COVID-19 Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, December 10, 2020

Official Report 738KB pdf

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Covid-19 Restrictions (Winter)

Item 2 is on the social and economic impact of Covid-19 restrictions over winter. This morning’s evidence session forms part of the committee’s work on the Scottish Government’s preparedness for key issues that lie ahead in its response to Covid-19. The purpose of the evidence session is twofold. First, it is to hear views on the economic impact that the restrictions are having on the travel and transport sector more generally, and what difficulties the sector might face as a result. Secondly, it is to hear views on the travel and transport industries’ preparedness for the increased travel that will arise from the upcoming easing of restrictions over Christmas, from 23 to 27 December 2020, and the impact that that might have on operations.

We will take evidence from Gordon Dewar, chief executive of Edinburgh Airport Ltd; Robbie Drummond, managing director of CalMac Ferries Ltd; Alex Hynes, managing director of Scotland’s Railway; and Alastair Wilson, director of Wilson’s of Rhu Ltd. I welcome all the witnesses to the meeting.

I invite each witness, in the order that I read out their names, to make a brief opening statement of up to two minutes or so.

Thank you for the opportunity to present evidence to the committee. To begin with, I thought that it would be useful to give an overview of the current situation at Edinburgh airport. Everyone will be aware that it has been an incredibly tough time. Unfortunately, our industry felt the impact of Covid-19 before many others did, and it will undoubtedly be one of the last to recover.

Where do we stand? Normally, we are Scotland’s busiest airport, with almost 15 million people having passed through our doors in 2019. Today, we are running at about 95 per cent down from that; we are operating at 5 per cent of our normal level of demand. We are flying fewer flights with fewer airlines to many fewer destinations.

As a result, we have unfortunately had to make about a third of our workforce—about 250 people—redundant, through absolutely no fault of their own. Those people have contributed to eight years of some of the fastest growth in Europe. If we apply that across the campus, where, in 2019, about 7,000 staff worked across many companies, that is likely to equate to more than 2,000 job losses already. That is before we go into the depths of winter and even more difficult times.

We face losses of about £16 million this year. We have had to borrow significant amounts to stay open, but we will need to service that additional debt in the coming years, so the problem will not go away when we get back to something approaching normality. We estimate that we will see a total of between 3 million and 3.5 million passengers in 2020, and we forecast that the figure for next year will be, at best, 7 million or thereabouts, which would be less than half the figure from 2019.

Despite all that—this might come as a surprise to the committee and the Government—I have not come here today to ask anything of Government. Instead, we have come with an offer of help. The offer is that we will use our expertise to assist in any way that we can to bring Scotland out of this desperate crisis.

We have already helped throughout the crisis. We stayed open to help people to get home to Scotland and to leave, when we would have lost a lot less money if we had closed. We helped to reunite families and got medical supplies to those who needed them. We helped to get Amazon and Royal Mail parcels and letters to where they needed to be, in order to keep things moving as best we could. We also hosted a Covid testing site.

We want to continue to do our bit, and we have offered to help the Government to design and deliver a vaccination programme that delivers at volume and at pace. Vaccine delivery is the only route out of the crisis, and speed is absolutely everything. In every week that goes by, businesses are going out of business, and people cannot plan for the future. However, I think that there will be another missed opportunity and that we will not see any shared ambition for the pace and scale that we believe are essential and possible if we set our minds to it.

I will give an example. At the start of the year, in the early weeks of the pandemic, we wrote to the First Minister to offer support and assistance, but that offer was simply not taken up. We have spent the past three months—nearly four months now—trying to agree on and implement a robust aviation testing regime. Hurdle after hurdle has been thrown at us and put in our way, and we are now in the bizarre position of possibly having to submit a freedom of information request to see a submission to ministers that contains—we hope, at least—a proposed solution that is based on a study that we and AGS Airports have sponsored and funded. We are still talking while the rest of the world has already acted.

The response that is required to the medical and economic crisis is simply too important for the Government not to accept offers of help. I am not speaking about Edinburgh airport or even the aviation industry; I am speaking about the whole country. I know that many private sector companies are willing to step in and help in any way that they can, but we are simply not being given the opportunity to do so, despite our best efforts.

It really is in all our interests to help each other, pull together, and navigate our way out of a horrific pandemic and towards the long-awaited recovery. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that we have found the Government to be very difficult to help. We can only hope that the response to our offer of help in vaccine delivery is more welcoming and open than it has been in our experience of other matters to date, particularly testing.

I understand that the committee will have a number of questions that it would like me to answer. I would be very happy to do so after the presentations.

I thank Gordon Dewar for his opening remarks. We are having some technical issues, so our convener is not able to chair the meeting at this point. As deputy convener, I ask Robbie Drummond, who is the managing director of CalMac Ferries, to give an opening statement before we go to Alex Hynes.

Good morning, everyone. We have already made a submission to the committee, so I will keep my remarks short.

Our submission focuses on the impact during the Christmas period. I am pleased to say that we believe that we will be able to accommodate demand during that period and that we have contingency plans in place should there be any disruption because of bad weather.

I would be happy to talk later about the impact on CalMac, how we have managed through the process, and how we see the future building. In the meantime, I pay tribute to the professionalism and commitment of all our staff and to the role that they have played in keeping our tremendously important lifeline services going. I am immensely proud of them all.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for inviting Scotland’s Railway, which is a partnership that involves the ScotRail Alliance and Network Rail Scotland, to participate in this meeting.

Coronavirus has fundamentally changed our railway, as it has every aspect of our lives. During these tough times, the priority of our amazing staff has been to keep people—doctors, nurses, care workers and other key workers—moving across the country. Right now, our focus is on the new timetable, which will come into effect from Sunday, and the upcoming travel window, as people consider visiting their loved ones this Christmas.

Scotland’s Railway is doing all that it can to bring people together. Although we do not expect a huge spike in passenger numbers this Christmas, we have plans in place to provide extra capacity if it is needed. Our gold command centre will monitor weather forecasts in anticipation of any bad weather and analyse stations and trains for any increase in travelling customers.

From Sunday, we will provide around 85 per cent of pre-pandemic capacity for what is currently just 15 per cent of pre-pandemic passenger numbers. We are therefore confident that our service will continue to deliver, but we also need customers to play their part. We are asking customers to plan their journeys in advance, to check the latest information for their journey before they travel, and to leave slightly longer for their journeys.

Looking beyond Christmas, we are working hard to be ready to welcome back more customers when restrictions are eased for good. Customers will, of course, have different demands compared with those before the pandemic. Whether it is new ticket types or timetables, smarter ways of delivering improvement works or better technology, we know that reform of the railways needs to match the transport expectations of potential customers and, of course, the economic reality. The pressure on public finances will mean that all parts of the rail industry—the operators, Network Rail, the Government, supply chains, trade unions and others—will need to work much harder to deliver a more cost-effective railway.

Those are all big challenges that our industry faces, but I reassure the committee that we are working hard to meet them, despite the uncertainty. The work that the railway in Scotland does, whether it is investing in our people, growing our economy or connecting communities, should never be underestimated. Now, more than ever, we are ready to play our part in the economic recovery and to make the case for continued investment in Scotland’s railway.

Thank you. I briefly lost connection between the end of Gordon Dewar’s statement and the start of Robbie Drummond’s, so I apologise for that.

I ask Alastair Wilson to give his statement.

