Chamber and committees

I think that Liam Kerr might have some further questions on a slightly different subject, but before we come to those, I have a question for Jo Green on this subject. Sewage discharge is an interesting issue. Did SEPA lose all its records of every sewage discharge into a watercourse in Scotland? It collected that data, so do you have those records? If so, can you publish them, and do you monitor them?

That is the end of our questions. I thank the witnesses for taking part. In particular, I thank Mark Roberts for taking part in both panels. I thank Jim Martin and Neil Langhorn for coming along for this item.

We will produce a short report for the Parliament, which will then consider a motion to approve the strategic plan.

That concludes the public part of our meeting.

Good morning and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2022 of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee.

I am not seeing any feed on the screens. Can we rectify that, please, before we go any further?

The first item on the agenda is consideration of whether to take in private agenda items 4 and 5, on consideration of the evidence that we will hear. Do we agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I think that Liam Kerr has supplementary questions on the first part of that.

I will bring in Mark Roberts, because he partially answered that question before.

Now I am feeling my age.

I have two further questions to follow up on that. You lost a significant amount of data, much of which I understand cannot be recovered. Is that delaying your ability as an agency to respond to requests for information in all the spheres in which you operate, or are you past that stage?

Is the agency responding to requests for information as quickly as you were doing prior to December 2020, or are you still behind?

That is fine. Thank you—I will take that.

There are some questions on changing weather and extreme weather conditions. How are SEPA and NatureScot monitoring and reacting to extreme weather conditions? We seem to get massive downfalls of rain, which overload every system and watercourse, and then periods of drought, as we had this summer. My understanding is that a lot of the restrictions on water abstraction were in place because, in some cases, waters were being transferred from one catchment to another, based on legislation from 1953. Will you very briefly explain to the committee whether the system of abstraction from watercourses is operating effectively, given the extreme weather conditions? Should we review the system to take into account extreme droughts? I will bring in John Kerr and then Jo Green.

I will call Mark Ruskell to ask a specific question in a minute and I will then call other members to ask about finance, but first I want to make abundantly clear what is clearly set out in my entry in the register of members’ interests: I farm in Speyside and have an interest in a fishery in the River Spey. My questions were more general rather than being specifically about the Spey, but I want to ensure that there is no dubiety or question about this and to make it clear that that is where my knowledge comes from.