me and just because you're about to applaud. This is so good.

I'm really glad we are doing this. I know this is a private event in certain aspects in terms of its attendees, but actually it will go out at some point publicly, and this is really, really important. And I'm going to be quite self-critical of my time in government. But before I do that, I'm a bit of a luddite as those who've listened to the podcast would know. But my marketing director, True North, Ryan Creighton, had to pay tribute to him.

He's been doing some analysis of Google Trends and he said that no country on earth searches the term what is a pension more than the UK? 43,000 people a year. No country on earth searches the term what is a mortgage?

more than the UK, and that's 25,000 people per year. Now, you can argue that two ways, I suppose. You could say great that people are taking an interest in it, but I actually take the alternative view. I think that that tells us that folk don't have a clue really about the importance of their financial future, their personal financial future. And I do think it is an economic and societal time bomb that's ticking.

As an aside, and I'm really glad that we had the opening that we did, because I don't feel bad about saying this now, Ryan actually said on Google Trends, in the last six months, there were 610 searches for Jeff Aberdeen.

I think I see where this is going. And only 40 for Andy McKeever. And they're all in this bloody room apparently. So no, but seriously, we do need to raise the profile of you because we can't have any passengers on Hollywood sources. I think that's because people can't spell my name.

I've got a certain Aberdeen that's not a spell Aberdeen. It's odd. Is there anything you've told us that Ryan couldn't just have been here telling us himself? I've got a lot more from Ryan, actually. Anyway, you know, it is an economic and societal time bomb. It's a huge issue. Just one thing, maybe in all seriousness, I did work at Aberdeen Asset Management for seven years now, Aberdeen.

actually was involved in the merger of the precursor to this standard life before I was in this building many times during that period. And I used to try and tell my friends, my peers, what asset management was, what institutional investing was, what equity investing was and the rise glazed over. I think fundamentally, and I want to try and tease this out of our politicians later on, we are doing a very poor job on educating our population and the importance of this stuff.

and I do think there are some first step solutions that we can take. I think the industry actually does quite a good job in trying to do that but I think there's an argument from making it a manry part of our curriculum. I really do because that's how important this is because it will impact our public services and generations to come.

Yeah. In a couple of minutes, we'll welcome Mark Difley of Difley Partnership, who's done polling and surveying and has got some data on how things stand when it comes to preparing for old age, how ready we are, actually, in Scotland for getting old, basically. And yet, later on, we'll welcome Kezi Adugdale, formerly the leader of Scottish Labour and Michelle Thompson, currently SNP MSP. They'll be here to discuss the politics of all of this as well. Speaking of which, actually, on the day of recording, so 30-20th of November,

The Scottish government announced that all pensioners in Scotland will receive a winter fuel payment in 2025, 2026. It should come into force by next winter and will help an estimated 900,000 people in Scotland who were cut off.

from accessing the Winter Fuel payment, which it used to be universal until the Labour government at Westminster changed that just a couple of months ago. So just by way of context, those in receipt of pension credit or other benefits will receive a £200 or £300 payment depending on their age, and all other pensioners will receive a reduced payment of £100. And I say this, Andy, because this speaks a bit to what we're talking about, doesn't it? Pensioners, lots of whom, nearly a million of whom,

need help, actually, with paying for heating and electric over the wintertime. It's almost as though pensioners are more likely to vote than non-pensioners. You've seen it. But there is that. I mean, this is the issue between short-term electoral cycles and long-term financial sustainability. So we do have a tendency

to reward those who vote more. And there has been that tendency for quite a while, to be honest with you, to protect the Mediterranean Triple Lock being an obvious example, but there has been that tendency for politicians to find it very difficult to break the cycle of protection

for pensioners and the whole narrative behind the Winter Fuel Payment changes by the Labour government earlier in the year was that it wasn't targeted benefit, so that a number of rich pensioners also got the Winter Fuel Payment. But we, at the moment, do not have a

debate which is constructed in such a way that you can get that kind of nuance across and make that point clear. But this is part of the problem with short-term electoral cycles where you have that absence of agreement between the parties on some of the bigger ticket, multi-generational, multi-decade issues. This is not the only one, but it's one of many issues where you just don't get that agreement and it is used as a political tool as opposed to focusing on financial sustainability.

Yeah, and the politics is fascinating of this, of course, Jeff, because what was it just last week? Anna Sarwar said that a future Scottish Labour government at Holyrood would bring the Winter Fuel Payment back. This was after Labour MPs at Westminster, including the Scottish contingent, voted to cut the Winter Fuel Payment in the first place. The SNP of the SNP just made the 2026 election interesting.

Potentially. I think I said in the podcast, Vote Labour to Stop Labour was Labour's positioning on that and I didn't blame Anasar for that. He had to find some sort of position to take on this issue because he knew what was going to happen. He knew that the SMP were going to respond

in kind today, as they have done in terms of restoring or putting in place, it went a few rounds. But this is the point I was saying earlier about me being self-critical. We are a political analyst. We're not pension experts, and we'll hear from them shortly.

But this is part of the problem. So the Labour Party at the Westminster have presented a wonderful open goal for the S&P to walk through. They chose to cut the winter fuel allowance, allowed the S&P on the back of a larger than expected block grant in the budget to be able to fill that gap with an alternative.

If I was in Holyrood right now, I have to be honest and say, guys, we've got to take this opportunity. I'd be sent to John Sweeney. Look, John, we've got to walk through the door. They've opened it for us. You're in a hell of a battle with this lot. And you need to try and evidence that you're standing up for Scotland's interests. And you'll do. And look after. And here's our guest Mark Difley running late. The point I'm making, the point I'm making, Mark, honestly, every time.

But the point I'm making, it's really relevant to this because this is the biggest long-term issue our society faces, but it isn't completely underpinned by short-termism in politics. And so an opportunity to present it itself, I've said myself, I would be advising Jones when I could do the same thing.

But that 150, 160 million pounds has just been combated a couple of hours ago. Where could have that money gone? Where could it have gone elsewhere? And I'm not, by the way, I'm not advocating for or against the Winter Fuel Cup. What I'm trying to say is all of this issue is underpinned, transcended by short termism in our politics. I don't know what the answer is, but I really hope that Kezia Dugdale and Michelle Thompson do.

We'll find out. We'll welcome them onto the podcast in a few minutes time. But first, we want to just add to the data, to add to our understanding of what we're talking about this evening. So, with that in mind, please welcome the ever-prepared, always on time, and never-flustered Mark Difley, who is the founder of Difley Partnership.

Mark, great to see you. Thank you very much for being here. Also, to kick things off, we've got Mike Amberry, who's the retirement savings director at Standard Life.

So we've got Mike and Mark, the comedy duo, to help us with the data and with what it all means. And Mark, shall we start with you on this? Because we have had a fairly recent census, Shambolic though it was, but we've got information from that that helps us understand about how the population is aging, how it's shifting, just talk us through what we know.

