The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-14405, in the name of Graham Simpson, on ending peak rail fares on ScotRail trains. I ask members who wish to speak in the debate to please press their request-to-speak buttons.
16:03
Just before Parliament returned from the summer recess, Fiona Hyslop announced that peak fares will be returning to Scotland’s railways. There was no debate—that was it. Well, here is the debate today, and Parliament can give its view. I hope that the Government listens.
Transport Scotland declared the trial of having a simpler and lower fare structure to have been unsuccessful, even though it led to more people using the trains. With fares having been raised by 9 per cent in April, passengers are to be hit with a double whammy in just 16 days, which will result in someone commuting between Edinburgh and Glasgow facing fares that are nearly double what they were at the start of the year.
When Fiona Hyslop faced a barrage of questions on the topic last week, all she had in her locker was a bizarre claim that people will pay less if they take advantage of season tickets or something called a flexipass, which friends tell me is fiendishly complicated. All that begs the question of the transport secretary, if there is money for her new complicated rail discount schemes, why does she not use some of it to scrap peak fares, which passengers overwhelmingly prefer?
I point the member, who I am sure is a regular rail user, to the position in his Central Scotland region. Take a rail journey from Airdrie to Edinburgh. If people use an annual season ticket four days a week, a single trip will cost £14.44. The pilot fare is £15.80.
On good use of public financing, the self-financing of the discounts is a benefit to the public purse, but, more important, it is a benefit to passengers. I am sure that Graham Simpson and all his colleagues will be encouraging people to use the discounts.
My fare from East Kilbride to Edinburgh will rocket by 83.8 per cent. That is not a saving.
In March, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, Unite the union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Transform Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Just Transition Partnership issued a letter to Fiona Hyslop. It read:
“If you were to restore peak fares it would be a retrograde step that would send exactly the wrong message at the wrong time. We urge you to do the right thing, scrap peak fares permanently to help Scotland meet its climate targets”.
Mike Robinson of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland will be delighted that I am quoting him. In March, he said:
“If we are serious about tackling the climate crisis, along with reducing inequality and improving health and wellbeing, it’s a no-brainer that using public transport should be cheaper than driving.”
I would not want to leave out my good friend Kevin Lindsay of ASLEF, who, in May, said:
“Surely just at the time the Scottish Government has backtracked on its net zero targets they should be doing all they can to make our trains more affordable and reduce CO2 emissions from road travel, which their own policy is committed to.”
Not for the first time, Mr Lindsay is bang on the money, as is Alex Rowley, whose amendment we will support because it calls on the Government to reverse that retrograde step. The Government amendment does not do that, so it should be rejected.
I should say that I would have been happy to support the Greens’ amendment, too, had it been selected for debate, and I give them credit for their work in getting peak fares scrapped in the first place, although, of course, others were also calling for the same thing.
If we want to get greater numbers of people to use public transport instead of driving, we have to make it simple and affordable. However, the service also has to be reliable, and it has not been. Almost 6,000 ScotRail trains have been cancelled since April, and more than a quarter of a million pounds has been paid out in compensation for delayed or cancelled trains. Two million pounds has been paid out since the nationalisation that was supposed to make things better. We have an unreliable service, and now it is to be more expensive. If the policy was to get more people on to the roads, that would be genius.
Fiona Hyslop has not been able to explain how increasing fares will help the Scottish Government achieve its ambition of cutting car miles by a fifth by 2030. Last week, the dire programme for government warned darkly of “demand management” measures. People might be tempted to hop in the car rather than taking the train from now on. However, I say to drivers of Scotland, “Beware: the SNP is coming for you”. The SNP Government is just not saying what it has in store yet. Maybe it is road pricing. It will certainly coin it in on that, at this rate.
It may surprise members to know that I do not always agree with the RMT, but, last week, it produced a critique of the Government’s backward decision that was spot on. It said—quite rightly—that the evaluation of the trial looked at the impact on overall demand and did not assess the impact on demand in peak time only.
It is a pity that the off-peak fares pilot did not create the greater patronage that was expected to cover the costs.
Did Mr Simpson take full advantage of the full-fares pilot to switch to rail travel from his region to Parliament, did he urge his staff to do likewise, and did he urge others to do so, too?
I regularly use the train, and my staff use the train all the time. It is just going to become more expensive for them now. That is a real shame, and Mr Stewart should know that.
