Chamber and committees

I am not stopping you—go for it.

That is useful.

I will now ask you about the possibility of introducing sunset provisions. The convener might want to explore later the question about whether situations are urgent, so I will leave it to him to ask about that.

Would it be good to introduce sunset clauses? Do you have any other ideas that might improve transparency?

With our previous evidence session in mind, I think that this instrument highlights why scrutiny is important. Indeed, the reason for the 28-day rule is to allow some form of scrutiny.

On the face of it, a lot of people will think that the Scottish Government has done the right thing by pushing the instrument through. However, you mentioned the letter that the Parliament has received from the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, which puts forward a counterargument. That shows why we need to have scrutiny.

We need to tell the Government in no uncertain terms that breaching that 28-day rule, whatever one thinks of the policy, is really not acceptable.

I had my booster jab yesterday. The guy who put the needle in my arm was at the start of a 12-hour shift. Nobody would be able to do too many of those without getting exhausted. What are we doing to protect the army of heroes who are delivering the vaccination programme? How many extra vaccinators do we need?

Does the First Minister think that it is appropriate for the Scottish Government’s active travel minister to turn up to a bikeability event for kids and not join them in wearing a cycle helmet?

I want to press the cabinet secretary on roads again. There is a slight increase in the total budget for motorways and trunk roads, but the road improvement budget has been cut. Will she, once again, have a stab at the question of whether, under this budget, the A96 will be fully dualled? Is there money for that?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the report, “A Vision for Scotland’s Railways”, produced for Scotland’s rail unions. (S6O-00498)

I thank the minister for that answer—of course, he did not actually answer the question, which was asking for his response to the report. I am not sure whether he has read it, but it was produced for Scotland’s four rail unions and is at least a vision for the future. We have heard nothing like that from the minister so far.

ScotRail is to be nationalised in March. We do not know anything about the governance, staffing, timetables, tickets and rolling stock. We do not know whether there will be redundancies. However, we know that there will be a series of big-bucks appointments, as that is already in process. Will the minister agree to cross-party talks on nationalisation? Will he make a statement on where we are with that, given that we are only a few months away? Will he also involve the unions in the process?

I am listening very carefully to what the minister is saying. Does he not accept that dualling the East Kilbride line was not just an idea, but a promise that was made by Michael Matheson? If it does not happen, how do we get the resilience that we do not have right now, with trains sometimes stopping at Busby? How do we get more trains if the line is not dualled? How can that be achieved?

Mr Sweeney is absolutely right—the Borders railway is in the same position.

The minister and I have spoken about the East Kilbride line, and I thank him for that. He will say that there is potential for the £40 million cost of dualling the line to spiral. However, there is such a risk with any infrastructure project, and it has to be factored in. It does not mean that the project should not be done.

Collette Stevenson, the new MSP for the town, has been quoted as saying that £100 million is still being invested in the East Kilbride corridor—I assume that she is referring to the entire line into Glasgow—which, in her view, is

“great news for the people of the town”.

It is great news for the town only if there is a guarantee of more trains; a guarantee that no hold-ups will be caused by there being only one line; and a guarantee of extra car parking at the new Hairmyres station rather than the reduced number of spaces that is now being mooted. I am afraid that none of that is being delivered right now, so it is not good news for the town at all, and it is not gesture politics to point that out.

East Kilbride is growing at a rate of knots; thousands of houses are being built on what was green-belt land to the south-west of the town. We should be doing all that we can to encourage the people who live in those houses to use the train, so we should be increasing the capacity and frequency of services. We should not be taking a short-term view based on current usage, because it will bounce back. I see the minister shaking his head, but it is a short-term view.

At one time, the line continued from East Kilbride to Hamilton. When East Kilbride became a new town in 1948, the line beyond the town was closed, and in the mid-1950s, the dualled section from Busby became single track. Diesel replaced steam in the 1960s, and in 2000 the Hairmyres loop was built, which allowed for a half-hourly service.

Of course, we are not the only place to have a single-track line and diesel trains. The Borders line, as Paul Sweeney mentioned, is the same. The line from Perth to Inverness is single track, and so is the far north line. There will be others that members may wish to highlight. All those deserve investment, too—it should not be a case of divide and conquer. If we are serious about cutting carbon emissions from transport, we need to persuade people that they are better off not driving.

East Kilbride could be a great example of what can be done, and the ambition should not end at dualling and electrifying the existing line. Right now, if someone wants to get anywhere in Scotland from the country’s biggest town—people from Paisley may disagree with that title—they have to go via Glasgow or drive. If we are to be truly radical, we should look to go beyond dualling only to East Kilbride. Why should we not extend the line again, maybe even to Hamilton at some point in the future?

I will end with the quote that I started with:

“The work involves not only electrifying the line but dualling it”.

That is a promise, and no amount of weasel words can wriggle out of it.