I thank the Scottish Greens for using their Opposition time to shine a spotlight on the Scottish Government’s shameful decision to scrap the free bus travel for asylum seekers pilot earlier this year. I and the Labour Party will support the motion in Maggie Chapman’s name.

I pay tribute to Mark Ruskell, a member for Mid Scotland and Fife, and my colleague in Glasgow, Bob Doris, the member for Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn, with whom I have worked constructively on the campaign since it launched in 2021. Mr Doris made a powerful point about the marginal increase in costs that we are talking about. The strapline of the campaign all along has been that such a small change can make a huge difference.

We know that 2.3 million Scots currently benefit from the free concessionary travel schemes in this country, and we currently have around 5,300 people seeking asylum in Scotland. The policy would equate to a 0.2 per cent increase in the number of people in Scotland benefiting from the free concessionary bus travel scheme. It is a rounding error in the Scottish Government’s finances; to be frank, the notion that it is unaffordable is simply for the birds. There was simply a lack of political will, because it was seen as politically expedient to get rid of the proposed scheme. That was an unfortunate moment in the Government’s budgetary process.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

In the light of reports that Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts is closing its doors in December until March next year to restructure the organisation, citing funding challenges, what is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that the CCA’s temporary closure does not become permanent and a further blow to an already beleaguered Sauchiehall Street?

I am glad that the cabinet secretary is minded to pursue the policy, but—as we learned today—the budget was never allocated in the first place. It is simply unacceptable to lead people on like that when they are in the most vulnerable situations.

Since the campaign launched, it has garnered robust support across civil society and the third sector, and cross-party support in this place. I say to the minister that if she is seeking to generate economic growth, which should be a key objective of her portfolio, she should note that it has been independently assessed that concessionary travel schemes, for every pound that is invested in them, generate £3.79 in economic benefits. That should be factored into the calculations that are being made, bearing in mind that the increase in the number of people would be 0.2 per cent, which is a couple of high schools-worth of people added to the under-22 scheme. It is equivalent to a rounding error, or to natural churn, and it could probably be funded through the underspends in the existing programmes.

The merit of the policy is clear. In the region of Glasgow that I represent, the cost of an all-day bus ticket is more than £5. People who are seeking asylum rely on a financial allowance of just £6 a day to cover their cost of living, if they are living in flatted accommodation. For those who are provided with hotel accommodation, that allowance can be as little as £1.15 a day—that is little more than a can of Coke from a vending machine. Having to fork out £5 for bus travel to attend medical, social or essential legal appointments is, therefore, simply not an option for those people, unless they go without food or other essentials.

The concessionary bus travel scheme also allows people to integrate into their new home country, explore their new place of residence and begin to restart their lives. That is why the Scottish Government’s decision to scrap the nationwide pilot is so disappointing. It would be better to be honest with campaigners, but the Government’s dishonesty in this respect has been completely unforgivable. For nearly a year, the SNP was happy to lead on a working group of stakeholder organisations such as the Maryhill Integration Network and the VOICES network, knowing full well that the money was not even allocated to deliver the policy. It is some cheek for the Scottish Government to use its amendment today to try to deflect the blame on to the UK Government for its own financial incompetence and false promises, for what is such a trivial sum of money.

We agree that the people in the asylum system in Scotland are some of the most vulnerable and, as members of this Parliament, we should consider what we can do in this Parliament to help them.

This was a simple measure that would involve a relatively small increase in public expenditure, within devolved competence, to make a big difference. The way in which it was casually scrapped earlier this year was a serious concern to us all. The media coverage concerning the delivery of the pilot, just one month before the minister announced that the scheme was to be scrapped, highlighted that the scheme was being planned and was in the works, yet it was suddenly jettisoned. That caused significant shock and anxiety. Some stakeholders were verbally told the news before the minister announced publicly, at the launch of the new Scots refugee integration strategy, that the pilot would not be going ahead—

I am keen for the Government come to the table again and revisit the stupid decision that it has made, because that decision will have a massive effect on our communities. I urge the Government to do that without delay.

The cabinet secretary makes an important point about how essential the third sector organisations that support people seeking asylum are to our communities, so will she take the opportunity to apologise on behalf of the Government for the haphazard way in which the policy was announced, given that it caught them completely off guard and caused their clients a lot of anxiety?

Mr Ruskell makes a very powerful point. Many bus companies have said that implementing the scheme would improve the viability of many routes that are currently marginal and make losses.

