 Can I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face covering should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus? The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 2784 in the name of Evelyn Tweed on response to Storm Arwyn in Stirling and future resilience planning. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put and I would ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons now and I call on Evelyn Tweed to open the debate up to 7 minutes please on this Tweed. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would firstly like to declare my interest as an elected member of Stirling Council. Storm Arwyn was one of the worst recent storms in this country. Winds in parts of my constituency reached 96 miles per hour and it was much more damaging than the beasts from the east. My office and I were inundated with requests for help and assistance, ranging from those with critical medical needs to others concerned about loved ones who were unreachable. Scottish and Southern electricity networks, SSEN, estimate that 135,000 homes lost power, a quarter waiting 48 hours or more before being reconnected. Some homes in rural Stirling were only reconnected after seven days while others across Scotland waited longer. This length of time of off supply is unacceptable and I thank everyone who is here today to try and improve this response to such incidents. SSEN is part of Scottish and Southern energy SSE, a multinational energy company and member of the FTSE 100. We should remember that SSE is the product of a merger of two formerly publicly-owned energy companies, both privatised in the 90s by the ideologically driven deregulation of the energy market. The north of Scotland hydroelectric board was formed in 1943 to provide electricity to the Highlands. Scores of hydro dams and power stations were built across beautiful but incredibly challenging terrain to dramatically improve lives in Scotland. In southern England, the southern electricity board had been created in 1948. The investment was made by the public sector because no private business could see profit in providing power to those areas. Profits of the privatised utility companies that should have gone in to improving services have since been diverted into generating dividends for shareholders and eye-watering director salaries. SSE operating profits were up 7 per cent last year to wait for it £1.5 billion. The chief executive of SSE earns a basic salary, excuse me, approaching £1 million. With bonuses and other payments, his total remuneration package was over £3 million. Other directors earned well over £1.5 million each. Perhaps if more of the annual £1.5 billion profits were diverted into creating better infrastructure, employing more local staff and having better resourced and tested resilience plans, that debate would not be required tonight. I carried out a survey of residents affected by the storm in my area. The top issues raised with SSEN were that people could not get through to the SSEN hotline and, when they did, the information that they were given was incorrect. SSEN did not publicise quickly enough how claims could be made for compensation for the cost of food and alternative accommodation when consumers were cut off for days on end. SSEN's vulnerable person list relied on phone connections, which were knocked out by the storm and a lack of power. Other information was given via social media and text message, which was again useless when people had no internet or mobile signal. One constituent wrote that communication from SSEN was at best misleading and inaccurate and at worst non-existent. My 97-year-old neighbour was totally and utterly forgotten about. We looked after her the best way we could, but if we hadn't, she would have left in the cold alone without food and I doubt would have survived. My survey found a lack of confidence in the resilience planning of both SSEN and the local authority. For example, a manager of a care home with 18 vulnerable adults wrote to say that they had zero contact from any local authorities or the energy company. We had to move them all to a hotel that was extremely difficult. Thankfully, our staff worked around the clock, but they were very disappointed that no-one even contacted us to see if we were okay. However, I must be very clear here that there was very positive feedback for the staff of SSEN and the council who worked hard in very difficult circumstances. I congratulate Evelyn Tweed on the debate. Can we pay tribute to the front-line workers of Stirling council? I am a resident as she is of Stirling council. We should pay tribute to them, but at the same time, I highlight the fact that the energy companies were incredibly poor at helping to pinpoint households that had hired the power cuts. Therefore, the help that the local authority wanted to offer was not able to be delivered in an expeditious way. Mr Kerr, I had made that point and I am going to say that at the end, but thanks for your intervention. I welcomed the 15 recommendations of the Storm Arwen review that was published last week for the Scottish Government and its partners. It is great to see that the vital role of volunteers and community groups was highlighted and the intention to bring those groups into the heart of local resilience planning. I want to thank the countless volunteers across Stirling and Scotland for their dedication and selfless efforts to directly help others when they needed it most. I also want to thank the efforts of staff from Stirling council, the emergency services, Cullen mountain rescue team, Trossac cert and rescue, the international rescue core, the British Red Cross as well as local businesses across Stirling. I had actually said it before. Sorry that I did not do that through the chair. I also found the response of Scottish Water to be worthy of praise and perhaps a lesson for others. Peter Farer, its chief operating officer, said at the recent Westminster