Official Report 219KB pdf
The next item of business is a statement by Neil Gray on winter resilience. Questions will be taken at the end of the statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
15:07
Two weeks ago, the first two named storms of the season hit Scotland. Storm Boelo, in particular, brought disruptive strong winds and rain to Scotland, causing power outages, flooding and issues across the transport network. Sadly, that also included the loss of life, and I put on the record my deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives.
Severe weather is not a new phenomenon in Scotland and we have extensive planning and response arrangements in place, which have been tried and tested many times in recent years. However, the risk picture is changing and we must continue to keep thinking further ahead and investing in the capabilities, infrastructure and natural environment that reduce vulnerability before disruption occurs. Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of these events, and this year’s record El Niño means that the whole of the United Kingdom is at higher risk of an unusually wet and stormy autumn and cold conditions in late winter.
The winter condition challenges do not sit in isolation. They coincide and interact with the wider risk landscape that Scotland is facing. Geopolitical instability, hostile state activity, cyber threats, infrastructure disruption, public health pressures and supply chain vulnerabilities at home and abroad all affect Scotland and they are increasingly interconnected. That can create complex and cascading impacts that challenge traditional approaches to resilience. More than ever, we therefore need to ensure that we are prepared for the risks that we will face over the coming months and beyond.
I will therefore update Parliament on the work that we are doing to model risk and preparedness. We are working with the front-line agencies that are responsible for much of our response to emergencies and we are making strategic improvements to the resilience system to better prepare us for the challenges of the future, not just in winter but throughout the year. We are all aware that the risks that we face are changing. We are therefore updating the Scottish risk assessment, which sets out the most serious risks that we face, and we are providing the resilience community with tailored information about the impacts to enable it to be prepared.
Through the Scottish Government’s crisis preparation oversight programme, which was introduced as part of a range of improvements following the Covid pandemic, we ensure that Government preparedness arrangements, including those for winter risks, are regularly assessed, challenged and strengthened in response to evolving threats and pressures. The programme provides a structured mechanism for improving the Scottish Government’s understanding of risk, testing the adequacy of preparedness planning and driving action to address risks and strengthen mitigations.
My officials also constantly monitor shorter-term emerging risks and issues, to ensure that we know, as far as possible, what is coming our way and can therefore prepare appropriately. Through engagement with regional resilience partnerships and the Scottish resilience partnership, officials support partners to assess preparedness through their own governance arrangements, and help to identify issues that require additional support or national co-ordination.
In addition, through a number of national resilience groups that are centred around key risks and issues, we bring responders together to share learning, review guidance and build a clearer understanding of capabilities, supporting greater consistency and resilience across the system.
We also want to ensure that the public is prepared. Through our Ready Scotland website and social media channels, the Scottish Government provides clear and timely information on how to prepare for and respond to risks, events and incidents. Those can be what we know are coming, such as winter and named storms, and risks such as wildfires or worse than normal weather. Ready Scotland’s annual “Prepare for winter” social media campaign will start this month and will encourage individuals and communities to take sensible and simple steps to be ready for tough weather conditions, such as protecting pipes in homes and keeping emergency kits in cars. In addition, our targeted marketing campaign will be activated ahead of storms, to provide targeted advice to the regions that are most affected.
Together, those activities will help to build Scotland’s wider resilience by ensuring that Government, responders and the public are better equipped to anticipate, prepare for and manage the impacts of disruptive events. Experience consistently shows that reducing risks before an event occurs delivers better outcomes and value than relying on response and recovery alone.
Crucial to our preparedness for winter and other risks is our close collaboration with responders and other resilience partners. Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and Scotland’s resilience framework, responsibility for preparing for, responding to and recovering from events and emergencies rests, rightly, with front-line responders and resilience partnerships, which are best placed to assess local risks, make operational decisions and co-ordinate activity on the ground. That includes not just the blue light services but local councils and health boards.
The Scottish Government’s role is not to direct that operational response but to support, co-ordinate and facilitate a shared national picture, where required, ensuring that those partners have access to the resources, information and strategic support that are needed for an effective response. That approach reflects the principle of subsidiarity, which is a cornerstone of our approach to resilience. We can all agree that incidents should be managed at the most local level, with escalation into regional or national structures only where that will add genuine co-ordination value.
That locally led, partnership-based approach ensures that decisions are taken by those with the greatest situational awareness, local knowledge, and expertise, while enabling national Government to provide oversight, assistance and escalation if circumstances demand that.