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you. First of all, thank you and thanks for having me on to see you guys. Yes, I think the kind of context for this, right, for the sort of detailed discussion we'll have around pensions and people's sort of financial preparedness is that there's something kind of bigger happening in the background to our population.

And we need to understand that as the context to the more detailed discussion. So, as you said, the census, which we gloriously decided to hold a year later than everyone else in the UK for reasons I still don't probably understand. Nonetheless, it's a magnificent source of

Magnificent source of data for not just for nerds like me but for I would say for everyone in this room actually do go and Do go and look at it for everyone listening as well because it tells us some really quite significant things that are happening So I think it tells us three things all of which are kind of relevant to this conversation, right? So it tells us that the our population is first of all our population is aging and

It's aging at a rate which is quick, so it's happening at some speed. It's aging quicker than other parts of the UK and many other countries.

And it's going to have profound impacts on things like our public services. So if we take a long view of this, Callum, right? So just a few numbers. But I think they're really, really interesting and impactful, right? So 100 years ago,

We had about half a million under fives in our population. We've now got 250,000. We've got about half of that. Now, I know 100 years is a long period, but this has been happening consistently over that period of time, and it's getting quicker. We've got about half the number of very young folk that we had.

100 years ago, and that's going to cause us all sorts of issues around, well, we're in childcare, where are we going to build schools, how many teachers are we going to need in sort of 10 or 15 years time, all that kind of stuff, right? At the other end of the scale,

the opposite thing is happening, right? And for very good reasons, improvements in healthcare and so forth. You know, if we were having this conversation 100 years ago, there were only about 35,000 of us, 100 years ago, there were about 35,000 people in Scotland who were over 80. There are now 275,000 people in Scotland over 80, right? So there's a huge change. And again, I know that's 100 year gap.

But basically, the population has turned on its head. So we've got far fewer younger people and far more older people. And this really is going to cause us all sorts of issues, not just planning public services, but around the issues that we want to talk about tonight, financial planning and how prepared we are.

as a country for our sort of financial futures. Second thing the Census is telling us is that we are moving out of rural Scotland and moving into urban Scotland. So we're urbanising. There are some pretty significant things going on, particularly in remote rural communities.

We are moving out of in quite alarmingly high numbers. I would argue we still don't really understand why that is entirely, and I think we kind of need to do that pretty quickly. I speak to businesses, as no other people do, in salmon, in whiskey, and other kind of food and drink, in tourism.

And this is one of their biggest worries, not just about what's going to happen immediately at things like the budget next week, how are they going to get people to run their businesses in five, 10, 20 years time. And a lot of these areas, they're losing working-age people. So the double whammy in a lot of rural areas is that the population is going down, but the older population is going up.

So it's not just that they're losing people, it's they're losing kind of, if I may say so, the wrong people, or the wrong people definitely from a business point of view. And then the third thing that's happening is that we're moving from west to east. So the population, the biggest growth in the population is around Edinburgh. East Lothian is the local authority, which has had the biggest population growth over the last 10 years. And again, that tells us some quite profound things about where we need to put stuff.

where we need to put schools, where we need to put nurseries, where we need to recruit people to come in and work, not just in the public, to keep the public services going, but for business as well. So these are quite really, really profound things that are happening, and I think we do need to understand this stuff if we want to understand

things around financial planning that we're going to talk about. Definitely, and we'll come on to that in just a sec actually. I was quite struck by the kind of the urbanisation of Scotland and the ages that are kind of left behind, I mean, a declaration of interest in my family living in the Western Isles, but let's do a comparison in other places. Compared to a Scottish average of 20%,

In our Gailen butte, Dunfriesen Galloway and the Western Isles, around 27% of the population is now aged 65+. So it gives you a bit of context on the kind of the rural parts. Let's get on to the kind of finances as well then, Mark, because this is an interesting part of this, about how much we've saved for retirement and we'll get Mike in on this, about how much we should be saving for retirement, because I think what part of our political conversation will be

How are we facing up to our personal responsibility for planning that against society's responsibility for looking after us in old age? So yeah, talk to us about the finances.

Yeah, so we did a survey earlier on this year with Phoenix looking at preparedness, basically preparedness for retirement, which is basically about financial preparedness. How much money have you got saved up that you can live off when you're lucky enough to retire?

We looked at a couple of other things as well about people's desirability versus reality, and I'll come on to that a little bit, but we spoke to about 2000, interview about 2000 people. They were all aged over 40, so we had a cohort of about 600 who were in their 40s, who were kind of sort of mid-career or starting to get to a sort of later career, but who

really should be kind of saving at this point. And then we spoke to about 1,400 people who were 50 and above both in work and retired or in work and not working. So that's the kind of background to this. It was a big survey, right? And it hadn't been done before.

And cutting to the chase here, we can see that Michael come on and talk about the impact of these numbers, but they're pretty stark.

About 14% of us have nothing saved, not a penny. That's a lot of people. And then at the other end of the scale, people with 150,000 or more is about the same number, 16%.

We are, as with other things, we're a country of extremes. There are a sort of about one in six of us who might sort of talk to this about how well-prepared they are, but they look sort of fairly well-prepared, at least, and about the same number who are absolutely ill-prepared. And of course, everyone else is in the middle, but they do tend to track towards the kind of lower amounts, right? So about 15% of us have between one and 10,000.

And about 21% of us have between 30 and 150,000. But the real figure, I think, which is of real interest is about a quarter of us don't know. We don't know how much we've got, right? So that's probably just as interesting as people listening, people in this room. That's as interesting as people who know but don't have very much.

there's something I think the overall picture and again Mike's the expert here not me but the overall picture is that we're not particularly as a nation we're not particularly well prepared. So let's get Mike in. Mike how scared are you by those numbers?

First of all, thank you. It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having us. For some great research in here. How scared am I? I'm very scared. I think we are on a ticking time bomb, and we've been on a ticking time bomb for a time over adequacy. Whether we had success in politics, in terms of regulation, we've had success in terms of what would term automatic enrollment in pensions. So back in 2012,

any one of particular ages on particular salaries could save into pension arrangement a total of 8% of contribution. There's a question there of is 8% enough? Who's excluded? Self-employed people being excluded, people on particular ages above and below levels are excluded at a particular time.

I'll also go back a little bit of history. I won't bore you with a lot of pensions history. But prior to 2012, what were people's pension arrangements at that time? There was no compulsory nature to pension. So there's a period of an aging population.

really powerful Michael was said, I think that was referring to me as opposed to that. We'll do bench squats later. So I'll probably say in terms of that, there's a population pre-2012 that have been in the workforce for 10, 20, 30 years that are coming up to retirement over the next five, 10, 15 years that have missed out on saving. There was a nature up till

2000s where there was closure of what I'll term final salary pension schemes which are guaranteed pension arrangements and at that point in time people maybe chose not to save and didn't need to save and weren't aware of saving for that purpose so the certain areas in terms of

is 8% enough. Our people actually actively in employment right now, which is another one of those findings with an aging population, there's a heavy amount of workforce that are outside of employment for a period of time, higher proportions at later ages. How do we address the imbalance of needing to save for retirement out of employment, either as carers or otherwise, to be able to achieve that? So, brief answer to your question of, am I scared?

