The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-11550, in the name of Jim Hume, on being one step closer to trains at Reston and East Linton. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the Scottish Government’s agreement in the ScotRail franchise contract to provide a two-hourly service between Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed that will call at Reston and East Linton stations; further welcomes the Scottish Government’s commitment to having the service operational by December 2016; notes what it considers the socioeconomic benefits that this will undoubtedly bring to the Scottish Borders and East Lothian, a view that was echoed in the 2011 report that was commissioned by Network Rail, The Value of Station Investment, which suggested that stations can have a significant impact on the towns and cities that they serve by acting as regional gateways, attracting businesses and helping to stimulate economic growth; further notes that the Scottish Government’s document, Rail 2014 – Public Consultation, states that “new stations assist with a number of strategic aims such as stimulating sustainable economic growth or encouraging modal shift”; recognises the joint feasibility study launched in December 2013, which recommends that this local service with the reopened stations should be taken forward to the next stage; praises what it considers the tireless work of the local campaigners, Barrie Forrest and Tom Thorburn, and all their volunteer colleagues from the Rail Action Group East of Scotland (RAGES), in driving forward this rail transport vision for south-east Scotland, and notes the collaborative funding bid to the Scottish Stations Fund by Scottish Borders Council, East Lothian Council and the South East Scotland Regional Transport Partnership.
12:31
I am delighted to host this members’ business debate, which I am even more delighted to say marks a key moment in the long-running campaign to bring trains to Reston and East Linton. Over the years, the campaign to get rail services to Reston and East Linton has rightly received widespread support from residents and community councils. It has attracted cross-party support from MSPs and has been supported across boundaries by East Lothian Council and Scottish Borders Council. Such is the social and economic case for the reinstatement of rail services at Reston that, more recently, Scottish Borders Council increased its financial commitment to the project to £1.28 million.
The tenacity of the members of the rail action group east of Scotland—or RAGES, as we all know it—is immense. Without a shadow of a doubt, their sheer hard work, determination and savvy campaigning have kept the issue in the spotlight across changing Holyrood and council administrations since the group was set up back in 1999. The chairman of RAGES, Tom Thorburn, its vice-chairman, Barrie Forrest, its secretary, Russell Darling, and all its committee members have campaigned tirelessly to keep rail services for Reston and East Linton on the agenda. That hard work is paying off.
The RAGES team is an exemplar of community campaigning, and I am pleased to say that we are in the presence of that campaigning tour de force, as some of the RAGES team are in the public gallery. I hope that the debate lives up to their expectations, and I am sure that my MSP colleagues will join me in welcoming them to the Scottish Parliament.
To provide rail services for communities across coastal Berwickshire and rural East Lothian is a historic achievement, and I welcomed the news from Keith Brown in his previous post as transport minister that a two-hourly service had been agreed in the ScotRail franchise and that trains would come to Reston and East Linton from December 2016. I hope that the new minister will be in a position to echo that commitment, and I look forward to hearing from him on that.
I am pleased that good progress is being made on the joint bid to the Scottish stations fund by Scottish Borders Council, East Lothian Council and the south east of Scotland transport partnership. Again, I welcome the positive comments that Keith Brown made on that submission, and I hope that the new minister will also look favourably on it.
In time, it will be important to see an affordable pricing structure for passengers and a timetable that works for commuters and tourists alike. More immediately, it is imperative that we get a firm timetable and deadline for construction works, and I look forward to hearing from the minister on that. I welcome Derek Mackay to his new position.
I have already hinted at the length of time for which the campaign has been running. In 2002, Tom Thorburn of RAGES and Ted Clemit of Reston and Auchencrow community council took a petition to the Scottish Parliament to reinstate services at Reston and East Linton. Since then, I have been pleased to support RAGES fully in its work to secure rail services at Reston and East Linton. It is certainly clear from feasibility studies that there will be significant socioeconomic benefits.