Thank you for the opportunity to attend today’s meeting. Wilson’s of Rhu is a small family-run bus and coach operator that operates 12 vehicles. We do a mix of work including providing local bus services, home-to-school transport, works contracts and private coach hire, much of which is tourism related.

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, our workload was decimated. Patronage on our local bus services fell dramatically, forcing a major cut in services. Two thirds of the works contracts stopped, schools closed and, day after day, we received cancellations amounting to the loss of a six-figure sum relating to all our coach work for the normally busy summer season. That position has continued until this point.

In relation to bus operations, the Covid support grant has been most welcome. It has protected vital rural bus services, assisted in getting services back to normal frequency and allowed drivers to be brought back from furlough. The grant is due to end on 17 January. Quite simply, services are unsustainable without that support.

In the first instance, there is a need to extend the support until, at the very least, the end of the financial year. The impact that Covid has had on bus patronage is such that we are likely to require support beyond the end of the financial year to protect our services and those of other operators. With social distancing, capacity is essentially down to 50 per cent of pre-Covid levels. The introduction of lockdown levels has had a further effect on the drop in patronage. While social distancing measures are in place, it is likely that the bus network will require support.

Government communications are essential as we come out of lockdown. People have had a strong message to avoid public transport and coach services. We hope that the Scottish Government will be proactive in encouraging people back on to those modes of transport.

The coach sector has been decimated by Covid-19 and has received no specific support. Coach operators have been either excluded from or largely unsuccessful in accessing wider funds. The sector is on a cliff edge and, without support, many more operators will cease to trade. From April to October this year, we have carried out only 4.2 per cent of the coach work that we carried out during the same period last year. This month, we have less than 1 per cent of the bookings that we had in December last year.

I must add that, yesterday, there was the announcement that £6 million will be made available to coach operators. That is most welcome. Although the details of the scheme are yet to be announced, I encourage the Scottish Government to work closely with the Confederation of Passenger Transport to ensure that money from the scheme is distributed sensibly.

We do not see the lifting of travel restrictions at Christmas having much effect on what we do, but there is the high possibility that the rail network, for example, will be stretched throughout the period. Coaches might well be called on to provide vital links in order to supplement or even replace rail journeys.

09:15  

Thank you to all our witnesses for those statements. We turn to questions and I begin with a question for Gordon Dewar on quarantine and airport testing. There has been a suggestion—I think at United Kingdom Government level—to shorten the quarantine period. Do you have any reflections on that? Also, I ask for an update on airport testing. What has the uptake been on your fit-to-fly programme?

Throughout the summer, there was a lot of discussion about the effectiveness of the quarantine policy and alternatives for it. Quarantine is, in effect, a travel ban because almost no one can find a sensible reason to travel if they must self-isolate for 14 days at the end of it. The effect has been that almost nobody flies and, therefore, the routes cannot fly because they are not cost-effective. We need to find an alternative to that.

The English proposal, or I should say the UK Government proposal that will apply in England, is for a test after five days. There would be five days of quarantine and then, if a traveller passes a polymerase chain reaction—PCR—test, they would be released into the community. The issue is that five days is not much better than 14. Thinking in particular about the economic benefits of inbound tourism, the idea that somebody, even if they are coming for two weeks, would spend five days in a hotel waiting to be released is just not practical. In that sense, we do not believe that the five-day regime adds any great value in commercial or economic terms. I do not think that it is the way forward.

We have been working with Government for three to three and a half months on an alternative proposal for a double-testing regime. The tests would happen on arrival and five days later, without quarantine between them. We have worked on that using Government statistics and modelling, which shows that the regime would not only be safer than the UK Government’s five-day test to release scheme, but safer than quarantine.

The point is that quarantine does not work. People either do not travel, which is an entirely different policy, or those who travel do not observe the quarantine, which is, therefore, not having the desired effect. The best estimates for observation of quarantine are 65 per cent, and anecdotally the Government admits that we are probably operating at closer to 20 per cent. Quarantine is not the answer, either economically or in effectively controlling the disease.

We are ready and we have put in a testing regime at Edinburgh so that people have that choice. Ironically, the test is therefore able to meet the requirements of every other Government in Europe or further afield. We are servicing their requirements for a clear test prior to departure. Although we have that capability in Scotland, we are still the only country in Europe that is not using a testing regime to support flying and make it safe again.

Thank you for that. I have a slightly different question for our other witnesses in relation to ferries, railways and coaches. To what extent do they think that there will be a great change in use by the public? Also, will they comment specifically on social distancing measures and issues of overcrowding? Do they think a high degree of public compliance will be achieved?

We have well-defined protocols for managing passengers through our ports and vessels and we believe that we have good processes for keeping our staff and passengers safe. We are currently running at around 10 to 15 per cent capacity, so we are carrying small volumes on our vessels. That is about half of what we would normally run at this time of year.

We anticipate that it will increase a little during the Christmas period but we do not think that it will introduce any pressures in our ports or on our vessels that we cannot manage. Our biggest concern is possible disruption caused by bad weather, because that might cause a bit more stress for particular sailings. However, we have processes and protocols in place to deal with that eventuality.

We review Christmas demand every day. We are looking at whether people will travel and, if they will, how they will travel and when they will travel, but all the research suggests that people will travel less this Christmas than at a normal Christmas.

Around 5 per cent of travel will be on the train and we expect rail travel to be particularly prevalent before the Christmas window and after it. We have spent the past nine months physically distancing the production of our railway and all the customer-facing areas. We are asking customers to follow the five rules of safer travel to keep themselves and our staff safe. That is something that we will keep under review every day before, during and after the Christmas window by looking at sales data.

We will look at how railway demand changes tomorrow as restrictions are eased in some parts of the central belt and, if we need to make trains longer or add additional services, that is what we will do. Our command centre will be monitoring that 24/7 and our customer service centres will be using our 6,500 closed-circuit television cameras to make sure that we are able to respond if we see any issues that cause us concern.

We are on high alert, but we think that our customers can travel safely and with confidence, and we will do the best job that we can for our passengers within the Christmas window.

We have virtually no coach bookings. We have one booking between now and the end of the year. Passenger numbers are easily managed in coach work because we know who is travelling. It is a wee bit more difficult to estimate for bus services, but we do not expect any increase in patronage over the Christmas period. Historically, patronage would generally be lower between 23 to 27 December with services stopping on Christmas day and services on boxing day being reduced. At the moment, we are carrying around 50 per cent of our pre-Covid capacity, which at 1m distancing is feasible on local service buses. Overall, we do not see any rise in passenger numbers happening.

I have no more questions at this stage, so I turn to Monica Lennon.

I am glad that the convener is back with us. I am grateful to our witnesses for their written comments and opening remarks. I have been scribbling notes because my questions have changed, now that I have heard witnesses’ opening remarks.

First, I am sorry to hear about the impact on Alastair Wilson’s business and on people in the sector. You said that rail could be stretched and that, in that situation, coach companies could be called on, but that it is vital that your industry gets support. It is great to hear about the £6 million fund, but I understand your point that you need to get your fair share of it quickly.

From listening to Alex Hynes, it sounds as though Scotland’s Railway is relatively confident that rail will be able to cope.

I will ask questions of both of you first. Does Alex Hynes accept that rail might struggle? I also ask Alastair Wilson how quickly coach provision could be mobilised if that were to be the case. Alex has talked about modelling that is being done. Could I get a bit more clarity on that, please?

