Flooding and Flood Management Inquiry
Agenda item 6 is consideration of the proposed inquiry into flooding and flood management that members agreed to conduct. Since the meeting at which we agreed that, the Government has held a major summit on flooding, which I attended, along with John Scott and Peter Peacock. Mark Roberts from our clerking team also attended, along with a representative from SPICe. The results of their attendance can be seen in the detailed note on the summit, which the clerks circulated to members and which also includes a draft remit for the inquiry.
As a result of the Scottish Government's recent movement on the issue, our inquiry will now run in parallel with its work. That said, my understanding is that we will, in fact, be up and running before the Government gets through its process. That gives the committee the opportunity to influence the Government. I remind members of the flooding debate tomorrow morning in the chamber.
In addition to agreeing to the proposed remit, we should agree to the call for written evidence, which must be issued immediately after the meeting. I ask members to put forward the names of any organisations from which we should seek written evidence that are not included on the list. I also welcome suggestions for locations for visits, and views on whether we should seek approval to hold a formal meeting outside Edinburgh. Does any member wish to comment on any or all of those subjects?
Following on from what you said about the timing, I point out that our inquiry will take place in public, whereas the Government's process for determining recommendations for legislation will take place largely among professionals and in private. Our inquiry will, therefore, be an important part of the process of illuminating this major concern.
The summit was excellent in helping to inform our work, and the clerks have done a good job in pulling all the information together.
I have two small points to make about the inquiry remit, then I will say something about visits.
First, we must make it clear that, within the remit, we will assess the adequacy of the current legislation. Some aspects of the legislation will endure, but some will not be fit for purpose any more and we must bring those to the surface. Secondly, the third bullet point of the remit is:
"What role can land-use management, the planning system and building regulations play in mitigating the effects of flooding?"
I wonder whether we need to be more precise and say that we will look specifically at sustainable flood management. Within that context, we could also consider land use and natural flood management—which we heard a bit about at the summit—as well as planning and building regulations and how they contribute to sustainable flood management. That may sound pedantic, but it is quite important. Other than that, the remit is good and the clerks have captured everything.
I urge the committee to think strongly about visiting Moray to take evidence.
Elgin, by any chance?
Elgin is the obvious place in Moray. I say that not only because it is within my region of the Highlands and Islands, but because the experience there was extraordinarily difficult and intense. It is a small area that the committee could easily see, and we could hear about the experiences of individuals who were traumatised by the events as well as about the effects on local industries, which were seriously threatened. Those are important points, but it is perhaps more important that all the statutory procedures and the complex process of planning a scheme are just coming to maturity there. All that experience is at hand, and people in the local authority, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Water and other organisations that are involved would be able to give us extremely well-informed contemporary evidence about all the procedures.
The other advantage of our visiting Moray would be that, on the way, we could stop at the Inch marshes, which are one of the best examples of a natural flood management system—probably the best example in Scotland. If the committee wished, we could also nip up to Invergordon to see the work that has been done there on coastal flood management, such as opening flood barriers in a particular way and restoring marshes.
Moray has a lot of the experience that we are looking for that other areas may not have, because of the timing of the planning system there and the geographical advantages of the area. I urge the committee to think about that.
Thanks. We will not make final decisions about locations for visits today; we will take suggestions from committee members. We can conduct our visits in different ways: some can be formal meetings and some can break the committee up into groups to go to different places.
The paper is very good, but I have a couple of points to make. First, the paper states:
"It is proposed that the remit of the inquiry should be to address the following five questions".
Should we not have a statement of what the inquiry is about and then say that we can address the issue by asking those five questions? It is a bit odd to say that the inquiry is five questions.
Secondly, the second of those questions is:
"Who is responsible for flood management, how is it funded"
and so on. A better question would be, "Who should be responsible for flood management and how should it be funded?"
That is why the second part of the question asks
"and are these structures appropriate for the future?"
The idea is to address the existing system and then consider potential changes for the future.
We should know who is responsible for flood management and how it is funded. The inquiry paper will be sent to people throughout Scotland. They should know what the system is. We should be asking how the system could be improved.
The system is complicated, and I would not want to assume that everyone knows how it works. Having been through the experience in Perth with flood defences—
In that case, we should send that out with the consultation papers, saying—
Okay.
You asked me for my views and I am giving them to you. We should state clearly in the consultation paper what the current responsibilities are and we should ask people who they think should be responsible for flood management and how it should be funded.
