Winter Resilience
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-04518, in the name of Keith Brown, on winter resilience.
14:42
Presiding Officer, thank you for the opportunity to update members on how Scotland is becoming more resilient, year on year, in the face of severe weather, and on the preparations that we have put in place for this winter.
As we all know, during the past three years Scotland has experienced some of the most prolonged and damaging severe weather that has been seen in modern times, mostly in the winter months but also at other times of the year. The one weather prediction that I can make with confidence is that Scotland will again experience severe weather, whether it is snow, a deep freeze, heavy rain or disruptive storms such as we had last winter.
As I said, severe weather does not happen just in winter. The summer flooding that affected neighbourhoods across Scotland—for example, in the Borders, Fife and Perthshire—is fresh in everyone’s memory. The volcanic ash cloud also tested the country’s resilience.
Only two fifths of the Scots who were questioned by the British Red Cross earlier this summer said that they were prepared for severe weather. They were most concerned about the loss of utilities—water, gas and electricity.
We cannot prevent the weather, but we can prepare for it. The Government’s priority is to get the people of Scotland to think ahead and plan, and therefore to cope better with all kinds of severe weather. The changes that we are trying to bring about will not happen in a year or even in a few years. Our efforts represent a long-term investment in building a more resilient nation.
This year, the public sector across Scotland is more prepared for severe weather than ever before. Year on year, with the measures that the Government is putting in place, we become stronger in dealing with the challenges of severe weather.
On Monday, the Scottish Government began its second national resilience campaign in partnership with the British Red Cross. We are undertaking a range of activities to highlight to people that they can do relatively inexpensive but effective things to prepare themselves, their homes, their families, their communities, their places of work and their businesses to withstand the worst effects of weather.
Our advice to the people of Scotland is that
“taking a few small steps now can save a lot of trouble later.”
That is advice that we are promoting and that we are trying to ensure gets into the consciousness of people throughout Scotland.
We are engaging directly with the public and businesses on the high street. There will be 64 information roadshows visiting communities in each local authority area in Scotland and all 56 British Red Cross high street shops will become information and advice hubs. That takes the campaign out to more than 80 towns, cities and villages across Scotland.
We are also engaging directly with schools. Pupils from primary 5 through to secondary 3 will tomorrow tune in to an online glow meeting hosted by Education Scotland, where they will take part in a conversation about preparing for severe weather.
Young people can be particularly vulnerable—both physically and psychologically—in emergencies, so it is particularly important that they are prepared should they be caught in an emergency situation. However, they also have resources of creativity, energy and enthusiasm. It makes sense to build the foundations of the knowledge required through schools.
In June this year, the Scottish Government launched the ready for emergencies web resource, which gives teachers a range of suggested activities to select from to enable children and young people to develop resilience as part of curriculum for excellence.
The ready for emergencies resource was designed by Education Scotland, with a team of teachers, parents’ representatives and resilience experts from the public and voluntary sectors, and it is already being well used in the classroom. To date it has been used by 3,300 people and has had 17,000 page views.
It is worth quoting the words of a teacher in a Scottish primary school that has been using ready for emergencies:
“It is great that whenever there is a major event in the news, we can follow it up with a meaningful activity, and think about what we would do if something similar happened here in the future”.
In my own constituency, that message was taken up by the pupils in Dunblane high school. In addition to ensuring that they were as well prepared for winter as possible, they took on the civic responsibility of trying to ensure that they looked after older people in Dunblane during the winter. They should be commended for that.
One of the key priorities of the Scottish Government in preparing for severe weather is to keep Scotland moving. Transport Scotland delivers its winter service programme on Scotland’s trunk road network from the start of October right through until mid-May.
Other measures that have been put in place ahead of winter include the purchase of two ice-breaking vehicles. I think that we can all remember the difficulties with trying to break down sheets of ice on the M8 after a prolonged period of very cold weather. We have made a commitment to have more salt stocked at the start of winter than was used across Scotland in the entire winter of 2010-11.
We also have a stock of more than 100,000 litres of alternative de-icers that will work in the severest of conditions when road salt becomes less effective—usually around 8° below freezing or below—and we are providing guidance for operating companies on when to use these de-icers.
We also have a strengthened network of weather stations and new cameras at 24 sites to improve decision making. We are publishing daily gritting plans to give the public and media more information about the treatments that are taking place. There is also a freight Scotland hotline for drivers to highlight network problems and provide guidance for heavy goods vehicle drivers. We also have a new YouTube video on winter service provision, which has been produced by key stakeholders and the public.
We will continue to alert the public to important information about travel conditions through a wide variety of communications channels including Twitter, Traffic Scotland internet radio and the Traffic Scotland website, variable message signs and mobile applications.
The multi-agency response team—MART—will continue to keep people informed and play a major part in the smooth running of the transport network this winter. Members may recall that it was an innovation two years ago that allowed all the key parties to be in the same place at Transport Scotland headquarters at the same time to aid decision making.
ScotRail has completed its £2.2m programme of investment, which includes reliability improvements to trains over the winter period through train modifications and the purchase of additional plant and equipment, enhanced facilities at stations and depots, and a significant upgrade to passenger information systems.
Network Rail has enhanced its infrastructure. For example, there is a new icebuster train, which costs between £1 million and £2 million and can quickly thaw out junctions and other key equipment. Network Rail also has many more four-by-four drive vehicles for operational and maintenance staff, and it deploys rail-mounted snowploughs at key locations across the network.
In addition, Network Rail, in conjunction with rail freight hauliers, has plans to maintain clear rail routes for critical freight train movements. That will ensure that sufficient priority is given to movement by rail of vital commodities, including fuel and food.
We recognise the serious implications for business and reflect airports’ commitment to their passengers. Scotland’s airports continue to devote significant resource to meeting the winter weather challenge, including investment in new equipment. For example, Aberdeen airport announced in August an investment of £1.3 million to upgrade its winter vehicle fleet to best deal with the worst conditions, and it has further investment plans for next year.
Severe weather can happen at any time and we have to be prepared for every eventuality. On 7 December last year the Met Office issued the highest level of warning—a red warning—for storm force winds across parts of Scotland. An Atlantic storm soon brought gusts of up to 164mph in some parts, with gusts of 77mph in Edinburgh. The advance information we received from the Met Office enabled us to take steps to prepare the people of Scotland for the disruption to travel that resulted.
The Met Office has done a lot of work since then to raise awareness of the meanings of its weather warnings. Red warnings are only issued when there is confidence that high levels of disruption will occur, and the public and responders must take action on those warnings to mitigate the effects of a potentially dangerous situation.
Farmers also have an important role during severe winter weather. In recognition of that, Transport Scotland, in partnership with the National Farmers Union and local authorities, has developed a code of practice to encourage and facilitate roads authorities and farmers to work more closely to get additional resources where they are most needed. I welcome Jim Hume’s amendment in that regard.
The storms of last winter caused some of the worst disruption to electricity supplies in recent memory, with more than 170,000 customers across Scotland affected. That is a significant number, although it is far less than the number during the previous comparable boxing day storms of 1998, which cut off over a quarter of a million users. With networks that are tens of thousands of kilometres long and which serve hundreds of thousands of customers over sparse geographical areas, there will be occasions when the power goes out. Scotland’s two distribution network operators have made network improvements in recent years, invested millions and enhanced their emergency arrangements in partnership with local responders.
In emergencies, the capacity to exchange information and provide direction and support through resilient telecommunications is vital. I will highlight two areas on which we have made progress in preparation for this winter.
First, we have acted to address issues that arose last winter regarding the Airwave network utilised by our emergency services. A tri-service group co-ordinated by the Scottish Government worked with Airwave Solutions Ltd to recommend appropriate action. Procedures have been improved to minimise site access problems during periods of intense and prolonged bad weather, generator maintenance scheduling has been enhanced, and engineering improvements have been delivered to improve electrical power reliability. Additionally, greater fuel, battery and electrical power generation has been provided to selected sites, to provide greater self-sufficiency in remote areas during prolonged periods of severe weather. We intend that a similar review of winter performance will be carried out in 2013 so that we can continue to learn lessons and improve reliability.
Second, we have installed a resilient telecommunications network—RTN—which, in the event of public network failures, should provide back-up capacity for strategic co-ordinating groups—SCGs—to communicate with each other and the Scottish Government. For the particularly challenging areas of Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and Argyll and Bute, we have added a new satellite communications service.
We have been making the most of new technology as well. The Scottish Government is introducing a new mobile phone application for iPhone and Android that is aimed at helping the public to cope during emergencies. By downloading and using the ready Scotland application, people will be able to gain quick and easy access—
Will the minister give way?
I give way to Alison Johnstone.
Speaking about new technologies—
Could we have Alison Johnstone’s microphone on please? Please put your card in, Ms Johnstone.
Speaking about new technologies, the minister may be aware that the Dutch are about to test heated cycle paths that will use heat that has been gathered during the summer. Finnish research shows that slippery roads rather than cold weather stop people cycling. Will the minister commit to making sure that cycle paths and footways receive the same attention that our roads will this winter?
I made the point at the start of my speech that we want to keep Scotland moving. To the extent that they will help keep Scotland moving, I am more than willing to look at the issues that Alison Johnstone raised.
The new technologies that I have been talking about allow us to gain quick and easy access to essential information from ready Scotland as well as storing advice and emergency contact details offline. Individual users will be able to find out when a road was last gritted and when it is next to be gritted, and they will get more road-by-road detail of the effects of weather on individual route journeys that they intend to make. The app stores the contents of a household emergency plan, adding national and local emergency contacts so that everything is in one place. It stores personal emergency checklists for the home, travel and business, which can be easily customised, and it will also advise users on which radio station to listen to during emergencies and provide the frequency needed to tune in to it.
It is fair to say that we will learn something new each time that Scotland is beset by severe weather, which will not always be in the winter time. The Government and the responder community are doing all that we can to build Scotland’s resilience to severe weather for the winter and all year round.
I thank the minister for giving way near the end of his speech. I was waiting for what I thought would be the crescendo. What is the Government going to do about the potholes that are left after the bad weather? They just get worse here.
Minister, you must conclude, please.
I think that Margo MacDonald has stolen Alex Johnstone’s thunder. We have procedures in place to deal with potholes. My responsibility is for trunk roads, and I am confident in the procedures that we have to repair potholes quickly. Outside that, the responsibility lies with the relevant roads authority.
Our infrastructure and services stand ready, and we urge the people of Scotland to be ready for severe weather all year round. That will help us to build a safer, stronger and more resilient Scotland.
I move,
That the Parliament welcomes the 2012 Ready for Winter public awareness campaign launched on 22 October in collaboration with the Red Cross, responder agencies and a wide range of partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors; commends the partners for their continuing long-term commitment to ensuring that Scotland is as prepared for severe weather as it can possibly be, and supports the activities taking place during Resilience Week, which emphasise that preparedness is essential, not just for winter, but for all kinds of severe weather, and highlight the simple steps that individuals, families, businesses and communities can take to prepare for this and other emergencies, all of which contribute to a more resilient Scotland.
14:56
As the minister said, long-range weather forecasting is notoriously unreliable because weather patterns are influenced by many factors, including variations in sea currents. For example, the unusually southerly position of the jet stream earlier this year brought cold, wet weather to Scotland during a period in which we would usually hope to have at least a glimmer of sunshine, and the oscillations of El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific Ocean are creating unpredictable weather patterns across many parts of the globe. Indeed, we were told that this summer was due to be a barbecue summer to rival the summer of 2003, but I had only three barbecues this summer—which was still two more than the previous year—and for two of them we had to eat indoors.