Why don't you share the fear by telling us how much we should have saved in order to fund our own retirement? How much we should have saved is partly dependent on what we can afford and what we need. There's industry examples and industry benchmarks that we have.

and which are pensions and lifetime saving as an association and sort of levels. So minimum, moderate and comfortable levels that give parts, give indications of what individuals might need at the point of retirement in order to have a lifestyle. And it gives an indication of what that lifestyle looks like. If you're on a minimum level, and I won't give bad examples, but you'll go to UK

sort of holidays maybe once a year. If you're on a comfortable level you go on a ski holiday and you go abroad to Europe two or three times a year. So it gives an indication of what sort of life you want to have at the point of retirement. Eight percent doesn't do enough.

for anyone. And we can go to overseas learnings. Unfortunately enough to have been to Australia recently, which is heralded in some political circumstances as one of the Nirvana's for pension schemes. Their aim is 12% contribution. They will have 12% in place by way of employer-only contribution.

from July 2025. Are the lessons there to be learnt by regulators, politicians and otherwise I think so. Yeah, really interesting. Andy, what sort of retirement are you heading for?

It's going to be a very long way away. I think I'll be holidaying in Donny. And he's got four daughters, four weddings. I mean, that's all. Good luck to us all. I'm pretty sure I'll be working to the age of about 97 if I'm spared that long. I don't think I'll ever reach retirement age.

Mark, right, a little bit more data and then we'll get the politicians on to see if they can fix all of this for us. A little bit more data from you. In terms of kind of differences around the country and indeed among demographics, ages, male, female, what have you found there?

Yeah it's a lot of really interesting stuff and it's just as a heads up it's not going to lift the gloom particularly. That's what we're here for Mark, don't worry about that. A lot of this is quite intuitive. There's an age relationship here so again we're talking about people's preparedness for

retirement, I talked about the different kind of cohorts of the different age cohorts that we spoke to a bit earlier on. Younger people tend to have less, but you would expect that, right? But even in one of the cohorts we've got is those at 67 and above, which is the sort of state retirement age or above.

even there, only 17% of what Mike would describe as kind of adequate saving. So there are a lot of people of retirement ages, it's not just people who are younger, who could actually have got time maybe to save a bit more on the way that Mike described and what's happening in Australia. Sorry, just so we understand, Mark, that is

pensions, private sector pensions, that's all savings, you're including that. Absolutely, yeah. So that's, you know, this is not just a kind of younger person's problem. There's people actually living it, is my point, I suppose, people actually of retirement age who are, who have, you know, not a lot, should we say, to go round. So there is that, there's a kind of gender thing here as well. And again, this might not be hugely surprising.

but men are slightly more well-prepared, at least financially, I don't know if they're more prepared in other ways, but financially they tend to be a little bit more well-prepared, sorry Geoff. Wrong, wrong slide I think, unless we're on a home ownership.

Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, so we can see here only 11%, so only about one in 10 women told us that they have, again, what Mike would describe as adequate savings, which is 150,000 or more. So that's extremely concerning. Again, quite intuitively, home ownership as a variable here is quite

is quite intuitive. Renters, both kind of private and social renters, only 1% have 150,000 or more, compared to 20% in the owner occupied sector. Again, so this is quite intuitive, but the relationship is quite intuitive. It comes out the way one would expect it to, but the numbers are still pretty staggering.

And then the regional breakdown as well. And when we look at 30,000, as so what people in the room can see and what I'll describe, is that if we look at 30,000 as the question here, so who has at least 30,000 in savings, who has under 30,000 in savings, or under 31,000 in savings,

Almost half the population in Glasgow, 46%. And this is people aged 40 and over. We're not talking about the whole population. We're talking about people aged 40 and above. So in Glasgow, if you're aged 40 and above, almost half of the people in that area have less than 31,000 saved up. That's pretty staggering.

And it's high in other parts of the country as well. So it's 44% in five. It's 43% in Central Scotland, and it's 42% in Highlands and Islands. So it isn't just a kind of an urban rural phenomenon. It's happening everywhere, but it's particularly acute in Glasgow. Yeah. Mark, thank you very much. That is a really, really helpful backdrop and context for our continuing conversation. Mark Difley, thank you.

Now, if you've got questions, comments, whatever, raise your hand. We'll get to you during the course of the conversation. What we're going to do is we'll welcome our politicians, and then we'll get the conversation really flowing. Let's welcome Kezia Dugdale, former Scottish Labour leader, and...

You're all getting carried out. And she's the Associate Director at the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow. Welcome, Kezi. You're great to see you. And also welcome Michelle Thompson, the SMP MSP for Falkirk East.

I'm not a politician. See you again. I'm not a politician. Oh, you're always a politician, Kezia. Come on now. I've not been a politician for five years. I don't think any of the political parties would take any responsibility for me anymore. If I was my previous job, I'd say you probably weren't a politician back in the holiday.

That's a good point isn't it? Because there's a big difference here between what makes good politics and what makes good public policy and that underpins a lot of the conversation. It doesn't. And actually the reason there aren't spokespeople with skin in the game here is that in this type of issue they probably wouldn't properly actually engage because it's too hard as we discussed before. So that's part of the reason why we have who we have isn't it?

Well, it's great to have Kezia and Michelle here. I want to sort of start with just a bit more of Mark's polling, actually. Around half of those polled think it's a joint personal and slash government responsibility to ensure people have enough money to live well in old age. And I think that is

the shared responsibility part is interesting. Less than 20% think it's purely the government's responsibility, but there is a feeling that government should be doing something in all of this. Kezi, let's start with you. On that, this is about trying to find the split isn't it between what should I be doing personally and what should I be depending on the government to do for me and for society.

So thanks for the invitation and just to emphasise again, I'm the Associate Director at the Centre for Public Policy at Glasgow University these days and I come to this conversation with a real interest in wealth inequality and income inequality and of course the government has a role in addressing both of those things and it doesn't matter where you sit in a political spectrum actually about your desire to do that, it's about the ability of the country to function and the state's role in enabling that.

So I think there's lots of things that the government should do to create an environment where people feel that they're better able to save. Because if you'll forgive me, I think we've had a very middle class conversation so far. There's an awful lot of people in this country. At least half of them, when you take out pensions, have next to nothing that cannot pay to replace their washing machine next month if that breaks.

So the idea that it'll just take a few tweaks here and a few things there and will fundamentally change the structure of our economy I think is wildly off the mark. So I think there's an awful lot the government can do to address some of the fundamental questions around how we create an environment where people feel comfortable enough to think about their future. Right now they're worried about tomorrow.

