Chamber and committees

I am grateful for the opportunity to update the Parliament on the response to and continued recovery from the major impacts of storm Arwen.

On Friday the Met Office took the serious step of issuing a red weather warning of danger to life. Classification of a weather incident at that level happens rarely and is an indication of the magnitude of the challenge that has been faced. Storm Arwen has caused widespread and extensive damage, with impacts that have been greater than those initially anticipated. That has created significant challenges and hardship for communities and households across Scotland. I extend my sympathy to everyone who has been and continues to be affected, and I assure everyone involved that every effort is being made, with our partners, to address the impacts as swiftly as possible.

Although Scotland regularly experiences severe winter storms, the high winds that are generally associated with them are from a southerly to north-westerly direction. However, on this occasion, the storm tracked down the North Sea, bringing very strong north to north-easterly winds across eastern coastal areas. Naturally, our infrastructure is designed to handle incidents from the prevailing wind direction.

The fact that storm Arwen gave rise to very strong winds from an unusual direction exacerbated the severity of the incident.?Met Office records identify a few occasions in the 1970s and 1980s when widespread strong north to north-easterly winds were recorded across eastern Scotland, but those gave gusts of only around 60 to 70mph, in comparison with the damaging gusts of around 80 to 90mph that were experienced during storm Arwen.

To give a sense of the scale, I note that storm Arwen has been a more significant event than the beast from the east in 2018, requiring a complexity of response that we have not seen for a number of years. It has affected almost all of Scotland, with the most widespread impacts being felt in the north-east, Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders. In the north-east, the impact has been compounded by heavy snow and a sharp drop in temperatures.

Amber warnings were issued in the days leading up to Friday’s storm, but the Met Office escalated that to a red warning on Friday at 10.30 am. The Scottish Government resilience committee met on Friday to be assured of preparations, with information from local resilience partnerships and power and utility companies.

Throughout the duration of the storm and its aftermath, the Scottish Government has been working closely with resilience partners and responders on the ground, and with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and Scottish Power, to ensure that all is being done to respond to the impacts of the storm. Throughout the period, the safety and welfare of the people affected has been, and remains, at the forefront of the discussions. I am very much aware that the impacts of the storm are still being felt across areas of Scotland and that the recovery will take time.

Our priority right now is to get power restored to homes and provide support to those who are affected. At the peak of the disruption, 79,500 Scottish Power customers and 126,000 SSEN customers were affected. Both Scottish Power and SSEN have worked tirelessly on network repairs and have restored supplies to 184,500 customers as of 8.00 pm yesterday. However, I am acutely aware that that will be of little comfort to the customers who continue to be off supply.

As at 11.45 am, I am informed that 16,763 customers continue to be without power.? Those individuals are located in the Borders, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Fife, Aberdeenshire, Moray, Angus and Perthshire. I do not underestimate the impact that that is having on people and their wellbeing, or how serious the situation is. I encourage anyone who is still affected by the impacts of storm Arwen to get in touch with their local authority to get help, advice and welfare support if they have not already been able to access that.

SSEN has deployed more than 500 engineers and support staff to repair widespread and extensive damage to its network and to support customers. Scottish Power is similarly deploying significant resource, and both companies are drawing additional mutual aid and resources from across the United Kingdom. Given the severity of the storm across the UK, however, the additional resources and mutual aid on which the power companies would normally be able to call have been available later in the incident than would usually be the case.

In many areas, damage caused by fallen trees and other debris has been severe. That is hampering access, and specialist equipment has been required. In addition, the power companies are encountering much more significant damage to the network, which involves much more complex and resource-intensive solutions in order to reconnect supply to particular areas. I pay tribute to the staff from Scottish Power and SSEN, who have worked in very difficult and often precarious conditions to make as much progress as possible in restoring power supplies.

Three multi-agency resilience partnerships are co-ordinating the response activity in the north, east and west, working closely with the power companies. Support is being prioritised for care homes and the most vulnerable in the community, including those with medical needs, with a range of actions being taken in the most affected areas.

Scottish Borders Council opened drop-in centres in key locations to provide free meals and hot drinks to residents in surrounding areas who remain without power. In Forth Valley, a resilience partnership care for people group has been established specifically to deal with the communities and vulnerable persons in them.

Aberdeenshire Council confirmed that all 170 schools would be closed on Monday and today, and all schools are being checked for storm damage and access routes, and to confirm whether power, heating and water supplies are operational. The priority is to ensure that buildings are safe before pupils and staff are welcomed back.

