Chamber and committees

When the cabinet secretary described his new bus bill, I was intrigued by what he meant by one little line that he did not expand upon. He indicated that we might require legislation for the bus fare cap, but he also indicated that we could potentially need it in relation to regulation. Was he indicating that new legislation will be required to speed up the process? I am happy to take an intervention from him to hear whether that is what his intention is.

I am still not sure that that is very clear, because I am not quite sure what “better services across Scotland” really means. Maybe we will find out more when the cabinet secretary comes before the Transport Committee later this year and he can perhaps explain the position in full.

I will support Graham Simpson’s amendment on multimodal ticketing. We should have had smart ticketing some time ago. People, particularly those in rural areas, who move from one bus to the next or even to the train require a much more simplified process.

15:57

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

Okay—that is fine. It is intriguing in itself that the cabinet secretary is not able to answer that question straight away.

For me, the issue is all about routes. In Fife, I experience the almost annual round of bus changes, which radically disrupts people’s lives. I will give an example. For people who live in Auchtermuchty and work in Perth, the bus route has been changed twice, and they now have to change bus several times in order to get to work. Many people simply cannot make it work. They have to get up extraordinarily early to make it possible to get to work.

The bus companies just go around cherry picking. I have to say that Stagecoach is the worst, because it just picks the routes that it wants. It tries out routes and gets people to use those bus services, but once people have created new lives and new working patterns, it pulls the rug away from them in the following year. Meanwhile, the council has to come along and fill in the gaps, together with Moffat & Williamson, which is a very effective bus company. Not all the private operators are profiteers. Moffat & Williamson works well for its communities—it works with the council to fill in the gaps in services. That happens almost every year. Meanwhile, Stagecoach just chooses the routes that it wants.

I want to urge a little bit of caution, because it was found from the English pilots on a bus fare cap that it did not represent particularly good value for money. The network support grant has been cut by about 31 per cent in real terms since 2012. I worry about us putting more money into a cap and concessionary fares. The effect of that could be that we shift support from rural areas to urban areas. Of course I am in favour of the cap and concessionary fares, but I want us to think carefully about how we use public funds in a time when public finance is restricted.

I do not know whether the cabinet secretary has an answer yet to the regulation point, but maybe we will keep on waiting. Is the cabinet secretary going to come back to me today or wait until he consults his officials? I am genuinely intrigued. As far as I am aware, we do not need legislation for the bus fare cap, so why are we introducing a bill if it is not for something more substantial? I think that an awful lot of organisations, such as Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, would welcome a simplified process that takes a shorter time than the seven years that it has taken to get to the stage that we are at now. If a simplified process is coming down the track, I would very much welcome that.

What Malcom Offord says is interesting. From his extensive experience as a Conservative minister in the UK Government, what can he teach members about reform of public services across the UK, particularly in his portfolio?

The minister will know that Professor Sir Ian Boyd has been commissioned by the board of SRUC to produce a report into the future of the institution in north-east Fife and Cupar for the longer term—a vision that has been long awaited. That report has now been handed over to the board. When it is published, will the minister and the Government get right behind it and make sure that it turns into reality?

I agree with all of that, but it sounds as if the cabinet secretary is trying to run the whole of Government by himself. Can he give us an idea of how he is going to prioritise? If he does not do so, I think that he is going to get lost.

Will the minister give way?

This is why the SNP is in more serious trouble than we thought. Its first reaction to any criticism of its internal affairs is to throw the muck around and blame everybody else. [Interruption.] We addressed that issue at the time. I am getting irritated now, because the SNP needs to understand that this is about the integrity of politics in Scotland as a whole—right here, right now. This is what people in Scotland are talking about, and the SNP is deaf to that.

If the SNP will not listen to me, it should listen to Douglas Chapman, because he is a strong supporter of independence. I do not know whether he continues to be a member of the SNP—I would not blame him if he was not. He said recently that

“senior people in the SNP failed to support the wishes of the SNP membership”,

and he pointed directly to John Swinney. He looked back over all that time and recognised that the leaders of his party, who are the leaders of this country, failed in their responsibilities.

For all those reasons, we should have an inquiry. Actually, I think that an inquiry is in the SNP’s interests, because it needs to cleanse before it can progress. We all know that; we have all made mistakes as political parties, but we can progress only if we acknowledge, clean up, inquire and have the sunlight running right into our party. That is the only way to move forward.

It is in the SNP’s own interest to have an inquiry. I know that the SNP does not like that, because it believes that we will stitch it up. I understand that. However, the SNP is not even attempting to do anything else. It just wants to shut this down, but it cannot afford to shut it down.

I deeply regret that Ross Greer’s approach to this is the same as Alan Brown’s approach—

I am going to conclude. The approach is to spread the blame around. Let us just reflect for a moment. This is what the public expect—if they believe that the Parliament will sweep the matter under the carpet, their faith in Scottish politics will diminish further. For goodness’ sake, let us listen to what people are saying.