It's time the British Government repealed the 1807 Slave Trade Abolition Act.

I offer my thanks to my opponent for his considered objections to my proposal, but before I respond, I should like to relate the following true story. Not so long ago, I spent a couple of years living in Aberdeen, a city located on the northeast coast of Scotland. The winters there are very harsh, with biting winds blowing in straight off the North Sea and with heavy snowstorms that block all but the major roads to traffic. One particularly dark and bitterly cold day, I read an article in the evening newspaper about a young Polish girl who had come to the "granite city" to find work. However, having been unsuccessful, and having no recourse to public funds, she was forced to live on the icy granite streets. It transpired that the previous night, the poor girl's body had given up the unequal struggle with the penetrating cold and her frozen corpse had been found that morning reposing in the foetal position in a shop doorway on Union Street. Now, what do you think John Locke's words would have meant to that miserable young woman on the night she froze to death? Would she have taken any comfort from the knowledge that she was dying "equal and independent" with her fellow man? Or would she perhaps have taken more comfort from a bowl of hot stew and a nice, warm bed? You see, this 17th century English philosopher's words are, superficially, noble and worthy, but we should remember he was born into an extremely privileged family and received the very best education money could buy, so had no personal experience of the abject poverty that the wretched masses had to endure in those days. To the majority of his contemporaries, his words would have been hollow and meaningless – the only thing most people were concerned with at the time was where their next meal was coming from. Things have moved on a bit now and we now have a social security benefits system, but some people, for various reasons, still slip through the net and find themselves living on the streets. I refer now to my opponent's accurate analysis of laissez-faire societies such as Britain and the US where he rightly points to the disparity between rich and poor (it is even worse in Britain where over 50% of the wealth is owned by less than 5% of the population). However, I cannot agree with his apocalyptic prediction of civil unrest if my plan were to be implemented. Whilst it is true that some slaves would end up in the homes of aristocrats and corporate fat cats, the less desirable ones, the ones with serious mental health problems or the physically infirm, would have to be sold off cheap. Perhaps farmers could buy sub-prime examples to use as live scarecrows? Or country landowners could pad-out physically fit, but mentally ill specimens and use them as surrogate quarry for the hounds to chase now that foxhunting is banned? The list of applications is endless but one thing is for sure, all this cheap labour will help the country compete more effectively in a low-wage global economy. My opponent then asked me to define "improvements to life". By this I mean the access to shelter, warmth, food and water, which my opponent referred to in the same paragraph in which he wrote that any such arrangement between master and slave should be entered into by mutual agreement. The trouble with this is, most homeless people are incapable of making sound decisions for themselves, either as a result of addiction or mental illness, which is why it is morally-permissible to employ snatch-squads to remove them from the streets for their own good. Now, before I close, I would like to address the interesting alternative proposals my opponent suggested for the bums in Florida. Actually I have a lot of family living in the Tampa Bay area so I visit Florida quite regularly. I have to say that I haven't seen many vagrants there. Perhaps my opponent is confusing them with British tourists? Anyway, he has two schemes. If I understand his ideas correctly, the first proposal is "adult adoption" whereby vagabonds are spruced up a bit and families are offered them keep them as human pets. I'm not sure this would work though. Vagabonds are not usually very cute and cuddly and who would want to come home to find a filthy tramp lying on the couch in a pool of his own urine, slurping your best scotch straight out of the bottle? His second proposal is to release them into the wild. This has more chance of success, at least in Florida where there is plenty of space. I only wonder if there will be conflicts with the Seminole Native American tribes on their neighbouring reservations? Perhaps they would violently resist these newcomers, just as they did when the first colonists arrived? So, in the round, we can see that my proposal is an eminently sensible one and bound to be a huge success. Its only impediment is the 1807 Slave Trade Abolition Act, which the British Government should repeal without any undue delay. Thank you.