Official Report 527KB pdf
Item 2 is an evidence-taking session with the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland and Passengers’ View Scotland on their annual reports for 2011-12. I welcome to the meeting Anne MacLean, convener, and Jane Horsburgh, committee member, who are both from MACS; and Hugh Flinn, acting chair, and Professor Colin Reid, committee member, who are both from PVS. I invite the witnesses to make some opening remarks.
I will give members a brief update on the three recommendations in our annual report and comment briefly on our current membership situation and the good practice guide for bus operators.
Thank you. The minister will come to our meeting on 12 December, so we will make a note to raise the issue with him.
Thank you for seeing us. I will start by reminding people that for someone with a disability, travelling covers the period from the moment they put their foot or wheel on the pavement until the moment they reach their destination. It is the whole journey. For people with disability, any break in the journey, whatever the reason for it, can lead to quite distressing circumstances.
Thank goodness for the result at Waverley station, which was bothering us all. Does Jim Eadie want to start with that?
That is the first point that I want to talk about. As an Edinburgh MSP, I was concerned about the attempt to ban taxis from Waverley station, so I congratulate the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland on its successful campaign to overturn the permanent ban. That is a good illustration of the positive and constructive role that the organisation can play.
I have seen a big improvement in the past six months or so and I will give an example of that. My colleague Mr Flinn from PVS mentioned the European regulation on the rights of passengers when travelling by sea or inland waterway. We commented on that to the UK Government through the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, on which MACS has a seat. As that legislation is from the EU, the consultation came from the UK Government.
Cruise ships?
Cruise ships—that is what I was looking for. I am sorry; the brain has gone to mush. We have no real comment on that issue, but I want a process that will be accessible to disabled people. The ferries team is willing to talk to us about that, which is good.
Would anyone like to add to that?
Yes. I echo what Anne MacLean said but have a couple of points to add. The first is that the secretariat for both our bodies is provided by staff from Transport Scotland, so we have a close working relationship almost by definition.
How often do you meet Transport Scotland?
That is difficult for MACS to say. We invite various people to come and address our meetings; it is not always Transport Scotland that we speak to. There are other parts of the Scottish Government with which we need to have a relationship. For example, we had the staff from Audit Scotland who did the audit of transport for health and social care come to talk to us, because we wanted to ensure that we could have an input into whatever came out of that report. PVS and MACS had a representative on one of the working groups, and we are waiting for the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing to make an announcement on the outcome of that.
We might come on to ask about Glasgow 2014 later in the meeting.
Will you outline how your organisations work together? How do you avoid duplication in your roles and those of other groups that represent disabled passengers, such as the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee?
DPTAC deals purely with things that are the responsibility of the UK Government. We work with PVS—PVS sends an observer to MACS and we send an observer to PVS, so there is a good interchange. I can give examples of issues on which we have worked closely together. We have just talked about ferries. Demand-responsive transport is another example, as is the Audit Scotland report on transport for health and social care. We also worked closely together on the rail 2014 franchise, on which we appeared before the committee. As Hugh Flinn said, we had a meeting with the franchise team at which MACS and PVS were present. We work well together, even though we have slightly different remits.
I confirm that. We certainly have a very close working relationship with MACS. The other main body that we relate to is Passenger Focus, which is the UK body for rail passengers. It now sends a member of its staff to all our meetings. Because it has the resources that we do not have to undertake passenger surveys, we talk to it about what goes in its surveys and that sort of thing. We have a highly constructive relationship with MACS and Passenger Focus.
For completeness, with regard to your representations to the Scottish Government, are you satisfied that the points that you have been making in consultations have been taken on board and acted on by the Scottish Government? I know that you are awaiting a response from the minister on a number of outstanding issues, but how have you found the relationship generally over the piece?
It is generally good. As you said, we are waiting for a response on issues such as rail passenger surveys, but we accept that because we know what process is going on and we know that we will get a response in due course. Generally, we are happy with the responses that we get. The only issue that has been of concern is the one about our own membership and our on-going role, which I mentioned earlier.
Professor Reid, do you want to comment on that point?
No.
I think that a lot of our recommendations refer not necessarily to the Scottish Government but to other bodies, such as the Commonwealth games team; the health department, because of the Audit Scotland report; and organisations such as BAA, with which we have had a successful outcome. We will also deal with organisations such as Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd, which owns 11 of the 14 airports in Scotland. We are not necessarily referring to the Scottish Government per se. Quite a lot of what we need to do is to persuade operators and providers to see us as a useful source of advice and help.
