Chamber and committees

In R (Miller) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union the UK Supreme Court decided that the UK Government may not lawfully notify the European Council under Article 50 TEU of the UK's intention to withdraw from the European Union without the authority of an Act of the UK Parliament.

The decision of the UK Supreme Court on these issues is final. There is no right of appeal from the UK Supreme Court to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Scottish Government will keep under review the question of what steps it should take to defend Scotland’s interests and the role of the Scottish Parliament as the process of triggering Article 50 and negotiating the UK exit from the EU continues.

The Scottish Government anticipates that around 25,000 Modern Apprentices aged 16-20 and between 6,500 and 8,500 Job Grant recipients aged 16-24 could be supported by its plans to provide free bus travel to these groups. We will be discussing the necessary processes with key stakeholders, including Skills Development Scotland, local authorities, Regional Transport Partnerships and bus operators, to ensure that the offer of free bus travel to young Modern Apprentices and, later on, to the young recipients of job grants, can be easily accessed.

We are aiming to introduce free bus travel for Modern Apprentices in April 2018. Free travel for Job Grant recipients will come into force when the Job Grant itself becomes available.

Over the coming months, we will be engaging with stakeholders across Scotland to listen carefully to their views so that we may understand the social, equality and other impacts of possible changes that might be made to the scheme.

This early period of engagement will lead to a more formal written consultation later in the year on ways in which we might help ensure the longer-term sustainability of concessionary travel.

Following the consultation, the Scottish Government will publish an analysis of the responses in the usual way and indicate its intentions including the timing of any changes. We do not want to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation process, though we can reconfirm that those already holding cards on the basis of the age will keep their bus passes and that there will be no reduction in eligibility for disabled people.

The number of concessionary travel card holders under the National Concessionary Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled Persons in each year since it was established are as follows:-

In December 2016 there were 1,310,803 cardholders under the National Concessionary Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled Persons.

The Scottish Government estimates that around 70,000 people will reach the age 60 and thus become eligible for a free bus pass under the existing concessionary travel scheme in 2017. This number is expected to rise in each subsequent year to around 76,000 people reaching the age of 60 in 2021.

The design and construction of network infrastructure to transport electricity within Scotland is the responsibility of the network owners Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and Scottish Power Energy Networks in conjunction with the GB-wide system operator National Grid. Regulatory oversight of networks costs and protection of consumers’ interests is the responsibility of Ofgem.

Engineering and routeing proposals are developed in accordance with the network companies’ licence obligations to develop and maintain an efficient, co-ordinated and economical network. Proposals may include overhead lines, undergrounding or subsea cables. The Scottish Planning Policy states that consideration should be given to underground grid connections where possible.

The Scottish Government requires that applications by the Network owners have taken account of relevant national and local planning policies and that environmental impacts have been fully considered.

The regulated measure of rail performance for Scotland for this railway control period is the Public Performance Measure “PPM”. Network Rail has a regulatory target of a Moving Annual Average of PPM by the end of this Control Period in April 2019 of 92.5%. The ScotRail Franchise Agreement contains a PPM benchmark regime which likewise tracks to 92.5% by 2019.

This approach, with a challenging but achievable PPM Target Performance Level in both the HLOS and Franchise Agreement, incentives the franchisee and Network Rail to work in partnership to deliver service reliability to passengers.

The key elements of the Cancellations and Significant Lateness (CaSL) measure are captured within PPM.

The trains which run to Milngavie and Westerton, as well as Dalmuir, also run to Balloch and Helensburgh Central in the west of their route. At the other end of their routes, they serve Springburn, Cumbernauld, Airdrie and Edinburgh. The service is collectively designated as the ‘North Electrics’ route.

Since the start of the current financial year, that is, from 1 April 2016-7 January 2017, about 85.6 percent of the ‘North Electrics’ trains met the ‘public performance measure’ (that is, arrivals within five minutes of the timetabled time, excluding trains which failed to stop at any point in the journey at which they should have stopped). This can be compared with PPM over the same period for the franchise as a whole, sitting at about 89.7 percent.

Transport Scotland does not hold data on delays and cancellations for the specific routes and trains in the question itself. The trains referenced in this query run within the Suburban West sector, and the number of gross cancellations and part-cancellations on this sector over the current financial year has been as follows:

Number of cancellations: (full) (part)

Cancellations 3,951 4,120 To 10 Dec 2016 – most

up-to-date data held

This is 8,071 full- and part-cancellations in total, or 2.2 percent of the 367,223 trains planned to run in the Suburban West sector during this time.

[Data as-reported by ScotRail to Transport Scotland]