Yes. This Christmas, 99 per cent of the rail network is open. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we are operating about 85 per cent of seats for about 15 per cent of normal demand, so we could accommodate double, triple or quadruple that amount of demand.

However, it is clear that we need to be alive to the risk from having large numbers of passengers, which is why we are establishing our gold command, and why we will make trains longer and will operate additional train services, if we need to. We have spare resources. We are in the business of running trains; when we have a planned disruption or, indeed, an unplanned disruption, a dedicated team in our control centre arranges rail replacement transport for our customers, as we do in normal scenarios. The bus and coach industry helps the railway industry when we need it.

Those are all established processes that we use during bad weather or planned engineering work, and they will continue throughout the Christmas period, albeit that we will be on higher alert than normal.

We operate only a small amount of rail replacement. We are called on from time to time, and can be mobilised very quickly. It is not unusual for us to get a phone call in the middle of the night—the call would come to me. As with all other coach operators, our phone is on 24/7. It is not unusual for us to get a call at midnight from someone who is looking for a coach to be positioned somewhere at 6 am, and that can be achieved. We can get a phone call at any time of the day, and we have often replied within 15 minutes and been at a local station within half an hour.

So, you are constantly on call. What additional measures are being taken to protect staff during a period in which we could see very high travel demand, compared with what we have been used to recently? I appreciate that Alastair Wilson will probably have to step up and do lot of that work himself.

I also have a question for Alex Hynes. Have there been discussions between the Scottish Government and ScotRail about the need to put on additional services? Have additional services been requested?

I emphasise that the question about staff is about managing public expectations and behaviour. People also need to be called on to do shifts at very short notice. I appreciate that that might happen in normal years, but what will that look like and how will it be managed in this Christmas period?

On managing staff, the buses and the coaches are a wee bit different. To protect staff on buses, there are temporary screens around the drivers, which avoid their having to wear face masks behind the wheel for a full shift. They have the option of wearing masks for additional protection.

On the coach side, seats are marked off so that nobody sits within 2m of the driver; the front row of seats is marked as being out of use. The drivers wear face masks, hand sanitiser is in all the coaches, and measures are in place to do what we can to protect the staff.

In the rail industry, one thing that has characterised our approach throughout the Covid pandemic has been partnership. We quickly established our rail recovery task force, which comprises Transport Scotland, ScotRail and Network Rail Scotland, to navigate our way through the pandemic and our response to it. Ensuring that our staff and our customers are safe has been at the heart of our approach.

One of the task force’s working groups deals with partnership working. Trade unions have therefore also been the heart of our approach. Everything that is done between the rail industry and the Government is done hand in glove. Our staff and trade unions are working in partnership with us. I chair a twice-weekly call, in which we plan our response to Covid. Therefore, Transport Scotland is, in essence, part of the decision-making process. We do the work in consultation with staff representatives, and we make a recommendation to the Scottish Government, which says yea or nay.

Since March, we have continually refined and tweaked our approach to ensure that we can continue to operate services for people who need to travel, and to keep our customers and staff safe. That has been our approach to date, and it has been successful. It will also be our approach in the coming weeks and months.

09:30  

I sensed from Gordon Dewar’s opening remarks a real sense of frustration. You made reference to missed opportunities, hurdles, the lack of a written response from the First Minister and the fact that the pace and scale of the vaccination programme were not as ambitious as you would have liked.

Many committee members also want us to do much more on testing—specifically for aviation. Can Gordon Dewar return to that and say exactly what the impact on your industry is of the absence of a robust testing regime? If you were to get a response from the First Minister today, what would you like it to say? You might also want to comment on the Christmas peak situation, but I would be grateful if you could address those questions first.

The issue with testing is that we are at a standstill, while the rest of the world is moving forward. That is disappointing because, as we have demonstrated in the report that we shared with Government advisers and which we believe has now gone to ministers—at least in some format—testing people is safer than what we are doing. We are not suggesting that we need to take more risks in order to look after the economy; we are saying that we can make the current situation safer and start our recovery towards some sort of normality.

I will explain why that is urgent. We are talking about demand over Christmas increasing from 5 per cent of normal demand to 10 per cent of normal demand. I am not worried about our ability to provide that. What worries me is whether we will have an industry at all by next summer, if we do not do very different things.

If we got the green light today to put our testing regime in place, realistically, we would not be ready until March to do volume testing, which would be 40,000 tests a day, if we are to get back to normal levels of demand. In the space of three months, we would be trying to deliver the levels of testing capacity that the Government has not managed to deliver in eight months. That is the level of ambition that we need, if we are to get the industry back up and running.

Of course, we hope that the vaccine replaces that, so we need to be able to signal that we are ambitious about that as well—I will come back to that later—because airlines are planning now for next summer. We are going to be competing for a much-reduced fleet, because airlines across Europe have made massive cuts. They will come to where they think they will get the best support and the best return on their investment, and they are fighting for their survival.

Even before the crisis, we were the least cost-effective country in the world, because of our taxation regime. We have, arguably, had one of the worst-managed Covid crises in Europe, if we judge it by any of the statistics for levels of infection and deaths, and we are now the slowest in responding to aviation and tourism. Yesterday, the First Minister called for people not to book their summer holidays for next year—we now have the First Minister campaigning against our industry. If I were an airline, I would say, “Let’s forget about the UK next year”, and I would certainly say that we should forget about putting in any of our faster start-up or our focus on the UK. That is all before I get on to Brexit.

We have a huge opportunity because, apparently, this country is ahead in scoping out and delivering on the vaccine, but the plans to deliver the vaccine are woefully inadequate in terms of making a difference. I sit on the Scottish Tourism Alliance, and I worry most about the tourism industry because many businesses are family businesses and the sector is the largest employer in Scotland. Normally, those businesses struggle to get through a five-month winter. They are already in a 17-month winter, because the summer was, in effect, written off—it is worse than the worst winter to date. Unless the vaccine is deployed by early summer and late spring, we will be facing a 29-month winter. Very few companies in the sector will survive that. Even if travel restrictions have gone by 2022, there will be nothing to service that—there will be no reason to come to Scotland.

Thank you; you have spoken very much to the point and have not minced your words.

You have criticised the First Minister for her comments about not booking a summer holiday. Last week, I think, I heard Professor Jason Leitch suggesting that people should not book anything unless they know that they can get their money back. Do you not accept that they are simply following the best available public health advice? Surely the First Minister is not trying to do your industry in. Is there not a middle ground, somewhere? What else would you expect the First Minister to say?

What I expect from the First Minister is to hear how to get the vaccine rolled out in time for next summer, so that we do not have to worry about that. We are talking, and Edinburgh Airport has offered assistance both as a site and, which is probably more important, through people who have expertise in passenger flows and volume movements.

We have looked at the designs for delivering vaccine roll-out. They are woefully inadequate. As things stand, they will not deliver wider vaccination capability until the back end of next year. To put that in context, there is no attempt even to start mass drive-through vaccination centres until February.

I genuinely think that it is extremely probable that, come March, vaccines—potentially multiple vaccines—will be in fridges in Scotland, but there will be no method of delivering them. People will still be dying of Covid and there will be no prospect of taking away travel restrictions. If the First Minister is assuming that the vaccine is not going to be delivered, she is probably right to tell people not to go on holiday, because we will be one of the few countries that are left with extremely strict transport restrictions—simply because we will not have delivered vaccination.