Fiona Hyslop should have sent back the evaluation for the reasons that I have outlined. In addition, the evaluation measured passenger demand in terms of journey numbers rather than distance travelled, which could give a different picture. The transport secretary has said that the trial cost around £40 million. The RMT suggests that the actual figure is nearer to £20 million, because without the trial, passenger numbers would have increased, similar to the rest of the United Kingdom, and I think that the RMT is right. It is not small change, but it should be seen as investment.
Public transport should be seen as a service, and it should become the go-to choice. When times are tough for people, we should not be making things harder. The reintroduction of peak fares should be reversed, as the motion in my name says. I call on Parliament to do the right thing and back the motion.
I move,
That the Parliament calls on the Scottish Government to reverse its decision to reintroduce peak fares on Scotland’s railway.
I call Fiona Hyslop, the cabinet secretary, to speak to and move amendment S6M-14405.3.
16:11
Last October, we introduced the ScotRail peak fares removal pilot, supported by £40 million in Government funding. It was a bold and pioneering initiative, which was only possible due to the Government’s bringing ScotRail under public sector control, which has not been done with railways elsewhere in the UK as yet. We initiated the pilot to achieve two objectives: to encourage more people to choose to travel by train rather than by car, especially at peak commuter times, and to make rail travel more affordable and accessible.
On Tuesday 20 August, Transport Scotland published its full analysis of the pilot. I encourage members to read it if they have not already done so. The analysis shows that, although there was a limited increase in the number of passengers during the pilot, at the ultimate level of 6.8 per cent, the pilot did not achieve its original aim of encouraging a significant modal shift from car to rail. The analysis suggests that around four million extra rail journeys were made during the pilot, two million of which would previously have been made by private car. However, that is in the context of around five billion annual private car journeys in Scotland, and it represents a reduction of less than 0.1 per cent of car-based carbon emissions.
Of the new rail passengers who were identified as switching from other transport modes, 54 per cent had previously used a car as a driver and a third had switched from using a bus. The evidence also suggests that the pilot primarily benefited existing rail users, who tended to be of above-average income.
The First Minister set out the Government’s priorities in his programme for government on 4 September. Due to 14 years of austerity—which was driven by the previous Conservative Westminster Government and is being continued by the current Labour Government—sky-high inflation and the failure of Westminster Governments to increase budgets adequately to address inflation, we have to make difficult decisions to address those circumstances.
When the cabinet secretary announced the decision, she admitted that, in some cases, people had saved thousands of pounds through the pilot. Does she agree, then, that ending it will cost people thousands of pounds?
Although it saved many passengers hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of pounds during the period, it primarily benefited existing train passengers and those with medium to higher incomes, of above £35,000. On the basis of looking at the priorities of tackling child poverty, on which we have just had a debate, and tackling climate change, I made the decision to end the trial of discounted fares from 30 September. It would be difficult to justify such a subsidy, as it did not meet the aims that were originally set out for it.
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
I am sorry, but I cannot give way, as I have limited time.
I wanted the pilot to succeed, and I am disappointed that it did not. The moderate increase in passenger levels, while welcome, was significantly below the 10 per cent increase that was needed to make the scheme self-financing. In the current climate, it is simply not affordable to continue with that level of additional cost, especially when the scheme did not result in a large-scale switch from car to train and so will have had a minimal impact on carbon emissions.
A significant minority of people cannot choose when they travel to and from work and might find the return to peak fares challenging. I have therefore instructed ScotRail to introduce a 12-month discount on all ScotRail season tickets—weekly, monthly and annual ones—and to permanently amend the terms of flexipasses to allow for 12 single journeys for the price of 10, to be used within 60 days. That is a saving of 32 per cent compared with buying six anytime return tickets. Super off-peak day return fares will return, offering even cheaper fares for those who can travel at less-busy times.
Those measures will offer significant savings from previous peak fare levels for many and may still encourage people to make the switch from car to train for their daily commute. Should Labour rediscover its purpose and recognise that we cannot cut our way to prosperity or to improved public services, and should UK Government budget allocations significantly improve, I remain open to reconsidering future investment to fund the removal of ScotRail peak fares.
I move amendment S6M-14405.3, to leave out from “calls” to end and insert:
“notes that the pioneering Scottish Government 12-month trial removal of peak rail fares has not been introduced anywhere else in Britain; regrets that the trial, which cost up to £40 million of Scottish Government support, was only a partial success in encouraging rail use; notes the reluctant decision by the Scottish Government to end the trial due to the fiscal constraints chosen by successive UK administrations; encourages rail passengers to take advantage of the new range of reduced season, flexi and super off-peak tickets, and calls on the Scottish Government to make use of the valuable data from the trial in further developing its rail fare policy.”