Yeah, it's a fair point. Michelle, on that, can you identify the key places for intervention and by that I mean in public policy? Where can the government address fundamental issues that would liberate people so they had some money to save and indeed could afford to replace the washing machine next week?

if it can be a bit cheeky, which government? Because this question comes down to one of power and control. As it stands at the moment, yes, I'm with the only politician in the panel, Kazi is quite correct, which I suppose I mean for the property of this is everything is my fault, which is that although obviously I'm going to blame Kazi for some things, but

Let's be clear that in terms of the kind of wider macroeconomic climate, there's a great deal that the UK government will have both the responsibility and the power to do, and I'm not removing any accountability from the Scottish Parliament for things it can do too. But just to be clear, the Westminster Parliament has power over state pensions, occupational pensions legislation,

company and consumer regulation, macroeconomic policy, much of a quality's law and a whole variety of things around that. So the limitations within the Scottish Parliament are quite significant. So if you want me to answer that question, in general, on behalf of both the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, I will, but I wouldn't be speaking for anybody by myself. Go on, Kazio.

So I was saying to Michelle earlier tonight that we haven't actually been across the panel like this since the referendum. And once again, it's fond memories, eh? We're going back to a conversation that's not too dissimilar to that because I actually think there's a lot that the Scottish Government can do. So when I look at this problem and think of the public policy responses to this problem, I think they're threefold. So I think the way to address our savings culture or lack of

It's to invest in public services that reduce the cost of living, increase inheritance tax and that's absolutely an issue for the UK Parliament. But we also need to unlock home ownership and reform the housing market. Two of those three things are absolutely within the ballgame of the Scottish government and the Scottish Parliament. Now that's not me saying it's their problem, not the UK government's problem. I think it's everybody's problem and we're kind of evidencing that quite clearly.

When it comes to investing in public services that reduce the cost of living, big one is childcare. Important to acknowledge that in the past five years, the Scottish government have invested over a billion pounds worth of additional cash into early learning and childcare. That's extremely welcome. But I think if you speak to any working families in the country, they'll see that's very heavily focused on children aged two to four. And there's not anything like the rat-brown support for working parents once they hit school age. And again, if you want to get really serious about this,

The child care provision that we have is still heavily reliant on the private sector at very inflated costs. And if we want to really reform that and get into the detail of that, we need to look at, did I say it's Scandinavian models of much more state-run, state-owned early learning and child care to open up some of these conversations.

Can I come back? Of course. Right, so the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that things cannot be done within the auspices of the Scottish Parliament, but once you start to unpick it, and I think probably this audience will find that easier, you start to see where the complexities lie. Housing clearly

is a significant issue. We understand that. And what's traditionally been happening in the UK economy is that we've been given the illusion of wealth by house prices, which is in effect, we've had massive, massive demand and restricted supply. So then you talk about, right, how do you increase the supply because that's a fundamental issue. And then you get into capital.

You can do that. A government could actually undertake its own building programme, which would require capital. And in this, the Scottish Government has significant limitations on its capital borrowing powers. The UK, as a state, invests very little in capital and has done

Probably for the last 30 years, I think it's now going to be about 2.5% of GDP, whereas 30 years ago, it was about 18% of GDP. So capital and the capital allowances given to the Scottish Government via the Scotland Act are extremely limited.

Then you come round to the other point of view, which actually I'm very supportive of, is that you have the mood music right that you allow pension schemes to invest in build to rent. And I think Kesea knows a lot about this as well. And clearly and absolutely the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government has a key role to that and is working very hard on that. But it's considerably more complex than that when you look at housing.

Some of the points that Keasier also has made one of the areas that interests me the most is about participation. The Scottish Parliament is a legal institution and is bound by laws and I often in my role will want to talk about matters such as this.

pension savings. And the tendency is that, well, no, that's a reserved responsibility. We look at the devolved responsibilities. But the critical point I would make is we are duty-bound to look at that because if people have insufficient wealth that they can't even see for their employment, that means probably their health outcomes are going to be worse. Well, of course, the Scottish Parliament is going to pick up the bill in terms of the NHS in that respect.

children not be able to learn, well that means we've got a less educated work face, force if they can't be fed at school and so on. So absolutely those sort of interventions the Scottish Parliament must make. Yeah, fascinating. I would actually add as well.

We're talking about saving money, which you, let's all assume, are earning through work. Even this week, we've heard the UK government talking about the number of people who are out of work, 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness. A huge rise in economically inactive is the slightly clinical phrase that's used since the pandemic. I think that's additional context that actually, if you don't have a job, where are you going to get the money to save? Andy?

I think it's interesting to go back to some of the key drivers of it, because not only are we not creating new policy to help some of these problems, but we are effectively perpetuating old policy, which continues to make them worse all the time.

The family who probably can't afford a new dishwasher for breaks next month, they've probably got kids, having kids in this country is an extraordinarily expensive thing to do. I promise you, it's really an incredibly expensive thing to do, especially when you multiply it by four. And there are no economies of skill that has to be said either. It's a very, very expensive country to have children and the tax regime is not friendly to families at all.

care is incredibly expensive and then of course she moves to the next stage and that's the demographic problem that impacts very directly on a demographic problem because people have to make financial decisions about children rather than family decisions about children.

I should have thought of that. And then you get to the next stage of the problem, which is education. So education is the key long-term driver out of some of these problems. But our education system, which I think is now relatively well accepted, is incredibly poor and getting worse in ways that we don't, I think, fully understand.

economic growth is a way out of the problem but our economy is moving out of the central belt and towards rural and remote areas and you know agriculture, whiskey, energy and yet we're so the economy is pushed out but we're sucking the people in they're going in

the wrong direction. So some of these really basic things, and of course housing is incredibly expensive, largely because we are not unlocking supply properly. So some of these major problems that are causing the overall demographic issue, we're still, we're making it actively making it worse because we're not changing high-level policy.

Yeah, I want to pick up on a bunch of what you said, but also what Andy just said about, if I may disagree with my Ursula colleague, slightly, the biggest economic opportunity facing our country just now is the green industrialisation of our country. And that's not just the delivery of an energy transition, it's the financing of it as well, which I'm sure Phoenix will play their part in.

Yes, that will have a positive impact on the more rural communities across the islands, across the North-East of Scotland because the projects from proximity to them and the ports are there and the existing supply chain bases there. But it also takes innovation, takes R&D, something that Glasgow particularly excels in, which Kezia can tell us all about, given the work she does.

It can be viewed as a national economic imperative. And I just think we can, all of us can say, I mean, I was struck by what Mark outlined and actually really, really worried about what you just outlined. It's actually really depressing.

But we're not going to solve it over the next parliamentary term, or probably over the next parliamentary term after that either. But we do need some sort of acceptance and agreement between both governments that there is a prize to be won in our economy. And I've always believed that economic growth, sustainable economic growth, is the way out of this. You increase the pie, you increase the money available, then you can.

indeed allocate more to the long-term savings and future of our country. But what I'm not seeing, and I'll just give you a couple of examples, I'm just not seeing that cohesiveness between our two governments, I'm not seeing in any way shape or form any continuity in terms of our narrative.

