 To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its response to the recent severe weather. John Swinney Last week's severe weather, which included the first ever red warning for snow, posed significant challenges across Scotland. The Scottish Government's dedicated resilience operation, which monitors weather and flood alerts all year round, was activated in advance of the severe weather and continued to meet regularly to ensure that ministers were kept fully updated on any developing issues. The operation also worked closely with Scotland's network of resilience partnerships, which brings together emergency services, local authorities, health boards, power companies and others to ensure that we understood any challenges happening on the ground and could offer support and guidance where necessary. This process enabled strong and decisive management of a challenging situation and ensured that practical public safety guidance was issued in advance of each change in the warning level. The Scottish Government resilience facility remains active while we monitor the national recovery and any potential impacts of flooding that follow the thought of the snow. Gordon Lindhurst I thank the minister for that reply. I would like to commend all emergency services and other workers who battled with the severe conditions to keep Scotland going over the past week. I would like to thank everyone who banded together to help out in their local communities. It is clear that the severe weather disrupted the Scottish economy, with estimates of loss due to closure of high streets and goods unable to be transported, ranging in the hundreds of millions of pounds. We saw, for the second time this year, people in cars stuck on motorways and we saw trains not running. Will the minister assess whether improvements to infrastructure to mitigate the effects of extreme winter weather can be undertaken to enable even better responses in future? What can be learned from other countries more familiar with severe weather? John Swinney First of all, let me associate the Government with the comments that Mr Lindhurst has made about the role of the emergency services and also about countless volunteers that have made an extraordinary contribution to supporting individuals during this period of severe weather, but also in bringing about the rapid recovery from that. In relation to the question of economic disruption, Mr Lindhurst will have seen the varying analysis about economic impact. The Fraser Valander Institute, for example, said yesterday that it did not believe that the economic impact was as severe as others were predicting, because essentially the resources that individuals may not have spent last Wednesday, they were likely to spend this Wednesday because they could get to the shops, which they could not do last Wednesday. I acknowledge that there will be economic disruption and the challenge for Government is to work with all of our partners to try to minimise that as far as possible. That brings me on to the latter part of Mr Lindhurst's question, where, after every severe weather incident, the Government undertakes a review of how that has been handled to identify if there are any lessons that can be learnt. I think that one of the key lessons that was applied in this instance was the very early, timely and specific warnings that were given to avoid travel, which significantly reduced the volume of traffic on our transport network. As a consequence, in many fewer motorists and travellers being stranded on our transport networks, there would have been the case had we not given such clear warnings about that. In relation to other jurisdictions, of course, we look at other countries. Part of the debate that we have to have is about what is the level of resourcing and resilience that we ordinarily should have in place to manage such circumstances. Obviously, there is a lot more could be spent to provide for those events, but we also have to be mindful of the fact that we do not face those events on every single year. There is a balance to be struck there. What was clear to me over the course of the last week or so was that we have a resilience capacity, which is able to be moved around the country to assist other parts of the country that are facing more difficult challenges. That is an important part of the collaborative arrangements that the Government has put in place. Gordon Lindhurst I thank the minister for that reply. The impact on our roads becomes ever clear as the snow thaws and recedes. We learned recently of the 20 per cent S&P cut to pothole funding since 2010, and the effects of that have been certainly seen all too clearly here in Edinburgh. Given the potentially significant and additional damage to our roads as a result of the recent severe weather, is the Government able to give a commitment to provide more support for our roads networks and local authorities to cope with this additional repair burden coming, as has been indicated as perhaps an exception to what we are used to as weather here? John Swinney The Government itself has taken action to increase the resources that we put in place for road maintenance, and we increased that by £45 million in the budget. In relation to local authorities, local authorities have to take their own decisions about the level in which they invest in roads. The Conservative council in my area, for example, did not invest as much in road repairs this year as the S&P group proposed in the budget process, which is a matter of great regret to me that that was the case, so it varies around the country. We have, as a Government, activated the bellwine formula, which has made available to local authorities the opportunity to put forward claims of extraordinary expenditure that are associated with handling those incidents, and any applications through the bellwine formula will be considered in due course by the French secretary, and local authorities will be advised. I have four members who wish to ask a question. If we are fairly sharp with questions and answers, everyone will get in. Ross Greer The SDUC has collected stories across the country of workers who have been treated shockingly during the extreme weather by employers who have told them that they have to turn up to work despite the weather warnings, putting them and their customers in danger. The First Minister and the Transport Minister have made welcome statements. Could the Deputy First Minister outline what