Despite that, Scotland’s mental health has worsened, according to all measures. The most recent Scottish mental health survey found that the CAMHS waiting time target has never been met and that a total of 28,000 Scots are waiting for mental health support. We have seen the Government’s response, which has taken the form of an extortionate sticking plaster through more than £130 million being spent on locum psychiatrists over the past five years. As we have heard, health boards have been paying up to £837 per hour to plug the gaps. Does the minister’s idea of a robust NHS workforce strategy involve anything resembling such a figure? Does she consider such expenditure to be an appropriate and good-value use of taxpayers’ money?

I congratulate my colleague Ms Clark on lodging her members’ business motion, which I was happy to support. She adequately and comprehensively outlined the situation at Ardrossan, which, as other colleagues across the chamber have hinted at, is a symptom of a broader issue on the west coast of Scotland, in particular.

Scotland is unique among European countries in that our major ports have, in effect, been privatised—that has been the case for more than 30 years. The Clyde Port Authority, which was originally established through the merger in 1966 of the Clyde Navigation Trust, the Greenock Harbour Trust and the Clyde Lighthouses Trust, was managed as a trust port—in effect, a form of local authority—whereby it was democratically managed and democratically accountable until it was privatised under a statutory instrument of Parliament in 1992, the Clyde Port Authority Scheme 1991 Confirmation Order 1992. That happened with no real debate and no real public scrutiny; it was done in a very surreptitious manner. The order transferred the ownership of the entire port infrastructure and all the harbour authority responsibilities to a subsidiary of the Clyde Port Authority, Clydeport Ltd, which was in turn subject to a management buy-out in 1992. It was floated on the London Stock Exchange in December 1994 as Clydeport plc. In 2003, Clydeport was acquired by the private company Peel Ports, which remains its owner.

The difficulty with that is the scale of the company’s ownership. Clydeport is the largest port authority by geographic area in the UK—it covers 450 square miles of marine inshore land. It operates major infrastructure that the west coast economy depends on, including Greenock ocean terminal, the King George V dock in Glasgow, the Hunterston terminal, Ardrossan harbour, Greenock cruise terminal and Inchgreen dry dock, among other assets. Therefore, it is critical not just for the operation of lifeline ferry services, but for the entire economic development of the west of Scotland. A parliamentary debate on the subject has been lacking for some time.

In Scotland, we have a unique system, whereby we have three models of port ownership. We have private ports, of which Clydeport is one example, trust ports and local authority ports. The big problem with the privatised system of ports is that, while other countries are able to plan and invest in new port capacity in a coherent manner, so that they can, for example, align ferry procurement with port infrastructure development, in Scotland the state has, basically, abandoned its regulatory role. That means that private port owners are given port regulatory functions that should be state functions. In the UK, privatised ports have, in effect, been allowed to regulate themselves, which they have done, inevitably, in their own interests. That has been the case in the Clyde, the Forth and the Tay.

The member makes an interesting point. It is important to recognise that we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good: we are where we are and must chart a coherent way forward. I would say that we can achieve better equilibrium in Scotland through improved regulation.

There are two key pieces of extant regulation. The Harbours Act 1964 gives Scottish ministers the power to reconstitute harbour authorities through a harbour revision order or, in extreme circumstances, a harbour closure order. The Marine Navigation Act 2013 allows Scottish ministers to remove a harbour authority’s pilotage duties.

Those legislative tools are available for further discussion, but I urge the minister to consider something that would be analogous to the approach that we have taken in recent years to bus regulation. We saw the privatisation of buses in the 1980s but are now using the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to improve regulation. That is not necessarily about nationalising bus companies; it is about having equilibrium through franchising or some form of oversight.

The new Clyde mission and the Glasgow city region deal might give us a mechanism to establish better oversight and governance of Clydeport. I am sure that Peel Ports would be happy to co-operate with that, given that it might help to cohere investment and to attract pension funds or others to invest in the development of the Clyde’s infrastructure. We have seen a rush of investment in ports on the east coast because of the ScotWind programme, but there has been a dearth of investment on the west coast. There have been recent improvements at the Greenock ocean terminal and hints of possible investment at Hunterston and Inchgreen, but Ardrossan is an investment desert, which has been a disaster for the local community and the wider Clyde economy.

I urge the minister to consider a deeper dive into the opportunity to improve regulation of the west coast ports because it is not only about improving services to local communities but about growing the entire national economy. With 450 square miles effectively part of a private fiefdom, we must look at improving that jurisdiction.