To provide such oversight, I met earlier today with the Scottish resilience partnership, bringing together the leaders of our key resilience partners, including the chair of the Scottish resilience partnership, chairs of regional resilience partnerships and strategic leaders from multiple national responder agencies and the voluntary sector. Together, we discussed early lessons that have been identified from storm Boelo, and broader winter preparedness. I also heard their strategic reflections on resilience and preparedness.
I sought assurance from responders that Scotland’s resilience arrangements remain fit for the increasingly complex risks that we face. Specifically, I challenged whether we are genuinely ready for winter, following the lessons of storm Boelo. Partners provided strong assurance that preparedness measures have been tested, exercising is taking place locally across a range of scenarios—from severe weather to defence—and the lessons that have been identified from recent events are being acted on. We will continue to engage, including through the forthcoming conference of the Scottish resilience partnership, which will focus on societal preparedness.
In a recent winter preparedness assurance process that was led by Scottish Government officials, regional and local partners reported that robust arrangements were in place for severe weather, winter maintenance, business continuity and care for people, and that those have been reviewed and refreshed ahead of winter. When we face an emergency or event that requires Government support or direction, we have robust arrangements in place.
Ahead of storm Boelo’s arrival, the First Minister activated the Scottish Government resilience room—SGoRR—which is our central co-ordination mechanism for emergencies. Regular SGoRR meetings throughout the weekend of the storm allowed ministers to receive the latest updates from the Met Office and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Ministers heard directly from our resilience partners, including emergency services, local councils and energy companies, and were able to ensure that they were receiving the support that they needed to manage the situation.
Our Government liaison officials worked closely with local partners, supporting them in co-ordinating their response and helping to maintain effective information flows. I know that anyone who loses power wants to be reconnected as soon as possible, and I assure them and members that responders and volunteers work hand in hand to get services back up and running as quickly as possible. I thank them all for their hard work in what were challenging circumstances.
While the response to storm Boelo demonstrated that Scotland can effectively respond to and recover from winter risks, it also generated important learning to help us and our resilience partners to improve and refine our processes at a local and national level. For example, we are already working with resilience partnerships to strengthen preparedness and assurance, including arrangements for information sharing, escalation and support to vulnerable communities during periods of disruption.
We will continue to sharpen our own response structures wherever we can, using lessons from recent incidents, including the Cairngorms wildfire and storm Boelo, with the Scottish Government resilience room working to further improve information flows with partners and across Government and ensure that ministers and senior officials continue to have early sight of emerging issues, allowing the Scottish Government to respond dynamically and effectively to fast-moving incidents of any type. Those practical improvements, which range from stronger risk assessment to greater assurance of our partners’ preparedness and building whole-of-society resilience through communications, will bolster Scotland’s resilience this winter. Together, they reflect our much wider programme to strengthen Scotland’s resilience in the face of increasingly complex, interconnected and concurrent risks.
Although the statement is focused on winter preparedness, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the significant Cairngorms wildfire this summer, which had a major impact on local communities and the environment. An extensive debrief process, led by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Highland Council and Police Scotland, is under way and is expected to report in the coming weeks. We will carefully consider its findings and ensure that lessons are captured and acted on as part of our commitment to continuous improvement in Scotland’s preparedness, response and recovery arrangements.
As set out in the 2026 programme for government, we are embarking on a significant programme of work to renew and modernise the systems, structures and capabilities that support preparedness, response and recovery across the country, through the development of a Scottish resilience strategy. The strategy, developed in close consultation with our resilience partners, will help us to identify the capabilities that Scotland needs in future, understand where gaps exist and ensure that our understanding of risk informs preparedness, investment and delivery.
It will also set out our ambition for a more resilient Scotland, helping us to make the transition from a model that focuses primarily on emergency preparedness to one that strengthens resilience more broadly across our society, economy and institutions. That means ensuring that we are prepared for the decades ahead and not just next winter.
As I said at the start, Scotland faces a wide and ever-changing number of risks, which is why this Government has a range of work under way and planned. No one organisation can manage those risks alone. It is our collective duty as Government, front-line agencies, businesses and individuals to do our part in ensuring that we are able to face the challenges ahead.
Thank you, cabinet secretary. I intend to allow 20 minutes for questions on the issues raised.