I call Alex Rowley to speak to and move amendment S6M-14405.2.
16:16
First, I want to highlight the difference in approach between the Scottish National Party and Scottish Labour on the issue of peak rail fares. The SNP’s view seems to be that withdrawing peak fares was giving a subsidy to workers who travel to and from work by train at certain times of the day. Scottish Labour views peak fares as a tax on workers who use the train to get to and from work. In other words, workers are penalised if they have to use the train between certain hours of the day to get to and from work.
The cabinet secretary says that the pilot mostly benefited those with medium to higher incomes, and we need to talk about what that means. The phrase “middle earners” might mean one thing to the SNP, but I have been contacted by nurses, teaching assistants, a janitor and a hotel worker, all of whom are front-line workers who would fall into the category of middle earners—according to the SNP—and none of those workers felt that it was fair to be charged a premium for overcrowded and unreliable train services that they rely on to get to and from their work.
Even if we accept the SNP’s view that removing peak fares provides a subsidy to middle earners, I ask that we be realistic about the chance of getting more people to leave the car at home and travel by rail. If we want people to move from their car to public transport, ultimately, any measures will have to benefit middle earners, as they are more likely to be driving than people on low incomes. Inspiring modal shifts means targeting those who are driving and giving them a reason to change their mode of transport. That must mean making rail travel affordable, accessible and reliable. It certainly needs to be cheaper to use the train than it is to use the car.
If we do not make modal shifts, we will continue to face an uphill struggle. John Swinney recently said that he believes that the Government will still achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres travelled by 2030. Personally, I think that that is pie in the sky. However, in reality, the SNP is unlikely to be in power by then, and it is easy to make targets for the future and then take little action to meet them.
The Scottish Government is trying to sell the removal of peak fares as a failure but, during an unprecedented time of SNP chaotic mismanagement that included delays, cancellations and the imposition of an emergency timetable—
Will the member give way? It is an important point.
No. I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes left.
During that unprecedented time, rail use increased by 6.8 per cent, which was incredible, given all that happened. Just think of the result that could have been achieved if people could have relied on the services and the scheme had been appropriately advertised at the start instead of being hidden due to concerns about overcrowding on trains. The only way that the pilot has been a failure is in its management and execution.
Even with the removal of peak fares, it is still cheaper to drive than it is to use rail. To achieve a modal shift on the scale that is needed, public transport must be the most affordable and reliable option. If we are serious about hitting our net zero targets and tackling transport issues, we have to invest in public transport. It has to be reliable. People need to know that, when they go for public transport, they will be able to access it, and it has to be affordable.
Mr Rowley, you are over your time.
I support the motion.
I move amendment S6M-14405.2, to insert at end:
“, and agrees that making public transport more accessible, affordable and reliable is key to supporting more people to use public transport.”
16:21
I welcome the fact that the Tories have chosen the cream of the crop of Scottish Green policies to champion in the chamber. Whether that is just blatant opportunism or a stumble towards one-nation Conservatism, I do not know. However, it is clear that the Tories have noticed the popularity of removing extortionate and confusing peak rail fares.
The Scottish Greens listened to rail unions and championed the scrapping of peak fares when we were in government. Rail union members work with passengers every day, so they know how the railway works, how ludicrously complex the fare system is and how it puts off passengers. The RMT has called the decision to reintroduce peak fares “a retrograde step”. ASLEF said that the decision was “a disaster” for workers. I whole-heartedly agree with the STUC, which said:
“Peak fares are a stealth tax on workers which is bad for the climate, bad for our communities and bad for people’s wallets.”
Public transport is a common good. It is at the heart of everyday life. How we get to work and access learning, how we visit our family and friends and how we engage with our communities delivers tangible positive benefits for all. If the Government is serious about its commitments to cutting emissions from the 5 billion car journeys that are made in Scotland every year and to transforming the way that people travel, we need radical investment into making bus, tram and train travel cheaper and easier than taking the car. A robust route map for reducing car kilometres by 20 per cent by 2030 will be vital to that, and I look forward to the cabinet secretary producing that soon.
Nearly 750,000 young people in Scotland now have access to free bus travel, and more than 150 million such journeys have been made in just over two years. The national entitlement card for bus travel goes further than that by offering young people 50 per cent off their train fares, so we are already creating a generation whose first choice is public transport.