Scottish affairs committee session on Storm Arwen, power supplies were lost to Scottish Water assets that supplied about 1.5 million customers. Fortunately, we had proactively turned on our emergency generators prior to the event happening, which protected the majority of our customers. It is perhaps no coincidence here that Scottish Water remains in public ownership. Presiding Officer, I am concerned that it is expected that the main burden of responding to a failure of a privatised industry should fall on volunteers and cash-strapped local authorities. I will be asking the Scottish Government to contact the UK Government to ensure that Stirling Council and other local authorities across Scotland are directly financially compensated for SSEN for having to fill the gaps in its woeful response. Claire Baker, who is running remotely, has a prior engagement, but was very keen to participate in the debate, which I am quite happy with. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate this afternoon on Storm Arwen and future resilience planning. I thank Evelyn Tweed for bringing the debate to the chamber. We cannot do so without mentioning the impacts of Storm Relic and Corry, which are still being felt in parts of the country. Thousands of homes are again left without power, some of whom are still to be reconnected, and schools remain closed and rural businesses are just emerging from the pandemic have already been hit again. There has also been a tragic loss of life in this weekend through the storms. My thoughts are with the families who have been affected. As in the response to storm arwen, the hard work and support provided by communities and organisations should be praised, and the efforts to reconnect homes and businesses as quickly as possible is welcomed. The weekend's events only underline the importance of resilience planning and make sure that our communities are prepared to deal with storms and other emergencies. The commitment from the Scottish Government to review the preparations for and respond to storm arwen was welcome. We know the disruption that caused to infrastructure, power supply, education, travel, care services and the environment, as well as sadly the loss of life of a driver in Aberdeenshire. Amid the talk of arwen being an exceptional storm, we need to recognise that wither events like this and like Storm Corry and Malik are part of our lives in the changing environment that we continue to inhabit and impact on. We must learn from exceptional storms as we do from the pandemic and make sure that we are prepared for the next time. We should also remember that it was not unforeseen. Storm arwen was forecast, but communities were not adequately equipped to respond. Part of our response has to be to address that and to improve on it. Resilience arrangements must always be evolving and improving, and communities must be kept up-to-date with them. However, extreme weather is forecast, we need to maximise the communication routes available before it hits. We need to make sure that people know where to go for help and who they can contact. When we talk about storms in a community, we know that that does not just mean power lines or roads but households, families and individuals. After the statement on storm arwen, I asked the cabinet secretary about the response in Starline. I had received reports of people being left in freezing temperatures with no rest centres being open or no access to generators. For some people, there was a swift local response with food and information and support available, but others said that the sport was inadequate and that they felt abandoned. The recommendation in the Government's review of storm arwen to prioritise assistance to the vulnerable is welcome, but we cannot always predict who will be in need. The review acknowledges the important point that storm damage can make anyone vulnerable. Being without power, heat or food, being cut off by geography or from communication, such circumstances would be difficult for most people to deal with, and we need to find ways to work to quickly assess who needs support and how to get it to them. Communication is a key aspect of any response, but without power, options are pretty quickly limited. The review recommends that subgroups of resilience partnerships would review and test plans and include more traditional means of communicating. We need to see clear information provided in advance when possible, and local networks can be part of that. We should look at how to utilise existing community groups as part of our response. Through the pandemic, we have seen a strong community response and support networks develop. Those are the kind of local networks that we should be able to activate in response to events such as storm arwen. I recognise the duty on statutory authorities in responding to emergencies, and I recognise the comments that Evelyn Tweet has made about the responsibility of the energy companies. However, a key recommendation in the review is to improve the integration of community and voluntary sectors into resilience planning. Local groups are often best placed to respond quickly, and they should be resourced and supported to do so as part of a co-ordinated process. It is crucial that the review is now put into action, and as we have seen this weekend, it is a matter that needs urgent attention. I now call Julie Martin to be followed by Dean Lockhart. Thank you to Evelyn Tweet for the debate of great importance to the people I represent in Aberdeenshire. Last week, the Scottish Government published a resilience review into House that the storm impacts managed between themselves, local authorities and energy providers. This is a welcome report. I was first to call for it in this chamber, probably straight after the storm arwen, which devastated my constituency to be told. The impact of the storm is still felt today. As I stand in the chamber, my constituency has been severely impacted by not one but