Hansard

It will not surprise you, Deputy Presiding Officer, that, apart from congratulating my colleague Audrey Nicoll on securing the debate, most of my speech will be dedicated to the River Tweed and its tributaries.

First, however, I will take a wee detour to Galloway—to Rose cottage in Minnigaff. It is where I lived for more than a decade, with two rivers right at the bottom of my garden: the Penkiln and, just beyond it, the Cree. My early experience with rivers was close and observed, with the salmon run in the Cree—the poachers gaffing the fish at night—and the brown trout in the Penkiln when their dorsal fins were exposed to the air because the summer had reduced the river to a wee stream. I saw scary flooding when the two rivers and the mill that lay beyond merged into a sea, with Rose cottage’s garden disappearing below the muddy waters. I saw kingfishers and herons, and I encountered Japanese knotweed for the first time, which was not at that time considered to be an ecological predator.

My love affair with rivers was born then and continues today with the grand old lady: the River Tweed. I even made a point—you might call it a pilgrimage—of going to where it is reckoned the Tweed has its source, which is high above Tweedsmuir, inconspicuous and with not a hint of the grandeur to come.

Our villages and towns have naturally grown around rivers—back then, the rivers were their dual carriageways—but their source of power must not be taken for granted. Two issues that require our attention are pollution—deliberate and casual—and the real and recurring threat of floods where floods did not occur before. We have come to realise that, and not before time.

The Tweed flows 97 miles to the North Sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed, forming part of the boundary between Scotland and England. It travels in my constituency through Peebles, Innerleithen, Walkerburn and Galashiels. It is one of the most ecologically important rivers in the United Kingdom, supporting Atlantic salmon, otter, lamprey and water crowfoot vegetation. Much of the catchment is designated as an area of special conservation and a site of special scientific interest. To this day, even though textile industries, which once perched precariously on its banks, have all but disappeared, it still supports local economies including angling, tourism and agriculture. Of course, it is central to the entire cultural identity of the Borders.

However, the Tweed, like other rivers, faces pressures from diffuse agricultural pollution, invasive non-native species and river bank erosion. Protection and restoration are delivered through co-ordinated catchment management plans under the water framework directive, local action plans, the Scottish Borders habitat action plan and SEPA’s Tweed area management plan. Those provide key policy frameworks to protect water quality and habitats.

Flood protection is major. Although sandbanks have not quite been consigned to a superfluous sandbank pile, other more creative methods are being implemented. I reference, as I have done before, the Eddleston Water project, which, by making it wind and through suitable waterside planting, has methodically changed the direction of the water and slowed Eddleston Water’s flow onwards to join the Tweed. More of such flood protection is done upstream these days.

From Penkiln to Cree to Tweed, I confess that, for me, there is a romance about rivers. They dictated where we live today, what industries we once had and those that we have now. I am with Mr Sweeney: rivers should have rights, if that does not sound a bit strange.

Again, I thank my colleague Audrey Nicoll for giving me the opportunity to praise rivers and speak about their protection. I cannot have too many debates about rivers.