However, I say to the cabinet secretary that it takes time to change behaviour. The off-peak fares trial led to an extra 4 million journeys over nine months, and half of them would have been made by car previously. It did not pass the success threshold that the Government set of a 10 per cent increase in journeys, but people take time and need certainty to make changes to their lives. At the end of this month, the only certainty will be that fares will dramatically increase on many rail services.
Will the member give way?
Is there time in hand, Presiding Officer?
There is no time in hand. It is up to the member whether to take an intervention.
I need to progress. I am sorry.
Ticket prices for the most popular Edinburgh to Glasgow route will more than double, from £14.90 to a staggering £31.40. That is a step in the wrong direction. It cannot be right that it is cheaper, easier and simpler to choose private cars over public transport.
The Government’s fair fares review recognised that rail fares are extremely complex and act as a barrier to encouraging a modal shift from car to rail. Simplification of fares and tickets is key to encouraging people on to public transport, and the off-peak all-day scheme was a great start to that. Returning to a complex picture of multiple ticket prices sends us back in the wrong direction and risks passengers abandoning rail altogether and getting back on the road again. We might also see a return to overcrowding on either side of the peak fare timetable, as passengers scrabble to avoid eye-watering prices, leading to a poor customer experience, which would further fuel frustration and a decline in the use of rail.
If passenger numbers go in reverse because of the decision to bring back peak fares, ScotRail’s fare box income will plummet. The cabinet secretary will then have no option but to finally scrap peak fares permanently. In that context, the Scottish Greens are content to back the motion and the Labour amendment in today’s debate, and I look forward to reflecting on members’ comments in my closing speech.
16:25
I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of Scottish Liberal Democrats this afternoon. We will support the motion and the Labour amendment, but we will not support the Scottish Government’s amendment.
The reintroduction of peak fares comes a few months after the announcement in April of a rise in fares of 8.7 per cent, which was a double whammy for commuters during the cost of living crisis. Some people will now be incentivised to come off the rail network and go back into cars. There will be plenty of real-world experiences out there that illustrate the barrier that the return of peak fares will make to their commute, and there is also a question about the reliability of the rail service. Passengers need reliability. Many experiences highlight commuters finding other means to get to work rather than rail, which perhaps impacted the success of the pilot.
It was hoped that that policy had the climate and sustainable transport in mind. The Scottish Government’s announcement stated that a 10 per cent increase in passenger levels would have made the policy self-financing, which poses the question why the Scottish Government was unable to achieve that magic number. What more spending would have been needed to ensure a successful public engagement programme to develop a self-financing policy and a sustainable rail service?
There were four campaigns during the pilot, with 4 million views on pay television and a radio podcast. People in my town received an A3 fold-out print. Therefore, there was advertising and engagement, particularly for car radio users, so we cannot say that the pilot was not advertised.
The RMT briefing states that it believes that the methodology that the Scottish Government used to evaluate the trial did not look at demand at peak time, which made it difficult to see the true impact of the trial.
The climate will be the biggest loser from the policy reversal. Scottish Liberal Democrats have long campaigned to get cars and lorries off the roads and to move passengers and freight on to our railways as part of a package to tackle the climate crisis. We also championed reforms to ticket incentives and discounts. Rail fares will now revert to the more complicated tiered system, with super-off-peak, off-peak and peak rail fares. If we were to design a ticket pricing system as a barrier to travel on our railways, that is what we would create.
Since the pandemic, more people have been choosing to work flexibly, with a mix of some days working from home and some days commuting. Rail season tickets for two or three days a week would provide flexibility and reflect the new hybrid models of working while saving commuters money. I note the Scottish Government’s 12-month discount on ScotRail season tickets and the new flexipasses that allow commuters to book 12 single journeys for the price of 10. However, those must be simple to use and purchase, with straightforward terms and conditions, to ensure usability and good uptake. We need to foster a culture of sustainable public transport use that is good for purses and the planet.
We need to invest to cut our carbon emissions, whether by investing in public awareness campaigns on discounts and passes, reopening stations, building new lines or adding new stations to existing routes. It is not just railway infrastructure investment that will help to reduce carbon emissions. Ferries to our island and coastal communities need to be sustainable and, dare I say, for some communities, tunnels to reduce emissions would be a sustainable alternative to recurring cycles of ferry replacements.
We move to the open debate. Back benchers’ speeches should be of up to four minutes. There is no time in hand.