two storms over the weekend. Some homes still remain without power. Over this week, families, businesses and communities have been left without power—thousands of them and phone signals—so they cannot even communicate. There has been still a bit confusing messaging about when they can expect their power to return from SSEN. It is going to be of the utmost importance that, when the future of the SSEN makes clear what the suitability of the current infrastructure is and how we can ensure better resilience next winter and beyond, not just of the communities in response, but we need the infrastructure to be much more robust to withstand the extreme weather that we get, particularly in my part of the country. I would like to associate myself with Evelyn Tweed's points about the SSEN's responsibility to invest in that infrastructure, and particularly the response to vulnerable customers. They have what is called a priority list, which seems to me, from the contacts that I have been getting from my constituents, to be a bit not much more than token, because some of my constituents—some of them are with family members on medical equipment that they need to keep going—were struggling to get that additional help. In the Storm Arwin resilience review, there were a few recommendations that stuck out for me. The first was on how information is relayed to the public. For so many of us in the digital age, we use our mobile phones to access basic information. Of course, there were so many mobile services down, and there was no way for people to access information. There was a resilience effort out there, and community groups and volunteers out there providing services and help for people, but people did not know about it. I was pleased that there was a recommendation about using local radio and local radio working more with the local authority to get that information out there. Most households still have battery-operated radio somewhere, and if they thought that was going to be the conduit for information in the future, then, if they did not have one already, they might go out and get one and have it there for emergencies. I want to talk about the contribution and response of the community during Storm Arwin and this weekend. I would like to highlight some of the community groups and organisations in Aberdeenshire East that went above and beyond when the storms impacted us. First, I would like to put on record my thanks to Rothi Norman Community Association, who provided refuge for residents. The community of Colliston, a windy place at the best of times, also came together to support their neighbours. Following the impact of Storm Arwin, the community is now looking to form its own resilience group, so that it can continue to help each other locally in their time of need. In Potterton, Jenny Nicol and Shona Jenkins took it upon themselves to set up a community hub, and they worked with the council and volunteers to serve hot soup and food, and both of them did not have power in their own homes. Many of the volunteers across Aberdeenshire East were without power, but still went out and knocked on doors for our most vulnerable people to see if they were okay. That is just a glimpse into my constituency. I want to thank every volunteer. I cannot name them all today, but the schools, the community centres, the councillors, the Red Cross and all the community groups that provide support. I am proud of them. I thank them for everything that they have done, but I will also finish by thanking my constituency team, some of them who did not have power, both last weekend and in Storm Arwin, who still managed to get help to my constituents. I also thank Evelyn Tweed for bringing this important debate to the chamber. The frosty and impact of Storm Arwin isolated many communities across the Stirling region and plunged many people into a prolonged period without power, water or any means of communication. Many rural communities across the northern and western areas of the Stirling council region, including Finchry, Doon and Killan, bore the full brunt of the storm. At times like these, the strength of our communities really shines through. There were countless individual selfless acts across communities to assist those who are most in need. Volunteer organisations such as Killan Mountain Rescue and Trossic Search and Rescue responded immediately, as did many local businesses. The staff of SSEN, Scottish Water, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Police Scotland all responded immediately to those in need, all backed up by assistance from Stirling council, international rescue corps and British Red Cross. There were many instances where, without this urgent assistance, consequences for many could have been incredibly serious. The experiences of these local communities during storm Arwin clearly demonstrate that the support that is offered by councils and by the Scottish Government can be improved. Therefore, I welcome the review carried out by the Scottish Government into the response to the response of Storm Arwin. While it contains some useful initial recommendations, I think that there is still a great deal more work that needs to be done. I have also supported calls for Stirling council to seek feedback from local communities and I am pleased that the survey and the feedback mechanism is now available. Because feedback and suggested improvements coming from those directly affected by the storm will be invaluable and should really be the basis for building on those initial recommendations. From the information that I have received from constituents, I would highlight the following key additional points that should be considered by local authorities and by the Scottish Government. First of all, when communications are down, the only way to assess a situation is immediate presence on the ground. Decision making must be streamlined and resources prioritised. For example, mobile generators are being made available and