the Scottish Government is going to do to defend workers' rights during extreme weather conditions? John Swinney The first thing to say is that, although I accept that some people have been treated badly by their employers, there have been a large number of individuals who have been well treated and appropriately treated by their employers in not being asked to undertake journeys that would put them at risk. Yesterday, the Government met the Scottish Trade Union Congress as part of our on-going dialogue with the SDUC. We agreed to work together to collaboratively develop a fair work charter that focuses on the treatment of workers affected by severe weather or other emergencies. That is what we will take forward as part of our on-going relationship with the SDUC. We do that within the context of employment law and employment rights not being a devolved function, but we will do as much as we possibly can to do within our areas of legislative competence to ensure that workers are properly protected from being asked to undertake journeys or to attend work when it is patently unsafe for them to do so. Christine Grahame Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I ask the cabinet secretary about the statement that the Minister of Transport meant about deduction of wages? I contacted the two councillors, Midlothian Council, who has paid in full all-employees who could not get to work during particularly the red warning time. However, Scottish Borders Council is only giving one day of full pay, otherwise it is asking those who could not work at any point to take it either off their flexi time or leave to make up the absences. To me, that is docking wages by another name. Can I ask if the cabinet secretary or the Minister of Transport would raise the issue with COSLA? John Swinney We will certainly be very happy to take forward discussion on the question with local authorities. As I said in my earlier answer to Mr Greer, we think that it is important. In our dialogue with the SDEC, it reinforces the point that individuals are treated fairly and appropriately. As Christine Grahame cites, Midlothian Council has taken an appropriate approach in that respect, but we will be happy to raise those questions with the convention of Scottish local authorities to ensure that there is fairness for individuals who are affected by those circumstances. Colin Smyth Thank you, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary made reference to the opening of the bellwine scheme. That is a very welcome decision, but will he acknowledge that the scheme's criteria can be overly restrictive if it only covers, for example, actions that deal with saving life in limb. There is a huge threshold for local authorities to have to pay first before they receive any funding from the Government, and it only covers actions that are taken in a very short period of time. Given that there is precedent for that, will the Government consider awarding further funding to local councils to deal with what will be a substantial cleanup cost across Scotland, not just in those authorities that will qualify for the bellwine scheme? John Swinney The Government will remain open to dialogue with local authorities about the question, but we have to look at it across a wider perspective. Not every winter is as severe as the one that we have experienced. Indeed, in the winter last year, there was much less recourse to some of the snow-clearing and gritting operations that were required last year, so local authorities will not have to spend last year as much as they will have had to spend this year. There is a need for us to look at that in the round. The bellwine scheme is available there to support local authorities with exceptional costs. That is what it is designed to do, but the Government will remain open to dialogue with individual local authorities and with COSLA on all of those questions. Margaret Mitchell The major incident resulting from the severe weather was hundreds of vehicles stranded overnight on the MAT. Will the cabinet secretary comment on Police Scotland's response to the incident, and in particular when Police First attended, how long they were there for, and the strategy that Police Scotland put in place to deal with the incident, given reports that there was a miscommunication between the former Strathclyde and central legacy forces, now the Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire divisions, which resulted in neither responding timiously to do with the incident? John Swinney I have not seen the speculation that Margaret Mitchell refers to. From my involvement in this incident, the police were on the ground handling the issue from the minute the difficulties arose. Indeed, I spent a prolonged amount of time, as did Mr Yousaf, on Wednesday evening talking directly to the police commander who was on the MAT in the freezing conditions explaining to us what was going on. The difficulty that was experienced at the MAT was the fact that a number of vehicles could not obtain traction in either climbing out from the hill from Castle Kerry or in either direction. That was caused significantly by the fact that we had a large number of HGVs in that area, none of whom could achieve traction. On various occasions, Mr Yousaf and I were involved in calls throughout that evening. The operating companies were trying everything possible to grit the roads to create a more solid surface on which vehicles could gain traction, but their efforts were unsuccessful. I can vouch to Margaret Mitchell that all that effort was going on. The police were there throughout the whole incident. They were handling a very difficult situation, but the conditions were very poor. That is why the minister gave such clear warnings to reduce travel on Tuesday. We intensified those warnings on Wednesday morning when the red warning came to us. Anyone listening to those warnings should have thought twice about going anywhere near the MAT, because it is no surprise to any of us that the hills up and down at Castle Kerry caused those difficulties during winter. I assume that Margaret Mitchell, the police were absolutely all over the incident. We were giving us quality information from the scene of the incident. I put on record my thanks to the police officers who were out on that motorway in the freezing cold for giving us such quality information as we handled the issue. That concludes topical questions. We will move on to the next item of business.