Someone mentioned that the UK Government is considering the abolition of DPTAC. What is your view of that proposal? How might it impact on your work?
I wrote in the introduction to our annual report this year that it is still all up in the air and that the challenge for us will be to build a relationship with whatever body replaces DPTAC. There seems to me to be no doubt that DPTAC is going. We and Passengers’ View Scotland have contributed to every consultation on the winding up of DPTAC, so it will not come as a surprise to hear that we have tried to show the UK Government as convincingly as we can that DPTAC is not nearly as expensive as the Government has been trying to make out and that it is an efficient body. It is becoming less efficient because posts are not being filled through the public appointments system as they fall vacant. The Government has also reduced DPTAC’s secretariat support.
We were disappointed by the consultation on the abolition of DPTAC, because it seemed to suggest that all consultation and discussion about disability issues has to go through one forum, whereas the reality is that there will be different sorts of relationships for different projects and for work on different scales—for example, focused consultancy, dealing with pressure groups or dealing with small groups. What DPTAC offers is the guarantee of across-the-board scrutiny and the ability to join up issues so that we can say, for example, “This is the third time that this point has come up in different contexts, so there is obviously a generic thing to do here.” Not being able to do that would be a further loss. It is not that everything has to, or should, go through DPTAC, but it has an important role to play as a backstop and in taking an overview.
I want to make it clear that DPTAC deals with UK issues and equality, so accessibility standards are dealt with at UK level. If we do not have anybody to liaise with and get involved with, it is unclear how we in Scotland will be able to feed in our views. In addition, the European legislation that comes to us goes to the UK level first. Although we are involved in it, we do not always lead on it. We will therefore have to have a discussion on the issue, depending on how DPTAC is taken forward.
For some people, eligibility for a blue badge is dependent on receipt of the higher rate of the mobility component of disability living allowance. What impact might the UK Welfare Reform Act 2012 have on the operation of the blue badge scheme in Scotland?
That issue, which relates to passported benefits, is being taken up with the Government. The reform could have an impact and, in theory, blue badges could be taken away. A lot of work is happening in the Government. MACS has a watching brief on that and engages with the welfare reform scrutiny group. The Government is working on how to retain the level of eligibility but, as yet, we do not know what will be set up. The issue is a worry to people out there, and they are getting more and more vocal about it. I believe that the National Assembly for Wales is consulting on the issue and trying to find a way to retain the level of eligibility, perhaps through a different means.
That is another issue that we could raise with the minister on 12 December.
We have not yet done so, but MACS sits on the Scottish rail accessibility forum, at which the issue of EGIP—however you pronounce it—comes up regularly. Therefore, I have no doubt that we will have an opportunity to, I hope, have some influence.
We have not done that yet, either. I have attended a stakeholder meeting, along with the MACS member who leads on EGIP. Beyond that, we have had no direct dialogue on the issue.
I have two questions for PVS. First, how does PVS gather passengers’ views to ensure that it accurately represents their interests to the Scottish Government?
I am afraid that the answer is that, notwithstanding our title, we do not do so directly, because we simply do not have sufficient resources to enable us to undertake surveys. Therefore, we are reliant on Passenger Focus—and I mentioned the input that we have to its surveys and our proposal that those surveys be widened to cover a much larger number of passengers in Scotland.
The other route is through the bus passengers’ platform, which is the direct complaints mechanism. The number and nature of the complaints are monitored, and if anything significant emerges we take it up. Moreover, we are all fairly well scattered throughout Scotland and all read the local press, which tends to be a very good way of picking up major issues.
Following the collapse of the awarding of the intercity west coast franchise, the UK Government has halted work on all passenger franchising exercises. What implications might that have for Scottish rail passengers?
When that happened, I wrote directly to the member of the franchise team with whom we are liaising to ask precisely that question. In essence, the answer was that the timetable that the team is following allows it to take account of the outcome of the two reviews that the UK Government has initiated. In short, we have talked to Transport Scotland about the implications, but subject to the result of the two reviews it does not appear that there will be a direct impact on the timescale for the Scottish franchise.
In its report, MACS says that it has not been supplied with sufficient information to properly assess proposed improvements to railway stations. The Scottish rail accessibility forum has had the same difficulty. What additional information are you looking for? Who is responsible for providing it—or not, as the case may be?
At the moment, the Scottish rail accessibility forum is merely told which stations are going to be upgraded and does not hear much about the rationale behind the decisions to pick those particular stations. Incidentally, MACS does not want to get into an argument about whether, say, Aviemore or Stonehaven should be upgraded; we simply want to know the rationale behind the decisions to upgrade certain stations, but we do not get that information.