On the other side of the Borders, work is under way on the Waverley rail line, which will benefit not just the Borders but Midlothian and, of course, Edinburgh. As work recently began on laying track, Alex Salmond set out his vision for 1 million passengers using the service annually. The two projects are very different, but that sentiment underlines the promise of the benefit that rail services bring to our communities through both inward investment and the tourism economy. That in turn reflects what we wish to happen at Reston and East Linton.
I would like the Waverley line to be extended to Hawick and beyond, to join up with Carlisle. I see no reason why the Scottish Government should not at least commit to a feasibility study, in the light of the former First Minister’s ambitious vision. That discussion is for another day, however—today is about Reston and East Linton.
Our rural and coastal areas can often be left behind when it comes to investment. Our coastal towns and villages, which have traditionally relied on fishing, have recently had to diversify in a changing economy. I am pleased to say that Eyemouth is still a busy working port that services fishing and commercial fleets. Over the years, an increase in tourism activities has brought visitors into the town and the wider county of Berwickshire, which has fantastic attractions along its coastline, such as St Abbs and Coldingham Bay, to name a couple.
It is easy to argue for the need for trains to Reston and East Linton. Such a move will make the area more attractive to young people and new business. Population alone justifies a rail service, which will help to get people out of their cars. It will perhaps even help Scotland to meet its climate change targets, too. Reston station could serve a population of roughly 10,000 in the eastern part of the Borders, and East Linton station will be a welcome addition, as we know that East Lothian’s population is projected to experience the biggest increase in Scotland—33 per cent—by 2035.
It is not an overstatement to say that today’s debate marks a seminal moment for rail travel in the south of Scotland. As work continues apace on the Waverley line, the east is now tantalisingly within touching distance of train services at Reston and East Linton.
I pay tribute to RAGES members for leading on this important local issue. They have been an impressive machine behind the campaign. They have kept up the momentum year after year, and I am sure that MSPs from across the chamber will agree that it is they who deserve the credit for bringing rail services back to Reston and East Linton.
12:37
I thank Jim Hume for securing the debate. The campaign for additional services in East Lothian and the Borders has been on-going for a while—since the first East Lothian rail study in 1999.
I, too, pay credit to the rail action group east of Scotland for its role in the campaign. RAGES was formally established at an inaugural meeting in Dunbar on 13 January 1999, and it has been campaigning for the reopening of East Linton and Reston stations since then. In 2008, a steering group was established under the auspices of East Lothian Council. That brought together MSPs and councillors from all parties to take forward and co-ordinate the desirable plans. SEStran has also been instrumental in moving the project forward. The cross-party approach has proven to be very successful in getting us to the stage that we are at today. I know that Jim Hume agrees with that.
Keith Brown’s announcement last week that the new train stations for East Linton and Reston are a step closer was welcome. Services that are written into the next franchise include the two-hourly service between Edinburgh and Berwick, with stops at the two new stations as part of the planned timetable. We hope that trains will run through both stations as soon as December 2016. That is a huge step forward towards the realisation of the services, and it shows real commitment from the Government.
That is a real investment. New stations elsewhere have been a driver for economic regeneration by bringing jobs, investment and social opportunities for communities.
The Scottish stations investment fund was launched in April 2012 to provide £30 million to support new railway stations and existing station refurbishments. The fund is now awaiting further details from the south east of Scotland transport partnership, East Lothian Council and Scottish Borders Council on the funding application that will make the new stations at East Linton and Reston a reality.
Investment in the stations will certainly encourage alternatives to private car use, which will contribute to the Government’s ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases. Evidence from recent rail reopenings in Scotland suggests that passenger use often far exceeds the forecasts. One recent reopening was of the line from Edinburgh to Bathgate. In 1986, it was forecast to carry more than 250,000 passengers per annum, but by 1989, usage had already exceeded 1 million per annum.
