 The next item of business is a statement by Angela Constance on response to storm Babette. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on cabinet secretary Angela Constance. I am very grateful for the opportunity to update Parliament on the exceptional weather Scotland experienced last week as a consequence of storm Babette. I would like to begin by expressing condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives due to the extreme conditions caused by the storm. I also want to express my sympathy for those whose homes and businesses have been damaged by the extensive flooding. I would like to thank and pay tribute to the local and national authorities, volunteers, the emergency services and members of the public themselves for all of their hard work and efforts in these extremely challenging conditions. I would also like to highlight the very impressive community response to offer support to all those affected by the floods. Angus Council received hundreds of offers of alternative accommodation for those who were forced to evacuate their homes. This is a testament to the strong community networks in Scotland who are there to support one another. On Thursday, 19 October, the Met Office took the serious step of issuing a red weather warning of threat of life. The Met Office issued these warnings when dangerous weather is expected with substantial disruption and the possibility of widespread damage to property and infrastructure. Red weather warnings are extremely rare and extremely serious. The Met Office's national climate information centre has calculated that, on 19 October 2023, was provisionally the wettest day for the county of Angus in a series from 1891. On 7 October 2023 was the sixth wettest day in that series. Those have been exceptional rainfall amounts across the Angus area. Serious impacts were felt across Scotland but were felt most keenly along the north and south-esk, including Brecon, where the flood protection scheme unfortunately overtopped and was subsequently breached. Nonetheless, the flood protection scheme still delayed the impact and provided valuable time to prepare for evacuation. Nearly 350 properties in Brecon were evacuated on Thursday afternoon. Angus Council and SIPA are assessing the extent of the damage to the Brecon flood protection scheme. However, we know that the flooding has also had an impact on communities and parts of Aberdeenshire, Tayside and Dundee. The process of assessing the full amount of damage caused by storm babet will take time. There will be a long road to recovery, but the Scottish Government will support our partners to ensure that communities can recover as quickly as possible. The Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance agreed the activation of the Bellwyn scheme on Tuesday 24 October. The Bellwyn scheme exists to give special financial assistance to councils who face an undue financial burden as a result of large-scale emergencies. To date, three local authorities have notified the Scottish Government of a potential claim relating to the storm. The Scottish Government stands ready to support local authorities to carry out the immediate work that is required. We also recognise that communities and home owners will be seeking to make vital repairs to secure their homes. Crisis grants are available through the Scottish Welfare Fund to families and people in Scotland who are on low incomes and have been hit by a crisis such as a flood and people can apply for a grant through their local authorities. The Scottish Government has funded the Scottish Flood Forum since 2009 to work with communities to build flood resilience and support those affected by flooding. This forum, which offers free advice and information on issues such as recovery from flooding, is working with communities that were affected by storm ba bet. We are facing a climate crisis and, although no single storm event can be solely attributed to climate change, events such as storm ba bet are becoming more frequent, more intense and more destructive due to the changing climate. Storm ba bet reinforces the need to think strategically about Scotland's future and what we need to do to adapt to our changing climate. The Scottish Government supports local authorities to deliver actions that protect our communities and businesses. We have committed an additional £150 million over the course of this Parliament on top of the £42 million that is provided annually to councils to increase flood resilience through the general capital grant. Flood protection schemes are one important tool to help our communities to become more flood resilient and this year, three new flood protection schemes have been completed in Cullin, Lockheeside, Arbroath and Stonehaven. The infrastructure is a crucial part of our flood resilience approach, but it is not the only tool available to us. We are taking action across agriculture, transport, forestry, water industry and planning sectors, integrating flood resilience measures into policies to deliver multiple benefits. The agri-environment climate scheme promotes land management practices, which protect and enhance Scotland's natural heritage, manage flood risk and adapt to climate change. To date, £285 million has been committed to over 3,000 businesses. Transport Scotland is spending more than £2 million a year on drainage improvement schemes and a watercourse realignment scheme to enhance the flood resilience of Scotland's road network. Transport Scotland estimates that the capacity of woodlands to store water and slow down run-off to downstream communities is worth almost £100 