A lot of controversy around oil and gas sector just now. I believe it'll be a big enabler of the energy transition. It's had five fiscal regimes in six years. Whether you like that industry or you don't, for whatever reason, you cannot treat one of the most valuable industries in your economy like that. Any industry like that. We had a Labour government coming to power recently promising no tax rises. There was a bit of nuance on that. And then we get this NIC bombshell.

on our small, medium enterprises. You're not getting off the hook, Michelle. We've had a Scottish government, quite frankly, that has hokey-cocade on every single element of its economic policy, from rent controls to take the point about housing as well. We have got no clear vision, and I tell you, we know we're sleepwalking into.

we can see it there in the slides before us. And I actually think there's a political imperative here. We know where the threat is coming from parties like reform. We know where the threat is coming because people are fed up of virtue signaling. The party that reaches that conclusion, the mainstream party that reaches that conclusion first will be successful in politics in Scotland and across the UK. So who's it going to be and when's it going to happen?

Thanks. Joe, I'm not as pessimistic, to be honest, Jeff. I think there are quite a few reasons to be cheerful. The improvement in intergovernmental relations since Labour have come to power, I think, is quite significant. I hear that from civil servants all of the time that they just have more access to each other than they did before and that access is encouraged. I also hear it across the third sector, particularly in Scotland. They've got more relationships with the UK government than they had before.

And I also understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Deputy First Minister meet on a fortnightly basis now, which is a massive improvement on what came before. And let's start from a place that this is still pretty early days. So I share a lot of your concerns about the long-term future. And my God, I share your concern that we don't do nearly enough kind of a long-term public policy plan in Scotland.

but it's not as bad as it was and I'll take that right now to be honest. Just a couple of other comments if I could throw into the mix around housing because that's been mentioned a few times now and there is potentially an opportunity here. Let me see if I can sell this to you and see if I can convince either of you. The resolution foundation of a new report out this week and one stat that came from that that I found really, really interesting about wealth inequality in Britain was the extent to which 2014 represented a real tipping point.

And what the argument is is that is the point where house price growth started to escalate far faster than wage growth did in Britain. So if you owned a house before 2014, you've seen the real benefits of that in the last 10 years. And if you didn't own a house in 2014, you really didn't and you're really struggling to ever get on that housing market.

So there's real distinct winners and losers from that dynamic, which now brought us to a point where a lot of people in their 30s and 40s have a real sense of fatalism about ever being able to buy a property. Now you might think, how's that a good thing, right? So here's my sales pitch. If you think the whole concept of wealth in Britain is framed around pensions and what you have in assets in the form of your housing,

If the housing bit dream is falling away, a lot more young people might turn their eyes to their ability for their pensions in the future to provide their economic security. So there could be a tipping point with the right political narrative for people to see that as the way that they can secure their future rather than thinking it was all on the basis of buying property. And actually there's lots of things about that that could be really positive in Britain if we were less obsessed with homeownership.

And I say that from a very comfortable position of having a mortgage, right? So there's a lot of self-awareness required here. But it could be something we could lean into about a completely different way about how the economy works. I do think that is, in theory, potentially quite attractive and possible. But I just, I mean, not to downplay the importance of that and of house prices and what that can do to affordability. I just wonder, though, I can't help coming back to a combination of Marx

graphics on demographics, that's a hard phrase to say. A combination of that and public expenditure which as I say is 50% between healthcare and welfare and it gets bigger all the time, it gets continually bigger and when you combine that much of the pie being spent on healthcare and welfare and a constantly increasing population who use that

because it's health care and welfare that are being used by that demographic that's increasing. Where's the break clause here? In 50 years time we cannot continue to allow that proportion of the pie to keep going up and up and up and up.

because then there's nothing left for all the other things that we want to do. So is this not more fundamental? Do we not need to say actually there simply has to be a break clause in whether or not and by what degree the state funds health care and welfare and old age? I mean that's the fundamental question is it not?

I think you're making a mistake there, including welfare in the numbers that you're using there. I'm sorry Michelle for dominating this. I'm not talking in a wee second, but I think this is really important. Right now we spend 35% of our money in Scotland on health. The Scottish Fiscal Commission, we are doing our tremendous service right now by doing long-term forecasts for the first time, tell us that health alone will be 50% by 2072.

So let's take the welfare a bit out actually because I think that's really distracting because we will always need a social security net for people with disabilities and all sorts of other reasons like that and just talk about the NHS. That is the imperative. That is the conversation we should be having right now about reducing the demands that the health service will have on public spending in order to do all these other things we need to do like reduce the cost of living so people can save.

Michelle? I mean, we're covering so much here. Just to return briefly to the housing thing, I think I'd love to buy into that. But I don't think it'll happen because a house, a roof over your head is such an emotional pool for people. And I'll probably leave that there.

I want to go back to Jeff's challenge which I absolutely accept. I would be honest enough to say that one, I think the relationship between the UK government and the Scottish government is a lot better. But to be honest, it was coming from a pretty poor place.

where they weren't collaborating together at all. It remains to be seen how that would develop, but the early signs are not unreasonable. Jeff mentioned both oil and gas and net zero and absolutely that's so important because going back to this point about growing the pie, increasing more wealth for everybody so that we get away from some of those issues around sustainable public finances, which I completely agree with. The Scottish Fiscal Commission have been doing a great job in pointing

that out there as well. So for the record, oil and gas companies are absolutely at the heart of driving this. I value all the work they do. They're putting in the R&D, they're putting in the R's and the shift. Net Zero Scotland has an unbelievable opportunity here because of our natural assets are so significant. And I am on the record so I can say this for being critical about any plans to use money off Scotland

for to fund public services. We have to be able to set that side. Going back to the politics, the SNP often have used the fact that Norway massive sovereign well fund built out of the oil reserves, the UK basically spent it all.

So Scotland absolutely cannot do that, so we need to do more. And that returns then to where I kind of started. I am a great believer in using the convening power of the state to create whether it's bonds or whatever that people can crowd money into. And that is where we do see some significant limitations with the Scottish Parliament. I mean, I'd love to be able to

set up bonds that the population can invest to and indeed companies being forced to invest in them. So for example, women go off in maternity leave or women don't aren't working for a while, will they stop their pensions contributions? The government can have a pool like that. So I would like to see much more power for the Scottish government to be able to do things like that. But net zero is so important and it's a significant opportunity and I'm going to keep on

checking what's happening with the Scotland monies. It's so important. Really interesting. Questions and comments from the room, right? Let me come out and say hello. Would you introduce yourself for us first? Susan Murray from the David Hume Institute. What would you like to say is a question, a comment? Can I take us back to pensions? Please do.