16:29
Despite his authoritarian misrule, Benito Mussolini is credited with making Italy’s trains run on time. In fact, a look back in time reveals that he did not, because that was a myth. Instead, Mussolini was a showman. He never missed an opportunity to be associated with great public works, and railways were among his favourites. Whenever a big rail bridge, a station or a new line opened, Mussolini was there to take the credit. Whether he would have gone as far as to launch a ship with painted-on windows is another matter, but there is a similarity between the tactics that were deployed by Il Duce and the modern-day SNP.
Last December, Fiona Hyslop was in East Lothian—
Shameful!
—smiling for photographers when she proudly opened East Linton station, which has been warmly welcomed and is much needed by the community.
A fascist!
On a point of order, Presiding Officer.
I could hear one of the members at the back of the chamber shouting, “Fascist!” I do not know whether you heard that, Presiding Officer. I think that that is disgraceful—
Mr FitzPatrick should not comment from a sedentary position. If he has something to say, he should stand up and say it. Otherwise, he should keep quiet.
Are you seeking to make a point of order, Mr FitzPatrick?
I am happy to make an intervention on the member.
You do not intervene on a point of order.
I thank Mr Lumsden for his point of order. I heard what was said, and I had hoped that Mr FitzPatrick would desist from making any further comment.
On a point of order—
Mr FitzPatrick, I am in the middle of responding to a point of order.
I note Mr Lumsden’s point of order. I have listened carefully to the content of what Mr Hoy has been saying. In my view, at the moment, he has been making debating points and has said nothing in terms of the substance of the claim that was made from a sedentary position. Obviously, I will listen very carefully.
Before we go back to Mr Hoy, I will take a point of order from Mr FitzPatrick.
Thank you very much. For clarity, I need to make the point that, when I used the word “fascist”, I was talking about Mussolini. It is stretching the point to compare a Scottish Government minister with a fascist in Italy, and I thought that it was shameful to do so.
Thank you for your point of order, Mr FitzPatrick. I did not for one second assume that you were referring to Mr Hoy, so that is all good.
With regard to your second point, I listened carefully when Mr Hoy started down that route. Vis-à-vis the substantive point that you make, my feeling was that Mr Hoy was in no way making such a claim about the cabinet secretary—otherwise, I would have intervened in a heartbeat. I did not feel that that was what he was doing. He was seeking to be humorous. Of course, it will be up to the chamber and members of the public who are watching proceedings to decide whether he succeeded in that, or not.
Please continue, Mr Hoy.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also read the history books. Let us say, for the purposes of my speech, that Benito Mussolini was a showman. Last December, Fiona Hyslop was a showwoman, because she was smiling for photographers when she arrived in East Lothian to open East Linton station.
However, now, months later, services have been slashed and peak-time fares are soaring. As a result of the SNP’s restricted emergency timetable there are only five trains a day from East Linton to Edinburgh, with only two trains each morning and only a single ScotRail service each day. Anyone who wants to return to East Linton after 5.42 pm will have to wait until 11 pm to get home. The trains are meant to take 20 to 30 minutes, which is half the time of the local East Coast Buses service, but this coming Saturday, a passenger—
Will the member give way on that point?
I will not, because I have had enough interruptions, and I think that I am probably on the clock.
This coming Saturday, a passenger who boards the 6.09 am service bound for Edinburgh will face a journey of two hours and 11 minutes, involving a rail replacement bus south of Dunbar and a one-hour wait on the platform before boarding a northbound London train to Edinburgh. That is two hours and 11 minutes to go just 23 miles. For that shocking level of service, the single fare is £9.90. The only saving grace is that the train is operated by London North Eastern Railway rather than SNP-run ScotRail, so passengers will be able to have a drink to quell their understandable anger.
Under the SNP, service levels on our railways are shocking and ticket fares are scandalous. The residents of East Linton are not alone. Commuters from North Berwick are set to see peak fares soaring despite receiving a reduced service, with ticket prices rising by 70 per cent from £8.80 to a staggering £15.
That is why I urge colleagues from across the chamber to join the Scottish Conservatives in calling on the Scottish Government to reverse its plan to reintroduce peak fares. The decision will be disastrous for passengers and will punish hard-working Scots, who will now have to pay hundreds and—according to the cabinet secretary’s own concession—thousands of pounds more to commute to work.
People are being forced back into their cars, which is resulting in increased congestion on the A1 and damage to the environment. Ticket prices are already up by nine per cent and peak fares are returning. A reduced timetable is causing misery for commuters. Far too many Scottish services are being cancelled—a staggering 6,000 and counting since April alone. Satisfaction levels with public transport are plummeting.
