Well, I was not the convener at the time of that inquiry. For the record, I need to recognise that, although I took part in all the evidence sessions, I was not involved in the final drafting of the ferry report, which was a very good report. A lot of the recommendations in that report are now evident in the award that has just been presented. We sent the committee a letter explaining that, which went through, point by point, some of the things that the committee recommended, which have now been given effect.

I have said this before and I will say it again: I strongly believe in the Parliament’s committee system. That report provides a good example of where a number of committee recommendations have been realised in the delivery of the ferries contract.

There is a serious issue right across Government in that we need to make sure that all pension schemes run by public bodies are in a good state. I worked in pensions a long time ago, and I merged some of the first organisations back in the 2007-09 period. With any governance and with any organisation, my advice has always been to get pensions sorted for everybody, because the security of employment and pensions is vital for any organisation. Especially when an organisation is busy procuring a third of our fleet and doing extremely good work in negotiating Ardrossan and other aspects, you need to make sure that its staff are looked after and that you give them confidence in the future.

I am content if the regional transport partnerships are content. That is basically my answer.

You are entitled to have an opinion—

There can be a real shift in reliability because of the bus infrastructure fund leading to the provision of bus priority lanes and so on. We have seen the success of that in the reliability of bus services where there are such measures.

I would also support and echo your request for multiyear funding but, as you know, we are in discussions about multiyear funding in our spending review, our budget is coming up and there is the small detail of an election coming up, which affects future planning for the incoming Government. I am keen for us to have multiyear funding, and the convener was right to identify the fact that we could not follow through with all the funding for active and sustainable travel that we wanted to last year. We do not get as much value for money if we take a stop-start approach to these things. Local authorities want continuous rolling programmes because it helps with aspects such as staffing and delivery, and that is true for active travel routes as well as bus infrastructure.

As part of our climate change plan, if we want to see a shift to greater use of public transport, for lots of different reasons including emissions reduction as well as health and wellbeing and the vibrancy of communities, we need to give some certainty, because that will mean better delivery and better value for money from construction and design and so on. I would like to say yes, but that is a question for the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government rather than me.

I think that every MSP would say that bus is one of the issues that come into our inboxes regularly—everybody, individually, can see that. Anything that the committee can do to encourage members to be champions for bus, across the parties and with our other MSP colleagues, would be welcome.

On the change that we have to make, the vast majority of journeys on public transport are made by bus, and we have to encourage more people to make bus journeys. That means having more bus routes available that are meaningful for people based on modern-day travel patterns. I am afraid that, in some parts of the country, bus routes do not reflect what modern needs are. Increasingly, we see that the routes go from east to west across the central belt, whereas we need to have more routes going from north to south within Lanarkshire and West Lothian to reflect people’s patterns of need for leisure and for work.

Jim Fairlie is leading on that. The guidance is currently undergoing final engagement with the key parties that are involved in the franchising process, which include the Competition and Markets Authority and the office of the traffic commissioner for Scotland. Once that is completed, that guidance will be shared with the committee and others, including local transport authorities. The final timescales for publication will depend on the capacity of those stakeholders to consider and engage with the draft document; it will be issued in draft form.

You referred to the memorandum of understanding, and we are currently working with the UK Government on the costs of running the independent approval panels for the franchising process. Subject to negotiations being agreed with the UK Government, we will provide the committee with a copy of the memorandum of understanding for its awareness. We are in the final stages of that process.

it would be wrong to say that there has been no discussion. There has been some engagement on that proposal and we still intend to deliver that. I would be happy for my colleague Jim Fairlie to give you an update on where we are.

I am sorry—did you refer to ferries?

I am just about to explain how we get to the total.