Chamber and committees

Surely, if there are developments on the issue, the cabinet secretary should tell us what they are. After all, she is the Cabinet Secretary for Transport. Will those developments please the RMT?

Smashing. I don’t have any time in hand. [Laughter.]

I was keen to work with the Government on developing costings for such a scheme, and I still am.

If the Government thinks that people with substance issues should get free bus travel—which is an idea that we can look at—what about unpaid carers and other groups, such as the unemployed? The review could have promised an expansion of eligibility for reimbursement under the national concessionary travel scheme to services that are provided by community transport operators under a section 19 permit. That appears as option 4 on pages 34 and 35 of the review, which is one of the options not being progressed. That will mean that under-22s, over-60s, disabled people and, soon, people who are seeking asylum who do not have local bus services in their area but instead rely on community transport will continue to be disadvantaged. They will have a free bus pass in name only.

The NCTS is a fantastic enabler, but that is the case only if people have local services on which to use it. As Scotland’s bus network continues to shrink, the need for community transport to plug the gaps will only grow.

As well as a bus fare cap, we have been calling for the free travel to which the companions of blind people with concessionary cards are entitled to be extended to rail travel. I had a members’ business debate on the subject in December 2022, and the proposal received support from all parties, except the Liberal Democrats. The then Minister for Transport, Jenny Gilruth, spoke of her upcoming rail conversation, which never happened. She said that she would be getting advice from officials on the costs of a national scheme, and she mentioned the fair fares review—it goes back a long way—but if the minister was expecting to get advice on costs in December 2022, surely we should be further forward than developing

“the feasibility of a pilot project”.

In any case, at the time, charities in the sector, such as Sight Scotland, estimated that the cost of such an extension would be about £2 million. Let us just get on and do it.

We have also called for the extension of the concessionary travel scheme for under-22s to ferry travel for young people who live on islands. The review talks about developing proposals, so let us get them developed. Developing proposals is not the same as saying that we will do something, which is what the review should have said.

On rail travel, the review says:

“We will monitor and evaluate the ScotRail Peak Fares Removal Pilot which has been extended until June 2024, to inform medium to longer term rail fares reform.”

Why not just commit to keeping that permanently?

Sticking with rail, I recently called for the introduction of a ScotRail tap-on, tap-off system. Some trials of such a system are being done in England, and I think that that would make rail travel a lot easier and would ensure that people always pay the lowest fare—a fair fare. The technology for that clearly exists, so I urge the cabinet secretary to look at that idea if she is not doing so already.

On the subject of technology, the review did not look at systems such as “Mobility as a Service”—which allows multimodal and cross-operator travel by using an app—even though we have some pilots of that in Scotland. Some parts of England are way ahead of us on that, which is, frankly, becoming embarrassing.

Nicola Sturgeon was promising a national smart card—to be called the saltire card, naturally—in 2012, but that has not happened. However, we do have the national smart ticketing advisory board, which should be tasked with powering ahead on that within months, not years.

That is encouraging. If someone could use a bank card to tap on and off a train service—as happens on the London underground, which I am sure the cabinet secretary has used—that would be the way to go. It is certainly worth investigating.

The advisory board should speak to companies such as Fairtiq and others whose technology is being used across Europe to make travel easier and, in many cases, cheaper.

Overall, the review is disappointing. It offers nothing but vague language. There are no firm commitments, and there is nothing to lure people back on to public transport. If the Government wants to cut how much people use their cars, making public transport more affordable is the way to go.

On that note, I have to go.

Transport Scotland should have sought data on that from Lothian Buses, but it does not appear to have done that. That would be the starting point.

No. I have taken two interventions already.

I have been calling for a bus fare cap across the country, as has Labour, but that proposal was not even considered. How is that even credible? Such a cap should be considered straight away. That would help people across the country. In particular, it would help people who are living in poverty; more importantly, it would help people who are living in poverty in rural areas, where bus fares are higher.

I apologise—I am a little bit hoarse today. I also apologise for having to leave as soon as I have spoken. I have already spoken about that with the Presiding Officer and the Cabinet Secretary for Transport.

We have been waiting a long time for the fair fares review. It is way overdue. If it had been the equivalent of waiting for a train, we would have jumped in a car and got there quicker. The review was keenly awaited, but nothing was promised so, to that end, it did not disappoint.

When the cross-party group on sustainable transport reported on the Scottish Government’s commitment to reduce car mileage by 20 per cent by 2030, one of the recommendations was that public transport should be made more affordable. That should have been the starting point of the review, because, for fair fares, we should read “affordable fares”—fares that make us want to jump on a bus, train or ferry instead of using the car.

The Scottish Government released figures yesterday that showed that just 10 per cent of people use public transport to get to work. Therein lies the challenge. If we compare current public transport use with pre-pandemic levels, we see that rail use is still down by a third and bus use is down by 17 per cent. The review could and should have been packed with concrete commitments to change that. Instead, it is full of the kind of Government speak that we have got used to, with no concrete action offered. The plan involves kicking the can down the potholed road.

Of course I accept that. Some people like using their car. However, some people have to use their car, because there is no bus.

I have to point out the shortcomings of the review, but I want to help the debate by suggesting things that we could do. We are at a starting point, and we need to continue the conversation. Although I might be critical in this debate, we should continue to talk. I hope that the cabinet secretary will take some of these ideas on board, and I hope that we can work together.

In the review, the word “pilot” appears 12 times. In Government speak, a “pilot” means a delay in doing anything. The review says:

“we will develop a proposal for a bus flat fares pilot for an area-based scheme to provide flat fares on bus travel, or reduced fares on zonal integrated travel for consideration in future budgets”.

As I pointed out in the briefing by Transport Scotland officials that I attended, we do not need a pilot. Lothian Buses has been using flat fares and a daily cap for years, and it works. There is your pilot. We just need to get on with it.

I will do, if I can have the time back.

The cabinet secretary knows that I am in a rush today, and she knows why.

I have been discussing the idea of a bus fare cap with my friends in the Poverty Alliance.

One of the more interesting ideas in the review is the idea of giving free bus travel to addicts, although the review does not say on what basis that would be done. Mention is made of another pilot. Would that apply to all travel by addicts, or would it apply only for certain journeys? How could such a scheme work? I will take an intervention from the cabinet secretary if she can clear that up.

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason the chief executive of Ferguson Marine had his contract of employment terminated yesterday.