Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, 15 Jan 2008

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Official Report 215KB pdf

---

Work Programme

Agenda item 3 is on our work programme. Members recently had the opportunity to suggest issues to add to our work programme for the coming months. Paper TIC/S3/08/1/2 lists the various suggestions that members have come up with, which I will run through quickly. The suggested issues are the costs of public transport, in light of recent increases; the development of air routes to and from Scotland; the role, responsibility and performance of Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd; school travel plan co-ordinators; the rail service from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Inverness; the development of high-speed rail links to England; and options for introducing direct rail links to Europe via the Channel tunnel.

I will kick off with my views and then open out the discussion. The final two issues, on rail links to England and the continent, are hugely important, but they are potentially bigger issues than we will have time to consider in the gap in our work programme that we want to fill. Although I advocate strongly that the Scottish Parliament should have a role in developing the case for such rail links in the longer term, there is no clear, simple and specific piece of work that we can do on that in the short term.

We recently considered the development of air routes in our examination of the Government's budget and we will have further opportunity to debate the issue in the Parliament, so I am not sure that a specific, discrete inquiry by the committee would add anything. My preference is to consider either school travel plan co-ordinators or public transport costs, given the recent increases. I am sure that members from other parts of the country will have similar experiences but, in the peak period, Glasgow to Edinburgh commuters are now asked to pay getting on for £18. A case can be made for examining the impact of rail and bus fares on the Government's aspiration to get meaningful modal shift.

Those are my initial thoughts. I open up the discussion to members.

The first question is how much time we have available. The clerks can advise us on that. Our choice depends on how we want to use the available gap. We might be able to do more than one inquiry by having a restricted time for the submission of written evidence only and a short period of oral evidence from witnesses. That way, we would get in more of the committee's preferences. Each member has their feelings about which inquiries we should follow through.

You would expect me to talk about the air route development fund, convener—I know your views on that, but it is a relevant subject. The business community is heavily behind the reintroduction of the fund. To stress a point that I have made on several occasions, I am still not clear about the reasons for the removal of the fund, as my understanding is that the arguments about state aid do not apply uniformly to all airports throughout Scotland. If the Government wants to make a change, it is perfectly entitled to do so, but I do not think that the state aid issue is the real reason for the change. It would be useful to flesh out that issue.

The fund has climate change implications—I know your view on that, convener—but there are also important issues about the development of tourism and inward investment, which are linked. The issue is not only about the Highlands and Islands—it affects airports the length and breadth of the country. An inquiry into the fund would be relevant, because the issue has arisen as a result of a change of policy that I do not think was in the Scottish National Party manifesto before the election, although I am sure that Mr Gibson and Shirley-Anne Somerville will keep me right if I am wrong about that.

To answer your first point, paragraph 1 in the paper states that we have an opportunity to do a piece of work that covers two or three evidence sessions and to produce a report with recommendations.

Given the context of our work this year, which will focus heavily on climate change, and recognising how the development of transport projects has been very much restricted to the centre of Scotland in the past eight years, we need to strike out and examine the problems that are faced on the longer-distance routes. That would be a materially useful piece of work at the moment. Some of the changes could take two or three three-year periods to achieve—perhaps nine or 10 years. It would be a good idea to get a wider understanding of the importance of those routes to the economy.

Anything that we do regarding the petition about railway lines north of Inverness is predicated on developments south of there. The Government has a commitment to reducing the time that it takes to travel between Inverness and the centre of Scotland. It would be useful for the committee to show that we understand the importance of rail development and to deal with the question of what fares should be charged in that context. It would be better to consider the vital nature of railways for the whole of Scotland, rather than the situation in the centre of Scotland, where services are overprovided—if I might say that—and are multiplying before our eyes. Although I have concerns about people having to pay any amount of money to travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh, it ain't nothing compared with the length of the journey, the poor quality of the vehicles and the time that it takes to travel in major parts of the country that contribute considerably to the economy and, indeed, to our sanity. There is a whole area of things there that I feel would be well worth your consideration, ladies and gentlemen.