So I'm really interested in the comment you made about if you don't have a job, where are you going to get the money to save from. But that kind of ignores the point and takes us back to Kezia's point, which is 40% of the people on universal credit in Scotland are in work. So we've got a large number of jobs with low wages where people aren't able to save for the future.

And there's a really good report out from a good few years ago now, maybe three or four, called Living Pensions from the Resolution Foundation. And that completely changed my view on some things because it broke down by industry which professions you are most likely to be living in poverty in old age. And I think that is a critical long-term thing for

all parties to be looking at because it makes decisions in the short term now easier about who you might give reliefs to. Can I ask if you can remember what those were? What sectors were they? Yes, you were much more likely to be in poverty in old age if you were in retail and hospitality and you were much more likely to be well off and comfortable if you were in financial services which is relevant for the building we're in. Or lobbying perhaps.

I couldn't comment on that, Andy. But I do think that's something we don't tell our school children. So taking us back to Jeff's point on schools, I have talked to my daughters about pensions. They're only in young, but it matters what job you choose about whether or not you're going to be in poverty and old age. The other thing that we've not talked about is the other cliff edge that's coming is all of our calculations now are done on people.

not having housing costs in old age. And that means that those pots are going to need to be much bigger as we move away from pensioners, not owning their own homes as much. That's a very good point because lots of people will use their home as their pension. You know, they'll be banking on that. If I'm going to just ask it. You don't mind me, I just spent the point about the curriculum. Michelle, I know you're not a government minister, but

It does seem striking to me. I can't remember the exact number. I think it was 23% don't know how much savings they've got. I think that's right, Marx giving me the thumbs up. That tells you that there's a real lack of knowledge. I'm going to be honest with you. I worked in financial service for seven years. I'm not entirely sure what I've got entitled to me in my pension pot.

I mean, can we not do something better around a statutory, mandatory level of a course? I'm not talking about a whole year course, but if you're a sixth year or a fifth year going through your school, I kind of have to call them that now. Do they have schools and all the bloody hills we're doing, do they? Wherever it is, when you're an older student, a school. I know, I'm trying to think, I think that's got to be a priority because

I don't believe we're making our particular younger people, but also through university. I was candid in what I did. I've landed into two very fortunate careers in the public sector and then the private sector, but I'll probably be okay. I'm not sure though.

But Michelle, why couldn't we man trying to do something quite interventionist at the early stages? I know it's not going to be helping us with the current time bomb, but the future time bomb it might. I completely agree with you, Jeff, and I would go further than that. I think it should be mandated in

schools, but it's not just schools, it's skills because we know that the nature of how you can get income is changing a great deal. We haven't even talked about AI and what it's going to mean for the world of work and future. So I think from a skills base it should be something

that is built in at every kind of intervention point, not just in school. I completely agree with you. I would probably point out the reason you don't know how much is in your standard life pension point is because it was a defined benefit. So you probably didn't need to worry about that. So you were lucky.

But just very quickly, you've got Alster Rosso maybe. You've got Ben Rosso mess if you've got Mark here, you've got Mike came, Mark at the back. Why not, you know, I'm not talking about the government doing this. I'm talking about getting the private sector to get them into schools to say, what do you have? You know, if Mark did that presentation to a bunch of kids and made it real for them, they go, that's a problem. I understand that.

How are we doing that? I don't know. Are we catching? I don't know. There has been work underway in terms of getting into schools, entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurship, programs, and they've been very, very helpful because people learn by doing often. But that senior school students, there's quite a number of groups that particularly in returning to Susan's point, these two sectors that she mentioned, hospitality and retail, are mostly staffed by women.

So actually, I think the key target needs to be young girls in school and women in the workplace, and particularly encouraging, which is, Kate Forbes has done some great work in here with Anna Stewart, Entrepreneurship and Women, because the evidence tells us if the women get income, they feed their kids, they can nurture a home and a family, they don't spend it on going to watch Aberdeen Nursery.

Right, I want to get a quick couple of thoughts from the group here and then we'll get Mike in for some commentary and we'll get some more from Kessey as well. Susan, you wanted to very quickly say something on the young people. Yeah, Geoff said 5th and 6th year it needs to be earlier because your attitude to money is set in primary school age. There you go, primary school age. Right, I'm going to come over here. Can you introduce yourself? Hello.

Thanks very much, Cam. As Sarah Davidson, Chief Executive at Carnegie UK, and I wanted to go back to the point, Kezia made earlier about the extent to which people don't have savings for stopping the country. We've recently published our life in the UK, Wellbeing Index for Scotland, and that showed that 30% of people in Scotland would no idea how they would afford an unexpected expense of £850. So I think we need to really think very carefully about how we talk to people about savings, because for many people it's something that they just can't even begin to imagine how they would do.

One of the lessons I got was from my history teacher who said, if you can save a pound a week, do it, or a pound a month, or whatever. How old were we then, 15 or 16? And for some reason it was my history teacher, and that stuck with me. Yeah, very wise man, without doubt. Hello. Would you like to introduce yourself for us? I would love to come. Thank you very much. So my name is Alastair Ross. I'm with the Association of British Insurance.

I just want to give us some reasons for optimism. Not necessarily to be cheerful, but one, two, three reasons for optimism. So Mike talked earlier on about automatic enrollment. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it. That's been the biggest public policy success of the last 10, maybe 15 years. So we've brought in the system where people are opted into a pension as soon as they start work. 90% plus stay in.

So they're getting started. This is something that had cross-party. All the major parties were bought into it. You had agreement. Your consensus has been introduced. Nobody's tried to overturn it. The question is how you can extend that further. How you can take that into younger groups, how you can take into different cohorts.

At what point does the saving rates kick in? Is it a certain threshold? Is it from day one? I'm from pound one of the money you get. We're doing a great job there. Keep doing that. Keep developing that up. Also, you've got some tremendous innovation going on in Scotland and across the UK in pensions. Just long road in Edinburgh Park, the pensions dashboard is being developed. So that's going to be a new tech project which

and answer to some of the points from earlier on is going to make it incredibly easy to go on and find out what you've got saved or what you can expect in retirement. From all the different sources, from your public sector pension, from your private ones, from the ones and jobs that you've left and moved on from,

the ones you don't contribute into, even your state pension. That's all going to be in one place that makes it that much easier for people to get into. Companies like Phoenix under the standard life brand, I've got a standard life pension, even better, I've got the standard life app and I can just go on and I can see how that's growing but also the kind of profile of where it's invested. And people are getting more and more interested in pensions, so two very quick things.

My daughter, my eldest daughter Jessica, she texted me the other week and said, you'll be really proud of my dad. I've opened up a workplace pension.

