Seòmar agus comataidhean

To be subject to flooding, at either your home or business, is horrible and heartbreaking. The Borders, in past times dependent on the rivers and waterways to power the mills, has seen many parts of its communities flooded. I recall several incidents in my early days here when I visited homes in Hawick, Selkirk and Stow and businesses in Gala where all people’s worldly goods were heaped outside in a sodden pile, the floors and cupboards of homes were warped by the floodwater and stock was damaged beyond recovery. What images on the news cannot tell you about is the stench that quickly follows the receding waters and, in summer, the invasions of flies.

The Borders learned the hard way how to deal with that, how to co-ordinate responses and what preventative measures could be taken, including simple measures such as accessing sandbags as well as electronic monitoring of waterways through sensors, particularly upstream, linking the data directly to fire and rescue as an early warning, and, more fundamentally, dealing with water flow upstream.

Today of course, the fall-out that we reap from global warming adds pressures to communities living by waterways in particular, where more are vulnerable as flood risk areas spread. In an area whose economy was, historically, founded on the wool and weaving mills where machines turned through the power of the river, the risk from rivers in spate remains, despite the fact that many of the mills have long gone.

However, I am impressed with the systems that Scottish Borders Council has put in place, supplemented with Scottish Government funding for flood prevention schemes. Therefore, I consider that, in the Borders, where people have developed skills and responses over decades, learning from bitter experience and with excellent inter-agency emergency communication, there is no need for an additional bureaucratic layer. The council already has a functioning multi-agency task force. Category 1 responders in the Borders include the council, the police, the fire service, the Scottish Ambulance Service, health boards and integration joint boards.

There are several phases to an emergency. There is prevention—I will speak about that later—and preparation with pre-warning. Much has improved these days, with local detail forecasts through the Met Office, which enable preparations such as providing places where people can access sandbags, opening rest centres or simply putting staff on standby in readiness to respond.

There is also recovery. Floodwaters subside. Help and assistance have to be provided to communities to get people back into their homes and businesses, clear up debris and signpost residents to funding and other support. Care for people is key in the event that floods manage to invade private and commercial properties. In preparation for that, emergency accommodation must be on standby. People must be prepared to provide food, water and other necessities.

There is transport. We need to utilise the voluntary sector, such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and to provide financial and other assistance.

Much of that is already in place in the Scottish Borders, where we have learned from bitter experience over the decades. Several flood protection projects have been completed or are planned for towns across the Borders. They include, in my constituency, the Galashiels flood prevention scheme, which was completed in 2014. Next on the list is Peebles. Innerleithen, Broughton and Earlston are currently having flood studies undertaken in order to gain an understanding of the flood mechanisms and appraise mitigation options.

Upstream from Peebles, as Willie Rennie mentioned, the Eddleston Water project, which I have visited several times, is already functioning. The Eddleston Water, which is a tributary of the Tweed, has been reshaped to make its route wind more, with the planting of suitable vegetation at the water’s edge, all to slow the water flow downstream into Peebles and to protect, in particular, the vulnerable Tweed Green, which is right at the banks of the Tweed.

To date, much has been successful. I hope not to tempt the rain gods but, on Bank Street in Galashiels, where shops and businesses were once flooded when the tributaries upstream burst their banks and flooded down the brae past the volunteer hall, such flooding has been prevented through interventions and early warning alerts to agencies to unblock any blockages and, therefore, divert a build-up of water. Low-lying parts of Stow used to be flooded by Gala water, but its course and depth have also been altered and, so far, all that has flooded is the park, which protects all properties and businesses round about.

Those are just some examples of places where I have visited flooded properties in the past and seen remedies that work. There has been much progress with local government taking the lead, supported by the Scottish Government and SEPA. With funding and other national mechanisms for emergencies, such as COBRA and the Scottish resilience room, I do not see a need for more bureaucracy. What works in the Scottish Borders could work elsewhere.

Thank you, Presiding Officer—I will be brief. I invite the minister to meet, as I have, with the Dementia Friendly Tweeddale group to learn of its work in supporting carers and those with dementia to continue to enjoy life and their activities after diagnosis, and even add more.

Under the Scottish Government’s vaccination programme, I recently had the Covid and the flu vaccines at a very busy, efficient and, indeed, friendly vaccine centre. However, that is anecdotal. Will the First Minister please provide an update on vaccination take-up?

Thank you, convener. I promise that I will not give evidence, although it is terribly tempting to do so. I shall have my day.

I want to challenge the minister on one or two things—you knew that I would. You said that the existing code of practice is functioning. If that code is effective, how is it that so many people are still buying online and puppy factory farms are still very successful?

Do you accept that my intention with the bill is to try to tackle the very supply that you have named through education? Do you accept that that is what the bill is about? If we can educate people through provisions such as those in section 2, we will at least have a better go at preventing the misery that some puppies go through than by trying to do it by catching those individuals at the other end of the process.

Codes of practice are not primary legislation, but, by putting such a code in primary legislation, you can bed it into the public conscience that it is, to put it in common parlance, the law, whereas people do not see codes of practice as the law. Do you accept that?

Thank you, convener. That is very kind. Do you accept, minister, that I have, from the previous bill that I proposed but did not proceed with because of the pressures of Covid, moved from providing for a mandatory regulatory scheme to making it a discretionary chance for the Government to introduce it? That is explained in the explanatory notes. With current inflationary pressures and everything else, I understand that we do not want to burden national or local government, so the scheme is discretionary.

I will move on. I accept that you can have a register, but the bill tries to specify some things in that register. Section 8(3) states:

“The Scottish Ministers may by regulations make provision”.

It is fairly flexible for Government and leaves it in the current context.

I accept the data protection issues, and have thought about all that. The wording of section 8(4)(g) is:

“provision for or in connection with public or other access to registration information”.

Do you accept that the Government has far more resources at hand than I have to consider the legal requirements for a register to give data protection cover, if I can put it in that way, to the transferrer and the transferee?

The only reason that I raised it, convener, is because the minister raised it.

Just to go back to compliance, this is, as we all know, very discretionary—it is not mandatory. For example, section 10(1) says:

“The Scottish Ministers may by regulations make provision for or in connection with securing compliance with regulations”.

Also, you are worried about people inadvertently ending up being caught up in some proceedings, given a fine or something, but section 10(2)(b) recommends that

“That provision may in particular include ... provision for the enforcement other than by way of proceedings for an offence of any provision of the regulations”.

Does the minister accept that, if all that was given was a warning to somebody that they should have had a puppy registered, it could leave things open for somebody masquerading as an innocent person who has been caught out who is actually either being used by criminal gangs or part of a criminal gang?

We must accept that there are options other than by way of proceedings. As I have said, the regulations are for the Government—they are just guidance for it.