installed at the most critical facilities immediately. That was not always the case during storm Arwin. In many cases, the traditional landline remains the only working means of communication during a power cut, as Gillian Martin and others have highlighted. Many in rural locations keep an old-style telephone for that purpose. However, landlines are due to be moved to internet-based connections by 2025, so thought therefore needs to be given as to how we are going to retain fallback communication capacity that has proved so important on occasions and during storms like this, because the mobile networks were out for a significant amount of time during storm Arwin and other recent storms. As for the Government emergency response, there needs to be a change in how local and central Government use the capacity within our local communities. At present, the approach is too cautious. There were many people in communities across Stirling with the necessary equipment to help with the immediate response during storm Arwin. A number of local community members helped to clear hundreds of trees, and the efforts made a significant difference as to how quickly crucial roads could be used again. I agree with the member that the SSEN was at fault here. I think that there were a number of issues in response to SSEN's overall approach to the storm, and I agree with many of the issues that the member raised with regard to the response. I think that it was unhelpful that the SSEN gave unhelpfully short periods of time or forecast for when power was going to come back on that were not met. It generated expectations among the community that were unrealistic. That compounded the problems, so I think that more accurate forecasting, fully recognising the challenging circumstances, more accurate forecasting would be very helpful. I know that I am up against the clock. We need a more positive approach that recognises how local communities with the appropriate equipment and experience can bring a huge amount of capacity at a time when official services are unable to cope. The Scottish Government should consider that Forestry and Land Scotland should be included as an official responder organisation. Its extensive forest road network is a vital asset and could be used in supporting many communities that are cut off when their public road is blocked. I will wind up on the point that other members have made. Our climate is changing, there will be further challenges such as storm Arwyn. I think that the best thing that we can do is work together across the UK, Scottish and local government to ensure that the different areas of responsibility are considered together and the necessary changes are made. I thank Evelyn Tweed for securing this motion for debate. Storm Arwyn has been catastrophic for us in the north-east and has caused widespread extensive damage, so much so that we may never see the return of parts of landscape in my constituency in my lifetime and possibly that of my children's again. The Deputy First Minister stated on his welcome visit to the north-east in the wake of storm Arwyn that this was indeed an extraordinary scale of a storm. It had affected most of Scotland and, acutely, my constituency of Bampshire and Bucking Coast. The level of damage that was inflicted on the power network was colossal. Indeed, the level of casework and contact, much like my colleagues with my office throughout the crisis, illustrated that people had suffered enormous hardship, including one person from my constituency that cost their lives. For some, the level of suffering that they experienced was unique and devastating. We had to down-chol, so to speak, in the office on everything that we were working on and, straight away, went into crisis centre mode, acting as a conduit between Aberdeenshire and Murray Council. Resilience partnerships, third sector community groups, welfare groups and constituents arranging welfare checks, water drops and more to liaise and assist so much as possible. The good that can come from social media was evident for a change, but we also needed those boots on the ground to spread the word. Also, being in continuous online and telephone communication with the power company and Scottish Water. I have produced several motions in this Parliament recognising individual organisations and businesses for their response to help others in their community during and in the days following Storm Arwyn and Storm Barra. Those individuals, businesses and community organisations opened their doors to the public, provided hot food and water, charging points, places to wash clothes and, in some cases, even a place to sleep. The local humanitarian effort was awe-inspiring and reminiscent of those first days of the pandemic when the true meaning of neighbour was evident. It represents the very best of humanity at a time when it was needed and in the right places. Each and every one of them are heroes in my mind. From the military to the volunteers, as well as the brave engineers and staff of the utility companies, many of whom have placed their own lives in jeopardy. This is an experience that I shall never forget and I know that it applies to all of us while witnessing how so many went that extra mile. Each deserving a medal and praise for their unselfish hard work and bravery, it should give us all hope and desire to learn lessons and act upon them. On that point conversely, the anger and frustration of constituents, the seemingly underinvestment in our energy infrastructure in private hands, the drip-drip messages of delayed deadlines of reinstated power, creating hope and then dismay amongst many in the dark and cold, including the elderly and vulnerable, is a matter of on-going concern and is amongst a long list of issues that must be addressed. Whilst we can be eternally grateful for the effective local resilience support on the ground, we must take seriously our reflection on the issues that have become exposed to build all