million a year to the Scottish economy. Its new woodland for riparian benefits forestry grant scheme opened in July 2023, offering grant support for woodland creation near rivers. Around 175,000 hectares of land has been identified for woodland planting, all with the potential to slow the flow of flooding among numerous other benefits. To future proof our developments against climate change, the national planning framework 4 aims to strengthen flood resilience by making it much harder to build in areas of risk of flooding by supporting the protection and management of our important natural assets in a sustainable, regenerative way and by promoting the use of natural flood management and blue-green infrastructure. However, despite all the good work to date by Scottish Government and responsible authorities, our changing climate means that flooding impacts are still on the increase. We recognise that our current approach to delivering flood management actions is not keeping pace with that. Indeed, events at the weekend are a reminder that climate change is not a far-off distant threat. It is a crisis that is here and now. We also know that our climate will continue to change for many years to come. The decisions that we make today have to stand the test of time. In January, we will start consulting on a new national adaption plan. We have a lot to gain by understanding Scotland as well, positioned to continuing to thrive in the face of changing global climate. This plan will set out the tools that are available to ensure that our lives and livelihoods are adapting well to the impacts of climate change. Fundamental to our approach to climate adaption is responding to the increasing impacts of flooding, Scotland's biggest climate adaption challenge and one that is set to become more difficult in the years to come. Meeting this challenge will require a team Scotland approach involving a broad range of delivery partners to ensure that our places and communities can continue to thrive in the face of a climate emergency. Our new national flood resilience strategy will form an integral part of shaping a climate resilience Scotland. The strategy will look ahead through to 2045 and beyond and capture the big issues that need to be addressed if we are to transition towards a sustainable level of flood resilience in our changing climate. The impacts in Breakin, despite having flood protection built to a high standard, illustrate that we cannot always protect our communities from all flood impacts 100 per cent of the time and that we should be considering all actions that can be implemented to increase flood resilience. This has been, Presiding Officer, an exceptionally challenging few days. We should not underestimate the impacts severe weather events have on our families and our communities. It is critical that we take action to mitigate the impact of future events and that the Scottish Government will continue to do so. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next night of business. It would be helpful if those members who would wish to ask a question could please play us and request a speak button now, and I call Tess White. Cabinet Secretary, I would like to associate with the tributes to the people who tragically lost their lives in Storm Babette. I pay tribute too to the front line responders, emergency services, individuals and businesses and community organisations who have worked tirelessly to support the affected communities. From River Street in Breakin to the north-east caravan park in St Cyrus, schools of people are homeless, with little prospect of return in the coming months. Like so many others across the north-east, my own home in the merns has been badly damaged by the severity of the storm. Families are living in air, BNBs and on the goodwill of others. The flood defence scheme in Angus that cost £16 million in 2016 was all but swept away in a matter of hours. Infrastructure needs to be repaired and significant changes made in the vicinity of South-Esc. There are massive issues with coastal erosion and flood damage to farms in Montrose. These need to be addressed. The bill could run into millions of pounds. My three questions to the Cabinet Secretary, if I may, is does the Cabinet Secretary believe the funds available through the bellwind scheme will touch the sides of this crisis? Two, how will the Scottish Government work with insurance firms to help residents hit by flooding as Humza Yousaf has committed to do? Three, what support is available to Angus Council to rehome those who are not returning to River Street for months? I am well aware that Ms White will be, through her own personal experience, aware of the damage and the trauma and how frightening it is to be a victim of flooding and the dangers of rapidly rising water. Like her, we should always pay tribute to those who have lost their lives. There have been three lives lost in Scotland and there are reports of four lives lost elsewhere in the UK. Of course, people will have protections under homelessness legislation, and the Scottish Government and our housing colleagues will continue to support Angus Council with regard to that. In terms of the flood defence scheme, it is important to recognise that it was built to a very high standard. It has in the past did the job that it was designed to do. On this occasion it did not, but it is worth remembering that it did delay the deluge and it did allow valuable time for an evacuation. Nonetheless, there needs to be an assessment to what those repair costs will be. As I said in my statement, the bell 1 scheme is now operational. There