The Berwickshire area has a high proportion of residents working in what are typically lower-paid sectors. The Scottish Borders area has deprived settlements such as Eyemouth, as identified by the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. Eyemouth has separately been identified as being among the most vulnerable rural communities in Scotland. Opening Reston station will provide new employment opportunities to residents in Berwickshire and subsequent economic benefits.
As we have heard, there is strong support from local businesses for the introduction of the new rail service and stations, which adds to the strong support from local stakeholders, community councils and of course elected representatives.
I will close with a quote from RAGES chairman Tom Thorburn. Following last week’s announcement, he said:
“This is terrific news for our area and will be of huge benefit to a whole range of people and businesses, namely those wishing to access jobs in Edinburgh, students being able to commute for their tertiary education at QMU, Edinburgh etc, the ability to take in the theatre and sporting fixtures, and tourist access to our areas from other parts of the country.”
Let us make sure that those benefits are fully realised.
12:42
I, too, congratulate Jim Hume on obtaining the debate. He and I have worked together on the campaign over the years. However, for me, today is not the best day for him to have got the debate. With your forbearance, Presiding Officer, I will have to leave a little early for a Smith commission-related engagement, for which I apologise to colleagues and in particular the minister. I very much wanted to take part in the debate, because the campaign is important in East Lothian and the Borders.
The inclusion of a proper local service between Edinburgh and Berwick that will stop at new or restored stations at Reston and East Linton is a victory for common sense and for persistence. It is a victory for common sense because, in my constituency, the community of Dunbar has a working railway station but no proper local service, so my constituents there depend on east coast main line train services, which sometimes stop at Dunbar and sometimes do not, depending on the timetable. That is a ridiculous situation.
Even more ridiculous is the situation of my constituents in East Linton, where the station was closed many years ago. They see trains run through their community daily, but none of them stops and my constituents have no opportunity to use those services. It is simple common sense that those two communities should have a proper local rail service, and the same is true of Reston.
The decision is also a victory for persistence—particularly the persistence of the local rail campaign RAGES, to which Mr Hume and Mr Brodie paid tribute.
Mr Hume mentioned some of the stalwarts of RAGES. They are some of the politest and most courteous people one could ever do business with, but their group’s acronym is not RAGES for no reason. For years they have raged against the argument that it is not possible to reinstate services to their communities, they have raged against the argument that there are not enough train movements to enable services to be reinstated and they have raged against the argument that significantly underestimated potential passenger numbers on reinstated services. They have won every one of those arguments.
There has been persistence on the part of East Lothian Council and Scottish Borders Council, which provided resources for the original Scottish transport appraisal guidance assessment and have committed significant resources to the reopening of stations, as members said. There has also been persistence on the part of local politicians such as Councillor Norman Hampshire in Dunbar.
I am happy to acknowledge the role that the minister’s predecessor, Keith Brown, played. He responded positively to representations that were made to him and he deserves credit for the inclusion of the services in the franchise.
The victory has been gradual. Some ScotRail services have been provided to Dunbar and there is the prospect of a two-hourly service, but we still have to build two stations to make it happen. My message to the new minister is this: make no mistake, RAGES will stay on the case and will not rest—and nor will we—until the victory is complete and literally on track.
12:46
I thank Jim Hume for bringing the subject to the Parliament for debate. The opening of railway stations will appear on our agendas increasingly over the years, because the case for each station can be made so effectively.
I apologise; I am a last-minute substitute in the debate, because local member John Lamont has been called away on a constituency matter. He was extremely keen for me to take the opportunity to express his support for the reopening of the stations at Reston and East Linton and his continuing support as we move towards achieving that objective once and for all.
For many years, evidence has been mounting that a little investment can go a long way in improving our rail services. Chic Brodie talked about the Bathgate line. I can talk about our experience in the north-east with the reopening of Laurencekirk station, which underlines the success of reopening stations.
