Chamber and committees

Passengers to and from Glasgow Prestwick International Airport are able to benefit from lower cost rail and bus travel through the airport's partnership arrangements with Strathclyde Passenger Transport and Scotrail, and with Stagecoach and Scottish Citylink. The Scottish Executive has no plans to enhance those arrangements. Completion of the proposed M77 between Newton Mearns and Fenwick will benefit passengers travelling to and from the airport by road.

The timetable for the renewal of the Scottish rail passenger franchise is as follows:

• the Scottish Executive's Directions and Guidance to the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) will be issued this summer;
• the SRA will subsequently invite bids later in 2002;
• initial bids will then be evaluated and short-listed;
• short listed bidders will be invited to submit a Best and Final Offer before a preferred bidder is selected, with whom to negotiate a new franchise agreement, and

the new franchise will begin on 1 April 2004.

European and international railway services are a reserved matter under the devolution settlement. Under the UK Transport Act 2000, the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) is required to prepare a strategy relating to services in various parts of Great Britain for facilitating the carriage of passengers or goods by rail via the Channel Tunnel. Publication of this strategy is scheduled for later this year.The SRA has also indicated that it will be carrying out consultation as part of this work. This will allow further consideration of the issues concerning regional access to Channel Tunnel passenger services.

The Scottish Executive's report demonstrated that in the short term the priority should be strengthening partnership working amongst the local authorities in the Highlands and Islands. Consequently, joint working between the partners in the region has been strengthened. This is illustrated by the move from a forum to a Strategic Partnership; the implementation of the partnership's successful bid to the Public Transport Fund in 2001; the creation of HITRANS and the recent formalisation of its constitution and funding arrangements. This has been aided by a commitment from the Scottish Executive to match fund HITRANS' constituent councils' contributions to the development of a Joint Transport Strategy for the area, on which work is substantially under way.

The Scottish Executive is considering a range of options for taking the Scottish passenger rail franchise forward after 2004 to ensure the best value for money. The Executive believes that what is needed is more rather than less integration of Scottish rail services, and that letting the next franchise to more than one operator could lead to fragmentation of services.

This is one of a wide range of issues that will be considered during the evaluation of bids received for the Scottish rail passenger franchise.

I understand that no decision has been taken on this matter by Consignia, and there is no indication of whether redundancies of rail workers might result. In the event of such redundancies, the local enterprise network and other relevant organisations would be able to assist those made redundant with appropriate training.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Executive. With the exception of the administration in Scotland by the Scottish Executive of the Freight Facilities Grant and Track Access Grant schemes, rail freight is a reserved matter and as such is the responsibility of the Strategic Rail Authority.

The Scottish Executive administers the Freight Facilities Grant scheme in Scotland which aims to encourage the transfer of freight from road to rail and waterborne modes of transport, by helping companies invest in the facilities needed to compete in financial terms with road transport. The opportunities to take advantage of this grant scheme are available to manufacturers and logistics companies throughout Scotland. The decision about whether to carry freight by road or rail is a commercial matter for individual companies to make.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24621.