will need to be an assessment of the damage at local level and there will be sympathetic discussions between the Scottish Government and the local areas. I can confirm that the Scottish Government has indeed been in touch with the British Association of Insurers because we need a timious and sympathetic response to those in need. We will continue to engage very closely with our colleagues in Angus. I thank the minister for advance notice of her statement. Scottish Labour also sends our condolences to the families who have lost a loved one. Those floods have had a devastating impact on people's homes, businesses and farming communities. I also thank the emergency services and the communities for coming together to support people in their time of need. I welcome the fact that the bell 1 scheme has been activated to support local authorities given the scale of the damage caused. However, lessons must be urgently learned. The briefing scheme was only built seven years ago and was designed to deal with a one in two hundred years incident. We urgently need to understand why it failed to protect the communities that it was designed to serve. That is critical in terms of new infrastructure being planned. What is the timescale for publishing that analysis on why the damage was so severe? What work has been done to review existing and planned infrastructure on flood prevention? What will be done to accelerate flood resilience to support the communities, businesses and farmers? Finally, I agree that the climate crisis will lead to more extreme and unpredictable weather. Will the minister say how we will make sure that all our transport infrastructure, road and rail, is resilient and equipped to deal with the more extreme weather that we will face? There is a lot on Ms Boyack's question, and if I do not respond to all her points, I am happy to respond in further detail or to ask some of my colleagues to do that. The reason that the damage was so severe was because the weather was so severe that we had two storms within two weeks, and in two days there was two months' worth of rainfall. The point that she raises about learning the lessons that I absolutely concur with, because the Breachan scheme was a scheme in which the Scottish Government contributed 80 per cent of the cost. Those engineering projects are a vital part, but they are only one part of an overall plan. We need to have that learning so that, going forward, we can assess where those engineering projects will be most beneficial and where they can be targeted at the areas of most risk. In short, the engineering solutions are only one part of the solution, and I hope that I have managed to speak to that in my statement. Her points about farmers are very important. Our farmers and food producers are at the front line of climate change and the climate emergency. I appeal to retailers and supermarkets to be very responsive and respectful and where possible sympathetic to the needs of farmers and food producers. There is a range of support that is available in terms of the agricultural benevolent fund, the agri-environment climate scheme, but the member also touched upon the importance of our national flood resilience strategy, which needs to capture all the actions that we must pursue. During the recent extreme weather events that had significant effects in my constituency, including the tragic death of my constituent Wendy Taylor, a number of flooding problems were thankfully avoided by the outstanding efforts and intervention of local volunteer resilience groups, who have tried and tested the experience of managing those situations, such as in Aberfeldy and Eileth, to name just two, who worked in collaboration with public sector responders. Will the Government commit to building into future resilience plans the vital role that volunteer-based organisations can play in supporting communities to deal with the awful effects of flooding and take practical steps to offer the necessary support to make that happen? The short answer is yes, and I echo the member's comments, thanks and pay tribute to the resilient volunteers in his constituency and across the northeast who have been, as he says, outstanding. Voluntary and community sector organisations are valued participants alongside statutory response organisations in our resilient structures and the processes in planning, responding and also in recovery from emergencies. To assist them, the Scottish Government emergency planning portal ready.scotland has been updated to include a new section designed to support and help community groups, voluntary sector partners and the public to understand how they can participate in an effective and joined-up response to emergencies. I can also advise that my resilience officials have been running a series of online community resilience workshops that have been joined to date by 240 participants. We will continue to work with voluntary and community sectors and, in particular, local authorities who have the lead role in engaging with local communities to understand their training needs and provide additional resources if required. It is vital that the public follows official guidance, particularly with regard to a red weather warning—the highest level of alert—to help to preserve life and aid the emergency services. Many stakeholders worked hard to communicate those messages to support residents and businesses to take the right actions. Can the cabinet secretary outline what additional steps the Scottish Government is considering to help local authorities, emergency services and others to reinforce communication