Do you have a list of priority stations that need to be made more accessible?
I do not want to be hanged for this. I do not think that that is our role; instead, our role is to find out the rationale behind the spending of money, to examine where money has been spent and to see whether that spend has made the improvement that it was supposed to make.
I want to ask you about the access for all approach that the UK Government and the Scottish Government support. The Scottish Government indicated that the access for all programme has made a “substantial difference” and that it is in discussions with the UK Government to continue the programme after 2014. Is that the best approach?
I will give you the same answer as I gave to the previous question. Again, MACS is concerned not about where the money comes from—which pot it comes out of—but about how it is spent and whether the outcome is valuable and useful. Anything that can be done to upgrade stations has to be good.
Does anyone else have a view on whether access for all is the appropriate approach, or are there any other suggestions?
To be clear, the access for all approach is about making train stations step-free accessible; it does not claim to make the whole station environment accessible. A report and research have been produced that state that a big improvement has been made across the network. The access for all approach slightly lets down those people who have a sensory loss such as hearing or sight, but addressing those issues was never its aim, which was to make train stations step free.
How far away are we from making railway stations accessible?
I could not possibly say.
Neither could I.
It has taken until now to get train stations—or as many of them as possible—step free.
I am interested in the new Borders line, because we can get in early and ensure that train stations are accessible from the beginning and are not just step free but able to cover all other disabilities such as cognitive problems, learning difficulties and sensory deprivation. We are starting afresh: not only is that a good opportunity, but the project could be an exemplar for what could be done elsewhere.
Talking about starting afresh, you obviously have some asks with regard to the ScotRail franchise for 2014. Are you satisfied that the issues that you are raising are being addressed satisfactorily as part of the franchise process? What are the key practical issues that you would like to be addressed in the next franchise?
You could look at the written and oral evidence that we gave the committee when we discussed the “Rail 2014” consultation: everything that we said in relation to disability is what we expect. Our views are also encapsulated in our annual report.
We made a full response to the “Rail 2014” consultation and it is summarised on pages 9 to 11 of our annual report. Our key priorities and concerns are set out there.
I am sure that we can take that up with the minister.
I have some questions about the PVS annual report. Hugh Flinn helpfully set out the background to the three recommendations in the report. You highlight that the existing rail passenger monitoring covers the views of about 1,000 passengers and that it is carried out by Passenger Focus, and you suggest that that is not a large enough sample. Given that there were 78 million rail passenger journeys in Scotland in the previous year—the statistics are for 2010-11—what size of sample should there be if we are to have a meaningful satisfaction survey? Which organisation is best placed to carry out the survey?
I hesitate to give a precise number.
Should it be 5,000, 10,000 or 15,000?
Off the top of my head, I think that it would have to be at least 5,000. The UK survey covers 5,000 passengers. As I said, although the 1,000 sample in Scotland is reasonable in terms of the national picture and is large enough to have a gender breakdown and a breakdown between key categories of rail transport such as urban, rural and so on, it does not allow route-specific feedback. Passengers on the Inverness to Kyle line will have different experiences from commuter passengers in the Glasgow area. In order to get such a breakdown, we need a significantly larger sample.
You have highlighted that you have concerns about future monitoring. Are you concerned purely about route-by-route monitoring, or do you have concerns about anything else? What are your concerns about how we will carry out future monitoring?
One issue that we raise in our written submission is the monitoring of lateness. That has been done primarily in relation to arrival at the destination but not so much in terms of monitoring along the way. A train might be on time when it gets to Glasgow from Aberdeen, but that does not mean that it was on time at various intermediate destinations. There could be better monitoring of that; it is, however, just one example.
You also ask that the Scottish Government establish a new “second tier” complaints handling body for ferry passengers, explaining that new EU regulations require a complaints procedure. Who should provide such a service and do you have any idea how much it would cost to set it up?
On the EU regulations, in its consultation response the UK Government said—after liaising with Transport Scotland—that the responsibility should be with the Scottish Government. At an overall level, that is the case. However, as I said earlier, we feel that there must be an independent element, which could be provided by us, although not necessarily. The independent element is critical because of the Scottish Government’s ownership position in relation to Caledonian MacBrayne.
I have one last question. You also ask that a duty be placed on public bodies to plan and encourage bus-rail integration where there are new or substantially changed rail services. Given that FirstGroup operates ScotRail as well as many bus services, why has FirstGroup not—do you think—integrated those services?