that into our planning for the future. We have got to make sure that the resilience arrangements that we put in place to support the people when they go off supply are effective and adequate. I have grave concerns that lessons have not been learned in some regards, not least when SSC changed their policy for support sometime between Storm Irwin at Barra and the latest storm to hit my constituency hard, Storm Malik and Corrie. They reduced available compensations. We must hold those with the responsibility to account, but I do hope that we can do that constructively. I do note that, following Storm Irwin, SSC has committed an additional £500,000 to the Resilient Communities Fund to help communities to become more resilient in the face of storms, severe weather and prolonged power interruptions. I look forward to having discussions on exactly how that will be implemented and when. I hope that this is just a start and the rest will be proportional to profit. We will face more extreme weather due to our climate emergency and what we do now will lay foundations for the future. We must ensure that we can indeed weather the storms together. Due to the number of members who wish to speak in this debate, I am minded to accept a motion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. I now invite Evelyn Tweed to move a motion without notice. Could Ms Tweed move the motion, please? Thank you, Ms Tweed. The question is that the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes. Are we all agreed? That is agreed. I now call Mark Ruskell to be followed by Colin Smith up to four minutes, please, Mr Ruskell. I thank Evelyn Tweed for bringing forward this debate. I enjoyed her speech, I enjoyed her deconstruction of electricity market deregulation as well and what some of the impacts have been in terms of investment. I think that one of the most surprising aspects of Storm Irwin was the really arbitrary nature in the way that the storm hit Scotland. While there were parts of the sterling area that were less affected, we saw pockets of destruction, particularly the area between Dune and Calender, where there was a huge amount of devastation. I remember the morning after the storm going out, looking at the wood of Dune, and it did not look like a storm had hit it, it looked like a twister had hit it. It was just a small area, but absolutely devastated. Many communities living alongside the River Teeth were affected and had power outages for many days. I think that we saw that environmental destruction across Scotland. I learned recently that there are 800 seal pups that were killed in the storm at St Abbs in East Lothian. There was a forestry area, an area of forestry woodland size of Dundee that was flattened through Storm Irwin. It is welcome that the Scottish Government has conducted an early review into lessons learned. I look forward to progress being reported against the recommendations to this Parliament in June. I also welcome some of the initiatives to engage with the experiences of people who are affected by the storm, particularly Stirling Council's use of their Engage website. I was interested to hear of Evelyn Tweed's own work in her constituents. You are reaching out to constituents to understand how things could be done better. I would like to focus on a couple of the recommendations from the Scottish Government review. One that struck a chord with me and many of my constituents was the need for better assessment and communication of restoration timelines. Certainly, the power companies had a very challenging situation to deal with. They were dealing with faults that were in succession, so they fixed one fault and then put the power back on. It would trigger another fault down the line and they would be back to square one again. However, what they were not great at was creating an expectation among householders that the power lines would be fixed within a couple of hours. If you contacted the app, if you contacted the customer phone lines, you are often getting contradictory information that power lines and energy would be restored within a couple of hours. However, as the storm and the effects of the storm stretched from a couple of hours into days, it was quite clear that restoration deadlines were being missed and that, in fact, power was not going to be restored for some time. The power companies were particularly poor at communicating what compensation was available, which made it difficult for people to plan ahead. What householders really need in this situation is the information so that they can continue to hope for the best, but they can also plan for the worst. I know that that is hard for the companies to do that, but they need to balance that. They need to not create an expectation that this is all going to be sorted in a few hours when, clearly, there are more significant problems that people need to plan for. I think that some of the other recommendations from the review as well improve processes for identifying and assisting those who are most at risk. I do not think that it was clear in Stirling that there were any door-to-door checks taking place for the most vulnerable. I think that we really need to get a handle on that and ensure that there is consistency across Scotland. If I can get the time back up, I will definitely lessen. Just to make a point to the member, yes, there were certain checks that the council organised with some of the voluntary groups. Mark Ruskell? That is good to hear, but I think that what we need to do is to ensure that there is consistency within council areas and also across Scotland as well. I think that there is probably room for improvement there. I think that another recommendation was around the need for better voluntary sector partnerships as well, understanding what the capacity is in our community and building that into resilience plans. My own community of staying in Deanston at a time started to gather blankets and food and set up their own welfare