channels for future incidents? Mr Golden raises an excellent point. It is a fundamental point because this was the first red alert that this country has had since 2015, since the storm desmond. We need communication at each and every level. I would contend that the communication at a national level was effective and where support was needed, I know that some of the emergency services supplemented communication support and communications officer support to local authorities where that was needed and requested. That is one of the benefits of having a resilient structure that operates at both a local, regional and national level, where we can all chip in and support each other and direct that support where it is required. However, it is the point that Ms Boyack raised about important learning. One of the things that I am particularly interested in is that there are instances of people not following advice. We need to look in more detail about what are the barriers to people following advice and how do we increase the prospects of people following advice not just through our many communications channel but also about who and how communicates messages that can ultimately be very destabilised and frightening. It is an excellent point and it is one that I will definitely be pursuing. I thank the cabinet secretary for her statement and for paying tribute to those who went above and beyond during these storms. As a representative of the north-east, I know that the harsh impact that extreme weather events such as Babette have on the energy and food security of rural communities. With each extreme weather event, we often see deliveries of goods delayed and shelves in supermarkets remaining empty. Will the Scottish Government commit to ensuring that the energy and food security of rural communities, like mine of Bampshire and Bucking Coast, are built into their future resilience plans and to ensure that power cuts are minimised and that shelves are restocked in good time? We know that extreme weather events can be extremely disruptive to supermarket operations. Empty shelves can sometimes represent sensible behaviours from citizens who have been acknowledged in weather warnings and are preparing themselves for disruption. The wellbeing of people in an emergency has to be that key and central part of resilience planning. Access to food is one element of that and we will continue to seek opportunities to support and improve that. Food features significantly as an issue in the Scottish Government resilience meetings. We have well established routes and relationships with key stakeholders, including supermarkets, to monitor supplies and the potential issues. Over the years, we have learned a lot about managing supplies, not least through the Covid pandemic. While the energy sector is reserved to the UK, we work very closely with the UK Government and the energy network operators. I have to say that, while there were power outages and substantial disruptions, the energy companies in the energy sector worked very hard to ensure that more than 30,000 households were reconnected as quickly as possible. I would like to offer my condolences to everyone who has lost loved ones and who has been affected by the devastating impact of storm Babette. Extreme weather events, like last week's storm, will only become more frequent and more severe and will continue to mourn victims of climate change around the world unless we act. However, the Scottish Government has already admitted to breaching its statutory climate duties and has already missed four of its last five emissions targets. Can the minister assure my constituents in the north-east region that her Government will meet its next emissions reduction target? My understanding is that it is this Parliament that has a duty to work together to ensure that we as a nation do everything possible to meet our pivotal climate change targets. The Government will always aim high, and I am sure that this Parliament will always hold us to account. However, I agree with the member that this storm and, indeed, other frequent storms emphasise once again that climate change is not some distant future event. It is with us here and now. In terms of our crucial future actions, the consultation that will be undertaken on the national adaption plan will be crucially important, as well as the national flood resilience strategy that will be published next year. Crucially, it is as all working together, not just across Government but across this Parliament and across this nation. My condolences to the families and friends of those who died in Storm Babette. In my constituency areas such as Aberfoil and Calender regularly flood, discussions on large-scale flood defence schemes have been on-going for some time. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what support is available to residents and business owners to help to reduce the risk of damage to their properties, while they await progress on flood defence schemes? The responsibility for the development and delivery of flood protection schemes rests with individual local authorities who are best placed to respond to those local resilient needs. Nonetheless, in terms of the support that the Scottish Government continues to fund the Scottish Flood Forum that we have done since 2009, that includes £220,000 of support for this financial year. The purpose of that investment is to enable the forum to work with communities to build resilience and to support those who have been affected by flooding. As I mentioned in my statement, it provides invaluable advice on property flood resilience and encourages