Despite the unreliability of long-range weather forecasting, however, it is always better to be prepared, particularly in view of the predictions by Adrian Crocker of British Weather Services, who suggests that the coming winter will be colder than average and will follow a similar pattern to that of 2010. I hope that that prediction will be proved wrong, but we must be prepared.
We have to be ready when the weather does its worst. We experienced very cold winter weather conditions in 2009-10 and 2010-11 and, as the minister said, flooding events are becoming ever more common and more serious. We have also endured extreme high winds such as hurricane bawbag last year.
The two extreme winters prompted both the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments to assess whether resilience measures needed to be improved. The UK Government reviewed transport-related provision, including rail, while the Scottish winter review group took a wider perspective that included local authority services, pressures on the national health service and the business community, and the contribution of the voluntary sector.
Government—both local and national—plays an important role in planning for problematic weather events, but responsibility also rests with communities and individuals to be prepared for the worst. I have logged on to the ready Scotland website, which has a number of useful suggestions for individuals and businesses. I registered for the draw for a home emergency pack and trust that, if I win it, it will come signed by the minister. The website is a good initiative, but not everybody is computer savvy or even has access to information technology. Some of our citizens who are most vulnerable to inclement weather are unlikely to be able to access information by that medium, which is why a hotline for older people, for example, could be vital in times of emergency.
When severe weather strikes, the first challenge is to keep transport routes open. HGVs often present problems when there is snow and ice on roads with even quite shallow gradients. Indeed, the M74 in my constituency is prone to closure under icy conditions due to the problems that HGVs encounter.
Getting up-to-date information to travellers is vital to prevent continual build-up of stationary traffic. We know that there were major problems with information during the first day of severe weather in December 2010. Indeed, I had personal experience of that because my daughter was stuck on the M73 in heavy snow. I found it difficult to find out what was happening or to get any information to her. Since that time, improvements to the Traffic Scotland information service have been made and, as the minister said, improvements in the provision of information to mobile devices have helped with some of the issues, too.
Resilience involves keeping public services functioning when possible and keeping the public informed when that is not possible. For example, schools may be closed at short notice because it is not safe for pupils and teachers to travel to school or because low temperatures have caused heating systems to fail. However, last-minute school closures create difficulties for working parents—and their employees—especially those in occupations that come under greater pressure during severe weather, such as the NHS.
In addition to local authorities organising methods to ensure that parents get information quickly by using texts, for example, parents should be encouraged to make plans with relatives, friends, and other parents about how they will cope with a sudden school closure and about which of them may be able to take time off work perhaps to look after several children on a rota.
I also encourage workplaces to make arrangements to allow homeworking, where possible. That clearly assists people to cope with transport issues and sudden childcare problems.
Periods of prolonged low temperatures present problems for other services. During the 2010-11 Christmas and new year period, my constituency experienced less snowfall than other parts of the region but, because the ground was not insulated by heavy snow, there were a lot of problems with frozen pipes and tobies—in many cases, the latter had not been laid sufficiently far under the road surface—so many of my constituents ended up without water services for several days. There were situations in which, for example, one elderly gentleman took snow out of the garden to put in his kettle in order to have something to drink.
One problem was that Scottish Water’s call centre could not cope with the volume of calls that were coming in, and that needs to be looked at. I must say that Scottish Water’s senior management did a sterling job—they dealt with phone calls and texts right into the night during a public holiday. That was an excellent service so I have never criticised them for how they responded at that time.
People who are able to contribute to individual and community resilience should be encouraged to do so. During the previous severe winter, there was unfortunately a fair amount of disinformation around, such as the idea that, if someone cleared the snow on the footpath outside their home and somebody else then slipped and fell, the snow clearer might be held responsible and could be sued. That was a load of nonsense, but people need to be confident that if they make efforts to help themselves and their communities those efforts will not lead to unexpected prosecution.
More plentiful provision of community salt and grit bins increases community resilience so long as the contents are stored in such a way that they do not solidify. Access to the bins can be difficult, and sometimes when a person looks into the bins they can see that the salt is totally solid.
It appears that lessons have been learned from the two recent harsh winters and that additional equipment has been purchased. I saw in the Daily Mail a nice little picture showing the minister wearing a rather natty set of gloves and scarf and holding an umbrella. However, my concerns about that page are not about the sartorial elegance of the minister but about the article next to his picture.
The article indicates that, due to financial pressures, a number of local authorities are looking to cut their winter resilience programmes. The Scottish Borders Council is reportedly hoping to save £170,000 by reducing the gritting priority for 100 miles of its road network. Last year, the Western Isles Council reduced the time interval during which gritting takes place by four hours a day. Six of our councils are cutting their gritting programme and three have reduced their salt reserves, although in some cases that is because councils believe that they can access additional salt more quickly if that is required.
It is worth looking behind some of the figures that Elaine Murray cited. Last year, many local authorities had very high levels of salt but did not use it because of how the winter turned out. It is for local authorities to take decisions that are in their interest. We are conscious that across the country we have more than enough salt in place—we have more salt at the start of this winter than we used during the bad winter two years ago.
I thank the minister for that clarification of the issues in the article. However, councils are implementing cuts not because they do not take winter resilience seriously—I know that they do—but because they are under extreme financial pressures, which is worrying.
I believe that Margo MacDonald and Alex Johnstone will mention potholes. In Dumfries and Galloway, we still have miles of potholes from two years ago, when the ice got into the road surface and it cracked, which it has not yet been possible to repair. There is still a huge backlog of repair work that needs to be done but which councils do not have the finances to do, despite the extra £4 million that has been provided. If we experience further severe winters, the incidence of potholes will probably increase and councils will not be able to tackle the problem.
We are talking about a serious issue that is a consequence of decisions that were taken on the funding of local authorities. We cannot just say that it is down to the local authorities to do something. If they face serious pressures, they will not be able to address some of the problems. They are experiencing serious difficulties in doing so.
It is my recollection from my time as a local councillor that the funding for repairs to the road network to deal with potholes, for example, came from councils’ capital budgets and not their revenue budgets, so I am not entirely sure what point the member thinks that she is making.
You are in your final minute, Dr Murray.
Capital budgets are under huge pressure as well—it is not just revenue budgets that are under pressure. I did not mention revenue budgets specifically and, while some repairs might be done using the revenue budget, some might be done through the capital budget. It does not matter which budget the money comes from; the important issue is the fact that funding is being constrained.
If the pessimistic forecasts turn out to be correct, there will be an effect on rail services, too. I have had a look at the temporary timetable that would have been implemented if there had been severe weather last year. It involved substantial reductions in network coverage, with no trains at all north and west of Inverness or on the west highland line, no service between Aberdeen and Inverness or south of Girvan, and none to commuter destinations such as Milngavie, Wemyss Bay and Shotts. That is not entirely the responsibility of Government but, if similar restrictions are planned in the event of severe weather this year, the public need to know about them, because we cannot have a situation in which people turn up at stations expecting trains to be running when, in fact, they have been cut back significantly.
You must close now, Dr Murray.
That information needs to be put in the public domain in advance of any prolonged period of severe winter weather.
I move amendment S4M-04518.1, to insert at end:
“, but notes with concern reports that some councils are considering cutting back on winter resilience measures such as road gritting due to financial pressures caused by the Scottish Government’s poor financial settlement for local authorities”.
15:07
I welcome the debate and thank the minister for bringing forward—for the second time, I believe, after last year’s debate—a debate on winter resilience at the beginning of the winter, when we can talk about things in the cold light of day, without getting involved in the heated type of discussion that we had two years ago at the expense of a minister.
The weather over the British isles is extremely unpredictable. Those of us who have made a study of climate change and the science behind it will realise that the one thing that will happen as a result of global warming is not that Britain will get any warmer but that our weather will become even less predictable. Some people might suspect that attempting to predict the weather and to improve winter resilience is a losing battle in the long term, but it is our duty to do all that we can to ensure that every lesson is learned and that mistakes that have been made in one incident are not repeated in the next. That is why debates such as today’s are so valuable.
I want to cover a couple of issues, the first of which comes under the broad heading of transport. The worst experiences that I had during the winter period at the end of 2010 related to the unpredictability of rail services. I am well aware of why the rail services between here and my home in Stonehaven were as bad as they were—the weather was obviously the cause—but a serious problem at the time was the shortage of heated points on the east coast main line north of Edinburgh. Can the minister inform us whether more of the points on that route will be heated and will therefore not freeze as they did during that period?
My main problem with the rail system at the time was one that other members have highlighted—it was to do with the issue of information. The inaccuracy of the information about rail services that was available during that period was probably a bigger problem than the lack of rail services. My worst experience was one that I have told the chamber about before. When my wife phoned the national rail information line, she spoke to a very nice Indian lady who told her that there were no reported problems with rail services in Scotland, even though, as far as we could see, there were no trains at all running in Scotland that day. The importance of information can never be overstated. I am glad that the minister has already been able to say more about how information for travellers will be improved.
Another point about transport that I will make relates to roads—my amendment is about roads issues in particular. I share the concerns that are expressed in the Labour Party’s amendment about the danger that local authorities, for whatever reason, may have decided to save money on preparedness for the winter. I would like further reassurance from the minister that we do not have local authorities in Scotland that have failed to make adequate provision and that will be unable to provide the necessary support to keep roads open and clear of ice and snow should we suffer a bad period of snow and ice during the winter. It would be an extreme disappointment if the lessons of previous years have not been learned and if a single mild winter has been enough to encourage some councils to return to their old ways.
Another roads issue is the quality and maintenance of infrastructure. The lesson that I learned from 2010 was that many of the problems on our roads were associated with poor long-term maintenance. If there is a pothole and a man goes round to fill it with tar and roll it flat, the problem is that if there is snow, and it melts, and if a snowplough passes over the top of it, it is not long before the fill that was put in the pothole is thrown back out. I saw individual potholes in my own backyard filled and refilled on up to four occasions during the six-week period at the end of 2010. For that reason, we need to take a long-term approach and encourage local authorities to be as responsible as possible in dealing with that issue.
Does the member agree that another issue that arises is when the road is dug up—by a utility company, for example—and then not properly filled in or patched up correctly, which allows ice to get into gaps, creating potholes? The issue is whose responsibility it is to pick up the tab for the repair work.
Mr Johnstone, you are going into your last minute.
Absolutely, I would not dispute that what the member describes is an issue.
I will have to move quickly to ensure that I cover some of the other points that I need to raise. Much has been said about those who are responsible for maintaining the electricity system, for example, but a key area that has not been raised so far is fuel poverty. For whatever reason, we have seen energy prices—particularly electricity prices—rise dramatically over the past two years. My concern is that, although some people will lose power as a result of grid failure, others will lose power because they simply cannot afford to pay for it. That is one area where our winter resilience may be lacking in the next year.
I will close on the issue of ensuring that individuals realise that it is their responsibility to make responsible decisions about how they handle themselves and their families during the course of bad weather. The worst disappointment is those who venture out in the worst of conditions and find themselves getting into difficulty, having failed to realise that they should have known better. In spite of what some speakers have said, I believe that the Met Office provides a reliable weather forecast over the two to six-day period and that people should know better than to put themselves in danger.