The severe impacts in the area also meant that vaccination clinics in Aberdeenshire were cancelled on Monday, with planned reopening today. The council has also set up rest centres. In other areas, hotels, pubs and halls are being opened to provide food and warmth. Local partnerships and community groups have been going door to door and providing hot food and assistance packages. Although many people are making arrangements to stay with friends and families who have power, those without power are being offered accommodation in hotels.

The British Red Cross is utilising community volunteers across the north area to support energy and council partners, provide door-to-door welfare checks on vulnerable people and care homes, and distribute blankets, food and essential supplies and information to vulnerable and prioritised individuals.

In Dumfries and Galloway, the care-for-people arrangements through the council’s care-at-home teams, social work teams and its care call service have continued to make care visits throughout this period. That has helped to identify those who may be in need of additional support and will continue to be closely monitored. Yesterday, there were a small number of primary school closures in the area; however, all except one are expected to reopen today.

Our transport network was also seriously affected by the storm. On Friday, Police Scotland issued do not travel warnings and, by Saturday, many trunk roads and railway lines were closed. However, I am pleased to report that all trunks roads were cleared by Saturday evening and that there are no remaining storm-related rail issues.

There have been many wider impacts from the storm, with 10,000 properties having experienced water supply issues. Scottish Water is working at pace to restore water supplies and provide all those affected with alternative supplies of drinking water. Around 1,500 properties are still without a water supply, mainly across the Deeside area, with work being hampered by the loss of power and difficulty in accessing some sites due to on-going weather conditions or blocked access routes.

Telecoms providers have experienced significant infrastructure damage and my officials have met them through the national emergency alert for telecoms protocol to seek assurances on power resilience provisions that they have in place to restore mobile telecoms in affected areas. Actions being taken include mobile generation deployment to affected cell locations. Although the position is improving, we continue to focus on that as a key issue.

I assure the Parliament and members of the public that the focus of the Scottish Government, local resilience partnerships and the power and utility companies is on restoring services to those affected as quickly as possible and on taking practical steps to help anyone who has been adversely affected. My expectation is that most of the remaining customers who are off supply will have it restored today, but I regret that, for some of the more complex cases, supply is unlikely to be restored until later in the week.

In the aftermath of the incident, we will review the preparations for and response to storm Arwen to ensure that we take all the learning from this exceptional storm. We have strong and robust arrangements in place to manage and address weather-related resilience issues at national, regional and local levels, but I want to ensure that our arrangements continue to evolve and strengthen for the future.

I express my sincere thanks to all those who have been working in very difficult conditions for prolonged periods to restore utility supplies and support affected communities and households. That includes voluntary organisations, local businesses and community groups of volunteers, who are contributing significantly to neighbourhood wellbeing and resilience.

We have been closely monitoring progress to address storm Arwen’s impacts and engaging with a range of organisations to ensure that the public is regularly updated in what has been a rapidly changing situation. We will continue to do so, with our resilience partnerships remaining active to ensure that every possible resource is deployed and the worst effects of this significant storm are addressed.

At the resilience committee meeting on Friday, we heard directly from the three strategic regional resilience partnerships, all of which had been in dialogue with local resilience partnerships to ensure that the capacity was stood up to be available to assist individuals in the event of storm damage being apparent. Obviously, the red weather warning was a clear indication that that was going to be the case. All that information and assurance was sought on Friday, to ensure that all resilience partnerships were ready to provide that. If Claire Baker would like to supply me with the information on the experience of the members of the public who have contacted her, that would be helpful to us in seeking the assurance that individual resilience partnerships took appropriate measures to be ready for the challenges.

Fundamentally, the needs of individuals in those circumstances must be addressed by the dialogue that goes on at the local level with resilience partnerships, which must find the means of addressing the individual circumstances that people face. Karen Adam has put to me a legitimate set of scenarios, which are distinctive and different circumstances that have to be addressed. The most appropriate mechanism for that is for dialogue to take place between individuals and local resilience partnerships. Those partnerships should be active at the local level, making sure that individuals who are facing difficulties are able to receive the support that they require.

In our reflections on this incident, we will work to identify how individuals can be most effectively supported should we again have to face interruptions of supply of the length that we are having to face in these highly unusual circumstances.