Boy, that made my day. I was soap. All those father-daughter chats about compound interest. That sounds thrilling. And then as daughters do, she took me right by the ground and said, not going to get the chance to benefit from it, because I'm not going to get it for the next 50 years. And I see where she's coming from. But getting that kind of start in life is absolutely fantastic. But people are just more interested in pensions in general. So people are starting to ask now, maybe Mike's seen some of this in the other Phoenix group colleagues. People are interested in how their pension is being invested.

where it's being invested and they see the opportunity to be a proactive agent for change in making sure it's invested in things like the Green Energy projects that Jeff mentioned earlier on. So it's tough. There's some probably statistics we've covered today, but there are reasons for optimism.

We appreciate optimism always. Yeah, nicely done. Mike, let's bring you into the conversation here then. So are you, I mean, you said you were scared earlier. I think that's understandable of the stats that we were looking at. Do you now feel optimistic as Alistair saved the day?

I'll say I was scared before by the stats. I'm still scared by the stats. Am I optimistic? I think Alistair is very right in what he says and where can we go to. I think we're at a point in time where we've got an opportunity to do something.

I'll make one point, pensions invest for the longer term. We've spoken today about maybe some of the political items being on the shorter term and not saying everyone is certainly short term thinking around me at all, it's not. But what can we do over the longer term to be optimistic and what changes can be made? At the current point in time I'm scared, in 2035 and then in 2045 we'll see maybe 6 million people in the UK and then 9 million people respectively

and being sort of pension poverty and not be able to afford to live at the point of retirement. So we need to do something about the level of saving. That level of saving that we've got a 8% total contribution, which is 5% from an individual, 3% from an employer, is too low and needs to include other areas of population such as self-employed and otherwise

I equally think it's not right for everyone to go to a higher level of contribution, notwithstanding Kazu's comments earlier around emergency savings need to afford what nested inside car savings and otherwise. What that is is employees taking a contribution, defaulting a contribution out for emergency savings, if

that can be afforded to a population. I'm not saying everyone can afford to do that. But there's certain levels of population that don't need to afford more pension right now but need a level of money going into that emergency saving in that future. So I'm optimistic on that. What else am I optimistic on? I think current government in Westminster has laid out a very stable plan of economic growth.

certain measures that will come through for the next term. Whether we agree with that or not, I'd let other more educated people debate over that. But it gives the sense of, in terms of pension investment reform, where can we look at? Should we be looking for economic growth and where can we invest in that economic growth?

Phoenix is the largest retirement and savings business in the UK. We've got 12 million customers, 290 billion pounds of assets. We want to look after our customers and make sure they have the lifetime that they require in retirement and the same for their families. Realistically, I'll probably say in terms of investment, we should be looking at growth areas in the UK. Scotland benefits from a huge

intelligence in universities, tech sectors, energy regeneration, offshore, onshore wind farms, solar, so on and so forth. These are areas that we can take long-term investments and give payback. And so my couple of comments are we should be utilising funds which we do at Phoenix Group to invest in the UK at the same point running parallel to increase either emergency savings or long-term commitment to pensions.

Yeah, I really appreciate the shout out for universities there. It's just worth pointing to University Glasgow for a second that takes its responsibility as a civic university extremely seriously. Some of that is about social innovation and what we can do with all that knowledge and expertise to resolve some of these big problems that we face. And some of it is about being active generators of growth within cities, particularly in second tier cities across the UK, which we need to be driving at full speed in order to achieve the growth that we want to.

A couple of other super quick points, just going back to Mark's presentation about the gender gap. I think it's important to understand when we see men are more prepared for retirement, that's not an active choice that women have made there to be less prepared, it's because the burden of getting responsibility still falls heavily on women.

And in the stats of the resolution foundation of published this week, that gap between women and men under their numbers is £79,000 over a lifetime. But Mike, look at the numbers that you did earlier. You have that as even higher, I think. You have it about 120 if not higher than that. So it's an enormous gender gap there.

And just one other thing to throwing at the end here, we have a particularly acute problem in Scotland, one which I'm sure Michelle will be well versed in better than I will, but just going back to those long-term forecasts about Scotland and the position we'll find ourselves in. We also need to recognise Scotland's population is projected to shrink.

So it will fall by 8% by the year 2072, whilst the UK population will go up by 5%. So not only is the Scottish population shrinking, it's also getting older. So the number of people aged over 65 will go from 22% to 31%. So nearly a third of all Scots in 2072 will be over the age of 65. That has epic consequences for the Barnet Formula and the degree to which we will be equipped to fund our public services.

I'm just going to leave that hanging. It's a very, very good point. McEever. I was really struck by something that Alice or Ross said. And Alice doesn't hear that often. I have to say. But I thought something that Alice said was really interesting about Otto and Roman and how effectively politicians united to a degree.

because they identified something, they needed to effectively break the cycle of 100% state dependency on funding pensions and it had to be pushed at least a little bit towards individuals and businesses funding pensions and such. So they took this big problem that the new was coming, this big pensions problem and they did something about it and they broke that cycle. Okay, so let's put that to one side.

Kezi I mentioned the volume of money being spent in Scotland on the NHS. Now this point I'm about to make is a deeply unpopular point which I'm you know it's not unusual and I always preface this by saying that I'm the husband of an NHS doctor because that makes me get shouted out slightly less on Twitter.

Why, what is the argument, what is the political argument or the economic argument against breaking the cycle in a very similar way when it comes to healthcare? And saying to people who are going into the world of work now, you are going to have to allocate some proportion of your income towards what is in effect health insurance. So we still have the state pension, that's the safety net. We would still have the NHS, that's the safety net, but we inject something more sustainable into the system

so that in 2072 there are significantly more people who can pay for their own provision who do so.

So I think, taking that head on, there are an awful lot of things you can do before you would need to consider that. So for example, one of the first things that we should do in this country that drives me absolutely bananas that we don't is spend money on house adaptations. So the number of old people who are in hospital, because they've had a fall, because their house is no longer suitable for them, costs us

tens of millions of pounds every year and could be easily fixed with a thousand pound handrail and a bathroom fixed by a council in a matter of weeks rather than 18 months. Things like that, really practical public policy solutions could hugely reduce the demand on the NHS with a little bit of practical thinking. And if you exhausted that bucket of policy options, and I've got a bucket for you Andy,

then maybe I would humor some sort of suggestion that you need to move away from, you know, a nationalised health service in the form that we have at just now. But we are miles away from thinking that is a starting place in this conversation, I think. I think Kazee has said at the beginning of this conversation the last time we debated was 2014 and I think she's right we're still debating here because in reality

even though Kezi is no longer a politician, I don't think she wants to say that that's what the Labour government should do. In reality, I think that's a long way away because what's happened for, regardless whether it's in Westminster or whether it's in Scottish Parliament, there is an emotional attachment to the NHS as currently set up. We love it.

we love that and it's become so such a problem for political parties. Going back to their spending, I do agree that the proportion of spend is so significant and the data tells us that that's going to get more and more of an issue.