Laurencekirk—like Reston and East Linton, it is on the east coast main line—is some 30 miles south of Aberdeen. The case for reopening Laurencekirk station was made consistently for a time. We thought that the case had been made successfully, but the Government took no action in the early part of the previous decade. However, in one of the first actions of the Scottish National Party Government when it came to power in 2007, the transport minister at the time, Alex Neil, took the project forward. He was proud to come along and participate in the reopening of the station when that eventually happened.
The business case for reopening the station had been made, but Laurencekirk rewrote the book in that regard. The number of passengers that use the station has vastly exceeded expectations and Laurencekirk is experiencing all the problems that arise when transport links are better. There are huge-scale applications to build additional houses in the area, because people want to live in a town that has a station and direct rail services to Aberdeen, for those who work there, and to Edinburgh, Glasgow and the central belt, for those who want to go south.
If we provide services, people will use them. The evidence is there, all round Scotland. I think that the decision to go ahead with reopening Reston and East Linton stations will result in more evidence to back up the business cases for many more new stations in Scotland. As the minister takes the matter forward, let him be well warned: success breeds success and he will have to budget for a few more stations.
12:49
At the outset, I welcome Derek Mackay to his new ministerial role and tell him that I am missing him already from local government. I thank Jim Hume for recognising in the motion a great example of the Scottish Government doing its job.
The motion recognises a simple matter on which the Scottish Government has worked to benefit directly the people of the eastern borderlands. The creation of a bi-hourly service from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh is an amazing way of directly helping the Scottish people, which we have been sent to this Parliament to do—sometimes we wonder.
Opening this service creates a host of benefits for the eastern borderlands and the commuters who live there. The service makes it realistic for people living in towns near the stations to come into Edinburgh for work and bring the money back into their own communities, which it was previously difficult to do.
In addition, the increased traffic makes the areas around the stations centres of their region and places for businesses to open and for people to live in. That is particularly true of the areas around East Linton and Reston, which have had train stations sitting idle for nearly 50 years. The reactivated rail stations will bring in money and commerce, which have been missing. All of that spells economic prosperity for the borderlands and the Scottish people who live there.
This opportunity for benefit was clearly not missed by the local activists who succeeded in advocating this action by the Scottish Government. I am not sure whether the name of the group—RAGES—had anything to do with that, but I am sure that I would be afraid of it.
Particularly when times are still hard for many families, we need to see more actions such as these, which put money directly into projects that benefit people.
It should come as no surprise to the chamber that Jim Hume’s motion has received cross-party support. Although the various parties of the Parliament do not always agree—anybody who was in the chamber earlier would testify to that—when it comes to measures such as promoting prosperity and commerce in Scotland, we are able to get together and do amazing things.
I sincerely hope that that spirit of co-operation continues to exist in the Parliament, so that we may work as a group to benefit our constituents and work towards a stronger, more prosperous Scotland.
I thank Jim Hume again for lodging the motion, not only because I support the work that the Scottish Government has done in opening railway stations for the benefit of the community but because the motion exemplifies the type of cross-party work that we could and should do in the Parliament.
12:53
I thank members for their warm and generous welcome to my new post of Minister for Transport and Islands. I appreciate the keen interest that has been shown in this issue by a number of parties in the chamber.
I understood some contributions more readily and easily than others, given the geography involved. Added to that is the fact that I am obviously intimidated by my ministerial colleague sitting to my left, Paul Wheelhouse, who also has a keen interest in this issue, along with the other members who have taken forward this important local cause. In that tone, I congratulate Jim Hume on securing the debate.
This is an important issue to communities in East Lothian and the Scottish Borders. The Scottish Government’s record on opening new stations—as broadcast and explained by Alex Johnstone—shows just how important it is to us. Our record speaks for itself. Since 2007, six new stations have been built and nine more are due to be opened as part of the Borders rail project.
