Chamber and committees

Does the cabinet secretary share my concern that one of the biggest contributors to poverty in rural and island communities for years to come will be the economic and social harm caused by the loss of freedom of movement and trade following Brexit? What does she make of the many UK parties, including Labour, that appear to have enabled that Brexit?

In 1869, a poem was collected by the folklorist Alexander Carmichael in Ìochdar in South Uist and published in the second volume of “Carmina Gadelica”. The poem predicts this for one fertile coastal area of Uist:

“Torranais of the barley, with the great sea around its middle. The walls of the churches shall be the fishing-rocks of the people, while the resting-place of the dead shall be a forest of tangles, among whose mazes the pale-faced mermaid, the marled seal, and the brown otter shall race and run and leap—Like the children of men at play.”

Members might find the poem to be unnervingly prophetic of the coming disasters that sea-level rises will bring to coastal regions across the world. Lest the reference to mermaids makes members inclined to dismiss the poem, I should say that it is far from the only unsettling and very specific prophecy of its kind in Gaelic folklore. It mirrors many of the fears that are now being voiced in contemporary scientific debate.

In the past decade, global sea levels rose by 3cm, but the situation is predicted to get worse. The most recent UN report on climate change, which was published in August 2021, warned that we could see the ocean ascend by nearly 1m or more by the end of the century. Such outcomes threaten many societies existentially. Under that scenario, island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu will simply disappear. Cities including New York, Shanghai and Kolkata will be exposed to coastal flooding by 2070. Bangladesh could lose up to a fifth of its land mass, displacing 15 million to 20 million people.

Scotland will not be immune. Among the places that will be particularly vulnerable are low-lying areas with soft coasts of machair, including Uist, Islay and Tiree, as well as Sanday in Orkney. Large tracts of arable land in Uist were created through centuries of drainage programmes. However, that means that land is often below the mean high-water mark. If a storm large enough broke through the machair dunes, the land could become inundated, and possibly permanently so. In the aftermath of the deadly 2005 storm, the primary school close to the shore in Balivanich was abandoned and a new one was built further away from the sea. If we multiply that up, we can see the kind of threat that now faces human infrastructure across much of the planet and the cost of dealing with that.

The climate crisis will also undermine intangible cultural heritage—many of the things that make it worth being human—so it is important that the debates on climate change take notice of indigenous voices in addition to science and that they reflect on the cumulative experience and knowledge of such societies, whether they be in Greenland, Tuvalu or Uist.

The Gaelic word for a person, “duine”, literally means “one who is from the land”. They inhabit a homeland, or “dùthaich”. The social and ecological bond that ties the two together is “dùthchas”, which is an untranslatable concept comprising heritage, culture, ancestry and identity, concentrated in a place made sacred. We should be in no doubt that rising sea levels represent a threat to all that, as well as to everything else.

We should listen to the breadth and depth of information that exists in endangered and indigenous languages across the globe. That information is not only relevant to fully understanding the crises that we face; it might just point to a way out of them.

As I represent and live in an island constituency that is entirely dependent on CalMac, it would be fair to say that ferries represent the greater part of my daily work at the best of times. It would also be fair to say that this summer was not the best of times. As a result, ferries came, properly, to represent the overwhelming majority of workload for me and my staff.

This summer, as I think we can all agree, a combination of factors made ferry services nothing short of intolerable. Without minimising any of the problems that members have rightly debated, I point out that some of those factors were well beyond normal control—chiefly, the fact that vessels were on average running at only a third of their normal capacity, due to social distancing requirements.

Tourists have the luxury of booking tickets months in advance. Most other people do not plan their lives that far ahead—nor can they. This summer, that fact led to an unfortunate tension between the needs of tourists, who are vital to the island economy, and those of islanders. I live in Lewis and I am very aware that at one point this summer people simply could not travel anywhere, for almost any reason. People elsewhere in Scotland should consider what that might mean for them, were such a thing to befall their mainland town for some unaccountable reason.

