Chamber and committees

I want to move on to the section about active travel funding. Transport Scotland recorded active travel funding as having been spent, but it was held in a delivery partner’s accounts. Transport Scotland did not check any documentary evidence that the £82.5 million had been spent on projects before authorising payments. That is pretty extraordinary, is it not?

Would you say that Transport Scotland lost control, and that it should have had a greater grip on the money that it was handing out?

There is a new model of funding whereby money will go directly to councils, rather than through Sustrans, and I am wondering how you think some councils will cope with that.

I agree with you on that. Quite a few of the projects that Sustrans has delivered have been good, in my view. The south city way in Glasgow is a good project, although its delivery was shambolic at times, and it took far too long. Overall, however, it has been a good project. We cannot just say that some of those things are not good. There is evidence that people are using the south city way, certainly locally, and there is less car use, because people now have a viable alternative to get from one part of the city into the city centre on a segregated route. For me, that has worked.

Perhaps this is a question for you, Mr Bell. We are now moving to a new system of funding, where money will go directly to councils. How do you think that will work? One of the issues that you will be very familiar with in relation to some councils is lack of capacity. That is probably the case in rural councils in particular. You mentioned rural areas earlier. How do you think it will all work?

It has taken me a long time to get the Greens to see sense, and it has finally happened. The motion from my good friend Mark Ruskell could well be his application to join the Scottish Conservatives—although that might not be a good career move. Everything in the motion has been our policy for years. My attempts to get various transport ministers to deliver cheaper, simpler fares and integrated ticketing may not have succeeded yet, but I live in hope. Fiona Hyslop knows that I am always here to help.

Earlier today, the Public Audit Committee looked at the Auditor General’s report “Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”. The report says—rightly—that

“Transport is the largest source of greenhouse gas”.

That makes me wonder why we would build new ferries, which pump out greenhouse gases.

The report refers to the Government’s target of cutting car miles by 20 per cent from 2019 levels by 2030, and points out that, even now, with only five years to go, there is no plan to achieve that target. I would like the cabinet secretary to tell us whether the Government is still committed to that target, because it does not look as if it is. If she wants to intervene now, I will take her intervention.

Well, I am none the wiser. Is anyone else? I assume from that answer that the target is scrapped—as it should be, because the Government has absolutely no chance of hitting it. The consultation paper that was published on Monday is just a way of stalling things until after next year’s election.

To achieve the target, car traffic levels would have to decrease by 4.5 billion miles from the 2019 baseline, to 18 billion miles. Car traffic levels were previously at that level in 1994. That is not going to happen, and the Government should be honest about that.

However, the Government can do what we have been calling for—I am pleased to say that the Greens are now on board with it—which is to radically improve public transport. Ignoring the will of the Parliament when we voted last year to end peak fares on the railways was a bad move. We will not get people back on the trains by making them more expensive. There has been precious little sign of things improving on ScotRail since it was nationalised but, when the Government has all the levers at its disposal, it should at least use them.

The bus system is too fragmented and confusing. I have long backed a £2 bus fare cap, similar to that introduced by the previous Conservative Government in England, rather than a pilot. We do not need a pilot, because we know that it works. Across the country, we need integrated ticketing and a smart card system, which can be on a phone. Other countries are using the technology that I have suggested to the cabinet secretary. In fact, we need only look at innovative regions in England, such as the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, to see how things can be done better.

We are way behind where we need to be. Transport Scotland has said that, to achieve the car reduction target, we would need an increase in public transport capacity of—wait for it—222 per cent. There is no sign of that happening, and it will not happen.

Sue Webber was right to mention Winchburgh in her amendment. A new station should have been planned and agreed before any of the new houses were built there. Why can we not get the simple things right?

Mark Ruskell opened the debate by saying that rail fares are “eye-watering”. He is absolutely right; others have made a similar point. I hope that Parliament backs the amendment in Sue Webber’s name, as well as the original motion, as amended. If it does, the Government will have to take notice and act on that instruction, because kicking the can down the road with yet another consultation will not do.

Yes, I certainly do. It is rather bizarre.

I agree with the convener of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, who has set out the issues very clearly. We cannot expect a committee to do its work properly with so little time for detailed scrutiny. Committees of the Parliament are not rubber-stamping bodies. When the NZET Committee says, in its hastily written report on the LCM, that the

“agreement of this short report amounts to ... an almost literal case of a committee going through the motions”,

it is correct. That is treating the Parliament with contempt—something that I thought the Government was against. If this had been a Conservative Government bill, the reaction would have been howls of derision. How times change.

I have listened with interest to members, not least to Douglas Lumsden, who went off on one of his regular tirades—for good reason, of course. If we cut through the amusing froth of Mr Lumsden’s strident contribution, he makes a very good point indeed, namely that GB Energy is a myth, a sham.

Members—including Jackie Dunbar, in an excellent speech—have spoken about how Aberdeen and the north-east were promised one thing but are to get quite another. Labour told us that it would cut our energy bills, but the reverse is happening, and Ed Miliband’s net zero obsession is more likely to increase costs. None of us, least of all the Labour members, can truly say whether we are any clearer on what GB Energy is for or what it will do. Daniel Johnson obviously did not get an answer to that when he spoke to Michael Shanks earlier.

There is no evidence that GB Energy will drive down costs and bills—for that to happen, there needs to be a plan to do so, and there is not one. That is not to say that the state, local or regional authorities cannot do that, because they can. There are examples elsewhere in the world of that happening, but it will not happen here, and we all know it.

What is before us is not the whole bill but just one clause—clause 7A. It says:

“Great British Energy must keep under review the impact of its activities on the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom.”

“Sustainable development” could mean whatever you want it to mean. It is very woolly language to use in a bill. The amendment was lodged by energy minister Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who really should have known better. He said:

“We see sustainable development as a broad category.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, Vol 843, 11 Feb 2025; c 1204.]

He can say that again. The vagueness of the clause makes it so close to being meaningless that it pushes me to say that it should not be in legislation. It might be harmful or it might not be; it depends on how he interprets it, and that is not good enough.

However, the main reason for rejecting the LCM is the lack of time to properly scrutinise it. I call on Parliament to back itself and to reject the LCM.

Will the member take an intervention?

I was feeling a bit lonely over on the Conservatives seats—as lonely as Mr Marra is. I wanted to give my good friend Mr Mason some company, but apparently he did not want it.

I thank Kenny Gibson for bringing the debate to Parliament. It is a very political motion, but I think that that is fine; MSPs should be able to debate such things. He managed in the motion and in his speech to savage both Labour and the Conservatives, but not, apparently, the virtuous Scottish National Party. Of course, he is entitled to that view—perhaps he is seeking re-election. For me, the serious questions raised are entirely valid. The main question is whether PFI and PPP represent value for money and what happens when they end.

I will take the first part of that question first: are they value for money? There is not really an easy answer to that, because, as the Scottish Parliament information centre said in its blog on the subject in January 2018,

“For the 129 projects that have been privately financed in Scotland, repayment costs will total £39.7bn, more than four times the capital value of the projects. However, bear in mind that these repayments often cover more than just the construction costs and interest costs. They will include the costs of maintaining the building (or other asset) and may also include other services, such as cleaning and catering, although this is less common with more recent projects.”

Does Sarah Boyack think that this Parliament has had sufficient time to consider the LCM?