Thank you. The committee will be looking at the vaccination strategy next week, so your evidence today is good to have on the record.

Finally, before I move on—I know that other colleagues need to get in—do you want to say something about the Christmas period and peak demand?

Yes. I do not want to be flippant, but moving from 5 per cent capacity to 10 per cent is not a problem. We can do that. It is quite a depressing challenge. We have to face such challenges all the time. Last week, we had snow and, despite huge numbers of our staff being on furlough, we managed to deal with that very well. I am therefore very confident that we can deal with such an increase.

I urge the committee to think more about the future, rather than about the immediate challenges, which are not very significant for the transport industry because demand is so low that a small blip, in relative terms, really does not touch the sides when it comes to commercial or operational reality.

Good morning. I want to ask about the medium to long term, and, in particular, what kind of recovery you would like for your sectors. I am mindful, from looking at the statistics, that every sector has seen a massive drop—a collapse, in many ways—in patronage over the past few months. That is obviously to do with the restrictions that are in place, but it is also due to changing patterns. More people are working at home, and there is perhaps greater reliance on personal transport than there is on public transport. What trends do you think are going to stick? How will you respond to those, and what do your business strategies therefore look like, for the medium term?

What does the recovery or relaunch of your sectors look like, for you? You have to persuade people to get back to using your services again. I have not been on a train for months, but I am looking forward to getting back on one. What is your offering to your customer base, as we start and move through the roll-out phase of vaccination and there is light at the end of the tunnel?

We will start with Alex Hynes, although I am happy to hear everyone’s views.

That is a great question. The honest answer is that nobody knows what the future will look like. As Gordon Dewar said, we do not even know when we will get the green light from public health authorities to return to some sort of normality—we do not know whether that will be in the spring, the summer or the autumn.

We think that coronavirus will have accelerated trends that were already happening. For example, in Britain, prior to coronavirus, rail patronage had never been higher. However, season-ticket journeys were 14 per cent down from their peak, because the product mix was changing, and Monday to Friday commuting was becoming less prevalent.

We are all expecting passenger demand to take some years to return to pre-coronavirus levels. If and when it does so, the market is likely to be different to the one that we had prior to 23 March. For example, we are expecting commuting to be lower than it was. That market might never recover, given that we have given the whole world a crash course in video conferencing, and commuting has essentially now become a discretionary activity.

We can expect leisure to be a bigger part of our market. Since March, Saturday has often been our busiest day on Scotland’s railway, which would have been unheard of prior to coronavirus. We need to think about what services we offer to customers—the timetable—and what products we offer in terms of fares and ticketing. We are working on some exciting proposals; recently, we have gone out with a special offer for students. However, there is no point in us, as an industry, going out to try to generate customer numbers and revenue until we get the final green light from the public health authorities. At the moment, the public health restrictions, more than anything else, are driving rail patronage.

We will move on to the bus industry. The changes that are planned, such as an extension of concessionary travel, are difficult now, given the restrictions on public transport. What are your views on the relaunch of the bus sector in the months to come?

Ultimately, concessionary travel is way down in numbers, even compared with the fare-paying passengers. As Alex Hynes said, nobody knows what is coming. Due to the changes, such as people working from home, I do not think that numbers will ever get back to what they were. I have spoken to office owners who believe that working from home works quite well, and they do not know if they will reopen their offices. Therefore, I do not know whether passenger numbers will ever get back to what they were.

A strong message to avoid public transport and only use it for essential journeys has been put out there, so the message that buses and coaches are safe modes of transport needs to get back out there, to build up passenger confidence.

Who should lead that? Should it be Government or the industry? What will you look for when we are the end of the current situation?

The message that buses and coaches are safe modes of transport needs to come from Government. So far, the Government has put out the message that public transport is not to be used other than for essential journeys, so the message needs to go back out that they are a safe mode of transport. Tests have been carried out, and there are statistics that show that public service buses are clean—no germs were found on them. They are a cleaner mode of transport than those in many other industries. We have in place a thorough sanitising process. Other bus and coach companies throughout the country are doing the same. We have machinery to sanitise vehicles daily, and some vehicles are sanitised twice a day; for example, after every school journey. We have a clean, safe mode of transport, and that message needs to get out there.

I will ask the same question with regard to ferries and airports. In the medium term, what do you see as the key elements of the recovery and relaunch of your sectors?

09:45  

As the committee can imagine, it has been an exceptionally challenging period for CalMac. However we are fortunate in that we have support through our Transport Scotland contract. Our concern is really about what the medium term into next summer will look like and how the tourism businesses on our islands will recover. Our strategy will be to work with the local marketing organisations, VisitScotland and our communities to support that recovery at a pace that those businesses and those islands will be comfortable with.

There is a degree of optimism in the ferry market on the islands that the current emerging trends, including staycations, wilderness seeking and eco-conscious tourism, may increase local travel. However, that is very much dependent on the roll-out of the vaccine and on travel restrictions being lifted so that people believe that they can book with confidence and travel safely into the summer period. Our concern is about how we get that recovery going and how the island businesses can be supported to have a successful summer.

The other speakers have hit it on the head. First, we need to get rid of the restrictions, as there is nothing to market until we have done that. Then we will need to listen to the consumer. Consumer patterns will have changed and as Alex Hynes has said, it is impossible to predict what they will be. However, the fundamentals of why people travel have not changed, whether they are off to see family, on a leisure break or a business trip. There is no doubt in my mind that the weekly trips down to London for a few meetings will be reduced, however, that will not stop people from wanting to go on sales trips, sign deals, launch products and so on. Travel patterns will be different, but the fundamentals will be the same. Consumers just need to be reassured that it is safe to travel. They certainly do not need to be told that they should not travel, which is the current environment.

We need to get rid of the restrictions, express confidence in the fact that people can travel safely—which can be the case very quickly—and think about how Scotland or the UK could stand out from the crowd and do better. The pace of the recovery and some competitive advantage will be hugely important. In my industry, that could include things such as considering an air passenger duty holiday to try to encourage the airlines with their reduced fleets to look at the UK more favourably, which will be massively important. If we are at the back of the queue, there will be nothing left to compete for, which is the biggest worry.

The pace of the recovery and the reassurance that safety management is in place will be key. Consumers will then decide for themselves how they want to spend their money.

Finally, I will ask about public financial support for your sectors. We saw conditionality being applied to public financial support quite early on in the Covid crisis. For example, the French state invested in Air France on the condition that that operator would not undercut the French rail TGV services. We have seen something similar in countries that rely on rail. For example, Germany decided to alter the framework of rail user rights at the same time that it bailed out its rail industry.

Have there been any discussions about conditionality of public financial support for your sectors? Obviously, a lot of public money is going into keeping your sectors afloat at the moment.

At the height of lockdown, ScotRail was carrying only 5 per cent of our normal customers, yet we continued to provide a service for the entire rail network in Scotland, and we have been keen to protect things such as first and last trains, wherever possible. The additional funding that we have received from the Scottish Government has enabled us to keep operating vital services that key workers rely on, and keep our employees in work too.

Are there any views from other sectors on that?

We have not really had any direct sectoral support at all. To be fair, we got help from the council with our rates relief, which was very welcome and was approved by the Scottish Government. I would argue that that was reasonable, given that rates are meant to be a reflection of the commercial value of a business and we did not have any commercial value during that period—we continue to be underwater, commercially. The other big assistance that we got was the waiving of the police costs that we pay separately in addition to our business rates. Again, there was no service for the police to provide because the airport was all but closed. That was very helpful and I was very impressed with the pace of response on that.