I move amendment S4M-04518.3, to insert at end:
“and seeks the Minister for Transport and Veterans’ assurance that Scotland’s trunk road operating companies and local authorities have achieved the state of preparation for winter road maintenance that is consistent with the recommendations in the 2004 Audit Scotland report, Maintaining Scotland’s roads, and its follow-up report in 2011.”
15:14
The last days of October are fast becoming characterised not by gaining an extra hour, or by Hallowe’en, but by the annual winter resilience debate in the chamber. I welcome the fact that the Government has, once again, brought forward a debate on the matter before winter truly begins to bite so that we might question the minister on the Government’s level of preparedness. During the severe winter of 2010-11 we were denied this opportunity until after our infrastructure and transport networks had ground to a halt. It is not good enough to simply be reactive in such matters and it is right that we have the chance to debate the matter today.
I support the principles and content of the minister’s motion, but I thought it necessary that the plight of rural Scotland should be addressed. During wintry weather conditions, the disruption of the transport network in the central belt will inevitably command most attention, but the problems that extreme weather causes in rural and isolated communities are no less severe, and they are more common, of course. The isolation of those communities can make the problems that are caused by wintry weather much more difficult to contend with. A closed road in the central belt can often be passed off as a minor inconvenience, but if the Rest and Be Thankful section of the A83 is closed, that can add up to 50 miles to some journeys. If a bus service is disrupted in Edinburgh or Glasgow, another route or rail may be an option, but in a Highland or island community, it is likely that a single bus service will be the only means of passage into and out of the town for many people. That applies to those who are lucky enough to have public transport, of course. More often in the countryside, cars are the only mode of transport. People can therefore be isolated in their own rural homes when the weather gets tough.
A one-size-fits-all approach simply would not work, which is why innovative measures must be attempted to confront the challenges that rural Scotland faces in times of severe weather. Scottish Borders Council, which has already been mentioned, deserves praise for its initiative in producing its resilient communities plan, which seeks to ensure that volunteers in the Borders have the chance to work more closely with the council and emergency responders during periods of severe weather. In rural areas, there may be rare occasions when public services are temporarily unavailable, so developing a framework for the co-ordination of voluntary support on a community council basis is an intelligent response to the difficulties that many suffer in winter. The support in mind ranges from clearing pathways for the elderly and disabled to placing sandbags in areas that are at threat of flooding. I understand that, in the Borders alone, four community councils have signed up to the plan, and I hope that more will follow. Indeed, it sounds as if the idea is one whose time has come and that it should be explored by other local authorities.
In last year’s debate, I welcomed Perth and Kinross Council’s initiative of adopting a farmer assistance scheme and called on the minister to engage with NFU Scotland to roll out such a scheme nationally. Such a partnership between Transport Scotland and NFU Scotland’s membership would be an asset at times of extreme wintry weather for our more isolated communities. I congratulate the minister on taking my advice and reaching a tripartite agreement involving Transport Scotland, NFU Scotland and the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland. The code of practice that has been established to allow local authorities to draw on the support of farmers and rural businesses—not just farmers, of course—is to be welcomed, and I am optimistic that it will prove to be a success if it is called on this winter.
In the spirit of consensus that has been commonplace in Holyrood this week, the Scottish Liberal Democrats will support the motion and all the amendments.
I move amendment S4M-04518.2, to insert after “possibly be”:
“; recognises that rural communities and businesses are most vulnerable to bouts of extreme weather and can experience disproportionate levels of disruption in comparison to other areas of Scotland in the winter months; welcomes the tripartite agreement between Transport Scotland, NFU Scotland and the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland in establishing a code of practice for local authorities to call on the support of the farming community in remote areas of the country”.
We turn to the open debate. At this stage of the debate, we are tight for time and it is unlikely that I will be able to call all members to speak. Speeches should be six minutes, but shorter speeches would be appreciated.
15:18
I, too, welcome the debate and acknowledge the considerable work that the Minister for Transport and Veteran Affairs, his officials, the services and the Red Cross have done to minimise the problems that we might face should there be a severe winter. We are being told that it may well be severe, and I humbly suggest to the minister that, no matter how seductive they are, his Gene Kelly-lookalike photos in the national press may well be no palliative to that severity. The coming challenge may be immense, and I am sure that the minister will have the undiluted support of all of us to face it, whether in keeping our elderly and other dependants warm and safe or keeping open our transport arteries, particularly our main arteries, to keep commerce and industry moving.
On Alex Johnstone’s point about fuel poverty, health clinics and hospitals must be at the centre of attention should there be a severe winter. This morning, members of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee had a conversation with Energy Action Scotland in which that point was highlighted.
We also need to ensure that the physical links and communications with our rural areas and remote environments are open, as Jim Hume said. He also mentioned the national code of practice.
Those, and more, are crucial components of our national resilience programme.
I highlight the recent Citizens Advice Scotland energy briefing, which says that the Scottish Government and local authorities might be able to help with rural fuel poverty by looking at the crisis loans that are provided, particularly in view of off-grid issues, such as the fact that oil suppliers often want a £300 minimum order before they will deliver.
That point is well made and noted.
The resilience programme should be packaged under the two themes of communication and equipment availability. It is good news on the latter. For example, we now have two new Finnish Raiko icebreakers that are designed to cut through the hard-packed ice that we might face as we did in 2010, particularly on the M8. It is also good that Network Rail has the plans and equipment to keep points from freezing. Munters will be used to steam out frozen points. Network Rail will also use a helicopter that is equipped with thermal imaging cameras to identify any points heaters that are not working. It is also encouraging to hear that more salt will be stocked at the start of this winter than was used across Scotland during the winter of 2010-11, and that we also have something like 70,000 litres of alternative de-icers available for any emergency.
It is also encouraging to hear that the police and the multi-agency response teams are ready to advise the public about disruption. Jim Hume claimed that the minister took his advice on rural areas and it is encouraging to hear about the agreement that will ensure that the farmers get full support.
Will the member give way?
No, I must finish.
We do not just have to deal with domestic issues. It is critical that airports and cross-border rail links continue to operate effectively. The maintenance of aeroplanes and rail stock is critical, as is the availability of buses.
However, in these times, communication is the critical factor. I am not talking just about finding the no-so-hot spots that disrupt services but about determining the locus and status of people who might become prisoners in their own homes because of weather conditions, such as the elderly, the disabled and children. It is incumbent on us to give dependants in our society a hotline to an angel database before we get into a severe winter. We need to create a buddy programme that will get those in our society who can do so to adopt a granny, grandad or disabled neighbour for the winter, and to look in and see that they are okay. The combination of a harsh winter and excessive fuel bills declare that nothing less than such a buddy programme will be acceptable and effective.
In supporting the motion, commendable as it is, I say that nothing—whether it be keeping our main transport open or keeping our commerce and business alive—is more important than ensuring that we look after our dependants, and that they are embraced and kept warm. That should be a major priority.
15:24
First, I pay tribute to our winter heroes, such as the good neighbours who clear the snow in their streets and check on the elderly; the workers on the roads and the transport system who have sometimes dangerous but always vital jobs to do every winter; and the emergency services that serve our communities all year round. Without their efforts Scotland would simply not stay open and safe during periods of extreme weather and challenging weather conditions. I take this opportunity to put on record my appreciation of all of them.
For me, today’s focus must be on how our economy, public services and national infrastructure cope with the range of adverse conditions that we can expect to face this winter. Businesses unable to open their doors, staff who cannot get to work and goods stuck on the transport network and not going anywhere all add up, such that it can be make or break for many small businesses. In addition, an extended period of cold weather can leave the elderly and vulnerable isolated and heightens risks associated with ill health by interrupting the provision of key services.
A resilient Scotland keeps moving through the winter but, when the weather overwhelms us, as it has on more than one occasion in recent years, the impact can be severe. We cannot control the elements, but we can prepare for them and ensure that every year our response to bad weather is better planned, better informed and better understood.
I agree with everything that the member has said and take issue with none of it; the only thing that worries me is that we are not talking about the money yet. It is the money that prevents the local authorities from putting into effect the plans that the member is talking about. Everybody knows how to do it, but what do we do it with?
I agree with that point and I will address it slightly later.
It was clear last year that lessons had been learned after the events of the two previous winters. Across government, the business community and the voluntary sector, people are more mindful of the need to invest in appropriate preventative measures. For example, First ScotRail invested in de-icing polytunnels and issued new equipment to station staff in response to the winter of 2010-11, which the company says cost it £7 million; Scotland’s farmers are getting involved in clearing roads to help to keep the rural economy moving; and, in my area, South Lanarkshire Council now holds 35,000 tonnes of salt, which is up from 8,000 tonnes just four years ago. The council is also converting some of its existing fleet of vehicles into snowploughs, and last year it purchased 14 Scandinavian gritters.
I welcome the improvements in South Lanarkshire but, given the difficult nature of the budget settlement, not every council has been able to develop contingencies to the same extent. However, whatever the service and whoever the provider, everyone has to understand that, although the most severe winter conditions remain uncommon in much of Scotland, particularly in the central belt, they are by no means alien to our climate. As we have learned to our cost, if we are unprepared when heavy snow comes, the country can be brought to a standstill.
The strength of our resilience in harsh conditions depends on investment and prevention, but in many ways it also depends on the relationships that the Government can form with crucial strategic partners. In reflecting on last year’s debate on this subject, the minister may recall another example from South Lanarkshire in which the council offered to assist contractors in clearing trunk roads on white Monday in December 2010 but was knocked back—to this day, I cannot understand why. South Lanarkshire Council and the contractors have come to an agreement that should prevent a repeat of that breakdown, but I would be interested to know what the Government is doing to help local authorities share resources with Transport Scotland and contractors as part of a concerted response to the winter disruption.
I note from the motion and the minister’s earlier comments that the Red Cross will be partners in resilience week after the success of its campaigning on the issue prior to the previous election. Everyone in the chamber values its contribution and involvement. I also highlight the often understated role of the Met Office, because good preparatory work has to be informed by the best expert advice, and the Met Office is a world leader in its field. We know that its advice assists the Government directly, but it also helps the NHS plan on-going care for patients with long-term conditions through the winter, and it is invaluable to key growth sectors such as the tourism industry and the oil and gas sector.
An additional £11 million has been released by the Treasury following pressure from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that will boost the predictive capacity of Met Office supercomputers by 20 per cent. I hope that ministers here agree that the Met Office should retain its world-leading position, with the best technology and the best scientific minds, and that Scotland should continue to benefit from access to its forecasts and analyses whatever the constitutional future of the United Kingdom.
I will conclude by saying that, although public awareness is crucial, our resilience will come down to more than self-reliance and communication. It takes proportionate preventative steps to keep Scotland moving and open for business whatever the weather, and it takes partnership, too.
Councils are the Government’s most valuable partners when a winter crisis hits, and they have to be given the support that they need to get on with the job.
15:30
As someone who is involved in the motor trade, doing deliveries, I declare an interest.
One of the biggest challenges that we face with regard to winter resilience is the highly unpredictable nature of the weather in Scotland, which presents a particular problem for weather forecasters. Most other countries that have to deal with snow and ice are at an advantage, as they have historically had patterns of weather that are predictable and they have a more consistent experience, so that, even when weather is described as being severe, they are able to counter the problems by being better prepared.