Scottish Labour fully recognises the urgent need to assess and plan our resilience, especially as we know about the acute challenges outlined in the cabinet secretary’s statement. Will the Scottish Government provide support to existing local resilience groups, particularly in rural communities? There are already some in existence that can play a vital role, especially in areas that are caught up by severe weather. Rather than reinventing the wheel, has the Government done an audit of what local resilience already exists?
Will the Government ensure that its winter resilience campaign includes clear messaging for employers, particularly in the small business sector, so that workers are supported and not penalised when they adhere to travel advice by staying at home due to adverse weather conditions? I have seen a few cases of employers not supporting employees with that. Will the Government also include ScotRail and bus network representatives in its discussions to ensure that they can operate safely at their maximum levels when we have severe weather events?
As someone who hails from a part of the world where winter resilience is a daily consideration during these months, I think that there are lessons to be learned, particularly around personal resilience. When I was growing up, I knew where the candles and necessary equipment were located in order to last for a few days during a power cut. Mr MacKinnon will be similarly aware of the need for such preparedness. As we face new and dynamic threats in different parts of the country, we will need to pass on that resilience to those who live in other parts of the country. Those lessons from rural areas are absolutely important.
Adhering to travel advice during such incidents is critical. I encourage employers, regardless of their sector, to ensure that they support their employees to follow that advice. Linked to that, our public transport providers are almost always present at SGoRR meetings to provide information, so that we are able to disseminate it publicly and so that people are aware of public transport availability at a particular time.
I sometimes wonder what the Scottish Government will take responsibility for. The cabinet secretary said that he was updating the Parliament on the work that the Government is
“doing to model risk and preparedness”,
but he then challenged authorities to answer whether Scotland is ready to respond.
He then said that
“We can all agree that incidents should be managed at the most local level”,
reflecting the principle of subsidiarity, which is a word that I have not heard in a while. I do not think that they think that that is the case in the Cairngorms.
He talked about updating the Scottish risk assessment, which most of us hoped would be done every few months anyway. He also stated that
“reducing risks before an event occurs delivers better outcomes”,
which I think that we all know.
He talked about the public’s role in being prepared and said that
“responders and volunteers worked hand in hand”.
What in that statement are the Scottish Government and the minister taking responsibility for? I cannot see one commitment that the Government has made except for berating others to get on with being prepared.
I merely set out in my statement the law as it applies. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 clearly sets out where the responsibility lies when responding to resilience issues, such as storm Boelo. That is why we have a resilience network set up that is based on enabling local resilience networks to escalate issues to a regional level, and for the Scottish Government resilience room to be available as a co-ordinating function, should that be required at the national level.
The cabinet secretary mentioned the commitment in the programme for Government to strengthen national preparedness. I welcome him saying that there will be a Scottish resilience strategy, but risks are ever changing, as in the case of new cyberattacks that are aided by artificial intelligence agents, and escalating in intensity, as the wildfires have shown.
Can the cabinet secretary provide details on when the strategy will be published? Will it be flexible enough to respond to changing challenges and risks in the years ahead?
Our ambition is to produce the Scottish resilience framework by spring 2027, followed by a joint action plan to deliver on key priorities with partners across Scotland by autumn 2027. Although the statement was about winter preparedness, Emma Roddick is absolutely right that we need to ensure that our resilience landscape operates beyond that and takes on risks such as cyberattacks and, as I set out in my statement, those posed to us by non-state actors. I hope that I can reassure Emma Roddick that all those issues will be part of our considerations when we build the framework.
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. It is clear that communities are now facing multiple threats because of climate change—floods, storms, drought and wildfire, sometimes in the same place and even in the same year—and that it will be important to build up community resilience alongside the capacity of public agencies, on which the cabinet secretary’s statement focused.
What specific consideration, therefore, has the cabinet secretary given to setting up a climate shock fund? Such a fund could build on the funds that have already been allocated to communities for their work on flooding, taking a broader approach and looking at how we really build resilience to those multiple threats and strengthen the capacity of organisations at a community level to work alongside the public agencies.
Mark Ruskell will be aware of some of the individual and resilience funding arrangements that we have put in place to provide the necessary support for businesses, individuals and authorities—for instance, for the activation of the Bellwin scheme in certain places. I will take away his point about a climate shock fund and provide him with a written response, informed by officials in other departments, to ensure that he gets an up-to-date picture.
