Flooding Bill

Thank you presiding officer.

Liberal Democrats recognise that flooding represents a tangible danger to many areas in Scotland, and the renewed focus on flood management legislation is welcome, much so in the South of Scotland. Liberal Democrats are committed to the flooding legislation and see it as an opportunity to introduce a more sustainable and integrated approach to flood management in Scotland. As Liam McArthur said it is of course a process begun by Ross Finnie in the last session.

The current approach to flooding doesn't serve the public well and changing weather patterns will make the situation worse. Currently almost 100,000 Scottish homes and 7,000 businesses are vulnerable to inland and coastal flooding. Estimates of annual average damage from flooding are around £20 million - and this could rise by 115% by 2080. That economic cost should be the force behind a change that is needed to achieve a more sustainable approach to flooding.

Sustainable flood management offers a long term solution to flooding. There will, of course, still be a place for hard defences - sometimes there may be no alternative, but these hard engineering defences should be looked at along with soft engineering options.

Many villages and towns in Scotland are located on floodplains alongside rivers and the coast, which makes them vulnerable to flooding and certainly this is true of the South of Scotland. And even with these susceptible communities, soft engineering can reduce the need for building ever higher flood defences to protect these communities.

Adopting sustainable approaches to tackling flooding will clearly require the need for a strategic approach where the catchment is considered as a whole, the water environment and land use interests. This will require shared responsibility not only between authorities but also with other groups such as the rural community.

In the South of Scotland Hawick has long suffered from flooding. And toward the end of last year Tavish Scott and I visited the devastating effects of flooding in the Bowmont and Kale valleys near Kelso to see the huge disruption caused to roads, bridges, homes and businesses. Further to the south west, heavy flooding disrupted the Whitesands area of Dumfries just last week and more flooding is expected today after heavy overnight rain - a well known flooding area. The River Annan recently caused problems for people when it burst its banks.

So floods are disruptive. Therefore we need systems in place to deal with the flooding and beyond that, we need policies and strategies in place to reduce the effects of the changing climate.

But I'm concerned that flood risk management plans do not have to be in place until 2015, many local authorities are uncertain of their rights and responsibilities regarding flood management in the meantime. Whilst SEPA would inherit the responsibility of Scotland's national flood management under the Bill, its role would not be fully implemented until 2015 at the latest. In evidence to Committee, Scottish Government officials said they had'nt finalised any interim arrangements between now and then. This has led some local authorities to question their flood management remit in advance of SEPA taking full responsibility. Written evidence from the Government stated that local authorities and SEPA would 'need to source funding for the initial stages of the Bill's implementation to 2011 from existing spending review allocations', again reducing the incentive for councils to act responsibly in regards to flood management in the meantime.

I would also echo Jeremy Purvis's concerns about local authority funding.

The Bill requires SEPA and local authorities to assess whether or not natural features such as flood plains, woodlands, wetlands, etc could be incorporated into its flood risk management. However, once this assessment has been carried out, there is no obligation for them to actually incorporate natural defences into their plans, and the bill does not presume that these defences should be preferred over other methods. Committee stated that it was "not convinced" that the current wording of the bill would result in a "cultural shift in favour of considering natural flood management techniques". So the obvious question is how then can soft flood defences be encouraged over hard engineering options?

Finally, the committee recommended that government looks at the idea of investigating funding streams. In particular committee made the suggestion to look at using money from the SRDP to finance flood management and compensation to land managers and landowners in situations where the viability of their businesses may be affected by a flood protection scheme. I am wary of this recommendation - the SRDP is already heavily subscribed and over complicated as was discussed yesterday and I have concerns that such an added pressure would not be beneficial to either those already in receipt of agri environment assistance or those new applicants who would choose to use the SRDP for flood measures.

Presiding officer, the introduction of a Flooding Bill is welcome, but there are still areas needing clarification and I hope that as the Bill continues its passage through parliament, the final outcome will be a piece of legislation which builds on the good work of Ross Finnie so that truly sustainable flood management strategies which reduce the impact of flooding on Scotland's economy, people, species and habitats can be taken forward with the proper finance behind it.

Thank you.