In other words, in the Alps, say, when snow falls for a given period of time, forecasters are able to state fairly accurately in advance the duration of the snowfall, the depth of the snow and roughly how long the snow will remain on the ground. Also, historically, whatever the amount of snowfall, the same conditions are likely to be around for a substantial time. Therefore, on the continent, whatever the treatment that might have been used, there is a good chance that it will be successful for a substantial number of days or, more probably, weeks.
That is in stark contrast to what our resilience teams have to deal with, which might involve spreading grit on roads and paths only to find that a thaw happens soon after and is quickly followed by a drop in temperature or, worse, by rain. That cycle can often take place within half a day.
The unpredictability of our weather brings a great deal of obstacles and challenges to our workforce. Indeed, if we brought over the workforce from the continent, who are highly skilled in their own backyard, and put them to work in Scotland, even with their own equipment, I am sure that they would give up in a week. In fairness, the same might happen with our teams—who are, in my opinion, just as competent and highly skilled—if we sent them over to those countries.
The differing conditions between our countries, as well as the different form of training and experiences of the workers, demonstrates the unique situation that Scotland is in during the winter months. However, what is done extremely well on the continent—something that we need to learn from and get better at—is ensuring that the driving public, both private and professional, are ready and better prepared for any eventuality. There is no doubt that, across the board, there is a cavalier attitude and a state of unreadiness on the part of drivers when it comes to bad weather.
As I already stated, I have been involved with the motor industry through my business, which my son now runs. The majority of our drivers are women. Contrary to the opinion of some, my opinion is that women, when given the chance, make some of the best and most careful drivers whilst, at the same time, getting the job done quickly.
Members: Hear, hear.
They get well paid, by the way—the same as the men. They know when to call a halt and when to alert our head office in the event of bad weather.
We have a no-drive policy that is based on up-to-date information, and we take our vehicles off the road for the duration of any extreme weather conditions. I cannot remember any of our motors or vans being marooned in bad weather. We have normally taken affirmative action sufficiently far in advance.
I encourage the Scottish Government and local authorities, which have a significant role in these matters, to do all that they can to educate the public and advise them as forcibly as possible when not to travel, particularly on motorways. If someone becomes stuck on a motorway, it is well-nigh impossible to get them off the road without significant rescue operations.
I appreciate the great difficulty in keeping the roads open and I appreciate even more the excellent work of the roads and clearing teams. If I could make a wish for them, it would be not for less snow or ice, but for the gift of informing them about where and when the weather will hit and for how long. If we give them the information, they will do the job well.
Government can do many things but, when it comes to dealing with mother earth, all that we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I am pleased that the Scottish Government is preparing in advance to deal with the weather this winter, whatever it is. I fully support the initiatives that are being taken.
15:35
We have had comparisons drawn between the continent and here. Of course, it is not just winter that causes problems. Thankfully, we do not have too many problems with earthquakes, but in Italy people who forecast such things have been banged up as a result of their forecasts. I hope that we do not get to the point at which we bang up some of our forecasters.
I am pleased that we are having this debate. Alex Johnstone identified that the issue is not just about the preparation that local authorities make in relation to transport, but about the preparations that others make, including us as individuals, and how we react to events that might or might not happen. Transport is important and knowledge about it, whether on road or rail, is particularly important. There is certainly evidence that steps have been taken to improve the information flow, particularly from ScotRail, and we hope that that will be successful. There is no doubt that many of our constituents are concerned about knowing what will happen and when.
It would be wonderful if we all had the foresight that Mr Paterson prayed for, but it is unlikely that that will happen. However, it is fair to say that people can take steps. As members of the Scottish Parliament, we can take steps. We can pay attention to the question of the money. As far as constituents are concerned, that is about the costs of energy and utility bills and their likely impact. How the situation will be managed is a matter of significant concern for constituents.
That is why, this weekend, Maureen Watt, Kevin Stewart and I are holding an energy advice surgery in Aberdeen, so that we can pass on tips from energy saving organisations such as SCARF—Save Cash & Reduce Fuel. Although that is not based exclusively in Aberdeen, it has certainly been around in the city for a long time and it exists to help folk make preparations so that they are resilient, not just in the winter, but throughout the year. I commend that type of activity to colleagues. Maureen Watt, Kevin Stewart and I look forward to engaging with constituents and providing them with tips on improving their lot financially and on preparing for eventualities. Those things are important.
I am delighted that we have all received many bits of advice in briefings from the private and public sectors on a range of topics. It is a pleasure to see that people in the private and public sectors have already made much effort to ensure that we are resilient this coming winter and that steps have been taken to ensure that we are prepared.
15:41
I am delighted to speak on the important subject of winter resilience and to have the opportunity to represent the many concerns of my constituents in Glasgow.
In recent years, we have seen at first hand the importance of having a strong and resilient transport network in challenging weather conditions and we have seen the need for effective management of the resources that are designed to deal with adverse circumstances. Slow and inefficient responses from the Scottish Government to severe weather lead not just to frustration and delay for commuters but to potential isolation and loneliness for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
For too many people, winter means taking difficult decisions about household incomes. It is unacceptable that any of my constituents should be forced to choose between heating their homes and putting food on the table but, tragically, that will be a daily reality for an increasing number of families.
If the Scottish Government fails to respond swiftly and effectively to failures in our transport network, we risk damaging any fragile economic recovery that our small businesses, employers and employees and their families across Scotland are counting on. The challenges for employers are great enough without the added financial pressure of vehicles that cannot be used, employees who cannot attend work and suppliers that cannot deliver. That is why the debate concerns much more than cancelled trains and delayed journeys. Scotland needs a Government that recognises the huge range of issues that directly impact families over the winter months and a Government that adopts a proactive approach to supporting communities in that difficult period.
A key issue for many of my constituents in Glasgow is the increasingly high cost of energy bills at a time when many household incomes are overstretched. Many older people who are isolated and have low incomes are being exploited by the pricing structures of the big six energy companies that operate in the UK. Customers who remain with one company for long periods are being substantially overcharged for energy supplies in comparison with new customers who have moved from a competitor. Too often, vulnerable and older people suffer the most from that disgraceful business practice, as they are the least likely to have access to the information and support to make informed choices about their energy supply and costs.
I commend the action of many of my colleagues in the Labour Party in working to promote the switch together initiative, which is helping many overstretched families and vulnerable people in our communities. In Dundee, our Labour MSP Jenny Marra is championing a collective approach to rising energy costs, to drive down prices by negotiating tariffs on behalf of thousands of ordinary customers and achieve far more competitive pricing as a result. We in the Labour Party believe that
“by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”,
and that opportunity allows ordinary people to have the kind of bargaining power that could make a real difference to household budgets over the difficult winter months.
It is time for the Scottish Government to learn a lesson from the Scottish Labour Party and work with us to deliver innovative and dynamic solutions to the tough realities of supporting Scotland in the current challenging economic circumstances.
My constituents in Glasgow deserve a consistent and effective response to severe winter weather and its effects on transport links and infrastructure. More fundamentally, they deserve a Scottish Government that fully addresses the wide range of issues that affect families and vulnerable people who live alone during the winter. I will continue to campaign for those who suffer from fuel poverty, who have to make the tragic choice on a daily basis between heating and eating.
Finally, I encourage the Scottish Government to invest in and work with organisations such as Energy Action Scotland in order to support families and individuals with ever-shrinking household incomes to make smart choices about their energy supplies. Citizens Advice Scotland, which was mentioned earlier, is working with Scottish communities to provide useful and impartial advice on energy consumption and on how to find the best deals. In the past year alone, CAS has noted a rise in the number of people who struggle to make their payments during the winter. That is simply not good enough.
The Scottish Government should support the Scottish people in their struggles during the winter instead of cutting local government budgets, which are already so overstretched. It is only through the full and unqualified resourcing of voluntary organisations and community groups that we can minimise the effects of severe winter weather alongside our unfortunate economic reality.
15:47
Before I go on to say what I want to say, I will touch on the Labour amendment. I cannot speak for every local authority, but I can speak for the one that I used to help to represent, and Glasgow City Council cut the road maintenance budget for—I think—five years in a row until we had the bad winter. It is now reaping the consequences of its inaction during that time. It is a bit rich for Anne McTaggart and others to stand up and tell the Government that it should be supporting communities and ensuring that the roads are fit for purpose when, in her city, it was her Labour-run council that put the roads in their current condition in the first place.
How much of a reduction does the Scottish Government grant to local authorities represent?
Local authorities have a bigger percentage of Government money than they have ever had. Labour members might not want to acknowledge that, but it is a fact.
Let me get on to business. I think that it was Brian Adam who talked about Italian weather forecasters getting the jail.
Earthquake predictors.
That is right. I was just thinking that Michael Fish will be thinking, “I need to move.”
It has been said already—I am sure that it will be said again—that Scotland is famous for its variable weather. It is not uncommon for us to have four seasons in one day.
Or half a day.
I can beat that. Many years ago, I was at a Celtic v Falkirk game at Ibrox—it was a semi-final in the league cup—and we had four seasons in 90 minutes. It was a terrible day for me, and we were beaten in the replay.
However, the past few winters have seen us experience some pretty horrendous weather extremes, which have only highlighted how important it is that we do all that we can to ensure that we are as well prepared as we can be. We have realised that, in extreme weather, we cannot rely on the provision of normal services. That might be because workers cannot get to work or because, once they are there, they cannot get out to provide their services. That is why I am encouraged by the minister’s comments about the additional two Raiko icebreakers, which will certainly help to keep important arterial routes open in the most extreme weather.
Nonetheless, the difficulty in moving from one place to another is why it is more important than ever that we build on the local community organisations that are often at the coalface in delivering services when we are faced with extreme weather that disrupts our normal services. That is why I welcome the steps that the Government has taken recently to help us all to become that much more prepared for the extreme weather conditions that we could face in the coming months.
Two years ago, when we experienced one of the most extended cold spells in living memory, it was heartening to see local groups and organisations work together to ensure that the elderly and vulnerable members in our community were cared for. In my constituency, church groups arranged for volunteers to check on their neighbours and deliver groceries, meals and medicines to the elderly, infirm and other vulnerable people. Organisations such as the scouts and Boys’ Brigade organised the shovelling of pathways to ensure that they were kept clear of ice and snow and would spread the salt from the bins, which the council replenished fairly regularly.
I am pleased to learn that more salt will be stocked at the start of this winter than there has been in previous years to ensure that it is available if and when needed.
The member should congratulate the council.
When it does it right, Hanzala, I will congratulate it.
The people at the Castlemilk Pensioners Action Centre in my constituency, including ex-lord provost of Glasgow the indomitable Pat Lally, ensured that otherwise housebound constituents were still able to visit the centre and take part in a number of activities that the centre runs or attends such as trips to the ballet or theatre, day trips, exercise classes and so on and that they were provided with a hot meal and company. Although that sort of thing happens all year round, it takes on even more importance in the winter because it allows the elderly to get out during the dark months and minimises the feelings of isolation and despair that can occur in extreme weather. The centre also provides information on where people can receive help and assistance on fuel poverty and other issues.
The recently announced initiative that was mentioned by the minister will greatly benefit those church and community groups and will help them to help the local community by providing ready and simple information about how we can all make life that wee bit easier for ourselves, friends, family and neighbours. I will not list the many helpful things on the ready Scotland website, as we have received the briefings and know what they are. However, I just want to note that we cannot simply rely on local care and interventions and that a national approach must be taken. Who among us will not welcome the £65 million that has been allocated this year to tackle fuel poverty and improve energy efficiency? That money will be most beneficial to those most in need of support during these difficult months and will help to ensure that the elderly and vulnerable are able to stay warm in their homes.
