Chamber and committees

There is certainly no such benefit, convener, although I hope that there will be for my constituents, if they get jobs in the years ahead.

Cabinet secretary, if Mr Fairlie is leading on canals, I hope that you can suggest to him that we look at the wider regeneration impact on communities. In my constituency, there is regeneration at the Hamiltonhill Claypits, impressive investment is being made in Maryhill, Gilshochill and the Stockingfield bridge, and a new nature reserve has been developed towards Cadder, beside the banks of the canal. Does the cabinet secretary agree that using canals as drivers of community regeneration, particularly in deprived areas, is important and that, when we audit Scottish canals, we should audit their social benefit as well as the pounds and pence elsewhere?

Absolutely.

I do not know whether the next question is related, but in preparation for today’s meeting, I was looking at the papers and saw that, some six years ago, the UK Government started talking about radical reform of the rail system across the UK. In 2021, the Williams-Shapps report was published, and eventually, in February 2024, the UK Government introduced a Rail Reform Bill that, from what I can see, would protect many of the devolved aspects of the rail industry.

However, there has been a lot of delay in relation to that bill, and now that the UK election has been called, we will have to wait to see what an incoming Government does. Has there been any impact on the Scottish Government and its planning arrangements in relation to Scotland’s railway, now that we are six years down the line from what was marketed as radical reform of the rail network?

I have a question about the performance of ScotRail. The most recent performance data that we have shows a public performance measure figure of 91.3 per cent, but the target is 92.5 per cent. Therefore, although performance is pretty good, it is not quite there. How can we drive improvement in ScotRail’s performance? In March this year, ScotRail had to pay out £1.5 million because of delays and cancellations, but £1 million of that was not to do with anything that ScotRail had done; rather, it related to issues with Network Rail.

ScotRail has reached a performance level of 91.3 per cent. Admittedly, that is not the target, but its failure to meet the target is down to Network Rail rather than to ScotRail. How do we drive an improvement in performance? How can we report on the data in such a way that we can work out which organisation needs to up its game to do even better?

There is a question—it is not to declare an interest, although I will say that I had to go to Cardiff to see Bruce Springsteen, because he is not playing in Scotland on his European tour.

A few months ago, in a debate in Parliament, I raised the idea of a £1 levy on tickets that are above a certain value for events in Scotland. If 50,000 people are going to see Scotland playing Finland at Hampden or 50,000 people are going to see Taylor Swift, the money from that levy could be used to provide high-quality public transport. If someone is paying £100 for a ticket, £101 would not be much different, but just think what we could do with that pound. I raised the idea in the debate that you led, cabinet secretary. How could that idea be developed further?

That was very helpful. Speaking from my position as someone who is involved in the committee’s scrutiny of the matter as well as being the constituency MSP, I suppose that we should start to ask some of those questions when it is appropriate. No doubt we will return to the matter, so I will not ask more about it, at present.

No, convener—you have just given me the assurance that I need. As convener, you had suggested that we had sorted out what was happening with the A9, because the petitions committee had sorted it out. However, we clearly have to take this committee’s own view on that. You have put that on the record, convener, so that is fine.

That would be helpful, cabinet secretary. What I did not ask about, because I did not want to go down that road either, was that a lot of the talk with regard to the bill was about specifying pan-UK routes, pricing and fare regimes, but with caveats for Scotland and Wales. The question is this: how strong were those caveats? I will leave that sitting there, though, until we see what an incoming Government does.

I was just checking, and the best start foods grant is extended to those without recourse to public funds. That connects my earlier suggestions on targeting with Mr Sinclair’s points.

No matter what your answer is, Mr Evans, I will not have a follow-up question after this, so the last word will be yours.

If you had a choice—and please make one on this occasion if you can—between meeting the interim target of 18 per cent or missing it by a whisker and taking the actions that the Scottish Government is taking to lift a huge number of people out of deep and enduring poverty—including those who are just on the artificial line of not being technically in poverty—would you rather meet the target or move a huge number of people away from enduring poverty?