Proof that work of Holyrood really CAN be dull as ditchwater

YESTERDAY, and almost certainly for the last time, three lonely politicians will meet in the Sir Alexander Fleming suite in our brutalist Scottish parliament.

They are Tory, Labour and Nationalist and for 18 months they have toiled, in the service of the Scottish people, as the Pow of Inchaffray Drainage Commission Bill Committee.

Their duties have been exacting and often dull. For the Pow of Inchaffray is not a character from Game of Thrones; nor a novel by Sir Walter Scott.

It is not even one of those archaically styled Scottish officials – the Lord Lyon King of Arms; the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer, or the Extractor of the Court of Session. The Pow dons no wig, nor struts about in a gorgeous tabard; it will never adorn a Palace of Holyroodhouse garden party.

The Pow of Inchaffray is a ditch – and a most important one, more than 800 years old and whose muddy history involves Augustinian monks, Robert the Bruce, William of Orange and some beavers that shouldn’t be there but, yet, vexingly are.

It’s a drainage channel meandering through Strathearn in eastern Perthshire, beginning at Methven Moss and flowing south-west to the River Earn.

The Pow, including its ten main tributaries, is almost 14 miles long, has historically been maintained by the Pow of Inchaffray Drainage Commission and is actually rather important because it drains 2,047 acres of land – the equivalent of 965 football pitches.

Many live on the land in question, such as residents of the Balgowan housing estate. Were the Pow not there – or if it were allowed to silt up – scary graphics furnished by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) attest that, given protracted serious rain, much of the area would soon be one substantial loch.

The rich local soil makes this ‘among the most fertile agricultural acreage in Scotland’, pant advocates of the Pow of Inchaffray. They further carol it is ‘vitally important that the Pow is maintained to prevent flooding in this area’.

Some quick history. The Pow was dug around 1200 by Augustinian canons amidst the construction of Inchaffray Abbey, which sat on an island in the middle of a very large bog.

THE ditch was an endeavour to drain it and, in 1314, the monks had a stroke of good fortune when their abbot – Maurice, chaplain to Robert the Bruce – turned up at Bannockburn to bless the Scottish troops, who then won. King Robert, understandably chuffed, ordered the extension of the Pow of Inchaffray, by way of reward.

But the monastery was swept away, as all others in Scotland, by the 1560 Reformation, and by the late 17th century, the Pow was choking and things around Inchaffray growing rather soggy.

The Scottish parliament in 1696 accordingly passed an ‘Act in favour of the Heritors adjacent to the pow of Inchaffray’, establishing commissioners to maintain the Pow and levy taxes from the landowners and householders who benefited from its drainage. This, in turn, was superseded by an 1846 Act of Parliament and – early last year – it was decided this needed serious updating.

This was a job nobody else wanted. Sepa insists the Pow of Inchaffray is not its responsibility. Perth and Kinross Council flatly denied the honour ‘at this time of austerity and reducing budgets’. Scottish Water didn’t even answer the commissioners’ first letter.

It has all come down to a Private Bill mothered by three MSPs – Tom Arthur (SNP), Alison Harris (Tory) and Mary Fee (Labour). The issues they have had to resolve are of genuine importance if you live on flat, floodable ground by the Pow of Inchaffray. Who benefits from the Pow? How should Drainage Commissioners be appointed? Should they be paid? How much money is needed to keep the Pow working and from whom should it be exacted?

It would be stretching the truth to suggest that the Pow of Inchaffray question has gripped the Scottish parliament. On the first debate in full chamber, there were very many empty seats.

Only these three MSPs spoke, and the relevant minister – Paul Wheelhouse – had to read aloud paragraphs from their initial report to ensure his answer lasted for at least one full, courteous minute.

But the little committee has been kept surprisingly busy. They have had to hear evidence from the Drainage Commission and consider many written submissions – most from local ‘heritors’ anguished at the possibility of some day waking up oxter-deep in water and the prospect of what would, effectively, be an additional tax.

In September last year the committee members paid what was no doubt a riveting visit to see the Pow of Inchaffray for themselves. They have had also to umpire at times lively meetings between the commissioners and local residents.

AND they weathered a hairy moment when one gentleman pointed out, correctly, that the plans presented by the commissioners were in many regards inaccurate.

It turned out they had been working with a map from 1851. This, said the three MSPs at their most headmistressy, had rather undermined ‘confidence in the expertise and credibility of the commission, not to mention the confidence the heritors should have in the commission’.

They have also had to consider beavers, illegally released into the countryside around the Pow around a decade ago.

Many want ‘beaver barriers’ but estimated costs have risen to more than £40,000 and Scottish Natural Heritage, initially interested, has now scampered away. There has also been a protracted technical row: is the Pow a ground-drainage scheme, or a flood-prevention measure? (On that presumably hinges the responsibilities, or otherwise, of Scottish Water and the local authority.)

It might seem odd that the Scottish parliament should find itself charged with the issue of a distant muddy ditch. But it has to step into the breach when everyone else refuses to take responsibility – rather as our city councils must sometimes resolve disputes over ‘common repairs’ in some stately tenement.

And away from all the sound and fury over independence, or Brexit, or Salmond, or the maddening inability of our party leaders to put a question to the First Minister without reading it – here are three MSPs working hard, in crossparty amity, to resolve something of genuine importance for folk in a pleasant corner of green-welly Perthshire.

Arthur, Harris and Fee may never hold high office, put up their feet in Bute House, change their first name to Right Honourable or generally trouble the engravers.

But they will always be the people who saved the Pow of Inchaffray.