Chamber and committees

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.

Those companies—[Interruption.] Mr Lumsden continues to shout at me, but as he might not know this, he might want to stay silent for a moment while I explain the position.

The power companies have access to mutual aid supplies across other power networks in the UK, but, as I said in my statement, other parts of the UK were under severe strain as well. Some of those resources are now becoming available, but that is happening only once power has been restored in the original network areas.

For example, let us consider SSE, which is a company that Mr Lumsden should be familiar with, if he is familiar with the north of Scotland. It has an operation in the south of England, which took a hammering as well. Once the damage was recovered in the south of England, SSE was able to relocate staff further north. That is the type of mutual aid arrangement that operates in the electricity market. It would be folly for me to intervene and interfere in what the power companies are doing to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. [Interruption.]

I have gone through the issue concerning the power companies, which have a mutual aid arrangement in relation to the network. We cannot send any old individual up an electricity pole to reconnect the supply—it defies belief that we are getting such suggestions.

When it comes to the financial issues, we have activated the Bellwin scheme. If local authorities are incurring expenditure that merits classification under that scheme, financial support is available to them. I assure Rachael Hamilton that the local resilience partnership in the Borders has been actively involved in discussions with the power networks and with the east of Scotland regional resilience partnership, to ensure that all the issues that need to be addressed have been addressed as quickly as possible.

I come back to my core point: there has been extensive damage, which is taking a prolonged period to resolve because of its intensity.

There is obviously a significant impact in the John Muir country park, to which Mr McLennan refers. Forestry and Land Scotland is looking at those issues actively and has provided guidance to individuals to avoid being in forest areas while the situation is being properly assessed. We must consider the impacts of the incident on our natural environment. A very careful exercise has to be undertaken to remedy those issues, particularly in the circumstance that Mr McLennan raises with me.

It is important that the quality of communication that is available to householders is at the highest possible level. The power companies have shared with me the volume of contacts that they have had with individuals, and they have had a colossal number of contacts with members of the public. It is important that individuals pursue their rights in relation to interruption of supply, but it is equally important that the power companies make available to individuals high-quality and reliable information on when incidents are likely to be resolved following the kind of outages that we have experienced.

Priority has been attached to ensuring that power supplies can be sustained for care homes and individuals with vulnerabilities. In my discussions with the local resilience partnership in Aberdeenshire, I have been assured that steps were taken to make sure that power supplies were assured to those organisations and institutions. In a number of cases in Mr Burnett’s constituency, the remedying of some strategic faults in the electricity network resolved the situation for a significant proportion of his constituency, but it is an indication of the magnitude and severity of the incident that such widespread effects arose as a consequence of it.

Many of those ventures have emergency supplies available to them, but we will ensure that the issues of emergency supply are reassessed as part of the work of the local resilience partnerships in order to guarantee that we have resilience in such circumstances.

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.