If we were to consider those issues, I would be entirely supportive of considering the whole country. I gave the one example of a journey earlier only because it was the one that I have made most recently.

When I looked down the list of suggestions in the work programme paper, I thought that some of them were very good, in particular the one about the cost of public transport. I have picked up from some people that they feel that the cost of public transport is different in different parts of Scotland. I would like to know more about that.

The last three items on the list relate to rail services between cities in Scotland and routes leading outside Scotland. They gave me the idea that it might be useful for the committee to do something a little more long sighted, particularly at this stage of the session. We could look a bit further into the future and invite people from civic society and industry to tell us what their aspirations are for rail services in the long term. Many political parties have proposals—some more practical than others—for huge developments in the rail system, inside and beyond Scotland. Perhaps we need to do something to scale and prioritise those aspirations and to judge what might be possible or less possible in years to come.

Are you suggesting that as something more substantial for us to do in next year's work programme?

I do not take the view that it needs to be all that substantial. The opportunity is there for us to invite people to come in and talk about what they see as the long-term future of rail travel, and we could use that to colour the attitudes of political parties and individuals as we go forward towards another election in a little over three years' time.

I do not disagree with what Alex Johnstone says about the importance of doing such a piece of work. However, I would like that work to be constrained to two or three evidence-taking sessions. We did not consider that for this year's work programme, so we should perhaps think about it for the future. All the suggestions are worth while, but I particularly favour our looking into the costs of public transport, especially if we widen it out to include bus fares, as I know, anecdotally, that bus journeys in the north-east cost much more than similar lengths of journey do in urban areas. I am also interested in school travel plan co-ordinators. Both of those would be short, focused pieces of work, and we could deliver some advice in our report that could be taken on right away. Some of the other things would depend on budgetary issues and so on.

I am keen that we choose a piece of work that we can actually do in a couple of weeks rather than having a talking shop for a couple of meetings just to fill a space. Sorry—I do not mean to be unkind, but when a committee of the Parliament sends out a request for information and evidence, people have expectations. They do not want to have just another opportunity to give evidence if it will not go anywhere. I agree with Alison McInnes that we should take on something that we can actually do.

We need to consider seriously not just the cost of public transport but the whole issue of public transport in relation to modal shift—the fact that trains do not come, or three coaches come when dozens of folk are waiting, or trains do not turn up for hours at a time, or people cannot get a bus in particular areas. We need to include public transport in our work programme in a serious way. I do not think that we can consider it in two or three weeks. I feel strongly about that.

We should promote public transport, but we need an opportunity to listen to what people are saying and we need to consider what needs to be done to change systems and make progress. That relates also to our discussion about the budget and how it might affect public transport. It might be that we can put down a marker and come back to consider the topic.

I am interested in the school travel plan co-ordinators. It would make sense to look into that topic now and consider how to change attitudes for the future, given that people have established ways of doing things. We can consider the topic in a short amount of time and make some recommendations.

Let us do something meaningful and consider a topic on which we can make some recommendations and changes. We should put down markers that we will come back and do bigger pieces of work rather than try to do them in two or three meetings just to tick a box.

I do not disagree with any of the suggested topics on the list. The question is whether we can fit in any of them in a piece of—if you will—quick and dirty work.

I support David Stewart's view on what I call the son of the air route development fund. I still have high hopes that my party can amend the Government's budget in that direction. I have a personal interest in rail links to the Channel tunnel—I will ask a parliamentary question about that later this week. However, I accept that the topic is complex and that considering it would probably take too long for the slot that we have available.

It is fine if people want to consider the cost of public transport, but we should not just hear examples of individual journeys. We would have to consider the principal issues and benchmark the average cost per mile travelled, or whatever, against the cost of travel generally, including the cost of car travel.