I have put on the record the fact that we have opened the Bellwin scheme. The Government remains open to considering any other issues that are relevant, and, if Mr Hoy has any particular issues to raise with the Government in that respect, they can be looked at by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy.

I come back to my response to Liam Kerr, which is that the responsibility for the operation of power companies lies with the companies themselves. It would be folly for me to interfere in the sophisticated technological work of power companies in restoring supply. If Mr Lumsden wants to know whether I have had discussions with power companies, I can tell him that I have—on multiple occasions.

I do not think that Liam Kerr characterises the gravity of the situation in any way appropriately. The Scottish Government does not run power companies; I have no operational control over them. I think that the power companies have worked extraordinarily hard to reconnect the 184,500 people who have been disconnected by a storm of incredible ferocity.

Liam Kerr represents North East Scotland. I assume that he has looked around to see the scale of the damage that has been done to infrastructure. I have looked around my Perthshire constituency and seen with my own eyes the impact of the storm. Unfortunately, that will take time to clear up, and that is what the power companies are focused on doing. I have been discussing that with them at every stage since the storm emerged last Friday.

On the resources on the ground, we work closely with local resilience partnerships, which are led by local authorities—that is the fundamental principle of the resilience operation that is in place. Mr Kerr will be familiar with the work of Aberdeenshire Council, which is in operational leadership at the local level to progress the emergency response.

I am certainly profoundly grateful to the various voluntary organisations, pubs, hotels and cafes that have made themselves available to help people. I think that such community spirit, which has helped to assist members of the public facing jeopardy, is really welcome in our society. That assistance is in addition to the public servants who are going around, door to door, making sure that vulnerable people are supported

On the financial question, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth has activated the Bellwin scheme. The Scottish Government has immediately made it clear that the terms of the scheme are available to local authorities, should they be required.

I will look with care at what the United Kingdom Government is offering financially. Forgive my scepticism, Presiding Officer, but I will look in great detail at the terms of the press statement that Liam Kerr has cited. The United Kingdom Government is awfully good at words on those questions but not very good at following up with substance as a consequence.

I listened with care to Professor Petersen’s evidence, which I found very interesting. The evidence that we rely on is that the lateral flow test is more than 80 per cent effective at detecting any level of Covid-19 infection and likely to be more than 90 per cent effective at detecting the most infectious people at the point of testing. There is strong and high reliability in lateral flow testing, which is why we encourage people to use those tests regularly. That introduces an element of opportunity for individuals to assess, before they go into wider settings, whether they are potential carriers of the virus and are putting others in danger of contracting it. A strong evidence base supports the use of lateral flow devices. The primary purpose of the Covid vaccination certificate scheme has been to boost vaccine uptake. The use of lateral flow testing has a wider application, and it is one of the material issues that we are considering.

For vast numbers of the population, that would be, frankly, a waste of resources, because they have access to smartphone technology. A paper copy of a vaccination certificate is only a phone call away for individuals—literally a phone call away—and they will have it sent in the post. I am confident about the systems. We had a notional 14-day turnaround time for paper certificates, but they have generally been arriving in two to three days. The capacity is there to deliver certificates in paper form to those who require that.

I think that it is a serious issue and it relates directly to some of the difficult judgments that the Government has made in reconciling the challenges of dealing with Covid with the wider challenges that dealing with Covid presents to the rest of society.

The four harms framework was developed in summer 2020 and was an explicit recognition of the very legitimate issue that Mr Fraser raises. There is the direct health harm of Covid, which I acknowledge was the central focus of Government decision-making between February and March 2020 and the summer of 2020 when we adopted the four harms framework, and then there are the other three harms, which are non-Covid health harm, economic harm and social harm.

The framework was a recognition by the Government that we could not just deal with Covid alone. We had to make sure that other factors and conditions were being addressed. A whole programme of activity has been in place to ensure that there has been as little interruption as possible to the routine services that would perhaps identify some of the conditions to which Mr Fraser refers and to ensure the recovery of health services to enable those conditions to be addressed.

However, the points that Professor Donnelly raises merit further investigation and analysis, which the Government is doing and will continue to do, to ensure that we have the proper and correct balance between measures to tackle Covid and measures to tackle the wider health harms that members of the public will face.

That dilemma gets to the heart of the overall picture and influences some of the decisions that we make about of what do we, as a whole society, have to do to tackle the issues that are thrown up by Covid. It is a serious issue and the Government is looking at it with care.

No.