families and businesses to prepare a flood emergency plan and to have a flood kit prepared for communities to set up flood resilience groups. For those who have experienced flooding, they can also get individual advice and information. Some of that is in and around managing insurance claims as well as dealing with the practical impacts. I also referred in my statement that the Scottish Welfare Fund is available with the crisis grant scheme for those who are on a low income, and that can be accessed via local authorities. I advise the chamber that I have five more members who wish to ask a question in order to get everybody in, which I would like to do. I will need much shorter answers, cabinet secretary, with respect, and short questions as well, please. Thankfully, we have avoided deaths in North East Fife, but I have witnessed the distress caused by flooding just in recent weeks in places such as Frookie Mill. I have been working with farmers for some time now about the climate extremes in terms of drought but also flooding, and I know the schemes that the minister set out in her statement. I urge her to explore whether those schemes are flexible enough to cover both flooding and drought on things such as reservoirs, which can help for the future. I will indeed speak to my colleague Ms Gougeon to ensure that our schemes are as flexible as possible. I know that Mary Gougeon has been engaged with the sector, with the farming community and food providers in terms of a range of round tables, but the point that he makes about that is not just flooding. It is also about water scarcity as well as a point that is well made. I pay tribute to all the responders and communities involved in Storm Babette and extend my deepest sympathies to the families of those who lost their lives. Given the harrowing scenes that emerged of the extensive damage that Storm Babette caused to people's homes, what initial discussions have taken place with the Association of British Insurers that I understand have deployed extra resources into contact centres and on the ground in order to assist people, both those affected now, but also those who might be affected in the future? The Association of British Insurers has been in on-going discussions with Scottish Government resilience and flooding officials and have set out a range of measures that the insurance industry has taken to support affected communities as quickly and sympathetically as possible. Those include deploying staff to flood-hit areas and preparing to make emergency payments to flooded households. They are also working with the Scottish Flood Forum, which is an independent Scottish Government-funded charity, to produce an advice document for the public called, Responding to Floods, what you need to know that is available on the ABI website. The ABI has also, I believe, proactively shared materials with MPs and MSPs in affected areas. Potato crops were flooded, livestock washed away and newly sown fields destroyed, farmers have been left to carry the can or rely on support from RS ABI or Forage Aid. Will the Scottish Government commit to supporting farmers wherever they can in whatever way they can and include them, food producers and suppliers in a stone-bibet resilience review, to ensure that their losses are considered and that food supply chains will be protected in the future? I would indeed like to reassure Ms Hamilton that Ms Gougeon will be taking forward a range of discussions. As I intimated earlier, our farmers very much are on the front line of the climate change and climate challenge that we face. I know that Ms Gougeon is in regular contact with NFUS President Martin Kennedy and that she will continue a programme of engagement, and it is right that those voices and the needs of those who are managing their land are heard, as we all need to work together to minimise the impact of what will certainly be more frequent with other events. I, too, send my heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives, and I pay tribute to all those involved in the response, particularly in Angus and Mann's. Thank you for providing rescue, support, supplies, welfare checks and so much more. The cabinet secretary will know that we must consider what residents and businesses need now, but also longer-term mitigations, defences and adaptations. Can she say more about how we can support communities to become more resilient over and above the physical defences and infrastructure that we know we need? We will continue to work with the voluntary and community sector and, in particular, local authorities, who, as I said earlier, have that lead role in engaging with local communities to understand the needs and to provide additional resources if required. Doing what we all can to prepare our homes, our families and our communities for the disruption that can come from emergencies can make a huge difference. I want to once again point to the Government's ready.scot website, where there is plenty advice for the public on how to be as prepared as possible. The other imperative lesson that we have learned in recent times is that fludden does not just occur in areas that have a history of fludden, and there is an exercise to undertake to raise awareness that fludden can indeed affect any individual or any community at any potential time. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I apologise to the member that I was unable to squeeze in. That concludes the ministerial statement. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business to allow front bench teams to change positions should be wished. Thank you.