For me, the low point was reached when people started telling me that they were unable to visit even very ill relatives. CalMac staff and crews went to great efforts to find ways of transporting people in that situation, whenever those people complained through me. The most extreme situations have eased since the lifting of social distancing restrictions and the tailing off, to some extent, of the tourist season. However, nobody is under any illusions about all the challenges that lie ahead.

As I indicated in my members’ business debate some weeks ago, services would be more likely to improve in future if anyone on the CalMac and CMAL boards lived on an island that depended on the ferry services that those companies provide. The minister, Mr Dey, provided a helpful reply to that debate. Indeed, the minister has been a regular recipient of my emails and phone calls and has been in regular touch, visiting the Western Isles and making clear efforts to address some of the issues.

On a more hopeful note, I hope that CalMac’s new booking system, which is due in the spring, will be an improvement on what everyone acknowledges to be the entirely inadequate booking system that exists now, which Mr Gibson described. I hope that the on-going review of ferries fares reflects more equitably the deck space that different types of vehicles, including camper vans, actually take up, and that the minister is able to say something about the issue in his summing up.

The commissioning of two new vessels for Islay and other islands, together with the addition of MV Utne, purchased recently in Norway, to the CalMac fleet will certainly make the fleet more resilient, as will the small vessel-building programme budgeted for the years ahead. As the minister is aware, the challenge is how to add resilience between now and then, and I hope that he is able to say something more about his efforts in that direction.

The minister and the Parliament do not need me to explain further the importance that ferries have to every aspect of life in my constituency. I appreciate the chance to hear from the Government about the plans for the years ahead in order to continue to improve services and ensure, I hope, that we do not return to the situation that we faced this summer.

I am curious about some of the issues that were touched on by a number of the organisations that gave evidence to us in relation to coming through the experience of the pandemic. I am thinking of museums and historical sites, in particular. Can you say anything about how the budget will reflect some of their experience? Obviously, emergency funding has been provided but, as has been mentioned, a number of organisations have talked about the challenges ahead, not least the challenges that have been presented for the fabric of sites and buildings through their not being in use. What is your thinking about how to help that sector?

On the specific point about Historic Environment Scotland and its historic real estate, you will be aware that a number of us have asked questions about that. I will not ask about specific sites but, if the board is meeting to discuss that, are you hopeful that we will get back to something like the number of sites that were open pre-pandemic?

I am grateful for that.

I want to return to the issue of how the budget will recognise new ways of doing things. Again, I am thinking about the museum sector. There has been support for the things that the museums sector and the galleries sector have been doing in the digital sphere. The situation has not been of their making, but they have made the best of it. To think more positively about the opportunities that those sectors have, will the budget recognise the fact that museums and galleries are doing things differently? I am thinking about not only the move to digital but the fact that they have plenty of stuff in their vaults that nobody ever sees. I am sure that they have been thinking about how to bring that to a wider audience.

7.

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to promote Scottish literature in schools. (S6O-00257)

Will the cabinet secretary say whether the Government feels that there are lessons to learn from other countries around Europe, where learning extensively about their country’s literature is almost without exception regarded as an essential outcome of secondary education for learners?

I recently met Tighean Innse Gall, a trusted insulation provider in my constituency, which is encountering serious difficulties because of the new UK-wide industry standard, PAS 2035. Among other things, the new ventilation standard requires fixed mechanical ventilation and large permanent window vents. In Hebridean properties, the strict requirements result in a permanent and significant draft—made worse by a requirement to remove the bottom 2cm of every internal door—which is significantly deterring people from using insulation schemes. Is the minister willing to meet Tighean Innse Gall and me to discuss the company’s concerns about that?

As the cabinet secretary knows, vessel 802 is intended to serve Lochmaddy and Tarbert. However, there have been calls from the communities of North Uist and Harris for each area to have a dedicated vessel. What consideration is the Scottish Government giving to that question, which has been raised for some years?