Chamber and committees

You will know, because you sit on other committees and have many other interests, that multiyear budgets provide better value for public procurement, because they enable better planning and they create a better pipeline of experienced people who are doing the work. That has been a real challenge in recent years because the UK Government’s one-year budget has meant that the Scottish Government has had to establish one-year budgets. We have ended up with a lot of stop start, especially as we had an emergency budget from the UK Government at one point; we had to readjust everything and there were consequences. I absolutely understand the frustrations of those who have been trying to manage the situation and keep good and talented people working for them.

The 2026-27 budget has a proposed £226 million investment in sustainable and active travel. It will deliver our strategic commitments generally, which have been on-going for some time, as well as the commitments that are set out in the draft climate change plan. I am hopeful that we will be able to continue to provide certainty. I think that multiyear budgets are a better use of public funding, give more confidence and will deliver better results.

Active travel schemes are extremely popular in many different areas. Active travel can help by giving people alternative choices as they can walk, wheel and cycle, and they may use another form of transport at the end of their journey. It is also about connecting communities. I have seen first-hand that active travel is connecting many towns and villages, which is having a big impact on how people use their space. It also means that they can access things in their towns in a better and easier way. That is most evident for children.

I cannot speak for the UK Government on what it is providing, but I will try to find out and let you know. The development of onshore charging at the port of Aberdeen is of course important, and the Scottish Government has helped to fund it. I am very keen that ports and harbours are not put to the back of the queue for onshore charging in any shape or form.

We are actively speaking with energy companies on distribution. One of the first things that I have said to the variety of UK transport ministers I have met is that the thing that will make the biggest difference in energy and energy transmission is distribution—where energy is and when. Those ministers need to be in the room with their energy colleagues for the discussions on that.

Kate Forbes chairs an offshore renewables ports and harbours group. Its members have come together themselves, and they are working actively in response to the proposition that, if we are generating renewable energy in Scotland, we have to benefit from it. Ports and harbours are critical to that, and the roll-out of onshore charging is key.

The measurements for aviation and shipping have been baselined already—Phil Raines and others will correct me if I am wrong. Much of that involves planning for technological changes in the future. For example, the work with ZeroAvia to help with activity at Glasgow airport has been supported and funded in part through a Scottish Government grant. If we can get the smaller planes that we use for our islands to use alternatives, we need to consider safety issues with hydrogen storage. Work has been done with academics on how to manage hydrogen safely on site, particularly at airports. There is potential there, and it partly concerns technological development.

On ports and harbours, I could not echo the points that you have made more clearly, and I do make those points on a regular basis to ensure that we get the benefits of the energy that we are producing and to ensure that we can electrify it.

You are interested in hydrogen. I was at a launch of a pilot project in Leith. The innovation involves taking green hydrogen from local sources for the electric charging of tugs. I will not exaggerate the size of it—it is a proof of concept. The UK Government provided some innovation funding for that, too. We need to ensure that we are complementary in what we are funding in the innovation space.

There is no reason why we cannot have meantime fuels, as I said—I understand that. The issue is where public funding should go, or whether it should be down to the market itself.

The committee is well placed, as the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, to look across the piece. You speak to all the cabinet secretaries, and I think that it is important for the different parts of Government to be aligned and to act in parallel on all these things, including project willow, which is still live and active. The strategic planning on energy, transport and net zero has to be aligned across Government.

I think that it is fair to question where biofuels sit within that, but that probably requires a genuine public discussion about where public funding should go. Should it go towards net zero and achieving statutory carbon budgets, or should it be used to subsidise biofuels for the haulage sector, which will take us some of the way there but will not enable us to reach our statutory targets?

The issue is the projection: can we do enough, and do it fast enough, to meet what are stretching targets? It is a genuine open question, and views on that from the committee would be very welcome.

We are doing that in lots of different ways. In my regular trips to London, I use the train, because I can work on it and it is convenient. I come back to your point about using a service that reduces emissions—when I can use that service, I do so. It is not always possible, but when it is, I do.

Well, that is what I was saying.

In your initial point, you set out how the cost issues—and the benefits—have been shifting, even just in recent years, so predictability is even more challenging over the longer term. The move is happening, however.

Your point about monitoring is really important. I am keen that we capture information about EV use through the Scottish household survey. It will be possible to drill down into that information to identify areas where uptake has not been as high as elsewhere. Some areas in particular cities have lower levels of car use and ownership anyway. That is an obvious point. We need to monitor the situation in different parts of the country.