However, that does not really address what I would call sectoral support. We have not had direct subsidy to keep things running. We are not asking for that; we are asking for the Government to create the conditions for recovery so that the conditions for the airlines are more favourable and we can look at other bits of the supply chain more favourably, such as the handling companies. Thankfully, none of those companies have folded yet but are we ready to step in if we have lost the ability to carry out handling in our airports? That is an issue that applies to all the airports across Scotland.

We are looking for greater engagement and more underwrites in case things go wrong that have not yet gone wrong—there is still a high risk of that happening. More importantly, we want the Government to start to signal now, for next summer, how it will support the recovery of airlines coming back to connect Scotland to the rest the world. Those industries that rely on us, particularly the tourism industry, have been very vocal in supporting that, but we have not seen any indication of that so far.

We have received significant support from Transport Scotland. At the height of the pandemic, our customers were down to about 5 per cent of what they normally are, so we faced a significant deficit in revenue. However, we were paid by Transport Scotland to keep the services going and were able to keep lifeline services going to the islands, which was a fortunate position to be in. There was no conditionality attached to that.

One of the concerns of CalMac as a business is that, when the restrictions are lifted next summer, we are going to be facing a very challenging financial environment. We are going to have to be very careful about our costs and how we manage them to ensure that our business is sustainable in the future.

Likewise, Transport Scotland stepped in to support the bus sector. The Covid support grant has kept our rural services and services throughout Scotland running. At the height of lockdown, we cut back to about 30 per cent of what we operate normally and, on some services, passenger numbers were down to about 10 per cent. Transport Scotland introduced the Covid support grant, which made a vast difference and helped us to get services back up to normal.

Transport Scotland wanted to get services back to 100 per cent in a couple of stages. We achieved 100 per cent frequency by the beginning of August and we have been operating at that level since then. The support grant has been fabulous for that. However, it runs out on 17 January and there is no word yet on whether it will continue. We are now up to between 50 to 60 per cent of pre-Covid passenger levels. However, our buses are unsustainable without that grant.

The coach sector has had absolutely nothing throughout. There was an announcement yesterday about a £6 million fund, but nobody knows the mechanisms for distributing it yet. Without tourism, the coach sector is dead. We need tourism to get coaches back out there and operating. Operators have got coaches of the value of £200,000 to £300,000 that are just parked up, incurring huge monthly payments. We have had no support with that. Finance holiday payments have now come to an end and we are back to paying £3,000 per coach—those coaches are just sitting there, not turning a wheel. The announcement that was made yesterday will help, but we do not yet know to what extent.

We are aiming to finish this session at 10.30 and there are still several members who wish to ask questions. I ask our witnesses to give slightly shorter answers where possible. Please do not feel obliged to answer a question if it does not apply to you.

Good morning. One of the reasons why we invited you was to get you to tell us a bit about your experience of how the various regulations and so on have impacted on your industry, and you have offered some fairly robust comments on it all.

I want to ask about the public messaging side. As a constituency MSP, it is hard enough for me and my staff to keep pace with the guidelines and regulations that are changing each week in order to respond to our constituents and try our best to explain what is happening. What kind of experience do you all have in that area? Are you finding it difficult to keep pace with what is going on, to make sure that staff throughout your industries can liaise and engage with the public in a simple, clear and meaningful way to explain what is required of them, and to know what kind of advice and guidance you can provide? What are your ideas and thoughts on that and do you have any suggestions for improvements that we could make so that it is a bit easier for everyone to understand?

Clearly, we are operating within a public health framework for both the guidance and the legislation and that has changed over time. That is why the task force approach between Network Rail, ScotRail and Transport Scotland has been so important, to make sure that we are joined up and able to respond to whatever the public health guidance is at that time. There is no Covid manual—none of us have done this before—so some of the guidance and legislation has emerged over time. That is why it is a dynamic process.

The task force approach has been very effective. Early in the pandemic, we developed the five rules for safer travel, which are very strong, clearly understood by our customers and communicated across all channels including television. We have kept that message consistent throughout the pandemic and I think it is quite clear. Public testing shows what the rail industry can and cannot do at the moment and that approach has been effective in making sure that our customers and colleagues are kept safe and keep within the public health guidance and legislation.

We have obviously tried to stick with all the guidance and we have developed our own brand of fly safe, which tries to capture all the components of washing hands, distancing and so on and put it into the context of the airport. That seems to be doing very well. We work hard on promoting Government messages throughout, whether that is UK Government messages around the border restrictions or whatever.

I say again that we are very focused on being an international business and we are trying to talk to airlines—mostly—in terms of what is going on. What has been really disappointing is that this crisis really needed proper international solutions, particularly around aviation, and collaboration at least at the European level. I contrast the present situation with aviation security after 9/11 when the whole industry managed to get a consistent standard delivered within three months.

We could not even co-ordinate within the four countries of the UK. Different rules were emerging at different times for different reasons and through different communications. That is really difficult when you are trying to talk to an international audience such as the airlines. It was deeply unhelpful and unfortunately it continues. The most current issue is the fact that the UK Government is going to introduce a different quarantine and testing regime in England and we have no idea what we are getting for Scotland.

Our experience was similar to that of rail. We worked closely with Transport Scotland on guidelines as they emerged. We worked really hard on communicating those clearly to our staff and customers with pre-board emails, through the ports and with onboard communication. It has been complex, as things have changed, but we have worked hard on communications and I think that our customers have responded well to that. Adherence to the guidelines and the wearing of face coverings has been very high, so our staff has worked effectively in what is a difficult situation.

10:00  

I echo what Robbie Drummond has said. We followed guidelines from the Government and Transport Scotland. Guidelines have not changed very much for public transport—originally they were for 2m distancing, and then that dropped to 1m where possible. Drivers are doing their best to encourage passengers to wear face masks and so on, and there has been a good uptake on that.

As MSPs, we often get complaints from the public, perhaps because of a lack of understanding, about the guidelines and sometimes a refusal to obey or follow the guidelines. I was just curious about the type of passenger that the witnesses deal with and whether there were similarities or differences within your sectors that we should be trying to pick up on and learn more about, in order to help the Government ensure that its messaging and communications are as simple and clear as possible.

From what you have said—other than Gordon Dewar—people seem to be fairly compliant and the guidelines seem to be well understood in the sectors that you deal with. However, we can always hope for greater clarity when we are communicating these fairly complex messages to the public. Those messages change—they can change from week to week, as we all know. It is a bit difficult to keep on top of it. I just wanted to know what the impact of all that has been on your staff, whether they are finding it easy or challenging to engage with the public to liaise and explain what the rules and regulations are and whether you might need more help and guidance from us. I am grateful for the contributions that I received on those issues, and I am happy to leave it at that, convener.

I would like to reflect on how important transport is to island communities and to on onward business travel, particularly for those who carry out national or international business. I can give the example of oil workers leaving Shetland and having to go to Aberdeen for two days to get a test before they can travel onwards for work in international areas.

I turn to Gordon Dewar. You have been quite robust in your comments this morning. If you could list three things that would make a huge difference but which need to be done now, what would they be?

It is difficult to be specific about actions, because I am not really that au fait with what the options are. As I said, the one glaring thing is that having the most aggressive and ambitious vaccine plan has to be at the forefront. The speed that we come out of this is going to be the most important thing from a health perspective, because in every week that passes when Covid is still running riot, we lose people and the health disaster continues. The vaccine is also the only long-term way out of this, economically.