facility, not actually aware that there was another facility being set up down the road in Dune, so better planning and training is needed. Presiding Officer, in closing, I would just like to thank all those who helped to restore power and support communities. I think that with climate change we are going to see far more events like this, but the only silver lining I think is that we will end up with stronger and more resilient communities as a result. Thank you, and I call Nic Collin-Smith to be followed by Mike O'Mara. Mike O'Mara will be the last speaker before I ask the Deputy First Minister to respond. Up to four minutes, Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to Evelyn Tweed for the table in her motion. I do not represent the Stirling area, but I do very much recognise the issues in Evelyn Tweed's motion and in the speeches that we have heard when it comes to the impact of storm Arwin on my own south Scotland region. Like Stirling, the borders in Dumfries and Galloway were battered by 100 miles per hour winds. Tens of thousands of trees were uprooted, many homes were left with no water, and huge parts of the region lost power to 40,000 homes at one point. I want to echo others thanks to all those who assisted with the response to the devastation of the storm in such atrocious conditions, emergency services, community resilience groups, councils and front-line workers from energy firms working to reconnect communities. However, we know that there were significant failings in that response, in particular from energy firms such as Scottish Power in my own area when it came in particular to the information or rather I should say misinformation that was being given to those often vulnerable people wondering where their homes would have power again. There are also serious questions to answer when it comes to the robustness of the network in rural communities. That would not happen, Presiding Officer, in our cities because that network is underground. So I await the outcome of the review into the energy networks response being carried out by Ofgem and the UK Government. I also welcome the Scottish Government's review into their response to the emergency and I agree with many of the recommendations, but I do think that we need to go further and I want to briefly highlight just two areas where, as the Scottish Government review highlights, the statutory responsibilities to manage emergencies in Scotland are set out in the civil contingency act 2004 and the contingency plan in Scotland regulations 2005. They placed six duties on category 1 responders and an additional seventh on local authorities in respect of business continuity. However, over the last 17 years much has changed in the way we respond to emergencies with building resilience now key. I'm a home region of Dumfries and Galloway. I've seen the growing importance and impressive work from the council and promoting, supporting and harnessing the huge commitment of volunteers within community resilience groups. There's now over 80 such groups all with community resilience local plans in place and they really did step up to the mark during Storm Arwyn. However, given that the need for that front-line response will continue to grow as the frequency of such emergencies grows, I wonder now whether it's time for the Government in consultation with local authorities to consider an additional eighth duty for councils to promote community resilience in the same way that they are required to promote business continuity. Crucially, that needs to come with funding. One of my other concerns is the fact that current support to councils isn't adequate enough to deal with the emergencies that they face. When we do face events such as Storm Arwyn, the Government has asked what financial assistance that will provide councils, and ministers often announce that they've opened the bellwine scheme. It sounds impressive at the time, but look at the fine print of the scheme. Does the member agree that SSEN in this case should be asked for compensation, given that the issue was down to SSEN to help councils in that regard? Absolutely. SSEN was certainly responsible in the Stirling area. Scottish Power failed when it came to Dumfries-Garwin borders. The compensation from the power companies is absolutely crucial. The lack of confusion around what compensation is available to households is also an issue that needs to be tackled. I come back to the point about funding from the Scottish Government to local authorities when it comes to all the emergencies that they face. The problem with the current bellwine scheme is that it covers only what is classed as immediate actions to safeguard life and property, or to prevent suffering or severe inconvenience. That rules out much of what councils face when it comes to costs. It also covers costs over and above a substantial threshold. In the case of Dumfries-Garwin Council, that is nearly £700,000 in 2021-22, and in the borders it is over £500,000. I suspect that no council will have received support from the bellwine scheme as a result of Storm Arwin. It is often forced to look for other funding elsewhere that it could be from power companies. However, it is often a further ask of Government. Just weeks before Storm Arwin, my own region suffered devastating flooding. Towns such as Dumfries, the largest in Scotland, floods on a regular basis, but still has no flood protection scheme saw at the banks of the nith bust again. Government funding for flood protection schemes is oversubscribed for the next five years. On the River Arran, two historic foot bridges, the Cuthbertson bridge and Jubilee bridge, were washed away by the flooding. A week later in Dremor, in the west of the region, 40 feet of the harbour wall was destroyed by Storm Barra. I know that the Deputy First Minister knows those issues very well. He visited Arwin to see the damage for himself. He told Parliament that the Government was considering what support