Last week, I spoke in the chamber of the Scottish National Party’s reverse Midas touch—everything that it touches turns to dust. It is a sorry state of affairs, not only for residents in East Lothian but for those across the South Scotland region that I represent. It is a state of affairs that is being played out across our transport network and our public services, the blame for which lies solely at the feet of the SNP Government.
16:35
Given the last speech, I note that Conservative colleagues who brought the debate to the chamber should consider that the people whom we represent know what is going on across these isles, and they know about the absolute folly of privatisation of rail services from the 1990s by the Conservative Party, which is having ramifications to this day. For example, there was the very long delay through the night that some of my constituents experienced on the Avanti service just a few days ago, as has been reported in The Scotsman in the past days.
We also know that, compared with elsewhere, the value for money that consumers receive from ScotRail is superior, and that there is strong support across the country for ScotRail’s having been in public hands since 2022.
I am a bit perplexed by members on the Conservative benches who have, in their previous contributions, spoken critically about public ownership of ScotRail but now seem to be demanding continued subsidy that can be utilised and delivered only because of public ownership. What does the Scottish Conservative Party stand for, in this instance? Is it in favour of public ownership or not? It is a mystery.
Will the member take an intervention?
Please. Enlighten me.
Would Ben Macpherson not accept that this is about the way that ScotRail is run? It is now nationalised. Surely he would accept that putting fares up—as is about to happen, in just over two weeks—is not what should be happening. Does he accept that?
That was not an answer to the question that I put.
The nationalisation of ScotRail enabled a subsidy, in the form of £40 million of public money, to be used to reduce fares at a time when there was a cost of living crisis. For many families, that was induced by the folly of the Liz Truss Government and the effect that it had on their mortgage costs and elsewhere, which came as well as the damage that the pandemic brought to the economy. Reduction of fares also helped with the stimulus of economic recovery.
I have not heard from the Conservatives today about what recurring spend they would cut elsewhere in the revenue budget in order to meet that £40 million. We have not heard that from the Labour Party, either. In fact, for the past two weeks, on all the issues of public finance, we have not heard any detailed proposals from the Labour Party about how it would change spending priorities. There have been only sweeping statements of criticism without serious policy proposals or solutions.
We are in the situation where the Scottish Government, through nationalisation and making the right choices, was able to bring in a subsidy, which made a positive impact during the period when it was in place. We know that the investment that is going into ScotRail is creating an improved service for people every single week, and it is going up more and more. The cabinet secretary set out the savings and methods, including the fact that ScotRail ticket fares are already some of the lowest in the UK, being 20 per cent lower on average than fares in the rest of the UK. We have also heard about flexi passes and all the initiatives that are already in place, and last week the cabinet secretary made an announcement to Parliament about improvement that is to come to the rolling stock.
Public ownership has made a positive impact, this policy has made a positive impact, and I commend the Government for doing it.
16:39
It was notable that Ben Macpherson could not answer Graham Simpson’s intervention. He seems unable to make a judgment on whether it is a good thing that many of our constituents are about to be faced with what Alex Rowley rightly identifies as an SNP tax increase on working people.
I was clear that the policy has made a difference but we are in a situation of public finance restraint. I am sure that Mr Kerr will tell me where, in the Conservative Party’s proposals, the cut to the revenue budget would fall if it were to reinstate the policy.
That was, of course, the speech that Ben Macpherson just gave.
Kevin Stewart—who is not in his place, by the way—might best ask ministers how many of them gave up their ministerial cars to take advantage of this period of reduced-price rail travel. The cabinet secretary must accept that this is a cost-of-travelling-by-rail crisis of her own making. Only John Swinney has more experience in Government than her, so she knows how this works. As Nigel Lawson said,
“To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.”
We have heard the predictable and usual grievance agenda from what is now clearly accepted as an incompetent SNP Government. Scots across our country can now see straight through all the excuses—no policy area is exempt. Getting people back on the railway was never going to be simply about reducing price, because many other elements go into how people make their travel choices, but there is no question that the unaffordability of rail travel is an issue.
It is also naive to assume that cutting prices will automatically make up for the loss of revenue through increased demand. I was involved in business for more than 30 years, and one of the first lessons you learn in business is that if you cut your prices it is very hard to get them up again. That is the reality, because people will exercise their choice.
That is how this SNP Government classically governs. It never gets to grips with any of the real issues that we face, because it is always far too busy trying to find an angle that will give it some political advantage when it comes to the only thing that it exists for, which is, of course, independence.