Of course, some of the energy companies are doing much the same as the Government. Scottish Power, which has its headquarters in my Cathcart constituency, supplies electricity to more than 2 million people in the south and centre of Scotland. It produced an analysis of its response to last year’s hurricane-like weather and has ensured that lessons have been learnt from it. During that bad weather, 850 additional field staff were mobilised and Scottish Power employees worked for 40,000 hours to restore supplies to the affected areas. Those dedicated and conscientious workers deserve a huge vote of thanks for being out in conditions that many of us would fear to leave the house to go into.
As has been said, fuel prices are of particular concern at winter time and Scottish Power has pledged to continue with its policy of no winter disconnections as well as continuing the warm home discount scheme, which gives a £130 rebate on fuel prices to all those eligible who are living in, or are at risk of, fuel poverty. That, coupled with the Deputy First Minister’s welcome announcement at the weekend of an extra £200 million to tackle fuel poverty over the next few years, will help to make a real difference to the lives of many of our constituents.
As has been said and as we all know, Scotland’s winters can be harsh, cold, wet and snowy, with weather unfit even for ducks. It is critical that we have a sustainable plan to ensure that we are as able as possible to deal with that weather and I am delighted that huge steps appear to have been taken towards ensuring that such a plan is in place. It is incumbent on us all as parliamentarians to use whatever medium we can to make the public aware of available help and advice and I am sure that that is what we will do.
I ask the chamber to support the motion.
Before we move on, I respectfully remind members to use full names when they address each other.
15:53
First, I agree with James Dornan: I, too, do not agree with what the Labour Party amendment says. My experience from my previous life on a local council is that councils have been steadily reducing the number of roads being gritted since the 1990s and well before this Government ever came to power. In most councils’ roads gritting policy, primary routes are gritted first and only when those are clear do they grit other roads, streets in housing estates and so on. That is the fact of the matter.
I welcome the ready Scotland campaign, which the Red Cross and the Scottish Government launched on Monday to ensure that Scots are prepared for a severe winter. Investment has been made in technology—for a change—to ensure adequate planning and preparedness. Transport Scotland says that road users will have the most comprehensive and up-to-date travel information possible, so that they can plan ahead during bad weather. I hope that that works out.
The public awareness campaign, in partnership with the British Red Cross, is the second such campaign and will provide information on how to prepare for and cope with severe weather. Information will be distributed through television, radio, the press, social media and national roadshows.
I was stuck on the roads a couple of years ago, as other members were, and as I mentioned when we debated winter resilience last year. Like Jim Hume, I welcome the timing of this debate. Only yesterday, I drove to the Parliament, and as anyone who travels on the M8 knows, the fog always lies at Harthill. I am always amazed by the number of people who do not drive to the road conditions. People were doing 80 or 90mph and jumping in and out of their lane. I hope that as part of the campaign people will be urged to drive responsibly. I love people who tailgate me. I often think that I will ask them to come into my car and sit beside me, because they are right up at the back of the car. What will happen if they try to brake in severe weather? They will just bash into the car in front. I hope that what the minister said will come true.
The vast majority of car owners think that they have done enough to prepare for poor driving conditions when they have an ice scraper and some de-icer. I love it when I go into Asda and see people buying their de-icers and scrapers. They should prepare by ensuring that their car is fit and their tyres are inflated and road worthy and have tread. They should ensure that they drive to the conditions.
I welcome the investment in technology to ensure adequate planning and preparedness. I welcome the trialling of closed-circuit television cameras in gritter vehicles, to help to inform decision makers about real-time conditions. After being stuck on the brae in Motherwell a couple of years ago I made the point to the minister that councils should have grit bins on hills, because gritters cannot get by all the traffic that is stuck on the road. Some people nowadays have wonderful new cars that just cannot get up small hills—I just love it to bits when I see that.
I agree with the member’s point. He might remember that the six-point plan from 2010-11 included the placing of strategic supplies of salt on trunk roads. We do that at Harthill, which he mentioned and which is on a rise. There is also a procedure whereby we can take out the central reservation so that emergency vehicles can get in to grit.
I welcome that.
The Scottish National Party Government has made a commitment to have more salt stocked at the start of winter than was used across Scotland in the entire winter of 2010-11. I do not need to go into the figures; we have all got them.
Like Jim Hume, I welcome the code of practice between Transport Scotland, the NFUS and local authorities, which will enable farmers to offer better support in the clearing of roads. We had a situation in North Lanarkshire in which a farmer asked the council if he could help but the council rejected his offer. Falkirk Council got the farmer to do work, and when North Lanarkshire Council got back to him to ask for help he said, “Sorry, I’m tied up working for Falkirk.” I am sure that farmers will help to clear the roads and I welcome their help.
Anne McTaggart mentioned fuel poverty. A household is in fuel poverty if it spends 10 per cent or more of its post-tax income on gas and electricity. For every 5 per cent increase in energy prices, 46,000 households are pushed into fuel poverty. Fuel poverty has risen steadily since 2002 and reached a peak of 33 per cent in 2009. Fuel costs have risen six times faster than household income since 2004. I am sure that Anne McTaggart agrees that the £65 million budget that the Scottish Government has allocated to tackling fuel poverty is welcome. It is terrible that in the 21st century our people live in fuel poverty.
I welcome the debate. I welcome the minister’s comments and I wish him well.
15:59
I am delighted to speak in the debate. I will focus on two main areas: our transport infrastructure and the impact on services for our elderly and vulnerable citizens.
As members will be aware, Transport Scotland is required to take steps to prevent snow and ice from endangering the safety of pedestrians and vehicles on our public roads. For trunk roads, Transport Scotland performs the duty by contracting companies to keep our key national routes open.
I have looked at the winter service plan for south-west Scotland, which includes the city of Glasgow. I am impressed by the level of detailed planning that appears to have taken place, to the extent that the contractor Amey is able to outline in great detail in the plan which vehicles will treat which routes and how long treatment will take.
Although I welcome that level of detail in the plan, Transport Scotland and its contractors were found wanting in the winter of 2010. As I see it, despite the impressive plans, one area in which we could fall short is that of co-operation between different contractors, agencies and local authorities. I would be interested to hear from the minister what is being done to encourage joint working. I am talking about in particular the deployment of plant and manpower from less affected areas to assist in other areas that are trying to cope with severe conditions. What systems are in place to encourage that?
I welcome the commitment made by ScotRail to give passengers faster and more accurate information regarding train service disruptions. I hope that ScotRail will also inform the Indian lady Alex Johnstone referred to so that if he calls, she will be able to give him that information.
Turning from land-based transport to water, members may be aware that great progress has been made in recent years in regenerating the Glasgow to Edinburgh canal. I would be interested to hear from the minister what steps are being taken to deal with the canal freezing over.
The canal is once again a great asset for the city of Glasgow, but I have concerns about the risk to children who might be tempted to wander on to the ice. There is more work to be done to inform our young people about the potential dangers of our waterways in the winter.
I will focus the remainder of my remarks on the impact of cold weather on the elderly and the vulnerable, particularly given the citizen’s advice bureaux figures that show a rise over the past year in the number of people coming to them who are struggling to pay their energy bills.
The Government’s cuts to the central heating and insulation budget, which is down to £48 million last year from £71 million the year before, will make it hard for many households to cope with the effects of a severe winter this year.
Last year two of my elderly constituents were denied a central heating system after the SNP Government moved the goalposts to make it harder for households to benefit from the scheme. Such cases should make all members of the Parliament ashamed.
I also have concerns about local authorities, which will be placed in a difficult position as a result of the year-in, year-out squeeze on their budgets. I would like the minister to assure the Parliament today that councils have sufficient funds to do the job.
I now come to roads and road safety. Our motorways and trunk roads are suffering because of a lack of maintenance and a lack of joined-up work between contractors. I give the example of the M8, where there are hardly any cat’s eyes and white lines are missing or have been totally eroded, so it is in a dangerous state. I want the minister to explain why he has allowed that level of poor workmanship on the M8. I travel on that road frequently and I find it quite dangerous during the hours of darkness.
Last but not least, we have a responsibility to continue to build on the good practices that we have developed over our historic years. Resource will be a huge issue for service delivery. Many members have mentioned potholes. It is easy to say that potholes are local authorities’ responsibility, but if we do not give local authorities money, they cannot do anything about them.
I would appreciate the minister’s commitment to assisting councils around the country to achieve the goals that I have mentioned.
16:05
The actions of this Parliament are sometimes subject to forensic media scrutiny and, indeed, criticism. That is perhaps entirely as it should be in a democracy, even if we will, on occasion, feel that as an institution, or as the Government or the Opposition, we are being judged harshly. Generally, though, across the 13 years of its existence the Scottish Parliament has been considered to have impacted positively on the lives of the people of Scotland. Although the various parties in this chamber will and do have their differences, more often than not when it has come to doing the right thing we have come together.
Compare and contrast that with recent events at Westminster, where a specific proposal was rather disappointingly not taken forward. I refer to the Winter Fuel Allowance Payments (Off Gas Grid Claimants) Bill of my SNP MP colleague Mike Weir. That private member’s bill would have permitted new pensioner claimants who rely on off-grid sources of energy to register for the winter fuel allowance in late July rather than late September, allowing for payments to be accessible to that vulnerable group by no later than 30 September. That would have allowed them to fill their tanks ahead of the increased charging that inevitably arises as winter unfolds. To be clear, it was a cost-neutral measure that attracted cross-party support from Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid, Social Democratic and Labour Party and Democratic Unionist Party members, yet it failed to proceed because of the Westminster system, under which such bills are, for the first reading, scheduled for consideration one after the other on a Friday.
The bill was never actually debated. Mike Weir’s proposal was the second up for consideration but was not reached after coalition MPs talked out the bill ahead of it and Government whips objected to it and prevented it from automatically securing a second reading. Incidentally, it might interest members to learn that the talked-out bill was introduced by Labour MP Barbara Keeley and covered the responsibilities of a variety of bodies in England with regard to supporting carers.
I should acknowledge that the bill will have a second chance at progressing. It has been rescheduled for consideration, but not until next March. By that time, one imagines that the worst of the inclement weather will be behind us, and the bill is so far down the running order that it is highly unlikely to be reached.
There are 488,000 users of off-grid gas in Scotland, and it is estimated that 197,000 of those are rural households. In the Angus local authority area alone, there are more than 20,000 recipients of the winter fuel allowance. Arithmetic was never my strongest suit, but from those stats I think that it is fair to suggest that there are considerable numbers of my constituents for whom Mike Weir’s bill would have provided a degree of relief. Indeed, I do not doubt that members who represent rural constituencies—indeed, those who represent most regions—have constituents who have lost out.
We are not talking only about older constituents who are deemed to live in fuel poverty, although clearly they have been the biggest losers. Being able to fill the heating tank before prices climb would help out thousands of off-grid pensioners, in some cases significantly and in others by a little bit. Many who are faced with filling up their tanks at the beginning of winter—before they receive the winter fuel allowance—cannot do so. They may well choose to go for half a tank if that option is available to them. By the time the allowance comes through they will be in the depths of winter, by which point the price will have escalated.