what is to be done. It still returns to the earlier point about growing the pie and focusing on creating more jobs, better jobs, focusing on sectors that Mike said that Scotland does incredibly well and differentiates herself. And the last point I would make is that the Barnet Consequentiales

the vortex, London, the southeast, I think it was Vince Cable that sucks everything in, is still there. We've seen it with financial services. Some of you here will know that I spent many happy years, I have to say, standard life, and I spent a couple of unhappy years at another company. I wouldn't say which one. No, I wouldn't. But what I saw during my time there was an increasing

pool of London's southeast of critical key functions. And that's why many of us are watching very carefully what's going to happen with the kind of National Energy Company. They was going to be headquartered in Aberdeen. Now we find it's going to be a tiny part of our building. It was going to create hundreds of jobs. Now it's going to be considerably less. And that is the reason why if we go back to business, I believe, as a politician, Scotland is my business. And I have a job to grow that business.

in an equitable and ethical way to provide for my employees in a multitude of ways. And it's for that reason, I think, if Scotland's serious about its business, maybe we should be rejoining Europe's costing as an absolute fortune of our GDP. We know it's been madness to come away from the single market. Scotland was pulled out without any say. It's a piece of nonsense. And I'd like to see Scotland back in Europe punching above its weight in the world.

So, well, one thing that strikes me about that idea, and it's not the only one to be mentioned tonight, and Micah want your take on this, is how long-term these things are. So, we're talking about growth, and we're talking about creating jobs. These things take time, and I wonder if we have the time for those sorts of things based on the data that we've been talking about this evening. Things like the auto-enrollment in pensions,

felt like it was more overnight than some of these other solutions that we're talking about. What action needs to be taken and how quickly in order to address the issues here? In terms of pensions itself, there's a couple of pensions bills in reform due to come in over the next six, twelve months. What do you think is? I'll open that.

I'm just supporting that strong, independent lady. So for me, what do we need to do right here, right now? Yeah, and can it be done quickly? Yeah, so it can be done quickly in terms of adequacy in those level of contributions. 8% isn't enough. We've recognised it's not enough. How do we increase that? We need to take action.

The policymakers need to come together to realise 8% needs to go up. Does it need to go up instantly? No. If we use Australia as an example, they used compulsion in 1992 to increase contributions gradually over a period of time linked with economic growth within their country.

And so they're eventually getting to 12% total contribution in July next year. If we're looking for a same sort of ballpark of 12%, then we should be bringing that in over a couple of parliamentary terms to enable to do that because we can't have blunt fiscal measures that will impact the industry to be able to do it. I think there's other points that we can do. I like the point of education. We really support education.

I love Michelle's idea that we can mandate that in curricula. Would we help support that as providers? Absolutely. We've got content to be able to do it, but we need people to listen and engage early on. Completely agree with that factor. On a later factor, are we getting engagement?

at later age, we're not. And we're no different in the UK to any area globally for investment and engagement with pensions. Jeff and I made a comment before, is it a sexy term pension? It isn't. It needs a little bit of everyone to engage in something to be a little better. Australia, I'll go to again, calls it a super. I'd like to think a super. A super.

and you go and talk about it. That's what it's called, a super. A super something. You're in a super annuation scheme. Oh, that's not sexy. No. No wonder it's just called super. But we call it a super and we look at league tables. We look at performance tables, we can look at our investments and where they're invested, which was a different question before. And we can look and we can engage with how our money's invested, what differences are that make into economies and otherwise. So I'd probably say need to look at the contribution level.

I absolutely agree with the education point, and I think things like the pensions dashboard, as Alistair mentioned before, will equally help support that engagement if we have a socialisation of what that actually looks like as well. I call my pension such as it is, MacCalum Sovereign Wealth Fund.

It's what it's called. It's a rebrand, Jeff. That's politics, isn't it? PR. It's good as Scotland's one, isn't it? It's probably, yeah. It's going to be as effective. May I just make two very quick points? I find these conversations so frustrating because they're so complex and you get into so many different subjects. And I try always, in my head, I always try to work with you. How do you break it down to some simple things? And I always remember Martin Gilbert, former Chief Executive of

My boss at Aberdeen Asset Management and Aberdeen Standard Investment said, you know, just focus on what you can control. The rest of it doesn't matter just now. And I think that's such good advice. And what we can control, going back to all the things that we discussed, great ideas, but we can, our government politicians, can tomorrow incentivise growth in our economy. They can attract people of a working age to different locations in our country. They can do it tomorrow.

They can, and they should, and they have to. And that's what's so frustrating about all of this. And we won't have time to go into this tonight. But there is so much virtue signaling in our politics just now. I speak to people politicians every day, privately they say, I know, Jeff, absolutely, you're a spawn there.

Go out and see. Absolutely opposite. And I think back to my timing. This is where I've got a question for both Keijia and Michelle as my second observation. I'd like to think that, during my career, I was a decent advisor, I had a good crack at it. But I didn't have much experience beforehand. It was a baptism of fire. It was a bag man for Alexander. I worked my way up there.

the chain ultimately achieve a staff. I sometimes wish I had the experience I have now, or at least the engagement of events like this now. If I could go back and do it again from what I know now, I know we all say that, don't we? But I've heard Kezia tonight talk passionately, knowledge-blade about so many subjects, and I wish she'd come back into our body politic and not be at Glasgow University as much as it is to their benefit. I've heard Michelle talk passionately from her business sense, and I feel that she's worthy of a government ministership.

I'm fed up in this podcast, we speak to Gene Freeman, we speak to Andy Weitman, we speak to Kezia, a whole bunch of people that knock us bandy on their analysis and yet none of them are in front line politics just now. We need that back in if we're to achieve the first thing that I said. Yeah, Andy, I thought from you.

Yeah, I'm well, I'm really pleased that we've done this podcast because these issues don't really get talked about in public. Yeah, that's true to be honest with you and because and it's because a lot of politicians don't want to engage in these issues and they won't really give you a proper answer on them. So I go away but

I mean, I do go away a bit pessimistic. I kind of get back to some of the points I've made before. A lot of what we've talked about as solutions to these problems are quite evolutionary solutions. And this is such a big issue, and it's a big issue already.

I'm just not sure that we don't need more of a revolution than an evolution in this and I just wonder if these are some cycles that just need to be broken and it's going to be really hard and it's going to be painful probably for a lot of people to break some of these things but I just think this is one of those is where you just actually need to say look we just can't do this anymore so we've got to rip the plaster off now and change the system completely because evolution is not actually going to cut it and that's what I think about this

Yeah, really, really fascinating. The conversation will continue in the building, but for the podcast, that'll do us. So our thanks to Kesia, to Michelle, and indeed to Mike as well. Thank you.

Thank you all very much for being here. We are really glad to have done this. It's something that is important and it's something that we probably would have overlooked had we not had this opportunity to come and have this conversation with you as well and let this just be the first conversation on this podcast, on these issues. So keep in touch, email us anytime. Hello at hollywoodsources.com is the email address. We can be the place that keeps the conversation going. Thank you for being a part of it tonight and we'll see you again soon.