I know that we are not being firm on locations at this point, but Peter Peacock's suggestion was a good example of a practical thing that we could do. It is important that this committee holds a formal meeting outside Edinburgh as soon as is practicable.
I commend those who produced the paper. I am relaxed about the remit; the important thing is that we have an inquiry. I am also quite relaxed about Peter Peacock's suggestion that we go to Elgin and, possibly, Invergordon. However, I wonder whether anyone has been left off the list of people whom it is proposed be invited to submit evidence. I note that we are asking about the efficacy of the responses to flooding events and the conduct of emergency services, but I do not see the Scottish Ambulance Service on the list. I should declare that my father-in-law is an ambulance technician and works for the Scottish Ambulance Service—I am sure that he would not be responsible for any submission, however.
I agree with colleagues that the paper is excellent. I also agree that the timing is good, because it will enable the issues to be properly debated.
Paragraph 12 deals with visits. I agree that we must have a visit to a coastal area, which could concentrate either on an example of successful coastal management or, more challengingly, on an area that has serious challenges in managing coastal erosion. We should address the fact that, in some areas, it might not be possible to hold back rising sea levels, and we should discuss the implications of that for householders and communities in terms of insurance and so on. That difficult issue should be part of the picture.
We should add a few organisations to the list of consultees. Organisations representing crofting interests could give us information about flood management on land, and the Marine Conservation Society could talk about the area where the sea hits the land and the wildlife interests there.
I echo everyone else's comments: this is an excellent paper. I agree with Sarah Boyack's comments. We should also invite submissions from a few local authorities that are at risk from the effects of rising sea levels and flooding. I am thinking about Inverclyde Council in particular, as Port Glasgow is—
All 32 local authorities will be contacted.
Sorry—I was looking down the list for a specific name.
To clarify, the list relates to a call for written evidence; no decisions have been made about oral evidence. We will make decisions about oral evidence once we see who we get written evidence from.
I understand that; I just want to ensure that we do not forget that lots of towns, such as Port Glasgow, have low-lying developments along the coast.
There is a great need for us to go out and about for this inquiry. The list of potential visits, in paragraph 12, is good and we should attempt to cover most of them, even if it means splitting the committee up into four groups of two and sending people out on that basis.
What we want to do—following on from Sarah Boyack's point about coastal flooding—is ingather the experience of the many different areas that flood. Shettleston in Glasgow was flagged up in Monday's flood summit as being the main part of the city that gets flooded, even though it is an extremely urban example, especially when compared with some of the other examples, which tend to be more rural or, as Sarah Boyack says, coastal. Milnathort—which is an interesting example, because its hard flood defences failed at the first test—would be another good place to visit. Perth, likewise, would be good to visit, not just because it is in my constituency, but because it is the centre of SEPA's flood warning operations. There are arguments for visiting just about every place on the list. We should keep all of those options open. There should be at least one formal meeting outside Edinburgh, but other informal visits will be absolutely necessary.
I take on board the point about hanging land use, planning and building regulations under the sustainable flood management umbrella. I do not know whether there is an easy way to accommodate Mike Rumbles's point; I suspect that there is. We are really looking to have a preamble paragraph that focuses on the five questions.
I wonder whether we should contact some of the communities that have been badly hit by flooding. I am conscious that every single body on the list is an institution, and it seems that, in the first instance, we should also seek written input from the community councils in some of the worst hit areas, such as Milnathort, Perth, Elgin and Shettleston. The press office will be advised to target the local press, too.
I strongly support your suggestion, convener.
I suggest that we broaden the call for evidence a little further. Given the incidents in Hull and Tewkesbury, should we request copies of the lessons learned reports, which I imagine were not previously available? People in those areas experienced the worst-case scenario.
That is a good point. We should take on board the experience in England. I do not rule out sending people down to visit those areas. Flooding is a big issue, particularly given that we are approaching the winter months, when one normally expects the flooding dangers to be at their greatest, although what has happened this year has somewhat contradicted that. We should give our work the widest possible exposure.
Do members agree that we should issue the formal call for evidence today? We had a lively discussion behind the scenes about whether to issue the call today, to get in on the pre-publicity for the flooding debate tomorrow, or to wait until after the debate. My view is that we should issue the call for evidence today to get in on the pre-publicity.
The sooner we issue the call the better. There is an advantage in our going first. There might well be duplication in all we do. Rather than being the ones who are doing the duplicating, we should get in early, so that it is the Executive that is doing the duplicating. The sooner we get started the better.
Okay. Do we all agree on that?
Members indicated agreement.