We should be setting the ambition of not having one single vaccine dose sitting on a shelf; the vaccine should be out there as fast as we receive it. We should plan to be more aggressive and more daring than we might think of being at the moment. I do not know what the current expectations are, but it would seem to be a very bad outcome if we got higher levels of vaccine than were anticipated but are not able to deliver it because we had not thought about that in advance. We should plan for very optimistic levels of vaccine availability and ensure that we are ready to deliver that amount of vaccine if it arrives. That is the way out of this, and it is also important in terms of competitive advantage, because it will kickstart the economy.

The other message is more of a theme: how do we deliver this as a country? I am struck by how centralised everything is. It is centralised in the thinking—it has to be a national strategy; I get that—but it also appears that, under the current approach, there is no room for others to get involved in assisting. We are held at arm’s length.

I think about other scenarios, such as aviation security, which I have mentioned. After 9/11, Government came back with a completely new standard around liquids, screening and all the rest of it. The entire industry across the world responded and delivered a new regime in three months. That was not pain free, as we all know, but it got going and it worked.

It will not work if the Government tries to deliver everything itself—you cannot get the best out of the system that way. We are all sitting on our hands, waiting for our business to restart, and the Government is struggling with capacity. There are some great people doing the best that they can, but the Government simply does not have the resources. We should be setting standards that the Government believes are the right answer—whether for a vaccine, for testing or for anything else—and we should then invite everyone to see where they can contribute.

To take another analogy, in the second world war, the Government gave the design for Spitfires to trusted people, and it then bought every one that was made; it did not try to make them all itself, as that would not have been effective. We must find the equivalent of that. If the Government sets up a design for how a vaccine could be delivered and then invites anybody who can contribute to see how they could help with that, we will be at the front of the queue, and I guarantee that there will be a long queue of people wanting to help.

At the moment, we are held in isolation. We do not know what is expected, we do not know what the plans are, and we are not being allowed to offer help, or to step in and help. That seems to be a massive missed opportunity.

Thank you for those comments.

I now want to ask Alex Hynes about ScotRail and the restrictions around Christmas. We note the reduction in the number of trains and that 20 per cent will be taken away before the travel window starts. What will that mean for people trying to connect with other services? I am thinking of people coming back to Shetland, who may have to get the ferry from Aberdeen. I know that the message is that people need to plan such journeys but there is a concern that, just before the 23rd, there might be a sudden rush of people who have not planned their journey. Could you give a bit more detail on the logistics around that?

Yes, of course. We are monitoring demand on a daily basis. At the moment, we are operating around 92 per cent of the service for about 15 per cent of the passengers. That is not a good use of taxpayers’ money.

We have taken a look at the service that we provide, and we are changing it on Sunday of this week. We are reducing it ever so slightly: we will be providing around 85 per cent of normal seated capacity for about 15 per cent of the passengers. In some circumstances, that might mean people having to wait slightly longer than they would ordinarily do for a train, and that is why we are asking customers to plan their journeys in advance, following the five rules for safer travel, so that we can be there for them this Christmas.

I am given to understand that the Inter7City trains are used on longer routes. There used to be two or three-carriage units, which could be combined to make six or eight-carriage trains. Can you give me an idea of how that will work and about the intention to extend trains if that is needed?

In the past few years, Abellio has invested £475 million in new and upgraded trains. The rolling-stock fleet is now 25 per cent bigger than it was just three years ago. We have lots more carriages at our disposal if we see greater demand.

We continually examine the demand data, and we tweak the service accordingly. Tomorrow, for example, we are adding extra carriages to existing trains in the Glasgow area to take account of the easing of travel restrictions and the move from tier 4 to tier 3. We are literally reviewing the position on a daily basis, ensuring that we get the right balance between the number of seats for our passengers and the demand that we see, so that we do not run services unnecessarily. We will continue to do that before, during and after the Christmas window.

We are establishing a gold command, so that we can add additional carriages and additional services if we need to. That is something that we will manage for the Christmas window.

Good morning to colleagues and those on the panel. The discussion has been wide ranging thus far, and I will pick up on a few points.

With regard to the vaccine issue, we have been talking about instilling public confidence in travel and the downstream impact on each of the sectors that are represented today. It is important to stress that there is a vaccine plan; it has been worked on carefully by the Scottish Government, which has brought in relevant expertise from a host of places.

It is important that we—[Inaudible.] If Edinburgh Airport, together with other airports, wishes to make a joint submission on the role of airports in the process, that would be as welcome as any other submission. However, it is important to clarify that there is a detailed plan, as the public want that reassurance. We can pick up that point with the cabinet secretary and Professor Leitch in our next session.

I want to raise two issues with Gordon Dewar. He referred briefly to Brexit, at which I think he was going to express further anger. Perhaps he could clarify briefly what impacts he thinks that Brexit will have, both immediately and in the medium term.

On the foreign summer holiday issue, I asked Professor Leitch about that last week, and he said that he would not book a holiday if the deposit was not refundable. As we are talking about instilling consumer confidence, what discussions has Edinburgh Airport had with airlines about potential caveats when a consumer books a flight?

I have heard from constituents that, when they have been unable to take a flight that they have booked, they have found it very difficult to get a refund, or a timely refund, from the airline. That might be a factor in consumer behaviour. If the issue were to be addressed by building in a proper exclusion clause, that might encourage more people to book a holiday. I do not know whether Mr Dewar has any comments on that.

The airlines have responded very well in dealing with the situation. One of the problems is that Governments have been a bit disingenuous, in the sense that they are saying, “You shouldn’t travel, but you can.” Passengers are therefore not covered by their insurance, and in many cases the plane has in fact flown, even though the passenger has been told that they should not travel. Who is at fault there?

Where Governments have the courage of their convictions and want to impose travel bans, which is what our quarantine is in all but name, they should impose them and bear the commercial consequences, but they do not do that. We then have a situation in which airlines, which are fighting for their very survival, are criticised for not paying refunds for travel that they have been desperate to offer while being prohibited from doing so.

It is even worse when consumers are being told—as they currently are—that they are allowed to fly to Tenerife, but they are not allowed to drive to Edinburgh airport. That is the problem—we are getting mixed messages that are not based on the evidence. Quarantine has not worked, and it does not work in that way. If it has reduced infection rates, that has worked simply by reason of what is a travel ban in all but name. We are not looking at the alternatives.

We are saying that we should be confident that there is a way out of this with the vaccine. We should plan for how it will be effectively delivered; communicate when we think that that will happen; and let people make informed decisions. The airlines have been exceptionally good at giving people almost total flexibility in rebooking. There are always isolated cases in which people do not get their refunds, and I am not suggesting that the system is perfect, but we are talking about businesses that are fighting for survival. At this rate, the alternative will be that we will have no airlines to worry about in terms of giving refunds or any other service.

I hear what you say—you have your perspective, and you are trying to run your business at Edinburgh airport—but I have to say that the constituents who contacted me were not happy that they did not get their refunds. That money was important, if only to them.

Yesterday, the scientific advisory group for emergencies published a genomic study that pinpointed a big problem with travel in reigniting, if you like, the virus in Scotland after July and August. That problem was particularly related to international travel, but also to travel in the rest of the UK. Perhaps Mr Dewar might want to look at that study in detail. That would be helpful.

