I would like to go back a bit. You spoke about some of the decisions that will be made about budgets and how you will always advocate for youth work and so on. How do you help young people to understand the decisions that are taken? They will not understand why those decisions have been taken. Are you doing work to help them with that?

I have some questions. Before I ask specifically about the Promise, I want to ask about those whom you consulted. I am looking for some more information about how you involved care-experienced children in developing your strategy.

I cannot speak too much about the detail, but we heard that the Promise is great, but there was generally a “but” afterwards. It is great to have a visionary and whole-system approach, but when it comes to how that impacts on young people, that is quite disconnected from reality.

Will your office be monitoring progress on the ground? What work will that involve, so that we have the evidence to challenge the reality?

Okay—thank you. We look forward to seeing that develop over next wee while.

The video was too far away for me to read the subtitles, but I will look at it again later.

You have a wee think about anything else you want to ask, Willie. Stephanie Callaghan has a supplementary.

Will the member take an intervention?

Under the Scottish National Party, public transport has become unreliable and far too expensive. Persistent issues such as delays, cancellations and overcrowding are eroding public trust and undermining the effectiveness of essential services. Unless considerable action is taken, our public transport network will continue to decline.

Although the fair fares review addresses some of the issues surrounding accessibility and affordability in public transport, including welcome announcements such as the expansion of the scrapping of peak rail tickets, the review fails to tackle the rising cost of public transport, contains only a few new initiatives and has taken far too long to complete. Without addressing underlying issues such as underinvestment in public transit infrastructure and regulatory barriers to competition, the review’s impact may be limited in scope and short lived.

The Scottish Conservatives want to revitalise Scotland’s railways and support local growth by reopening rail lines and stations. We want to introduce a Scottish smart travel card, which would enable passengers to use all domestic transport anywhere in Scotland with a contactless card or indeed, as many of us do these days, by using their phone. We would also implement provisions in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to allow local councils to propose bus services in their areas to address gaps in provision.

However, today I want to focus on buses. In 2022-23, there were 301 million bus journeys in Scotland, accounting for 76 per cent of public transport trips. Lothian Buses, which we heard about extensively from Gordon MacDonald, operates in Edinburgh and is, I would say, considered the gold standard of buses in our country. The fair fares review committed to developing a proposal for a flat-fares pilot, stating:

“we will develop a proposal for a bus flat fares pilot for an area-based scheme to provide flat fares”—

all this alliteration is very difficult—

“on bus travel, or reduced fares on zonal integrated travel for consideration in future budgets”.

That is welcome.

As we have heard, Lothian Buses already uses that flat-fare structure across the network within the Edinburgh city boundary, with familiar zoned bus fares for services that go wider and beyond the city boundary. Those are the Lothian Country and East Coast Buses brands, which reach into suburban and rural areas. We have the opportunity to get information from Lothian Buses on how it would work in both areas.

I know that Lothian Country took over a lot of services from First and McGill’s Buses and relies on express services that do not stop everywhere across the city and so are still specifically for West Lothian residents.

Importantly, there is still the simple taptapcap system in place for a card or a phone, whether people are on Lothian Buses, Lothian Country or East Coast Buses. There are daily and weekly maximums that cap people’s payments. The technology already exists. Instead of having another pilot, we need to move ahead more quickly. There are calls in the city to integrate with the Edinburgh tram, but let us not get ahead of ourselves—let us get the buses and the taptapcap first.

I welcome hearing about the integrated ticketing being multimodal. That is something of a holy grail for me, and I look forward to that moving ahead. London has Transport for London and we have all experienced going across various modes. I welcomed Graham Simpson’s comment about tapping on and tapping off, as that would mean that people would get the best fare no matter where they got on and off public transport.

We need to be mindful of the rise in antisocial behaviour that is being seen on buses. In the transport portfolio questions session before this debate, Liam Kerr, who is a member for North East Scotland, mentioned some of the tragic events that have happened. We need to be mindful that there has been a rise in antisocial behaviour on our buses since the under-22s free bus travel scheme was introduced. We have certainly been aware of that in Edinburgh. I know that Lothian Buses has

“a zero tolerance approach to antisocial behaviour and will not hesitate to remove services from particular areas for a period of time if necessary to keep our colleagues and customers safe.”

Fifty-four per cent of people in large urban areas use a bus at least once a month. That is quite different from the rural statistics that we hear about. It is vital that the bad behaviour of a few youths does not impact on the majority of people who use public transport responsibly.

Although there are concerns across the country that free bus passes are fuelling youth crime and disorder, I do not believe that the solution is to get rid of the free bus pass scheme, even for those abusing the passes in that way. However, I believe—I know that we have debated this in the chamber in the past—that there needs to be some consequence of that poor behaviour.

Back in October last year, I had a very informative visit to the Linburn centre in West Lothian, which is a Sight Scotland veterans centre. I am really pleased that a pilot project to extend free rail travel for companions of blind persons concessionary travel card holders has been agreed in the Scottish Government’s fair fares review. Everyone I met that day was really vocal about that campaign, so I am delighted. That was a great win for them and Sight Scotland.

Those asleep at the wheel might not be aware that I have been campaigning for a new train station in a small place in West Lothian called Winchburgh. That is the vital missing link that would give Winchburgh people direct access to national train services. A station is essential, because Winchburgh people need a sustainable, low-carbon alternative to cars to access services and jobs that many have in the capital city. Winchburgh is set to be home for more than 4,000 families due to a large expansion agreed as part of the Edinburgh city region deal. I am certain that ScotRail would be delighted with the increase in passengers that that would result in. That is why I suspect that it has already built in a stop at Winchburgh in the timetable for the Edinburgh to Dunblane service.

Winchburgh Developments funded a new junction on the M9 to allow direct access for cars from the fast-expanding Winchburgh village. [Interruption.]

I am sorry, but I am getting distracted by members talking. It is okay—I will carry on.

A station is vital if we are to reduce the congestion that our city faces, and we must provide vital public transport links for that expanding village if we want to hit our net zero objectives. I have been working with the Scottish Government, the UK Government, the cabinet secretary and West Lothian Council to make that project a priority. Winchburgh provides the perfect example of revitalising Scotland’s railways to support local growth.