Members: Oh!
Well, it is a fact. SNP members can say “Oh!” all they like, but that is the reality of the politics of this Parliament. It is all about independence.
The new peak fares that are about to be foisted on the Scottish people will drive people off the railway and back into cars. Under the new fares, the cost of a peak return journey from Stirling to Edinburgh, for example, will increase by 64.5 per cent, from £12.10 to £19.90. The fare rise between Perth and Glasgow will be 100 per cent, from £20 to £40.10, and the fare from Aberdeen to Inverness will go up 84 per cent, from £37.70 to £69.50.
Will the member give way?
The member is in his final minute.
I know what the minister is going to say. She is going to say, “They should buy an annual ticket or a monthly ticket,” but that is not the reality.
By the way, it does not help the Government’s case that it has decided to reduce the regularity of services on some of our major routes, because reduced services become less convenient and so less attractive to potential customers. The suggestion that the Government is doing this to increase reliability is, frankly, ridiculous.
Rachel Amery of The Scotsman made a video last week detailing her typical journey from Perth to her offices in Edinburgh. It took her nearly two hours to make that journey, which would have taken just over an hour when Queen Victoria was on the throne. If the cabinet secretary wishes to understand why people who could use the train continue to use cars, I recommend that she watch Rachel Amery’s video.
It is worth reminding ourselves that, for a whole section of the Scottish public, the opportunity to use any form of public transport is an alternative that is practically non-existent.
Mr Kerr, you need to bring your remarks to a close now, please.
To conclude, the Government will tell us, in its favourite phrase, that it takes no lessons from anyone. How true that is, because it never learns.
16:44
I remind members of my voluntary register of interests.
Back in June, the last time that Parliament debated peak fares, the cabinet secretary accused me of having a “glass-half-empty analysis” and proceeded to give me a lecture on the savings that ScotRail passengers were making. So, the cabinet secretary was claiming the credit in June for rescuing Scotland’s commuters from the cost of living crisis, but by August she was blaming the very same commuters for being too middle class or too upper class. Last week, in Parliament, the cabinet secretary called them “middle to upper-income passengers”. Well, I call them working-class passengers. They are travelling by train before 9.30 in the morning and after 4.30 in the afternoon because they are going to and coming back from their work.
I invite the cabinet secretary to come with me one morning to Linlithgow station, look her constituents in the eye and tell them that they are all middle-to-upper earners, so they can afford the big hike in rail fares that her Government is imposing in two weeks’ time. Let her try to tell my constituents in Falkirk what she tried to tell us in Parliament just last week—that they can simply buy a flexi-pass with a 20 per cent reduction or an annual season ticket with a 20 per cent reduction, which, it turns out, is not a 20 per cent reduction but the equivalent of a 20 per cent reduction. An annual season ticket to commute from Falkirk to Edinburgh costs over £2,500, which passengers have to pay up front. If they pay monthly, it costs them over £3,000 a year. Is the cabinet secretary seriously arguing that people can easily afford that?
I suggest that the cabinet secretary also listen to the ScotRail staff who are working in our stations, who tell me that rail passengers are being forced to give up their jobs because they cannot afford to commute any more. Last week, we were told, in answer to questions posed by Opposition MSPs, that one of the other reasons for reintroducing peak fares was the fact that there was a limited increase in the number of passengers during the year. The fact is that there were 4 million extra journeys. We were also told that the number of journeys had tailed off, but might that be because the number of trains had tailed off, because the number of driver hours available had tailed off and a temporary timetable had been brought in, so the chances of getting a seat on a train had tailed off?
Finally, let me say this. When the First Minister was elected, back in May, he told us of his commitment to transparency and openness. He emphasised the importance of Parliament in scrutinising our record and our plans. Yet, barely three months later, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport put out a press release, days before Parliament was due to return, announcing the scrapping of the scheme. It was a pre-packaged decision accompanied by dishonest data and made behind the back of the Parliament.
It has taken an Opposition party this week and a barrage of Opposition MSPs’ questions last week for the cabinet secretary to be forced to come to Parliament to explain herself. In my view, that reflects not just a disdain for the Parliament but a disdain for democracy and—most of all—a disdain for the people, including all those commuters whose votes send us here. In return, all they expect of us is that we act in the public interest, have consistency of principles and promote the common good. I call on Government ministers to remember that and reverse this disastrous decision.
16:48
Well, if gongs were being handed out for brass necks, everyone on the Opposition benches would be wearing them—and proudly, no doubt.