it could give to the reinstatement of the foot bridges in Arwin and the harbour wall in Dremor. I hope that the Deputy First Minister and the Government are true to their word, and we see funding allocated to those communities for the devastating impact of the storms. In the long term, I hope that we see additional support to councils and communities to build that community resilience and to continue to improve our response to emergencies. As others have mentioned, I want to add my own thanks to our first responders from a vast array of services that put themselves at risk to ensure the safety of others. The impact of the efforts from local authorities in all emergency services and volunteers cannot be understated. Both Karen Adam and Gillian Martin gave particularly warm tributes to the community spirit and their constituency, which I would echo. Storm Arwin brought with it a rare red weather warning, and the damage was extreme. Unusial wind patterns from the north made mitigations in our built environment less able to cope and, particularly, impacted on trees that do not usually have to sustain winds from that direction. That has resulted in levels of devastation, which I think continues, as many members have mentioned, to surprise and shock people across Scotland when they come into contact with it. However, our immediate thoughts on the aftermath of these storms, three souls, were lost during that storm, and our thoughts are with their loved ones. The broader impact in Scotland was that 80,000 homes were without power, and our energy infrastructure simply could not cope. Many of those people were within my region of the north-east and with Aberdeenshire bearing the brunt of the impact. For too many, the response was unacceptably slow, and I think that there is a broad agreement across the chamber on that fact. Miscommunication throughout the following days became deeply frustrating. Mark Ruskell echo his comments on the issue about expectation management from the power companies. One of the greatest frustrations when people were trying to cope with the situation and plan the days ahead to make sure that they had enough food and fuel to cope and that there were great mistakes made in that regard. On 8 December, almost two weeks after the storm Arwyn and following Storm Barra, which came just after it, I raised an urgent question in this chamber because 600 homes and businesses were still without power as winter approached. I think that that is a scale of the longevity of the problem, which I hope that the current reviews will continue to deal with. The Parliament was rightly told by the Government that the response would be reviewed, and the lessons would be learned to improve how those events are reacted to in the future. We have heard some about those that were reviewed tonight. Unfortunately, we did not have to wait long for resilience teams to be needed again. As Storm Scorry and Malik hit last weekend, we can leave 118,000 homes without power in Scotland and claiming two lives across the UK. I just want to focus on the realisation that we are going to have to deal with more of those events in the future and that we have to act now to make sure that we can cope with them. Science tells us that we are to experience more extreme weather events than we have in the past. There will be more of them. They will be closer together and they will be of a bigger scale than we are used to. We talk about mitigation in terms of climate change, and this is one of the areas that we have to make sure that we have adaptation as well, that we adapt our environment and that we begin to cope with it. Colin Smyth touched on the issues of infrastructure in his constituency, and the fact that we have to make sure is that the Scottish Government is already doing it, but more resource will have to be committed to storm defence, in particular footbridges and the like. I think that we have to start the conversation about the large-scale infrastructure investments that are needed around the grid and energy supply, such as the undergrounding of power infrastructure, both in future expansion but also in the existing network. I do not underestimate the size of that undertaking. I do not think that any of us should, but if we are dealing with the reality of climate change in these extreme weather events, we have to recognise that we will have to feature more prominently in our scenario planning for how we go ahead in those. I hope that the First Minister might reflect on those matters in his summing-up. I thank Evelyn Tweed for raising that on behalf of her constituents and for all of us who have had constituents who have had to deal with such severe problems in recent months. Thank you, Presiding Officer. May I begin by congratulating Evelyn Tweed on securing this important debate and providing the opportunities that Mr Marra has just said for members across the country to reflect on the implications of the very challenging instances of weather around Storm Arburn, Storm Barra, Storm Malik and Storm Corrie that we have now had to face. Evelyn Tweed is absolutely correct in her motion and in her comments tonight to pay tribute to the significant contribution that has been made to the resilience effort by countless communities and community organisations, and I will come on to say a little bit more about that in the course of my remarks. As members have indicated, in the aftermath of Storm Arwin, the Government undertook to review the experience of the handling of Storm Arwin. That review was carried out expeditiously by the Government's resilience division and the report that was published last week. It is a comprehensive report that contains a number of recommendations about how we need to address and improve the resilience effort that is put in place. None of that should in any way detract from the enormous efforts that were put in by a range of different organisations, staff from the power companies who I saw working in