I had a look at it, and it certainly demonstrates that quarantine did not work.

10:15  

We are going through a pandemic, and each country will try the best that it can to do the best that it can. Before the second wave, we were certainly doing very well indeed in Scotland.

I turn to Robbie Drummond and Alastair Wilson on the theme of holidays and summer. People are not going to book holidays abroad in the same numbers. However, every problem usually brings an opportunity for somebody else. What should CalMac and people with businesses like Alastair Wilson’s be doing now—with support from VisitScotland and so on—to try to catch that business this summer?

I mentioned our concern about the summer period. We will work closely with our tourism bodies and local marketing organisations to try to recover at a pace that communities want to go at.

My concern is about confidence. There is some evidence that people want to do more staycations and perhaps go to different areas, which gives some confidence. However, a fast roll-out of the vaccine is required, and people will need to be confident that it is safe to travel and that there will be facilities and things for them to do when they get to their destination. Destinations will need to be open and thriving to give people that confidence. It is all about how quickly we can recover and get confidence going. We will play our part, working with all those partners, to build travel, but it is all about confidence.

Ultimately, confidence is a big thing. Social distancing still has a huge effect. We do not operate our own holidays or tours as such, but we are contracted in by tour companies. A lot of our summer season work involves cruise ship tours and we do not yet know whether cruise ships will be running next year—certainly, they will not be running to the extent that they ran last year. There is also event transport and weddings, and we do not know whether, for example, large numbers will be allowed at weddings next year. It comes down to social distancing, passenger confidence and getting tourism and events up and running again.

Obviously, there remains uncertainty, which is inevitable. I hope that we start to see a bit of a clearer picture emerge as the weeks go by and, for your business, I absolutely hope that that happens sooner rather than later.

Very briefly, I note that Mr Hynes and I have had many discussions over the years about the Fife circle. Given that I have him here, I cannot miss the opportunity to ask him about what he thinks the impact will be on all the good things that ScotRail said were going to happen to the Fife circle. How has the timetable for those been impacted?

The great news is that our long-promised InterCity fleet has arrived, which has allowed us to operate longer trains from Fife into Edinburgh if we need to. Clearly, customer numbers are much suppressed. However, pre-coronavirus, we talked about operating six-carriage trains from Fife into Edinburgh, and we now have the ability to do that because the InterCity fleet has arrived. Clearly, coronavirus has changed the railway significantly and, sadly, customer numbers will be lower for some time. The good side of that coin is that the customer experience will be a lot better, because we have more seats for them. I therefore expect great things for passengers who travel between Fife and Edinburgh, particularly during the peak.

That is very upbeat, Mr Hynes.

My first question is for Gordon Dewar. You said that the airlines are having to deal with four different regimes in the four nations of the United Kingdom. Could you, through your work on the ground at Edinburgh airport, persuade the airlines to try harder to push for a more unified approach?

Are you suggesting that the airlines should try harder to co-ordinate the British Government?

No. I am saying that you could co-ordinate an effort to get the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to come up with a more common approach to your industry.

We have been calling and screaming and crying for that for the past six months.

What has been the major factor preventing it?

We are being ignored.

And that has continued up to date.

The latest example is the testing regime. The UK Government has published a five-day test to release strategy, which I think takes effect from January, but the Scottish Government is silent on that. That is the biggest divergence since the start of the Covid crisis.

So the Scottish Government is not listening, basically.

It is not acting; whether it is listening, I cannot tell.

You talked about underwriting the service recovery for your industry. How do you see that playing out?

To be honest, there is still a very high risk of failures in the industry. That will not involve Edinburgh Airport—thankfully, we have quite deep pockets, because we have managed to borrow huge sums of money to survive this. We will get through this, but there are many parts of the supply chain that may not. I am quite worried about handling companies, for example. We are entirely reliant on the airlines having access to handling companies that turn aircraft round, get passengers and freight on board and so on. I am not saying that we are at risk, but if this continues much longer, we will see some failures in the supply chain.

It would be good to see Government having some forethought and plans for what to do if we see failures that would stop the operation of airports but which are not the failure of airports themselves. We have been asking for that for six months but have been told that it is all a bit too difficult. As we go into another bleak winter, with no guarantees that next summer is going to be any better, I worry that we have still not got plans to deal with failures in advance, rather than waiting for them to happen and then panicking or living with the consequences.

Far more important, given that airlines are planning their summer schedules now for next year, is that we should be giving signals to airlines about what we are going to do to restart our tourism sector and create the business environment for recovery. The most obvious step would be to take away APD for at least a year, or to reduce it substantially. We are the highest taxed aviation country in the world and we are going to suffer more than most, partly because of our Covid performance, but partly because we are so dependent on aviation, which is taking the hit. Whereas every other major European country has either thrown money at its airlines or substantially reduced tax burdens and so on, we have done nothing—we are not even talking about it.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

I want to ask Alex Hynes about rail travel and the issue of rural and urban services. In my region—West Scotland—I have a bit of both. There has been a tendency to cut some of the early morning trains in my area, which is hindering the movement of people who live further out of town. Is there any likelihood of those trains coming back? Is that being done because of a lack of support from the Government or Transport Scotland?

We have been keen to ensure that the entire rail network in Scotland continues to receive a service, even though demand is only 15 per cent of normal and it was as low as 5 per cent of normal at the height of lockdown. Clearly, Scotland is a big country, and it has a big rail network. We have worked with the regional transport partnerships and consulted them on our timetable proposals. We are continually tweaking the timetable based on the feedback that we receive from the regional transport partnerships and passengers themselves. However, the primary reason for operating 85 per cent of the normal number of seats from next week versus 100 per cent pre-pandemic is that we are carrying only 15 per cent of the passengers.

On that basis, will you be thinking about reinstating any of the early morning trains that I am talking about, such as the Arrochar to Glasgow train?

We will look at any requests that we receive on specific train services. We have been doing that continually throughout lockdown. Our approach has been to work within the travel restrictions, the public health guidance, and the demand that we see, which we review daily, and to continually tweak our timetable, as we are doing tomorrow for the Glasgow area.

I am happy for you to write to me about that. We will respond to you in due course.

Thank you.

Finally, I will ask Alastair Wilson a couple of questions. On your points about the bus and coach trade organisations, do you think that they are pushing hard enough on behalf of you and your colleagues in the industry?

Absolutely. The Confederation of Passenger Transport UK in Edinburgh has worked with—[Inaudible.] There is an executive committee of about six to eight coach operators, as well. Since March, they have been working tirelessly to get support for the coach industry, but they have been banging their heads off a brick wall. The work and the hours that the CPT and the coach operators have put in have been fabulous.

The fund was announced just yesterday, so we do not know how far it will go. There are 3,000 coaches in Scotland and a £6 million fund is available, so we need to see how that will be distributed. There needs to be a workable mechanism that suits all operators, whether they are large or small, have older or newer vehicles, or have minibuses or coaches. There can be big differences between the operating costs of the different vehicles, and the fund needs to be distributed evenly and fairly throughout Scotland. However, I cannot fault the guys at the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK in Edinburgh.

Has Strathclyde Partnership for Transport been helping, as well?

I am sorry to interrupt, Maurice. Given the time and the fact that we have two more members to get to, I hope that you do not mind leaving out your last question. John Mason has the next question.