An Office of Fair Trading review of the market found that there were many competing suppliers, but by definition many of those are small. Although some of the larger players offer greater payment flexibility, many smaller ones do not. Indeed, a citizen’s advice bureau has reported a case in the north of Scotland where a client’s heating oil supplier refuses to supply anything less than £300-worth at a time.
In general terms, as Dick Lyle noted, fuel costs have risen six times faster than household incomes over the past eight years. In so doing, they have undermined the Government’s efforts to tackle fuel poverty through energy efficiency measures. If we break that statistic down it becomes evident that there is considerable disparity between on-grid and off-grid supply costs. The average cost of heating and providing hot water for a typical three-bedroom house using liquefied petroleum gas—LPG—is reckoned to be £2,300. The cost for heating oil is £1,700. That compares with a figure of £1,200 for gas.
Over the past four years, the cost of heating an average home with propane is estimated to have risen by £850 and with home fuel oil by £750, whereas the comparable rise in the figure for gas is estimated to be £400. Given the present economic situation, with pressures on fixed low-income households, whether they are in fuel poverty or not, any measure that alleviates the financial pressure on that vulnerable group would be welcomed.
I highlight the matter principally because it is relevant to the debate. The motion refers to the taking of “simple steps” to contribute to Scotland’s being more resilient to the ravages of winter, and earlier access to the winter fuel allowance for off-grid customers surely falls under that heading. It is also worth pondering how this place might have reacted to such a commonsense proposal in whatever form and from whichever source it had come. I believe that it would have garnered widespread support and would have been implemented. Roll on the day when the Scottish Parliament has control over such matters.
However, we are where we are, so I will focus my closing remarks on welcoming the various discussions that have taken place between Calor Gas, local authorities, NFU Scotland, Transport Scotland and the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation to ensure that hard-to-reach routes remain open and that off-grid customers can at least be got to during severe weather. Such households are often situated in remote locations along or off roads that are not necessarily priorities for gritting and snow clearance work. During the savage winter of 2010-11, when some rural households were running low on LPG, the problem was not a shortfall in supply but the difficulty in gaining access to that supply because of road conditions. I very much welcome the fact that attention is being paid to that issue, and I join others in acknowledging the formal and informal role that is played by Scotland’s farmers in ensuring that less accessible routes are made passable, which will protect access to sources of heating for off-grid households.
16:11
The debate is a useful reminder of the measures that all citizens need to take in the run-up to winter—measures that we need to take as householders, as office tenants and as neighbours. It is to the Government’s credit that winter resilience has risen up the agenda, and it is creditable that so many agencies are taking winter resilience seriously, as witnessed by the number of briefings that we have received from many of them in anticipation of the debate.
We all hope that our preparations will not be needed—especially this year, as we have had such a rotten summer with prolonged periods of rain, which have had a detrimental effect on our farmers among others. I contacted Alex Hill of the Met Office yesterday to see whether the long-range weather forecast would give us some cheer. In summary, he said that for October, November and December a whole range of forecasts favour lower than average rainfall for the period but slightly colder temperatures. There is no real cheer there and we must be prepared, although weather forecasters have become a lot more canny in recent years about what they say.
As someone who lives in a rural area where the roads are not maintained by the council, I know the importance of having shovels and salt-and-sand mix ready at the door and in the car. I am also aware that rural roads are not a priority if they are not bus routes. I understand that, as it is important that our councils make the best use of their equipment on arterial routes. Therefore, I welcome the fact that farmers are being involved in clearing rural roads. I am not sure that Jim Hume can claim the credit for that, as—I am sure that Alex Johnstone will back me up on this—Aberdeenshire Council has been involving farmers in clearing the roads for a number of winters.
It is vital that we keep our roads not only clear of snow, but gritted. As Graeme Dey said, companies such as LPG providers and heating oil suppliers must be able to access their customers in remote and rural locations. I therefore welcome the information that we have received from Calor Gas that it is working with local authorities and Transport Scotland to ensure that off-grid consumers can be accessed during severe weather.
Mention has been made of the railways, and I welcome the £2.2 million that ScotRail invested last year to ensure that it is better prepared for severe weather. Those preparations include providing pioneering de-icing equipment for our trains and real-time travel updates for customers. Updates are important because, for travellers, there is nothing worse than getting absolutely no information at all—people can take the bad information, but waiting around without any information is most distressing to customers.
During the debate, we have tended to focus on the preparedness for snow but, with climate change, we are as likely to experience high winds and extremely heavy rainfall. That is why it is vital that landowners clear—and keep clear—water courses and that councils keep drains clear. I am not sure that all councils have the best strategies and plans for clearing drains and water courses, especially in areas that are prone to flooding.
People who dump garden rubbish in burns and streams are totally irresponsible. I think that Keep Scotland Beautiful may be doing work in that area, but perhaps the minister will confirm that.
Similarly, preventative action may be useful, with landowners, councils and ScotRail removing weakened trees before they fall and cause disruption.
I put on record my thanks to all those public sector workers, including snow clearers, police, fire and ambulance personnel, social and care workers, and health and school staff, who go that extra mile to help our most vulnerable. I also want to thank the many volunteers who step up to the plate to help in adverse times—that even includes four-by-four drivers. I support the motion.
16:16
I welcome the Scottish Government’s launch of its ready for winter campaign, which I am sure everyone in the chamber supports. I congratulate the Red Cross on its involvement in getting the message out.
Winter weather conditions do not affect only our transport services. They can close schools, affect emergency response services, cut off power supplies, affect the economy when people cannot get to work and lead to a loss of income for employees. They can also have a detrimental effect on people’s heath.
Severe weather means that those who routinely struggle will suffer disproportionately, because they must not only choose between eating and heating, but take into account keeping the house warm to avoid pipes freezing, and all the misery that burst pipes can bring.
For some children school closures can mean time for fun in the snow, but for children in deprived areas who rely on free school meals, it means that they will not get a proper meal until the school reopens.
Off-grid issues have been mentioned. What discussions has the Scottish Government had with the Westminster Government and other stakeholders about the 200,000-plus householders who are off-grid in rural locations and who depend on fuel supplies to keep the power running? Is there a co-ordinated effort to ensure that off-grid consumers have access to those vital supplies? What advice is being offered to them? The ready Scotland website seems sparse in its guidance on that. Those consumers consistently suffer problems in the cold months, so what is being done differently this year to alleviate that? All members recently received a briefing from Calor Gas, which explains that last year it had to prioritise the elderly and the vulnerable whose supplies were running dangerously low—not because Calor was running out of supplies, but because country road conditions were too dangerous to drive on as they were not priority roads for gritting.
Like others, I welcome the fact that the farmers will help more this year, but I stress that that must be well co-ordinated to ensure the best use of volunteers.
Although I am sure that all of us in the chamber understand that there needs to be a priority system for road gritting, we must remember that some rural roads are just as vital to communities as major road links are, and we cannot allow them to be forgotten. Of course that is not only a rural issue: because of budget cuts, councils in urban areas are being more selective about which roads and footpaths in our towns and cities are gritted.
Some councils have reduced their stockpiles of salt, while others, because of the cuts in funding that the Government has imposed, are looking at reducing the number of salt bins and considering gritting high-priority roads later in the day. Having to make such cuts can put people’s lives at risk, so we must do all that we can to ensure that local authorities are fully resourced and fully prepared for whatever weather befalls us this winter. We cannot afford to be taken by surprise and see our communities suffer because underfunding means that there is a lack of salt.
We tend to think of winter weather as being snow and ice, but what is the Government doing to ensure that local authorities are prepared to deal with the increasing number of floods, which Maureen Watt touched on? I appreciate that it is not easy to predict when and where floods might happen but, with climate change, I think that we can anticipate an increase in the incidence of flooding. If some councils are already stretched to their limits, winter flooding could further exacerbate the strain on resources. We have already had severe flooding in Fife and other areas this year. What support is being offered to tackle the issue?
We need to ensure that individuals and communities are prepared for whatever the weather brings this winter. I cannot stress enough the importance of promoting the need for people to check on their vulnerable or elderly neighbours this winter. Ensuring that they have power, heat and food supplies could save lives. People who are willing to help their neighbours to clear footpaths need to know that they can get salt or grit from their council, but that they will have to collect it from the depot, as is the case in North Ayrshire.
Scotland cannot afford to be taken by surprise, as it was in 2010. We need to ensure that councils are prepared and properly resourced to keep essential services to the elderly and the vulnerable operating, and to keep our communities safe. We also need to offer support to those consumers who live off the grid and who depend on fuel deliveries to keep the power running.
16:22
I say at the outset that I would like to be able to spend more money on everything, but the simple fact is that we operate within a fixed budget. Even if we were to decide to allocate more money from the Scottish Government budget to local authorities—which seems to be what the Labour Party would like us to do; it will be interesting to hear what its members say in the budget debate on that—there is no guarantee that those local authorities would choose to prioritise winter maintenance funding. The whole concept of local decision making is that it is for local authorities to decide their priorities. I have not heard any councillor from any party call seriously for us to go back to ring fencing specific local authority budgets. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has not called for that; indeed, COSLA welcomes the fact that councils can now take decisions on local priorities, rather than being told how the money that they are allocated by central Government is to be spent.
If Mark McDonald believes that it is appropriate for councils to take decisions themselves, does he not think that, in future, it would be appropriate for councils to decide whether to freeze the council tax, rather than have that imposed on them by the Scottish Government?
Indeed—like Stirling Labour, which cut the council tax. I think that most people would accept that that was a rather irresponsible thing to do while complaining that councils are not funded properly. If councils are not being funded properly, why was Stirling Council able to cut the council tax?
It is clear from his speech that my colleague Richard Lyle is gunning for the Mercedes/BMW driver vote. I say to him that, although Mercedes and BMW are German, so, too, is schadenfreude. Perhaps we should encourage drivers of such vehicles to consider measures such as winter tyres, as well as pointing to the difficulties that they can experience in icy conditions.
The maintenance of our road and footpath networks is an important issue. Aberdeen City Council, as a member of which I served until May of this year, currently has 16,726 tonnes of salt in stock. That compares with a stock of 15,986 tonnes in the previous year. Interestingly, the salt usage in that year was only 8,088 tonnes. That is a significant fall compared to the usage the year before that, perhaps reflecting the milder winter that we had. Nonetheless, that also demonstrates a much better strategy for salt usage by the council than perhaps had been the case in previous years.
Another issue is whether there are other means by which roads and footpaths can be treated, rather than simply using salt. The council has purchased 24,000 litres of a substance called Eco-Thaw, which it intended to trial in 2011-12. The conditions under which Eco-Thaw is most effective in comparison with salt—hard-packed snow and ice—were not prevalent in 2011-12, but Eco-Thaw remains at the council’s disposal.
Potholes are an important issue, on main routes and on side roads. I am glad that Alex Johnstone agreed with my earlier comment that it is not always the case that potholes are due to poorly maintained roads. Often utility companies or others dig up roads and do not repair them properly, which leads to gaps in the surface through which water ingress occurs. Ice then forms and we get potholes. We need to look at whether utility companies perhaps bear some of the responsibility on some occasions and whether there should be some discussion around the possibility of their perhaps putting forward some funding towards repair, rather than it simply being the responsibility of local or central Government.
