Meeting of the Parliament 26 October 2022
The figures that I cited are not linked directly to the monitoring of CSOs; they relate to a holistic assessment of the water quality in Scotland. If we break it down to the factors that constitute that overall water quality—which is about the water quality itself, water quantity and fish migration—the figures are higher than 66 per cent. I would be delighted to provide the member with them.
I am proud of the figures, but we are not complacent. Through our third river basin management plan, we have set out our most ambitious plans ever, including the steps that we want to take to get our overall water quality to 81 per cent by 2027. In December, I gave a statement on the plan and how it, together with Scottish Water’s “Improving Urban Waters Route Map”, would drive substantial improvements in future years.
Today’s discussion has focused on the sewer network and swimming in bathing waters, so I will address both of those issues. There are misconceptions around the operation of the sewer network in Scotland. There has been some focus recently on Scottish Water supposedly discharging raw sewage on a regular basis. While I am on that point, I would like to clarify that, in my intervention on Alex Cole-Hamilton about Loch Leven, I was not saying that there had not been an incident; I was talking about the characterisation of the incident and what SEPA had done as part of its licensing and monitoring of the situation.