Chamber and committees

The open procurement process will establish the optimum requirement for delivery of the trains. I have talked about improvements in passenger service, and ScotRail will establish and publish the contract details in the coming weeks.

I am fairly open on open access because there are opportunities that have not necessarily been fulfilled. Open access challenges the main operators to ensure that they have better services. However, that will be more an issue for the UK Government, because most of those services are cross-border services. Therefore, as the bill progresses through the House of Commons, the matter will be subject to scrutiny.

Open-access operators operate even though we have public ownership of the railway in Scotland. That is primarily because of the arrangements that the UK Government makes. I think that we have the space for that. I do not think that it is problematic, but that depends on the extent and scale of open access and whether it is seen as being a few companies doing it on occasion, as opposed to there being a full roll-out of open access and so on.

The issue is more for the UK Government, but we will keep a keen interest in it.

Yes.

Can I take that question back and think that through?

Even just looking at the LCM-related legislation, we can see that establishing the timeframe for when franchises might come to an end will be a challenge. The approach will not be to have full-scale nationalisation on day 1; it will be a rolling issue.

On the wider issue of GB rail reform, I am conscious that this committee has a full agenda and that your interest in the issue is similar to ours. Therefore, I undertake to keep in close contact with the convener and the clerks to share what we know about timescales for scrutiny and engagement, so that our work can be aligned and we can all take the opportunity to ensure that Scotland’s interests are protected.

I cannot speak for the UK Government, but I can speak to our experience over the period of our public ownership of rail. Remember that it has been quite a short period. With the establishment of Scottish Rail Holdings Ltd and with our pressing down on spend, we have managed to reduce costs rather than have costs increase. We have seen substantial passenger-number increases—I will look up the figures later but, obviously, they have increased substantially since the pandemic period. Our satisfaction levels are the third or fourth highest in the UK, and that figure has increased, with the latest finding being a satisfaction level of 91 per cent. Under our public ownership, good things are happening in terms of cost and satisfaction levels. Performance levels have gone down, but that is because things were more efficient during the pandemic, as there were fewer passengers and so on.

I think that our experience to date indicates that public ownership has benefits.

There is an underutilisation of the potential of what we have in our railways, and there are different ways of trying to resolve that. There is far more that can be done on freight, and I am keen to do that under control period 7. We have strong targets under CP7, and I am glad that the UK does, too. However, when it comes to utilising our rail tracks, there are a lot of moving parts, as it were, not least in terms of what is electrified, what is not electrified and what that means in terms of speed and so on. Obviously, the fact that some operators are cutting cross-border services to Scotland does not help. Of course, as we have seen recently, some of that space has been filled by open access operators, and we have to watch where things are going on a UK basis.

We either deal with where we are now or we determine that we want to try to cause a fight about the principle of decision making on the issue. It is the case that rail legislation remains reserved. That is why I am referring to the main piece of UK legislation that is coming and our opportunity to have full devolution through it. While UK rail legislation remains reserved, I have the opportunity to ensure that what is a temporary system of public ownership becomes a permanent system of public ownership. I am going to take it; I think that it is important that we take that opportunity.

I could have just said, “Well, that’s it. It’s the summer recess—they can get on with it at some point in the future and we’ll try to get some changes down the line,” but you know that when you have an opportunity for UK legislation—or, indeed, Scottish legislation—to deliver the policy output that you want, you take the opportunity. That is why, while UK rail legislation remains reserved, I want to make sure that the Scottish interest is protected, and the Scottish interest is protected by our recommending that Parliament approve, with legislative consent, the opportunity to make sure that the temporary public ownership of rail becomes permanent.

I will bring Bill Reeve in on that. However, our investment in Network Rail using the current system—remember that CP7 is the first control period that we are going into with public ownership—has gone up substantially. We have a pipeline of activity and works, so the investment is in place.

You are probably trying to get at the displacement of funding from the private companies and how the Government accounts for that. I can give you evidence on what we have done. We are the trailblazers in that area because we have done it for the past two years. I cannot speak for what the new UK Government will do: that would be speculation. From our experience, it should be positive, but I cannot give you firm commitments because I am not responsible for the UK Government’s decisions on the matter.

I ask Bill Reeve whether he can enlighten us about the private train operators’ investment.

There is indeed, and, to be fair, it started under the Conservative Government with the proposal to integrate track and train. Scotland has already done that. We work very well with Network Rail and ScotRail and that work provides efficiencies in investment and planning. I visited the control centre and discussed the multiple storms that we had last year and how we react when there are major weather-related disruptions. The integration of track and train is a positive step forward.

Members will be aware that the previous UK Government seconded Alex Hynes into the Department for Transport to work on the rail reform legislation. I gave evidence on that and I shared my evidence with the committee. That legislation is a step forward for England and Wales but I have concerns about how it might operate in Scotland. The incoming UK Labour Government has picked up the baton on that, and our understanding is that it will take forward a more substantial piece of legislation, which will be the formation of Great British rail. That is the legislation that the committee should take a close interest in. I certainly am, as cabinet secretary, because we do not want to see complete centralisation that would undermine the progress that we have made in integrating track and train.

We want to operate and co-operate with that in a positive way. I communicated some of my concerns to the then chair of Network Rail, Sir Peter Hendy, who is the new UK Minister for Rail, so he should be familiar with them. The issues and concerns that I expressed when I gave evidence to the UK Transport Select Committee just before the close of the UK Parliament still stand.

We have yet to see the substance of that legislation. Given the level of co-operation that we have engendered to date, I hope that there will be a practical way forward to ensure that my concerns will be addressed. Obviously, there is more to do. The bill is short and sharp; it is about bringing rail into public ownership at the end of each franchise.

More substantive rail reform legislation is still to come, and we will need to keep a close eye on that when it is published. In advance of that, I hope that the relationships that we have built to date, at both official and ministerial level, will stand us in good stead so that we can try to make sure that our interests in Scotland are protected.