Storm Arwen

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend will accept that we are in an extreme situation. He will also know that I have spoken to Mr Alistair Phillips-Davies, who is the head of SSE. He and I and colleagues in the Scottish Government are apprised of the situation. Generators are being distributed that can take up the slack when important power infrastructure is down, but it is an ongoing situation and I would be happy to engage with my hon. Friend in the next few hours.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. This storm was of incredible strength when it hit us on Friday night, with the north-eastern parts of Scotland and England being especially in the full face of the gale. SSE’s storm models predicted between 60 and 100 high-voltage faults. In fact, it has sustained more than 500 high-voltage faults, with more than 1,000 instances of damage to its network. Sustained winds with gusts in excess of 90 mph were, unusually, from the north-east, affecting trees that do not normally have to yield to those winds. It has resulted in colossal tree damage to the network.

I wish to pay tribute to the fortitude and resolve of the many people facing severe hardship on day five without power, some of whom will not get it back today or tomorrow. It is a tremendous disruption to how we live today, and they are to be in our thoughts at this very challenging time for them. Indeed, as of 9 pm last night, 9,500 customers remained cut off from their supply, including 5,700 in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, 1,500 in Moray, 1,400 in my Angus constituency and 570 in Perthshire. This enduring lack of power would test anyone’s resolve, yet it is telling that people remain mindful of the extraordinary efforts of the engineers and support staff of SSE and its industry partners to restore supplies, and power has been restored to more than 118,000 customers. The UK Government have, I understand, said that they are

“on standby to provide further assistance to the Scottish Government”,

but like the Deputy First Minister in Scotland, I am a little sceptical as to what that is. I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate on what that assistance would be. If it is financial assistance, is it new money or recycled money?

I was in touch with SSE again this morning, and it has assured me that it has engineers from across its network working in the north-east to repair supplies and also engineers from other networks sharing distribution network operator resources. That enormous recovery effort is hampered by the prolonged scale of the damage, which is compounded by the locations of the damage and the types of equipment that have been damaged. I place on record my thanks to the engineers working in all weathers to restore power supplies to Angus, to the council and to other members of the local resilience partnership who have done so much to help to restore supplies and in humanitarian welfare provision.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s remarks and pay tribute, as he does, not only to the fortitude of many of his constituents and other people in Scotland, but to the tireless efforts of the engineers, the voluntary staff and the DNO in this instance, SSE, in trying to deal with an unprecedented situation, as he recognised. He was right to point out that it was not only the high velocity but the direction of the winds that posed a huge challenge.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I speak to counterparts across the border in the devolved Administration frequently; in fact, I was on a panel with the Cabinet Secretary yesterday and it is something that we are talking about all the time. We have not specified the amount of money, if there will be any. I do not think we have reached that conversation, but we are in constant dialogue with his colleagues in Holyrood.