Hansard

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am grateful for your generosity, and I am sure that my constituents—one of whom is Alex Johnstone—will be, too, because, sadly, they probably know more about the subject of flooding than any other group of constituents in Scotland. We have had plenty of experience. I thank the minister for coming up on what I recall was Christmas eve to see the problems at first hand. That was very much appreciated by all those who were involved.

Alex Johnstone rightly mentioned the flooding of the old town in Stonehaven on 22 and 23 December last year. He did not have time to mention that, only a week before, the north end of the beach had been flooded, but this time by a high tide and a strong easterly wind, which wreaked a great deal of damage and which must have been a dreadful experience for some of the elderly folk who live there in sheltered housing. I suspect that they still have not returned. That was dreadful and came only a week before the events that Alex Johnstone helpfully discussed.

On 21 October last year, further south in my constituency, I was wading through the overflowing South Esk in River Street, Brechin. With a few sandbags, we just about got away with it, but it really was close. Again, the minister has visited the area. There is a prevention scheme there, as the minister will be well aware. The scheme needs a significant amount of money; that is just about ready to go, and I hope that the scheme will be proceeded with very rapidly.

The whole of the Mearns experienced heavy rainfall and there was widespread flooding, especially in Fettercairn, where a flood went straight through a shop and disappeared down an alley. In Marykirk, Auchenblae, St Cyrus and down to Edzell, which is in Angus, there were significant problems that lasted a long time. They are all being addressed—I will come back to that—but we unfortunately have considerable experience of water. However, several things have followed and, inevitably, I suppose, there are some good things.

Local flood action groups have sprung up in most places in order to improve communications and resilience. They have enabled people on the ground to help the officials in the councils who are working on the matter to develop good solutions—we would expect that. They have also worked to improve warning systems for residents and first responders. It is probably fair to say that we are already in a better place should such incidents happen again, but we recognise that they will happen again.

Another lesson that emerged from the floods has perhaps not been entirely learned. Much of what happened in Stonehaven had something, at least, to do with the effect of trees and other flotsam that had just been left lying around, having come along in the floods, which blocked culverts and bridges, causing them to overflow. I am not convinced that everybody has really learned that lesson yet and I am not sure that we are clearing such stuff from valleys as quickly as we should.

I acknowledge the contribution of the police, fire and rescue and ambulance services, local volunteers and many local authority employees. Their actions were exemplary. There were also, of course, the existing flood wardens, who did what they could.

I will mention the Stonehaven flood relief fund, of which Alex Johnstone is well aware. The minister and I—and, I think, Alex Johnstone—were in the town hall on Christmas eve to see the response of the community in trying to ensure that the children of families who had literally just been washed out of their homes would at least enjoy something that Christmas. That was genuinely heartwarming and we should put it on the record.

Part of the response is the Scottish flood forum, through which the indefatigable Paul Hendy has been providing advice and encouragement. I have a report from him, to which I will return later.

I also acknowledge the Bellwin fund, which has been implemented, and the considerable assistance that the Scottish Government has provided to Aberdeenshire Council in its hour of need across several locations.

The petition that is before us today concerns insurance. The officers of Angus Council and Aberdeenshire Council are working hard and applying intelligence, good thought and engineering. There are many opportunities for local authorities in my area—and, I am sure, other areas—to undertake schemes to reduce flood risks. I use the word “reduce” because we all now understand that we will never eliminate such risks; it is only about reduction.

Schemes throughout my constituency will, of course, be prioritised. They should be. It is inevitable that officers and councils will be concerned about the greatest good for the greatest number. That is the normal way of doing things. We will all be concerned about value for money and, inevitably, we are trying to make the best use of scarce resources. That means that some of my constituents—and some constituents of every other member present—will inevitably find themselves at the bottom of the list or, for practical purposes, not on the list because people never work their way up such very long lists.

I acknowledge the point about cross-subsidy that other members have made. However, regardless of cross-subsidy across countries—this is nothing to do with borders—an element of cross-subsidy is absolutely essential in insurance. I want to ensure that we have got that point. Otherwise, we will find houses and possibly businesses that are uninhabitable and unsaleable because they are uninsurable at the market rate.

We have all been out and about and found the remains of a cottage in a valley somewhere that, once upon a time, was an important place to be. We know what derelict buildings look like. In remote areas, that may just be an economic fact about which we can do nothing. However, we cannot afford to have derelict buildings in the middle of Stonehaven or, to be frank, anywhere else in our communities.

If we happen to have a building in the dip in the High Street in the old town of Stonehaven that will be absolutely guaranteed to flood if any extra water gets down there, we must do something as a society and a community to ensure that that property can be insured. That has to be done in a sensible way—people might have to worry about making sure that the electric cables run down the walls rather than up them, as well as doing all sorts of other things that we know about—but we simply cannot afford to have buildings that are unsaleable and uninhabitable in the middle of our communities simply because the market insists on taking its market view. We just have to understand that.

We must ensure reasonable distribution of risk—that is part of insurance—but at the end of the day insurance is about making sure that things that must be covered are covered even if we have to do so collectively. I do not think it matters how we do that. I understand that local councils are in a position to subsidise council tenants to some extent to make sure that they have housing insurance. Clearly that works only for council tenants; one could hardly expect councils to do otherwise. It will have somehow or other to be done at national level or at society level.

I want to pick out one or two more things from the briefing from Paul Hendy. He has compared the Scottish flood forum’s inquiries into Stonehaven’s floods in 2009 and 2012, which Alex Johnstone mentioned. The numbers in 2012 are very much higher than they were in 2009 and I want to point out some significant ones. There have been at least six inquiries this time around from people whose excess on their flood insurance has been above £1,000. Alex Johnstone has already mentioned some figures. The numbers that I have show that there have been three cases in which the excess is above £3,000 and one case in which it is at least £10,000. For a normal home owner, those kinds of numbers would mean that their home contents were uninsurable. If the house actually falls down, they would be covered, but the contents in ground floors would, in effect, be uninsurable. That has a knock-on effect not only for the state of mind of the person who is trying to get back into a property that was flooded three years ago; how on earth can they sell that house to somebody else, whose mortgage provider will ask, “What is the insurance risk?”

I return to the basic point that while we may not mind having derelict properties out and about, we cannot have them in our communities. Stonehaven is the most obvious example, but there will be others. We have to ensure that whatever solution we come up with recognises the need to subsidise people who are in such desperate situations—“desperate” is the word that we should use.

Might I just have another 30 seconds, Presiding Officer?