Meeting of the Parliament 26 October 2022
That is a bit off topic. It is certainly an issue for debate at another time, but it says a lot about this Government’s priorities that that is the focus of its response and rebuttal to these points—these realities—when we are desecrating our natural heritage. With raw sewage being dumped into Loch Leven, this Government is allowing the biodiversity that the loch provides and supports to be destroyed, and it is allowing those who use the loch for open-water swimming to be exposed to harmful faecal bacteria.
Even Ian Blackford, at Westminster, sought to tear the United Kingdom Government to shreds for the scale of its sewage releases, but the Scottish Government is certainly not coming up smelling of roses either. When the local Lib Dem councillor Willie Robertson raised his concerns about the impact that raw sewage would have on Loch Leven, he was told by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency that SEPA “understand and sympathise with your frustration at this situation, but the removal of these historic sewers will require multimillion pound investment, and as this is public money, it requires to be planned and spending to be justified.”