I, too, put on the record my condolences for the loss of life caused by the recent storms, which flooded homes and devastated local businesses across my West Scotland region. In Largs, drains were tarmacked over, and sandbags were delivered after the water receded. The same thing happened in Saltcoats. In Renfrew, flood defence barriers were not activated. The authorities knew that the storm was coming but did little to prevent what was extensive and expensive damage. Will the cabinet secretary therefore take this opportunity to apologise to those who are paying the price for those shocking failures?
I very much understand the issues that Mr Findlay has raised. The examples that he gave, and other examples, were part of the discussion that I had with the Scottish resilience partnership, so that we learn lessons through the resilience network. That will enable us to ensure that there is responsiveness and that we get access to accurate information, so that local resilience partnerships can take decisions and provide a commensurate response to a particular incident. Those examples will also help to inform the forthcoming Scottish resilience framework, so that we have the necessary response in all parts of the country.
Further to my answer to Ms McNeill, the dynamic that we are facing is changing and spreading. It is not just a winter-based issue that the rural areas of the north and the islands face; the entirety of Scotland faces it, and we and the resilience partnerships must learn from the incidents that Mr Findlay has put on the record
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. It is said that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. However, for those who live in Scotland, the other certainty is that there will be an extreme weather event that leaves the public scrambling for help while public authorities struggle to cope. Public spending is a balancing act, but it is also about choices. Rather than handing out schoolbags, should the Scottish Government not be concentrating on sandbags?
I do not think that it is an either/or. We can quite possibly do both by ensuring that we have the local decision-making capability informed by information from our partner authorities, so that sandbags and other resilience capabilities can be deployed—where those are available, to follow on from Mr Findlay’s question.
It is fundamental that we learn lessons from the likes of storm Boelo and prepare for further weather-related disruption hitting all parts of Scotland, which the member—absolutely correctly—says is inevitable.
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. Year after year, residents have complained to me about a lack of grit bins, particularly on new-build estates. Would the Scottish Government consider reviewing planning legislation to make it the responsibility of developers to provide grit bins, so that local people can act locally until those roads are adopted and the responsibility transfers to local authorities?
I thank Kate Campbell for her question. From her experience in local government, she will understand where responsibility lies for the deployment of grit bins and other resilience equipment, where necessary, to ensure that communities have the necessary equipment in place to respond to weather-related incidents. I am happy to write back to Ms Campbell on the particular question about planning guidance. However, my first port of call would be to ensure that our local authority partners, by custom, deploy the necessary technology, such as grit bins, so that communities are able to respond to winter weather.
Power cuts and recent storms have highlighted the vulnerability of communications in my constituency and across rural Scotland. With the switchover to digital phones that require power, and given the already patchy mobile phone signal, which is also impacted by power cuts, some communities have found themselves cut off completely. That has potentially devastating consequences in the event of emergencies, with people having to physically travel to raise help from emergency services. I have been told harrowing stories about constituents who were unable to call for help during the recent storms. What is the Scottish Government doing to support the resilience of communications in our rural and island communities, including any engagement with the UK Government and communication companies?
I perfectly understand the point that Mr MacKinnon has raised. I have family who remain in Orkney, so I understand the significance of the continued reliance on communication networks, particularly during such incidents. He referred to one element of those discussions in that this is largely a reserved area and the UK Government has a responsibility for our communication networks. Of course, we engage regularly with it, and those are the types of issues that we return to in four-nations resilience discussions.
At this stage, I also note that we are about to discuss the importance of public service broadcasting. The work that is done by our public service broadcaster in Scotland, including the radio network through BBC Scotland, is absolutely fundamental to the dissemination of information in those types of scenarios. That is all the more reason why we need the UK Government to ensure that the necessary funds are available, through the charter, to allow BBC Scotland to continue to provide local output through its BBC Radio Scotland outputs.
I appeal for succinct questions and answers. A number of members still wish to ask questions.
I listened with interest to the cabinet secretary’s response to Donald MacKinnon. ALIenergy, in my constituency, does fantastic work to support those in fuel poverty and provides cosy kits to improve individuals’ winter resilience. Given the recent advice that households should ensure that they are better prepared for extreme weather events—perhaps with wind-up radios, which the cabinet secretary mentioned in relation to BBC Radio Scotland—what support can the Scottish Government or its partners give to organisations such as ALIenergy, to support those who are unable to afford the essentials required for being better prepared?