That is a very interesting question. The second part of our recommendation addresses that issue. When we embarked on the Airdrie to Bathgate line report, I thought naively that the fact that you have mentioned would make co-ordination and integration between bus and rail services easier. However, it turns out that the situation is quite the reverse. I was advised by officials from both FirstBus and West Lothian Council that the requirements of the Office of Fair Trading are such that, in order that the bus operator is not at an unfair advantage, as the OFT would see it, by virtue of also being the rail operator, it could not simply adjust its timetables to enable direct transfer to take place with the minimum delay. It is a strange situation.
Given that the problem is with the OFT, what would any new duty that was introduced by the Scottish Government achieve, bearing in mind the OFT’s ruling?
The problem is that competition legislation is a reserved matter. We can only suggest that representations be made; I do not think that the Scottish Government has any direct powers over such matters.
The Scottish Government has no direct powers, but it could do other things. Integration of services is one aspect, but another issue is where the bus stops are—whether they are accessible and whether they fit easily with the rail stations. Things can be done to improve the situation even if the competition problem still exists.
My questions are on PVS’s bus passengers’ platform. We have seen the breakdown of the complaints figures. Is the system for resolving bus passenger complaints fit for purpose, given that the vast majority of complaints to the bus passengers’ platform were not within the scope of the agency?
Unfortunately, neither of us has had direct involvement with the BPP. Partly, that is because of the constitutional structure, as PVS is the appeals body from the bus passengers’ platform. Rather than get involved in looking at individual papers, we take a hands-off approach so that we have independence when matters come to us.
What sanctions can the BPP impose on a bus operator that fails to resolve legitimate passenger complaints?
It can impose no sanctions directly. Under the Scottish statutory instrument that created us, we have the power to require an operator to provide compensation, which I do not think we have ever got to the stage of doing. How we would actually require an operator to do that is, I find, quite an interesting issue. Would we send them a bill or invoice? How would it be enforced and by whom? As an academic administrative lawyer, I find the whole BPP system to be fascinating as an example of a hybrid system that might have been thought out a bit more carefully to begin with.
Let us explore that system a little bit more. What, if anything, can the BPP do to assist bus operators with a view to avoiding complaints being made in the first place?
Two things come to mind. First, we have been working with operators in Scotland on a good practice guide, which tries to ensure that they know what is expected of them and that they do things properly.
Basically, the BPP can operate in a fairly interactive way to assist and ensure that the level of legitimate complaints is lower than it would otherwise have been.
Yes—the small number of cases requiring formal decisions is a sign of our effectiveness in dealing with the operators.
Can you tell us a wee bit more about the good practice guide for bus operators and what good practice it covers? Is it purely about the kind of service that people currently get, or can it cover issues such as the services that a community wants in its area? What is the remit?
I can take you through the headlines, if you like, in the good practice guide. It covers the passenger’s experience before they are even on the bus or coach; the quality of facilities and level of information at bus stops and in bus stations. It covers the conduct—for want of a better word—of drivers and inspectors, and the quality of buses—for example their cleanliness, heating and ventilation. It also covers the means of paying for journeys, punctuality and reliability.
What a pity. Is the guide being adopted? What is the problem that you described at the outset?
We have a good working relationship with the Confederation of Passenger Transport in Scotland, which is the bus operators’ umbrella body. We discussed the code of practice intensively with the CPT and it has been agreed. However, it does not feel able to sign on the dotted line without the consent of the UK Confederation of Passenger Transport, of which it is a part. The problem is that that consent has not been forthcoming. We understand that the issue is reluctance on the part of the UKCPT to have a distinct code for one part of the UK.
That is a bit odd.
I could not agree more.
Are companies that operate in Scotland adopting the good practice guide as a matter of course?
They are not doing so in a formal sense, although—broadly speaking—the major bus operators respect it.
Anne MacLean talked about interaction on the Commonwealth games. Will you say more about that?
The last time we appeared before a committee—it was the Equal Opportunities Committee—the Commonwealth games scene was fairly sad. Although we contributed to a consultation document, you would not have known it because none of our comments was printed, although the document casually mentioned in the front that we had contributed.
That is how you pronounce it.
There is also the Commonwealth pool in Edinburgh, of course. We want to ensure that all those venues are dealt with in the same way as the main Commonwealth games centres in Glasgow.
Is there anything that we have not covered that witnesses would like to raise?
No. I think that we have covered our main areas of concern and I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to do so.
If there are no more questions from members, I thank the witnesses very much for their attendance. The committee will follow up the issues that you raised in the context of our forthcoming work on transport issues, in particular the next ScotRail franchise. You mentioned several issues that we will take up with the minister. Thank you again.