Chamber and committees

We have to be quite careful and take our time in ensuring that we run the right pilot. There is a danger that £15 million could be spent on running a pilot, at the end of which we say that patronage levels have increased. However, would those people be people who were always going to return to using rail anyway or the same people who were already using it? Is the approach making it more accessible to those on lower incomes? We need to be careful to ensure that the pilot is meaningful.

That is why the work that is being taken forward by officials in Transport Scotland and with ScotRail will have to demonstrate how we can ensure that the pilot will provide us with the level of data and understanding that we are looking for. I want us to take our time to ensure that we make the right choices and that we have the right processes in place to be able to evaluate the pilot effectively; otherwise, we will lose that opportunity.

That was a good piece of work, although it has taken some time. It was led by the Fraser of Allander Institute and it is a joint piece of work between Government and Parliament. I am keen to make sure that, across Government, there is much greater transparency around spend on meeting our climate change targets. In this year’s strand 1 work, if you take the carbon taxonomy that has been used, you can see that the proportion of spend on low carbon has increased while the proportion of spend on high carbon factors has declined. We are starting to get greater transparency around that.

That is the challenge for the high-level strand 1 work that we have this year. That provides a bit more detail, in overview, of how we are spending our resources in tackling climate change. Strands 2 and 3 will give us much more detail and will also make it more bespoke to individual portfolios.

I am conscious that a lot of the burden falls on this committee when it comes to climate change. However, I would have thought that the Economy and Fair Work Committee would have a particular interest in what is happening in the economy portfolio on investing in tackling climate change—likewise, other portfolios. It is important that we get strands 2 and 3 delivering that level of detail, so that individual committees beyond this one will be able to see more clearly exactly what an individual portfolio is doing to deliver on our climate change targets, and how it is investing in funding to support that.

That is what strands 2 and 3 should help to deliver. I think that strand 1 has been helpful in being applied to this budget, but there is clearly more that we need to do. That will be done over the course of the year.

Just to be clear, we are providing £62.5 million to support bus services. Within that there is £1 million in resources and £5 million in capital to support councils to explore providing bus services in their areas.

I would like to have seen faster and greater progress. Bus is the most flexible form of mass public transport. It is a very flexible resource and real priority for us, as reflected in our policy programme. However, it is important that we allow local authorities to consider what is the most appropriate model for their area. Something that works in a big urban area might not be effective in a more rural area.

There are several different options available to local authorities. One model that some local authorities are interested in is franchising: having a franchise service in the local authority area would allow the authority to set out the services that it wants, their frequency and the fare rates. It would give local authorities much more control and remove the need for them to own and run buses, although they would control the service. That takes away a lot of the capital cost that is associated with running a service. We need to allow local authorities the space to identify what would be the best way to go about that. The funding that we are providing is to support the development of some of that work.

It is fair to say that the bus industry is going through a really difficult time because of Covid, and that patronage levels have not fully returned to their previous levels, which is causing financial challenges. It is in all of our interests to find a more sustainable approach. If you were to ask me whether the current model is working in our interests, I would say that it is not. That is why the provisions were put in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 in order to give us options. I would like to see some of those options being developed and becoming active models that are being used. I hope that we will start to see that happen over the next couple of years.

We have more than 3,000 public charging points in Scotland, which does not include the number of private charging points. There will be several thousand private charging points, including those that have been put in at workplaces and so on, which are not part of the public sector network. There is a distinction. The 3,000-plus figure relates to public sector charging points. I do not know what the figure is for private sector charging points, but several thousand on top of that will be available. That is a growing network as well.

We have committed to doubling the public sector charging network from the 3,000-plus units that we have at the moment to more than 6,000 units over the next couple of years. We have allocated £30 million to support that and we are working with the private sector to lever in an additional £30 million to deliver that expansion of the network. A combination of further private sector investment, which will continue to grow, alongside the public sector investment in the public charging network will give us sufficient coverage for the charging network overall.

I have heard a number of times the figure of 30,000 charging places that the CCC believes is necessary. I am not entirely sure how that figure was arrived at. However, we believe that a combination of public and private investment will provide us with sufficient coverage, alongside encouraging people to make greater use of public transport.

It is part of a programme of work that we have taken—

We have been working with the Scottish Futures Trust to look at levering in private sector investment. That engagement is on-going. That is where the total of £60 million comes from. It is public and private together, but £30 million comes from the public sector.

Yes. I am happy to provide any further information that would be useful.

The additional allocation that we have made this year for the tree-planting programme is to see 16,500 hectares of tree planting, which will be taken forward by Forestry and Land Scotland. When you ask me specifically how we are going to achieve that, do you mean in terms of areas or something else?

Based on the budget allocation that we have made for this particular element and the discussion that we have had with Forestry and Land Scotland, the expectation is that it can meet that target of 16,500 hectares.

The public performance measure is not often closely associated with the financing of the frequency of services. It is often affected by the impact of infrastructure failure on the operation of rail services or by staffing levels. I am confident that we have sufficient funding in our resource allocation to allow ScotRail to be able to sufficiently staff services.

However, as the committee will know, historically, infrastructure failure has the biggest impact on PPM. The question might therefore be whether sufficient investment is going into infrastructure to reduce the adverse impact that its failure has on PPM. That continues to be an issue, and my view is that Network Rail can do much more to get value for money from the amount of investment that goes into rail services infrastructure and the costs associated with that. Anyone familiar with the detail about the rail industry knows that infrastructure failure is the factor that has the greatest impact on PPM. Reducing the number of failures requires investment from Network Rail, not just by introducing new technology and updating and digitalising systems, but also by ensuring that there is a proper maintenance programme to reduce the risk of failure.

Is there more that we can do to help achieve the PPM? Yes. Industrial action will be having a big impact on the PPM just now. However, I am confident that we are making enough investment in ScotRail to allow it to operate the level of service that there is a demand for, and also for it to have the staffing levels to achieve that. However, Network Rail could do more to get greater efficiency from infrastructure investment.