Absolutely.

I know for a fact that motorists do not do accurate calculations when they calculate the cost of their car travel. They fool themselves and convince themselves that the car is always cheaper. On the other hand, because of the way in which the railway industry is structured, people pay over the odds for many journeys. They pay more than the true economic cost of their rail use because of the way in which we separate track charges from charges for using the train.

I tend to favour our considering the cost of travel rather than the cost of using public transport, but unless we are focused and look in the right places, we would probably run out of time.

I certainly agree with your point about the comparative cost of different modes of transport. If we are looking to understand why people make certain decisions and what their incentives are, we need to make that comparison. Again, though, that reinforces the point that that is probably a more major piece of work.

There seems to be a lot of open-mindedness to the idea of a more substantial piece of work on public transport, including the future generally for rail travel in Scotland, bearing in mind the need to consider all parts of Scotland and not just the areas that are already well served. However, perhaps that is something more substantial for next year's work programme.

If we are thinking about doing something short—however dirty or otherwise it might be, Charlie—we are probably talking about having two or three meetings to consider something much more discrete. Several members have mentioned the school travel plan co-ordinators. Is there anything else from the list in the committee paper that people would prefer us to take as our topic?

Perhaps we can look into what Alex Johnstone described in the longer term and, over two or three meetings, consider the cost of public transport, if the terms of reference are kept very specific. I do not see the two issues as an either/or decision. We can have a wider, long-term debate about the future of rail—and if members want to broaden it out to all public transport that is fair enough—but there is scope for us to do something on the cost of public transport. It would be advantageous for the committee to look into that, as a lot of the population have great concerns about it.

Is that the general view?

I would prefer us to consider school travel plan co-ordinators. That would cover both health and the impact on congestion, and we would probably come up with a report that people could use. I do not doubt that there is benefit in considering the problems of the costs of travel, but we are not in control of those—they are not something that we can influence directly right away. That would be a longer-term piece of work.

I suggested that we consider that issue because, although there are elements of the costs of all the different modes of transport that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government can do nothing about, there are elements of them that we can do something about. I was interested in discussing the balance that can be struck and which of those mechanisms we are using.

If we are going to consider public transport costs—whether of trains or whatever—we need time to do a bigger piece of work. I like the idea of looking at the school travel plan co-ordinators. It also makes sense for us to consider the development of air routes to and from Scotland, given that we are going to debate climate change legislation and are gathering information on climate change.

Those are things that we need to do and that we can do in two or three meetings. I am arguing that we should not do any of the other things until we can make time to do them properly.

Two topics seem to be getting support. It is suggested that we do something short and focused on rail travel in general or on the prices of public transport in general—I am not sure which of those members support. The other topic concerns school travel. Can I see a show of hands? Who supports a discussion of school travel? Thank you. Who supports a discussion of rail/public transport? Thank you. We are probably going to have to thrash out a fairly specific remit for our consideration of the issues based on the discussion that we have had. Steve Farrell suggests that we give a nod towards either something aspirational or something that is about costs. It seems to me that a proper examination of the costs of public transport is hugely important but probably requires a lot more work than we are going to have time for. Is that agreed?

I agree because of the time constraint. However, it should be possible for us to get some of the institutes of motoring to appear before the committee to tell us the costs of running motor cars, as was suggested. We do not have a proper estimate of that. It would be important to put that information into the balance when we are talking about aspirations for public transport, to make the situation quite clear.

Okay. Is that enough to be going on with?

I think that I might agree with Rob Gibson on that, but only because my brain hurts.

That is usually the reason.

I bet that the clerk is sorry that he asked.

I bet that he is.

I think that we have enough to be going on with. I thank members for their attendance. Does the committee agree to delegate to me and to the clerks the tasks of identifying relevant witnesses and of updating the committee's work programme on the website to take account of our discussion?

Members indicated agreement.

You are the man.

Meeting closed at 15:45.