The other issue that we have to consider is how best to develop community resilience. I speak to a number of elderly residents in the north-east of Scotland and many of them go back to the days when neighbours looked out for one another and when people gritted their own paths and the areas outside their homes. We have gone back from that in a way. I live in a street that will frankly never be top of the priority list for the council, not just because I live on it, but because it is not an access route to anywhere. It is essentially a road where you come in at one end and leave at the other and it does not connect to anything. Therefore, in the past I have gone out and gritted areas on my street when necessary, particularly where there are elderly residents. We should look at encouraging the development of that kind of community resilience and that kind of neighbourly spirit.
My colleague Graeme Dey mentioned Mike Weir’s bill. Compared with the frankly archaic, nonsensical system of members’ bills in Westminster, where members have to go through a bizarre, byzantine lottery, our process in the Scottish Parliament much better enables back-bench members to involve themselves.
I mentioned driver behaviour and the use of winter tyres, but many of us will have noted, particularly as the mornings get darker, that there are many drivers who do not use their headlights when they should. When we get into more severe winter weather, that becomes a significant safety concern. I know that in Scandinavia, for example, there are rules and regulations on the use of headlights. Perhaps we need to reflect on that point, given the weather conditions that we often face in Scotland.
We now move to the closing speeches. Before we do, however, as there are several members who are absent I remind members that they should be in the debating chamber for the start of the closing speeches. Perhaps the whips would like to address that point. Jim Hume, six minutes, please.
16:28
We can all agree that we have ploughed through a gritty debate. In last year’s debate, I completed my speech by expressing my hope that those in the public, private and voluntary sectors who had worked so hard the previous winter would have an easier time of it. Thankfully, that turned out to be the case, as we experienced a far milder winter.
That does not mean that the Scottish Government’s preparations were a wasted exercise. Nor does it mean that the Government has a licence to be complacent this year. We are an island nation and therefore the weather is difficult to forecast. That was mentioned by Elaine Murray, Gil Paterson and James Dornan—who is unfortunately not here. Also, I was glad that Margaret McCulloch acknowledged the extra funds that the UK Government has put in for the essential Met Office forecasting.
I am encouraged by some of the Government’s measures for this winter, which suggest that it has learned some harsh lessons from the 2010-11 winter. The acquisition of icebreakers in Transport Scotland’s fleet is welcome, although perhaps that was not timely for one of the minister’s predecessors. It is clear that the review that provided a considered comparison of winter resilience strategies in other countries was a worthwhile exercise that probably should have been done some time ago. The news of a strengthening of the network of weather stations, which has been mentioned, the publication of daily gritting plans, and the commitment to stock more salt than ever before—or Eco-Thaw, which Mark McDonald mentioned—are similarly encouraging. Our hauliers and couriers were among those who were badly affected two years ago, so the proposals relating to heavy goods vehicles, which are often vulnerable in extreme weather and cause disruptions, are to be welcomed. After all, it is our HGVs and others that keep supplies going all year round and provide food and fuel to the vulnerable people whom Graeme Dey and Hanzala Malik mentioned.
Last summer, the Government, in conjunction with the Red Cross, published the emergency preparedness report, which revealed that 40 per cent of Scots felt prepared to deal with emergencies arising out of severe weather. I am pleased that the Government has again teamed up with the Red Cross this winter. Dick Lyle and Margaret McDougall acknowledged the Red Cross’s valuable work. The Government can do only so much and the public need to take some responsibility for being prepared, but I imagine that it must be a source of disappointment for the minister that, as he mentioned, after last year’s campaign the level of preparedness among Scots remains at just 40 per cent. Sixty per cent therefore feel unprepared. In his summing up, I would like the minister to tell us how he will seek to improve that preparedness with further measures.
Preparedness comes at a cost, of course—I think that Margo MacDonald and Brian Adam mentioned the budgets—as does, crucially, the aftermath of a severe winter. Members who have analysed the Government’s spending plans for the 2013-14 financial year may have noted the marginal but welcome real-terms increase in the routine and winter maintenance budget, which could be well utilised should the worst be thrown at us again. The minister may point to the significant increase in the motorways and trunk roads budget as a whole, but that would represent an unclear picture, as most of that money is, in fact, intended for specific road projects. Many of those projects have been promised for years, but there has been some slow progress—I refer to the Dunragit bypass in the south-west, for example. However, we are getting there now.
Closer scrutiny of the spending plans reveals that the road improvements budget will be subject to a 27.8 per cent real-terms cut. When spring arrives, especially if it is on the back of a tough winter, there may be cause to undertake necessary remedial work on roads across the country. That will be made more difficult with such a drastic reduction in funds. I hope that the minister agrees that we cannot expect local authorities’ transport budgets to foot the bill following a harsh winter such as we have had before, when they are continuing to feel the squeeze. We must avoid the spectre of two years ago, when local authorities were forced to raid their limited reserves. I look forward to the minister addressing that particular point in summing up.
It is true that even the best-laid plans can prove to be insufficient against the full force of extreme weather, but it is the job of Government to ensure that those plans are as robust as possible, and our job as parliamentarians is to ensure that the Government is doing everything in its power.
I wish the minister well for the forthcoming winter and look forward to monitoring his and Transport Scotland’s progress.
I agree with Margaret McCulloch’s acknowledgement of the council workers, emergency services and deliverers of supplies who deliver our resilience plans. I praise them all for doing so.
16:34
The debate has been largely good natured, which is appropriate, given the range of essential issues that have been raised in it. I will go through one or two of them, but at the outset I congratulate Jim Hume on getting in the line:
“we have ploughed through a gritty debate.”
There is always something to be said for entertainment.
I also welcome his remark about this being an island nation—long may it stay that way. One or two members decided to be a little bit politically motivated during the debate. Although I agree with much of what Graeme Dey said about the difficulties of those who live off-grid, his vociferous criticism of the mother of Parliaments to make his point was wholly unjustified.
I will go on to some of the issues that were discussed during the debate. Jim Hume and Maureen Watt are correct when they talk about how important it is to find new and more imaginative ways of clearing roads, particularly in rural areas. We should be doing all that we can with the use of farm machinery. It is ironic that some of the roads that get the deepest snow and suffer most from winter conditions are in areas in which heavy plant might be sitting around in sheds doing nothing because of the snow. They might as well be out there clearing the roads, and we should continue to pursue that idea wherever we can.
I liked Brian Adam’s comparison with Italy, where scientists who were supposed to predict earthquakes recently received prison sentences for failing to do so. Not everyone would welcome the comparison with the failures of our weather forecasters or the potential threat of imprisonment, although I am sure that some might.
One of the key elements that has raised its head and been mentioned by a number of speakers during the debate is the cost of energy. Fuel poverty is a growing problem in Scotland, and we will discuss the reasons for that on other days. Today we have discussed the disastrous coincidence of increased fuel prices when we are going into what might well be another cold winter. James Dornan talked about the fact that several electricity companies in Scotland have given a commitment that there will be no winter disconnections, but my concern is about the potential for self-disconnection or denial by those who cannot afford to pay the bills and simply choose not to use the energy. It is essential that we all look at ways of cutting energy costs.
When energy costs are intrinsically high, and that is likely to continue, it is important for us to squeeze unnecessary costs out of the energy system. I therefore welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement in Westminster, however controversial the circumstances were, that demonstrated the Government’s intent that action will be taken to limit the increase in energy costs in future. I look forward to seeing how that will develop.
Although I acknowledge the issues around the electricity companies, does the member agree that if the welfare reform process that is going through the Westminster Parliament recognised the benefits that people need, we would not have to deal with people who have to face making a choice between fuel and food?
I understand why the member made that remark, but regardless of the situation in isolation, it is a good thing to keep energy costs as low as possible, and we have a duty to pursue that.
The final issue that I will talk about is something that I could have mentioned earlier, but did not have the opportunity to do so. It is an issue that raised its head when we had bad weather conditions at the end of 2010. At that time, supermarkets in some areas came close to being in danger of running out of food. During his time in office, has the minister had any opportunity to look at the difficulties that were experienced at that time? Admittedly, there was some panic buying, which cleared supermarket shelves, but the problem was that most of the supplies were either stuck out there on the roads, or simply could not make it on to the roads because of the bad weather. In recent years, we have become very dependent on the supermarket supply chain to ensure that our people are well fed and that food is available, but for the first time in a generation, we came very close to seeing empty supermarket shelves and supplies of essential raw materials drying up. I would like some reassurance that at least someone in Transport Scotland has that on their agenda so that we might avoid it in the future.
I thank in advance the people who will, in the course of bad weather during this winter, endure difficult conditions and hardship by going out and doing what is necessary to ensure that the country does not come to a standstill if it snows; and, given the record of his predecessor, I wish the minister good luck.
16:40
It has been a good debate on an important issue. No doubt in his summing up the minister will say that if Scotland separates from the rest of the UK our climate will suddenly be more temperate and our winters less severe. However, in the meantime, we will have to deal with winter under the current constitutional arrangements, and there is every chance of cold and snowy conditions, which will present many challenges; indeed, the current forecasts suggest a colder than average winter ahead.
We have had contributions from across the chamber on a wide range of issues, reflecting the fact that we all know all too well the difficulties that a severe winter can cause for the transport network, which a number of members have reflected on, and the delivery of lifeline services in our communities, and the impact that it can have on the most vulnerable households—too often, older people are still living in poorly heated homes. A number of members have spoken about fuel poverty, which is very pertinent to this debate.
That is why it is vital that ministers, the Scottish Government and public sector agencies are properly prepared for severe weather if it occurs. Some eventualities are difficult to prepare for and we can rightly blame the weather for many things, but the minister who yesterday blamed poor weather for missing climate change targets perhaps took that a bit far. However, there is no excuse for failing to put in place the contingencies that we need for the problems that we know will occur if we have a period of severe weather this winter.
Does the member accept that it is inevitable that, should we have a mild winter, it will be entirely the responsibility of Alex Salmond and our Scottish Government and that should the winter be severe, it will be entirely laid at the door of the evil Conservatives in London?
I fear that that is unlikely, but let us see what advice Mr Salmond has received on the issue first, before we make any judgments on that.
Looking at where the Scottish Government is clearly responsible, I note that it was in the context of its failure to deal properly with the impact of the severe winter weather of 2010 that the minister came into office, following the resignation of his predecessor. There has been talk about people being jailed for mistakes at these times, but I think that the resignation of Stewart Stevenson was quite enough penitence on his part. I do not want to get into a situation in which forecasters are imprisoned for their mistakes. We should remember that, at the time, our forecasters got it right but, unfortunately, Government mistakes ensured that we did not have the response that was required. However, it is right that we look for a range of agencies—not just the Government but transport operators and others—to learn lessons from 2010 to ensure that we are better prepared this time.
If today’s debate is an indication that ministers are being diligent in learning the lessons and making contingency plans for the future, we should welcome that. I am sure that that is the message that ministers want to promote through the debate. However, we must have not only the perception but the reality. Ministers must not only make plans but take the actions that are required.
That is why our amendment highlights our concerns about the impact of the budget settlement on local authorities’ preparedness for wintry conditions. Elaine Murray and others have referred to the reduction in such budgets in a number of local authority areas. The minister said that there is enough salt and grit available nationally. However, where there are any concerns about the provision of those resources and associated facilities because of budget pressures, I hope that he will work with local authorities to ensure that we have the national coverage that we need. I would like to hear more in his closing statement about the dialogue that he is having with local authorities on that important issue. We must ensure that appropriate preparations are made so that we do not have frozen, impassable roads. As others have said, we do not want to have frozen, impassable pavements either, particularly for the sake of our older people.