atrocious conditions to try to restore supply in very complex circumstances when I visited the north-east of Scotland in Gillian Martin's constituency in the aftermath of Storm Arwin, nor should it detract from the efforts of local resilience partnerships and volunteer groups who put in such an effort to try to improve the situation. However, in all of those instances, we have to be candid enough to reflect on performance and to identify how that can be improved. One of the points that I would reflect on, having spent most of my weekend involved in calls and discussions in relation to Storm Malik and Storm Corrie, is that the pace of the delivery of the—two important factors changed, I think, about the handling of Storm Malik and Storm Corrie compared to Storm Arwin. The first is that the identification and recognition of the scale of the challenge was identified earlier by the power companies to resilience partners. We were clearer earlier in the handling of Storm Malik and Storm Corrie that we had a very significant challenge to overcome in the restoration of power supply. In broad headline messaging to members of the public, it has been clearer to members of the public that they may be off supply for a longer period than was clear in Storm Arwin. That does not help anybody if they are off power, but it allows people to make alternative arrangements and it also commits the power companies to making alternative arrangements for those individuals to support them. The second difference as a result of that notification is that the local resilience operation that has been put in place has been available on a more timious basis than was the case in Storm Arwin. The welfare support, the availability of hot and warm food, the access to leisure centres for phone charging and for showering purposes and just simply for a place to get warm, has been more readily available more quickly in Storm Malik and Corrie than was the case in Storm Arwin. Those are two areas where I would say that the swift review of Storm Arwin has helped us to improve the delivery of a resilience operation to members of the public in the course of the last few days. Having said that, there are important additional areas where we need to continue to build on the very strong foundations that we have for resilience within Scotland. We have well-established and tested resilience arrangements, but we must constantly improve those arrangements because of the nature of the challenges that we are likely to face. Members are right to highlight the fact that there will be crucial tests thrown at us by the weather and the changes in the weather systems that are now becoming all too familiar. In the course of her comments and in her motion, Evelyn Tweed made particular reference to the role of volunteers, and particularly to the Kilin mountain rescue team, to the Trossach search and rescue team and to the British Red Cross. I reiterate those thanks to those organisations, and to the many other voluntary organisations, Gillian Martin and Karen Adam, also referenced those organisations within their constituencies in the northeast of Scotland. Those organisations are making a huge contribution to resolving the difficulties faced by individuals. However, there is an important issue that Colin Smyth raised, which is one that I discussed yesterday with the Scottish Resilience Partnership, which is about the necessity of their being capacity within communities to be able to contribute to the resilience efforts. In some communities that exist today, and it does phenomenally well, it is not quite as mature in other communities. I am interested in the suggestion that Colin Smyth has made about an eighth duty in relation to the formalisation, perhaps, of the role of community capacity building, but in saying that, I acknowledge the importance of that being adequately supported and created to make sure that it can be effective in meeting the needs of individuals in their communities. Lastly, there is a significant issue in the evidence that has talked extensively about this in relation to the work of the power companies. There are power company staff who currently are working extremely hard in very cold and challenging conditions to restore supplies to people affected by Storm Malick and Storm Corrie. I am advised before I came into the chamber tonight that Scottish Power has restored all supplies. SSEN is optimistic that they will get very, very close to the restoration of full supply by the end of this evening, but it may well be a very late evening before that is restored. I thank those members of staff for all that they are doing, for all the communication that is under way. Clarity of communication is essential in all those circumstances to alert people to the challenges that are likely to be faced, but it is important that there is also an acknowledgement that our network has to be resilient to meet those challenges. Mr Smith again makes fair points to Mr Marra about the need to make the network more resilient. We lost power lines because of the degree of overhead cables that we have, and that is an issue that is going to have to be resolved by off-gem and in dialogue with the power companies. I am grateful to Evan Tweed for providing this opportunity for us to reflect on what has been a very stormy period in Scottish weather in very challenging circumstances. A huge amount of community effort and a huge amount of local resilience partnership and a huge amount of power company effort has gone into addressing those challenges, but I want to assure Parliament of the Government's determination to lead a process of constant improvement to ensure that we are building on the strong foundations for resilience that we have and that most of all we are acting to remedy the challenges that members of the public face and to do that as quickly and as effectively as we possibly can do. Thank you, Deputy First Minister, and that concludes the debate, and I close this meeting.