My question is about enforcement; I will start with Alex Hynes. We have already heard that, on buses, drivers encourage passengers to wear masks and that some of the seats are marked off and some are not. However, on the railways, it appears to be a free-for-all. I understand that there are ticket collectors on trains, but we never see them. Does the rail industry need to encourage passengers a bit more, and take more enforcement action?

Our advice to customers is to follow the five rules for safer travel, one of which is to wear a face covering at stations and on trains. That is now the law in Scotland, and compliance levels have been very good. We have 6,500 closed-circuit television cameras across the network to continually measure compliance with face covering requirements, and we take action where we have hotspots of non-compliance. It is for the police to enforce the law, and we work with the British Transport Police to make that happen.

Passengers are reassured when they see a member of staff walking through the train, but we never see anybody. Frankly, it is groups of younger guys who do not wear masks—it is a macho thing. They are challenged in the shops and on the buses, so why are they not challenged on the trains?

Our priority is to keep our staff and customers safe, and the physical distancing between staff and customers is very important to us. In the future, we want to reinstate ticket checking on board trains, but we have to risk assess that in order to keep our people safe. We will work with the trade unions to do that. If customers follow the five rules for safer travel, they and staff will be kept safe.

10:30  

Maybe Mr Wilson can tell us whether his drivers have had bad experiences when they have encouraged people to wear masks.

Overall, the uptake of mask wearing has been pretty good, but it is not a driver’s job to police that. The driver is there to drive the bus. We recommend face masks, but there are exemptions. Some people will take advantage of the exemptions but, overall, the uptake has been pretty good.

At the outset, I declare, as I have done before, that my wife works part time for Caledonian MacBrayne.

I want to look at the lessons that have been learned from the current processes, bearing in mind the five-day travel window that we will have over the festive period. Some areas will have moved from level 4 to level 3 or from level 3 to level 2. In Inverclyde and parts of Argyll and Bute, there have been reports of people travelling from Glasgow and elsewhere to go to Dunoon or Helensburgh, to go to pubs and, obviously, drink alcohol. They will have used ScotRail and CalMac services to get there. That goes back to John Mason’s question about the actions that you have been taking to check passengers on vessels and trains. Are you aware of that type of activity, with people using those forms of public transport?

As I said before, we have well-developed protocols to address the guidelines that the Scottish Government has issued. We expect our customers to follow those guidelines. We see our role being to inform, and we take that role very seriously, but we are not there to enforce. Responsibility for decisions on whether to travel lies with individuals. We inform customers through boarding emails, information at ports and harbour welcome announcements and, on longer journeys, we repeat those announcements. Customers have adopted those guidelines, and that adoption has been strong.

There is a difficult balance for our crews in maintaining compliance and not aggravating a situation that could escalate into an act of aggression. If there is aggression, dealing with that is clearly a role for the police, and we would involve the police, if required. However, ultimately, it is up to customers to follow Government guidelines or, indeed, the law as it stands.

Have CalMac staff had to call the police because of unruly passengers?

Yes, we have, and that was a regular occurrence before the pandemic. We have a strict rule that we do not accept any aggression towards our staff, and we have a clear protocol that means that any aggression is reported to the police. We have good links with local police stations, so that officers are able to attend. During the pandemic, there has been a slight increase in the incidence of acts of aggression, but it is still at quite a low level. We are clear with our staff about what is and is not acceptable, and we support them to manage such situations.

Obviously, our advice to customers is to follow the five rules for safe travel and to adhere to local travel restrictions, which vary depending on where people live. The vast majority of customers adhere to them, which is great news. We monitor compliance, whether that is through our network of 6,500 closed-circuit television cameras or by listening to our passengers and staff.

When we get intelligence on potential breaches of regulations, we pass that to the British Transport Police. We work with the British Transport Police every day—they are part of our task-force arrangements—and it is for them to enforce any travel restrictions or regulations. That process has worked well. Where we have seen adverse trends, we have worked with the British Transport Police to nip them in the bud.

I do not want to contradict you on that point, Alex, but I had a meeting yesterday with representatives from the British Transport Police, Police Scotland and ScotRail because some issues have occurred locally. This touches on John Mason’s question from a few moments ago. The Fife circle service was referred to as a route where there have been a number of unruly passengers—predominantly youths not following the rules or putting fear into other passengers.

I agree with you on that. Last weekend, we were working with the British Transport Police on the Fife circle in order to nip in the bud behaviour we saw that we did not like. We are working with the British Transport Police to ensure that people comply. It is for the police to enforce those regulations, not the rail industry.

We all accept that, because of how things stand at the moment, the revenue situation is somewhat different from what it was pre-Covid. When we get to the point of once again allowing revenue collection to take place on the trains, that will probably have a positive effect, as you and I have discussed before.

We are looking to reintroduce revenue collection as soon as we can, but the most important thing for us is to work with the trade unions on that and to keep our staff safe.

I have a question for you all, as the subject touches on you all. Mr Wilson discussed cruise ships a few moments ago. Cruise ships come into Greenock every year, and it was anticipated that more than 100 ships were due to come in over the next year. That would have had a hugely positive effect across the wider economy. The situation for that sector is considered to be quite unsure for the next year.

Do any of you have a potential number in mind for how many people you would like to see vaccinated in Scotland by the time we get to the summertime, which is when the majority of ships would come in? How confident would you then feel about that particular part of the tourism economy potentially starting up again in Scotland?

Vaccination is probably the key to the cruise ship industry. Whether it should be a condition that passengers must be vaccinated before they travel I do not know, but I think that vaccination is essential if we are to get cruise ships running again and back up to where they were previously.

According to the people we are speaking to in the Government, we need 9.6 million vaccines to be delivered for about 4.8 million people, as people need to take the vaccine twice. We need to be pretty close to that total before we can be safe in the community again, I understand—although that is a bit beyond my area of expertise.

If we work that through, in order to have a meaningful summer—which the cruise ship sector is part of, but so are the other parts of our community, including events and hospitality—we need to do the vaccinations before the summer is in full swing, and we need to tell people that they can plan with confidence that that will happen.

I have no idea whether we are planning on it—we are certainly not communicating on it—but I would like to see a plan that gets all 9.6 million vaccinations done before the start of the summer, so that we can start trading our way out of this situation.

We have had small glimpses of what has been planned in our early conversations, on the basis of what we are offering to do in order to help. That is the key theme: we can help. However, the level of ambition and the scale of delivery will not get anywhere close to that aim, and we will be lucky to finish by the end of next year. That is why I am saying that the problem is that we will not have an industry to save in the end if we do not get our skates on and deliver the vaccine so as to allow a normal summer to happen next year.

I am not really qualified to comment on that area but, to go back to the point about confidence, we are in competition for tourism spend, and we are in competition to encourage people to come to Scotland. If we are not at the forefront of making those efforts and giving people confidence that we are making things safe, that money may go elsewhere. A key part of our recovery strategy has to be to get people vaccinated and to give people the confidence that they can come and start spending that money. People will be starting to look at planning things now.

We have been led by the public health situation throughout, clearly. If the vaccination programme is successfully delivered, that will enable us to release the travel restrictions, and we can then set about building up our business. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty around when that will happen. We are planning on a number of scenarios but, until the travel restrictions are eased, it will continue to be a very difficult time for the rail industry in Scotland.

That concludes this agenda item. I thank all our witnesses for their evidence this morning. We have had a wide-ranging discussion.

10:41 Meeting suspended.  

10:45 On resuming—