We cannot afford to take a silo approach to the issue, because it requires partnership. The motion rightly reflects the breadth of the collaboration that is required, which is what needs to happen. Joint working between the Scottish Government, councils and third sector organisations such as the Red Cross to that end is welcome and necessary. Further, as Hanzala Malik said, there must also be joint working with transport operators, road contractors and the various organisations that are involved in that.
Many members referred to the ScotRail briefing. It is encouraging to learn that ScotRail is investing and seeking to learn the lessons of previous winters as well. We can all agree that we cannot afford a repeat of the same level of disruption that we saw two years ago, with the rail network grinding to a halt and drivers stranded in their cars, as they were on the M8 that winter. We want an assurance from the minister and the Scottish Government that the preparations that are being made mean that we will be able to deal with those conditions better if they arise.
Clearly, the collective effort goes beyond the organisations that will be involved. As many members said, there is a role for all of us. We have to be good neighbours in the circumstances that we are talking about. We have to do what we can to make pavements passable and be aware of the needs of the vulnerable and the isolated. The Scottish Pensioners Forum estimated that, in the winter of 2010, 200,000 older people were trapped in their homes. Of course, such conditions make hugely challenging not only the work of emergency services but also the work of care services. At that time, we said that there should be a national hotline that people in that situation can call because, in a number of circumstances, local agencies were unable to deal effectively with the calls. I would like to know whether further consideration has been given to that proposal and, indeed, to the sort of buddy scheme that Chic Brodie proposed—it would be interesting to see how that would work.
A number of members mentioned flooding, which is one of the features of the aftermath of severe winter weather. We have already seen instances of flooding this year, and my region—North East Scotland—has suffered particularly badly, with flooding in Aberdeen over the summer and in towns such as Stonehaven and Huntly. I ask the minister what work he is doing with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and local authorities to ensure that we are as prepared as we can be to deal with flooding and that, crucially, we put in place early warning systems, which can be a crucial element of dealing with the challenges that flooding presents.
We have heard that severe weather presents many challenges, and we all have a role to play. We in the Labour Party hope that resilience week is a success and raises awareness of the measures that individuals and organisations can take. We welcome the debate today and are glad that it has been brought forward early. However, ministers will be judged on the effectiveness of the response if the extreme situations occur. We hope for a mild winter but we must be prepared for the worst of conditions. The minister’s intentions to deal with the potential problems of a severe winter are welcome, but they must be matched by the right actions to show that we are ready for any challenges.
The experience of 2010 shows the cost of getting the approach wrong. I hope that we can be confident that the Scottish Government will be better prepared in future and for the winter ahead.
16:48
Earlier, I outlined many of the steps that Scotland is taking to prepare for severe weather, not only in winter but all year round.
I will try to address the points that have been raised. I do not think that I will get round to dealing with all of them, but if anyone wants to follow up any that I do not get to, I invite them to let me know and I will try to get back to them.
It has been a good debate. I was struck by the preponderance of councillors and ex-councillors who were speaking in the debate. I think that, at one point, everyone on the SNP benches either was a councillor or had been a councillor. That has contributed greatly to the quality of the debate. Unlike some people, I think that people’s experience of local government stands them in good stead when they come to this chamber, and I welcome the contribution that those people made to the debate.
I should say that there were one or two good speeches by people who have not been councillors—that is also possible.
Exercise Arctic blast, which happens tomorrow, is a severe weather event training exercise that is an important part of our preparations. Responder organisations from across the Highlands and Islands will take part in the exercise, which will examine the detailed consequence management of a combination of emergencies, including prolonged loss of electricity and a shortage of basic supplies such as food as a result of severe snow and high winds.
In my experience, it is a feature of proper contingency and resilience planning that we consider not just the last thing that happened and how we might deal with it again but new events and the fact that some events are compounded by further complications as they proceed. The Highlands and Islands strategic co-ordinating group has identified the loss of the lifeline A9 as a high risk to the region and the fact that, to return to the point that Alex Johnstone made, severe weather elsewhere, such as in the north of England, could seriously impact on the provision of food and other consumables to the area.
I mentioned the resilient telecommunications network that we have installed. For the particularly challenging areas of Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and Argyll and Bute, we have added a new satellite communications service, which will have a degree of user testing during exercise Arctic blast.
On the point that Alex Johnstone raised, as much as two years ago, when I first had this job, there were substantial discussions with the supermarkets directly and with Scotland Food & Drink. Those discussions have continued through me and with the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment.
Much mention has rightly been made of the need for partnership working. The ready for winter campaign is an overwhelming success for partnership working and exemplifies our approach. In addition to the highly productive partnership that we have forged with the British Red Cross, we are working with COSLA and a multitude of other partners from the public, voluntary and private sectors. For example, the support of the major supermarket chains is enabling us to take our road shows into high-footfall areas across the country; 545 libraries will display information; and, with the help of groups such as the Salvation Army and Citizens Advice Scotland, we hope to reach more vulnerable groups.
Specific mention has been made of councils and the Scottish Government working in partnership. That was a prominent feature of the national roads maintenance review, which concluded in July this year and which set out a framework for initiatives to maintain Scotland’s roads more efficiently. By encouraging shared services, collaborative working and innovation, the review’s outcomes will make road maintenance more efficient and improve the condition of our roads.
In many instances in the south-west and north-east, council gritters grit trunk roads and trunk road gritters grit council roads. There already is a degree of collaborative working, but I agree that we should have more of that. We are trying to achieve that through the roads maintenance review and other measures. Mutual aid is a prominent aspect of the operating companies. For example, if a council is short of vehicles, vehicles can be made available from the trunk road stocks, as we offered to do many times last year. Partnership working is very much a feature of what we are doing. That underlines Anne McTaggart’s point that we can achieve more by our common endeavours than we can alone. I certainly agree with that.
Mention was made of the fact that some people might not have access to advice on the internet. That is a fair point. We produce much of the advice in written form. One of the best pieces that I have seen is the advice on driving in bad weather, which seems common sense, but it is an excellent document that is produced by the police, the trunk road operating companies and Transport Scotland. It covers not only driving in ice and snow but driving in conditions such as very low sun, which can cause problems. I commend that document to everybody.
Community resilience has been mentioned. As we have all seen and as members have mentioned, one wonderful thing that happens when emergencies occur is that people and communities pull together to get one another through the experience. Resilient communities start first and foremost with resilient individuals, and many communities in Scotland are organising their own efforts through local community emergency plans.
To give just one example, this week, Howwood community council in Renfrewshire took its first steps towards that. Dozens of other communities around Scotland, in places such as Argyll and Bute, Stirling and the Borders, are further down that road. This is not about doing the work of the emergency services; it is about communities making sensible preparations that will enable them to work in support of the emergency services. For example, one rural community cleared snow from an access road to enable a fire engine to attend a house fire. The people knew not to tackle the fire, but their actions made it easier for the fire service to do so quickly.
Much has been said on flooding, not least by Richard Baker. No one in the Parliament can argue that it is a bad thing for communities to prepare for emergencies, and flooding is one consequence of severe weather for which individuals can often prepare. Just last week, my colleague the Minister for Environment and Climate Change signed up for SEPA’s floodline service when he visited its flood forecasting centre in Perth.
I am well aware of the serious effects that flooding can have on homes, businesses and health. SEPA’s national flood risk assessment has identified 125,000 properties that are at risk of flooding. Never mind what the winter will bring—we have just had one of the wettest summers on record, and the people of Scotland share a responsibility to protect themselves from flooding. One thing that they can do to start to put protection in place is to sign up for floodline.
A number of other points were raised. Jim Hume said that 40 per cent or thereabouts of people feel that they are sufficiently prepared, which represents an 8 per cent increase on last year’s figure. In my opening speech, I made the point that we must build up the position over a number of years and raise awareness, and we will continue to do that. Far fewer people—16 per cent fewer than last year—are very or quite concerned about the consequences of severe weather, so we are taking action.
Hanzala Malik mentioned white lines on the M8. A bigger proportion of the budget has been allocated to white lining, which is being prioritised where the need is greatest. Additional white line refresh has been programmed on sections of the M8 in this financial year, which I hope will address some of the member’s concerns.
Two members mentioned the idea of a hotline for vulnerable people, which is being considered seriously. As many people know, services check on vulnerable people. Various agencies have lists of vulnerable people and are good at checking on them. The most sensible approach is to draw that activity together so that it is co-ordinated.
Many people are familiar with the existing hotlines, so it is important that they continue to be available. We will continue to look at that. In a crisis, people react by using something that is familiar, whether that is NHS 24, the traffic Scotland service or local social work services. It is important that familiar services are available. We have also developed vulnerable people protocols, to ensure that they are taken care of.
That also applies to people who depend on heating fuels—on off-grid energy supplies—which a number of members mentioned. A great deal of work was done 18 months ago to deal with the issue of the last mile in delivering heating fuels, which a number of members talked about. The companies that are concerned have invested a great deal in four-wheel-drive vehicles and many other measures.
Will the Scottish Government look at crisis loans for high energy costs, as suggested by Citizens Advice Scotland?
I will come on to high energy costs. Of course, the Deputy First Minister recently made a statement that might interest Claudia Beamish in relation to the issue.
As I said, I am happy to accept the Lib Dem amendment, in Jim Hume’s name. Of course, what it refers to was not his idea—as Maureen Watt said, such an initiative was developed in Aberdeenshire some years ago. I took up the issue when I came into my job two years ago, but the amendment is good and we are happy to accept it.
I cannot accept Alex Johnstone’s amendment. I am sorry about that, because I see that he is often the only Tory on the Tory benches. I feel sorry for him and I would like to accept his amendment but, unfortunately, a number of the points in it are not exactly accurate. The reviews that he talked about are much more about general road maintenance. However, I give him the assurance that he seeks about the preparedness of the trunk road companies—we have ensured that they are prepared.
I cannot accept the Labour amendment, which brings me to perhaps the key point of the debate. The debate was good but, unfortunately, Labour members once again made a list of demands for more spending. They wanted more money for local government, even though we could not guarantee that it would be spent in the required areas, as one member pointed out. They asked for more money for local and trunk roads, more money for central heating, more money for trains and more money to deal with fuel poverty—I am genuinely unaware of whether the winter fuel allowance counts as “something for nothing” in that context. They also asked for more money for flood prevention.
As Mark McDonald said and as most people with a local authority background know, if more money is to be spent on something, it must be taken from something else. The position is not as it was in the days of Andy Kerr, when £700 million was left lying in the budget. We spend the money that we have, for good purposes.
I say to Labour Party members and others who genuinely suggested ideas that I have tried to address them. If someone has a genuine suggestion of a good idea for improving the situation and if a cost is attached to it—I am not saying that the cost must be definitive; we can help with that—I am more than willing to listen to it. However, members cannot continually ask for more spending without identifying where the money would come from.
I repeat that, this winter, Scotland is better prepared than ever to deal with the effects of severe weather. We understand that we can always do more, because the weather will always carry a risk of disruption. This year, we ask the people of Scotland not to let the nasty weather that might happen turn into a nasty situation. I commend the motion in my name.
That was perfect timing, minister. That concludes the debate on winter resilience.