I, too, thank Willie Rennie for securing time for a debate on such an important topic.

For those flood-hit communities in my region that are struggling to get back on their feet, it feels as though the magnitude of what happened still has not hit Humza Yousaf’s Government. The Scottish Governments ministerial task force met one month after storm Babet wreaked havoc in the north-east. Communities were left in limbo for weeks, but the First Minister still managed to stage a photo op on River Street in Brechin within 48 hours of the storm.

Four months on, the people of Brechin and communities across the north-east are still hurting. The fallout from the flooding is still being felt; repairs are on-going; and homes continue to be uninhabitable. Businesses are trying to make up for lost time. Vital infrastructure has been badly affected, such as Marykirk Bridge in Aberdeenshire, where repairs are due to get under way next month. Following storm Babet, as many as 82 businesses contacted Angus Council looking for help, upwards of 300 properties in Brechin were affected by floodwater and 57 council-owned properties still require significant work before they can be reinstated.

We have recently learned that Angus Council’s interim claim under the Bellwin scheme is £6.9 million, but that is just for immediate emergency response, not the recovery phase. Meanwhile, for many, the grants that are available for residents and businesses have not touched the sides of what is required. Adverse weather events are costly, both financially and emotionally, and they are happening more and more, with a record number of flood alerts issued by SEPA since 1 September 2023.

Since storm Babet, some areas have been hit again by flooding, including cottages in Castleton, which flooded in October and again in December. For residents there and many others whose properties had already been compromised, the problem is not going to stop; it will keep happening again and again. That is why I have engaged proactively with communities throughout the north-east on building resilience since I was first elected in 2021.

Willie Rennie’s motion rightly focuses not just on what has happened but on how better to manage the risk of flooding in future. Information that I received from Angus Council via a freedom of information request has confirmed that no climate change adaptations have been made to Brechin’s flood defence scheme since 2018, when the updated climate projections for the United Kingdom were published. It is all very well having flood protection schemes in place, but maintaining the defences and ensuring that they take account of updated climate change projections is key to protecting our communities.

I will be very interested to see the final output for the Scottish Government’s national adaptation plan later this year, but it is vital that local and national partners work together now to ensure that Scotland is not on the back foot when it comes to flooding. When lives and livelihoods are at risk, good enough will not cut it; we need gold-standard protection to keep our communities safe.

Magdalene Robertson was Packer’s first known victim. She was raped as a teenager, yet she was ignored and misled by the criminal justice system. Then there are Packer’s dozens of other victims. None was believed and some are no longer alive to see that justice is done. Will the cabinet secretary give an undertaking that every victim’s voice will be heard?

I give way to Gillian Martin.

I agree with Gillian Martin on the importance of investment, and it is true that it is a declining basin. I worked in the energy sector for decades, and we both understand that. However, it needs to be a managed and programmed proper transition, not a rushed and forced transition, which is what the SNP Government wants us to have.

A rushed, premature transition serves no one, nor does it serve Scotland’s economy. Offshore Energies UK has warned that the region will be £6 billion a year poorer by 2030 as a result of such a transition. I think that that matters to Gillian Martin’s constituents as well.

Humza Yousaf, who announced last year that Scotland would stop being the oil and gas capital of Europe, has suddenly decided that he is the saviour of North Sea workers. There must be a general election on the horizon. What an insult to the intelligence of the thousands of people who rely on the North Sea for their livelihoods.

The SNP can pivot all that it wants, but the north-east has not forgotten the depth of the betrayal that was perpetrated by Nicola Sturgeon. I see Labour members laughing, but Daniel Johnson did not mention oil and gas even once in his speech—

I thought that I was in a different debate.

The Scottish Conservatives will stand up for our oil and gas industry. We support new oil and gas licences. We will not abandon the industry or the workers who rely on its continued survival, and we will not allow the industry to shut down.

There is no denying that the past decade has been exceptionally challenging for the energy sector because of the downturn in oil and gas, the Covid-19 pandemic, Putin’s war in Ukraine and the global energy crisis—not forgetting the massive supply chain disruption that was caused by the conflict. Many companies throughout the supply chain in Scotland have battled to stay afloat, and livelihoods have been lost.

Just as there was an upswing in the industry, more uncertainty struck. The North Sea became a bargaining chip in the disastrous Bute house agreement, with Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater castigating the industry and the thousands of people in my region who rely on it for work. Patrick Harvie ludicrously proclaimed that only those on the hard right support oil and gas extraction.

The SNP’s draft energy strategy includes a presumption against new exploration for oil and gas. It does not want Cambo, Jackdaw or, as we have seen and as is being reinforced today, Rosebank. It does not care about the UK’s energy security, workers in the north-east or the environmental impact of importing fossil fuels.

The Scottish Conservatives recognise the importance of a fair, careful and well-managed move to renewables. We know that we need an energy supply that is more secure and more sustainable. The north-east, with its unrivalled technical knowledge and know-how, is perfectly placed to become a world leader on net zero. However, propped up by the Scottish Greens, the SNP wants to turn off the taps and go for the fastest possible just transition. It is a cliff edge, plain and simple.

The moment that Nicola Sturgeon signed on the dotted line with the Scottish Greens, she betrayed the north-east, because the SNP-Green Government values virtue signalling over 90,000 highly skilled jobs.

Pot, kettle.

Members: Oh!

Will the Scottish Government ensure that all the records of all its meetings and engagements with Eljamel’s former patients, which go back a long time, will be made available to the public inquiry?

You had your chance, and you did not say anything during the committee process.

Members: Oh!

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I wish that there had been as much clarity and scrutiny at stage 1. It shows that my colleagues can scrutinise when they need to do so.

From the Royal College of Nursing to Unison, and many more besides, stakeholders are clear that developments last summer have breached their trust and muddied the waters even more. The National Care Service (Scotland) Bill has been touted by the First Minister as the most ambitious reform of public services since the creation of the NHS, but it has been a masterclass from SNP ministers in how not to legislate, and it is a dog’s dinner. The party of the defunct Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, the delayed deposit return scheme and the dormant Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 has struck again. This is not just about policy but about process, and that process is a sham.

Today, Gillian Mackay asked Emma Harper about self-directed support. That is just the kind of issue that needs to be ironed out in advance of the parliamentary passage of the bill. We are in the extraordinary position of being asked to agree to the general principles of a framework bill that has changed so significantly that we do not know what we are voting on. As Ivan McKee pointed out, it was yesterday—he did not say “only yesterday”, sadly—that a model was shared, which was a week after the committee finalised its report. If no one is alarmed, they should be. It is disrespectful to the parliamentary process.

I think that we all agree that the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s stage 1 report is well written. However, as Dr Sandesh Gulhane emphasised in his remarks, that SNP-Green majority committee has ultimately nodded the bill through with too many unanswered questions. I have outlined two examples. There may be caveats and conditions in the report that support that, but there are no consequences. That is not a threshold of scrutiny that the Scottish Conservatives can get behind.