We are committed to supporting major projects and improvements to infrastructure and services across the network to contribute to sustainable economic growth. That is reflected in an ambitious £5 billion package of funding and investment until 2019.
We are delivering the Borders railway—the longest new domestic railway to be constructed in Britain for over 100 years—on time and within budget.
Next year, as we all know, two new exciting rail franchises will be in operation. They will build on passenger feedback to the rail 2014 consultation and the results of the national rail passenger surveys, all of which point to the need for an efficient, reliable and value-for-money service for Scotland’s passengers. As such, we have secured contracts that reflect our desire that the franchise should put the passenger first, contribute to the overall economy and build on the successes of the current franchise. The successful bidder’s proposals satisfy those requirements and more. They underline the Government’s commitment to providing enhanced rail services across Scotland. Trains will be introduced that are more suited to the demands of intercity travel, journey times will be shorter, facilities will be improved and there will be galley catering and more comfort for passengers.
We will deliver value for money by offering passengers a £5 advance fare between any two cities together with other proposals such as the club 50 and reduced travel costs for jobseekers and the newly employed. That is in addition to Scottish ministers’ commitment to restrict fare increases, which will further improve rail travel’s appeal and encourage modal shift.
The Borders will also benefit from being part of the great Scottish scenic railway, which will market Scotland’s scenery, heritage and tourist attractions to a wider audience. There will be special steam services to promote local attractions and grow tourism. I hope that community rail groups, local businesses and the wider rail industry engage with Abellio Scotrail to maximise the opportunities arising from those initiatives.
Mr Brown, my predecessor, was delighted to have secured services in the new Scotrail franchise that will accommodate stops at Reston and East Linton. The service is scheduled to be a two-hourly service between Edinburgh and Berwick and I am sure that we can all agree that it is a major step forward in bringing those stations back to life.
We have been open and responsive to the representations of East Lothian Council, Scottish Borders Council, SEStran and RAGES and we appreciate the work that they have done to date. East Lothian has a growing population and a new service will help to deliver sustainable economic growth and reduce the impact on the road network. In Berwickshire, the key issues are accessibility and social exclusion. Crucially, the proposed new services and station will provide improved access to work and educational opportunities and they will be a driver for economic regeneration. The benefits that the services will bring are evident to all.
The final element that is still to be put in place is the capital funding for the stations. We recognise the importance of infrastructure to sustaining our economy, providing access to opportunities and bringing our communities closer together. The investments that we have delivered or are in the midst of constructing and those for which we have detailed plans confirm our commitment to improving Scotland’s infrastructure. That commitment is backed by our £30 million Scottish stations fund, which was announced in June 2012 as part of Scottish ministers’ high-level output specification. The fund is designed to lever in third-party funding to provide new and improved stations, and it gives East Lothian Council and Scottish Borders Council the opportunity to achieve additional funding for the stations just as it was designed to do.
The bid is currently under consideration and a decision will be made once Network Rail has completed the scope and design work for each of those stations. I look forward to seeing that progressed as soon as possible.
Would the minister be able to give us a—I cannot get away from the puns—timetable on such as decision?
I would be happy to write to the member with the details of how we will consider that and with a target date. I want to be transparent about the options that are open to us and to make sure that locals are informed about likely progress. However, the member will appreciate that, in my first week in the job, there is much for me to consider and I am waiting for the required information from Network Rail so that I can properly consider the bid, cost it and ensure that what we do is credible and beyond challenge.
I am proud of our impressive record of continued investment in transport and improved accessibility to the rail network across Scotland. The investment continues to create employment, to stimulate growth and to create conditions of advantage and opportunity for Scottish communities. I encourage all those who are working towards the opening of Reston and East Linton stations to maintain that momentum with the new services, because they will greatly support the realisation of the goal of bringing the new stations to fruition and the benefit of public transport for all.
13:00 Meeting suspended.Previous
First Minister’s Question TimeNext
St Andrew’s Day 2014