I very much recognise the point that Jenni Minto has put on the record, and I add my gratitude for the work of organisations such as ALIenergy and others, who provide a critical element of robustness in our communities by ensuring that community-based resilience is in play. That is a key interaction of our local resilience partnerships, where they need to be working. Part of the reason why the Scottish resilience partnership has a community and voluntary representative on it—Rob Murray from the British Red Cross—is to ensure the dynamic of community and voluntary organisations supporting individuals and our public services to have the necessary resilience in place.
The statement provides absolutely no comfort to me or my constituents on the actions that the Scottish Government is taking with respect to winter preparedness. As the Scottish Government reminds us of how it is pushing responsibility down to local services, will the cabinet secretary inform all of us of what additional funding is being made available and offered to front-line services?
The budget is still to be set out—the Deputy First Minister will set it out in due course—but we have continued to provide local government with a settlement that ensures that it is capable of providing for the local resilience responsibilities. This is not about pushing down responsibility; it is about recognising the law. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 sets out how our resilience network operates. I would be more than happy to furnish Mr Smith with more information on that, should he require it.
Can the cabinet secretary indicate what more can be done to inform people of what the red, amber and yellow weather alerts mean, of their impacts and of what action should be taken, so that there is no complacency about acting responsibly and appropriately to those alerts?
It is important for us, as individuals, and for our resilience partners—which relates to my answer to Mr Findlay’s question—to ensure that, when there are weather forecasts and our partner agencies respond with the likes of flood alerts, we have an accurate understanding of how those work. In recent years, the Met Office has provided additional information with each warning, to help the public to better understand the likely impacts and the steps to take.
The relevant public communications groups that activate in the event of a crisis include communication specialists from responder agencies and partners and from the Government. They work to amplify advice through the available channels, be they local government, blue light or travel related. The aim is to provide a single, consistent message to the public, regardless of where they hear it. I point to the Scottish Government’s ready Scotland marketing campaign, which ensures that people who are affected by an amber or red weather warning get the information that they need in adequate time.
The A78 shore road between Largs and Skelmorlie, in North Ayrshire, has partially reopened after a fortnight, although repairs to the sea wall are ongoing and close the road during school hours each day. Recognising that many coastal communities in vulnerable locations have essential infrastructure like that road, and given that the amount of flooding and storms will increase with the continued use of oil and gas, what action is the Scottish Government taking to future proof our coastal infrastructure?
We have invested significantly in our flood defence arrangements over the past decade. I believe that more than £600 million has been invested in that space. The risk registers for local areas are the responsibility of local resilience partners, and I am sure that the particular road that Cara McKee mentions will be part of one of those. That means that defences to ensure the road’s continued operation, or mitigations to allow people to continue to move as she sets out, should be in play. That is part of why I met the Scottish resilience partnership and regional leaders today—to test and challenge local assumptions and to ensure that the necessary protections are in place.
Following the conclusion of storm Boelo, which left more than 150,000 households—including my own—without power, can the cabinet secretary walk us through the multi-agency response process that was activated to manage an event on such a scale?
Absolutely. As I set out in my statement, the Scottish Government resilience room was activated, which allowed for multi-agency reporting on that nationwide incident. That involved all areas of the public, community and voluntary sectors and others, to ensure that the necessary information sharing was happening at a national level. Partners’ decision making could then be informed by that dissemination of information.
It is a well-tested route to ensure that our resilience network remains robust, but we continue to test and challenge it. As I set out in my answers to other colleagues, we are updating our resilience framework in response to the dynamic challenge that we face.
I do not think that the Scottish National Party has yet twigged the connection between the summer wildfires and the recent flooding. How can the cabinet secretary come to the chamber and say that he regularly assesses plans if, for both incidents, the response was so shocking?
Russell Findlay asked whether the cabinet secretary would give an apology to the people and businesses of Largs—or, perhaps, to the people of Nethy Bridge, who had to evacuate their homes in the middle of the night. Will he give that apology to them now?
I recognise that there was significant disruption at Nethy Bridge, as I have set out to Mr Eagle and other colleagues on a number of occasions. I also recognise the challenge that was faced by colleagues in Largs. The Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport, alongside the Presiding Officer, visited the area shortly after the flooding, in order to provide support.
There will be challenges in the future. We face a dynamic risk of more extreme weather spreading further than it has spread previously. We must ensure that our resilience partners are prepared for such events and that we mitigate the risks as far as is possible, but we will not be able to prevent every power cut, every flood and every wildfire. We need to do our best to prevent such events and ensure that, when they occur, we have in place the necessary infrastructure to respond to them. That is exactly what I have set out to the Parliament today.
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