On the point about working with local authorities, in their transport planning, they will want to monitor use in different areas for approvals. As the planning authorities, they will be giving approvals to EV charging points and so on in different areas. I also note the guidance from SCOTS for cross-pavement charging. I do not want to add to the work required here, but I suspect that that will include factored properties in the future, including tenements, as we consider how best that can be done.

You are right about identifying whether people are losing out and who is benefiting most. The issue affects everybody—it has an impact on everyone. There has been a suggestion of using the census to do that, as that would give us information on uptake if we want to do future projections. There are different means and methods by which Government produces and should produce statistics. The Scottish household survey is quite good, as it drills down into different communities.

That involves working with the private sector and encouraging businesses in relation to their requirement to produce work travel plans. We need to work with businesses to get more people to use public transport when coming into work. That applies to both rail and bus services.

Do we encourage family use of public transport? We do, particularly in relation to rail—we have offers for younger people and families, such as the kids for a quid ticket.

We worked with chambers of commerce and businesses on the removal of peak rail fares. They wanted more people to come in and be present in the workplace, so they promoted the policy, and I encouraged Transport Scotland and ScotRail to be involved in that work.

The South East of Scotland Transport Partnership is doing interesting work on the routes that are required. Sarah Boyack has referred to the need for such work, which involves considering where people need to move to and how they need to move there. We are working with major employers in that regard. Health is a big player, because a lot of people using transport are travelling to hospitals, either for work, given that hospitals are major employment anchors, or as patients. It is important that we try to align all those elements, and the on-going work through our transport to health strategy is an important part of that. It is about looking strategically about who needs to go where and how. That is also covered in the reissued islands plan, and we have been talking to Western Isles Council about it. Looking at how transport can be used strategically is important.

I am not sure about where the concessionary travel scheme sits within that, unless we were to expand it. Some people might want to do that, but that would then add to the bill that we have just been talking about, and we would have to think about whether we were using resources strategically.

Kevin Stewart makes an important point. Through the budget we are investing £60 million in the bus infrastructure fund, because improving service reliability will make a huge difference to bus usage. I recall that, previously, one challenge was that bus service reliability in the Lothians was disrupted by the extensive road works that were required for the tramlines. By the time that buses got out to West Lothian, for example, they could not stick to their timetables because they had already been held up in the city centre.

Having smooth and uninterrupted routes, as well as the real-time technology and data that many bus services already use effectively, will mean that people will know when their bus is going to turn up and they will not be left standing in all weathers. The bus infrastructure fund can also be used—and is being used—to make it more comfortable for people in certain areas, including rural areas, if they do need to wait for a bus. It is worth considering monitoring the areas where there have been improvements to bus infrastructure, but whether that is tied to the fare issue is open to question.

When we consider what has been achieved in the budget, the requirements for transport to deliver with regard to the budget and the negotiations that took place—last year, a bus fare pilot request was put out to see which RTPs would want to take part—I think that something around reliability will be tied to the bus infrastructure fund.

It will be interesting to see what Highlands Council will do in the towns in its area and how it will use the combination of the various tools that are available to it.

It is not for us to do the regional transport partnerships’ job for them; they can do that well themselves.

Dundee has some interesting propositions on bus infrastructure fund deployment, which it has been waiting to roll out. That reliability will help the market more generally. Do we need to tie it into a bus fare cap pilot? I think that it will prove itself regardless of such a pilot. The two measures are not mutually exclusive; in the future they could be done either together or separately. The bus infrastructure fund will make a significant difference to reliability and people’s ability to use buses.

Thereafter, we will determine whether we need something else on top of that, if we can do it, to reduce fares. That would all come down to public funding—and it would require extensive public funding. Some of the fare pilots could cost as much as £50 million, £100 million or more, depending on what is required. Bearing in mind what we have just discussed, if regional transport partnerships are trying to be strategic and have other tools to use, they need to identify which are the most applicable for them, as well as whether there is anything relevant in their budget or the Scottish Government’s budget. That will require additional funding at some point in the future, but it is not in this budget.

That is in the budget lines, and it will have been done as a total. I will ask my officials whether they have that information. I think that it will be under level 4, under rail services.

I should probably put my glasses on to look at the budget lines. Please bear with me.

The committee will have seen that rail services are listed under level 3 in the transport section of the 2026-27 budget document, at £1,008.6 million. That is the figure that has been provided.