Before the recent general election, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that there was an £18 billion hole in the UK Government’s finances. True to form, when Labour opened the books, it feigned shock that, in fact, the hole was £22 billion—but what is a billion or so between Governments?
Before the election, Anas “Read my lips” Sarwar proclaimed no austerity under Labour. Now, the Starmer mantra is, “Things will get worse.” Pensioners already know what that means.
Against that economic climate, the Tories—in this debate and in the previous one on free school meals—are demanding more money for services. On what planet do they live? Ditto for Labour. The ruin of the UK economy is simple. In 2008, under Gordon Brown, the banks crashed, although he at least admitted that he had made a “big mistake”. Boris pursued Brexit slap bang in the middle of a global pandemic—so much for Brexit being “oven ready” and for the side-of-a-bus promise of £350 million a week for the NHS.
As if things were not bad enough, along came 49-day Truss, who, with a stroke of her quill, crashed the economy, pushing inflation up to 11 per cent. We would have been better off with a lettuce—at least that is good for your health. Yet the Scottish Government, although it depends for the majority of its funding on Westminster, somehow has a very large sofa, with coins just waiting to be liberated, to provide £40 million a year to subsidise on-peak fares. Even with all that, I repeat that this was a pilot scheme to move people back on to trains, especially after Covid, when trains were all pretty well cut back out of necessity and the need for compliance in public transport. There was to be a specific return in passenger numbers for that money. That return was not reached—end of pilot.
I will make a further comment—work practices have radically changed since Covid. We moved to Teams, WhatsApp and Zoom, and we still use those either fully or in a hybrid way. Commuting to work for five days a week is, for many, in the past. The new balance of home working and office working is here to stay. There are offices across Scotland—Borders Council headquarters is one such—where, on weekdays, it feels like the Mary Celeste. This place is another such example: some MSPs are delivering speeches from their homes, and Mr Eagle has actually delivered a speech from his lambing shed.
Some time ago, I discussed that change in working practices with Alex Hynes, who was ScotRail’s chief executive. He advised that ScotRail’s business model had to adapt and that ScotRail would look to increasing train usage through pleasure journeys, because commuting had completely changed.
As always, I wish to be consensual, so I look forward to the Opposition parties specifying in their closing speeches—because I know that they have done their homework—where the £40 million for the recurring annual cost is to come from. Is it from health or education, or should we just scrap the millions that we give every year to mitigate the effect of UK austerity? That would do it, because I have news for them—there is no coin-laden sofa.
We move to closing speeches.
16:52
I will address Christine Grahame’s comment first. This is a bit of a frustrating debate, because we always talk about peak fares and higher prices to manage demand on the railways, but we never talk about peak pricing on the roads. We never talk about putting in road charges to manage demand during periods of congestion—which, of course, could then be used to invest in public transport and in our road infrastructure.
Will the member give way?
I think that I am short for time.
The reality is that those are the choices that people, if they are fortunate enough to own a car and be able to drive, have to make every single day. Do they pick up the car keys or do they pay upwards of £30 to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the railway? The reality is that, if people want to drive between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley, it is actually free—there is no pricing on the roads. However, we all know that private use of motor cars results in cost to the economy, cost to the environment and cost to communities through congestion.
To be honest, people in France are quite frankly astonished that we do not have road pricing here, because they have road pricing. We can see the impact of that investment on the quality of the autoroutes and the roads in France, as well as on the quality of public transport there, so I hope that the cabinet secretary is preparing to launch the much-wanted 20 per cent vehicle mileage reduction route map—to give it its long title—in the weeks to come, because we need to get a grip on what the acceptable measures are to drive down demand.
Graham Simpson says that he does not back demand management, but we have to address the other side of the coin. I will give one example—again, it is from France, where residents of Montpellier have had free public transport since December 2023. In the first few months of the scheme, passenger numbers have increased by about a quarter. The scheme is paid for by a mobility payment from companies that have more than 11 employees and by ticket sales from those visiting the town. There is still significant public investment, which is funded by higher tax payers, but a model has been found to invest in public transport that gives people a real choice to leave their car keys at home and get on to public transport.
We need to be open to new ways in which we can invest in our capital infrastructure and support revenue measures such as scrapping peak fares. The cabinet secretary made a heroic attempt to market the new plethora of tickets that are being introduced, including super-off-peak tickets, which most people do not use because they are at times of the day when nobody needs them. A lot of the longer-term tickets need a longer-term commitment from people to invest up front. As Beatrice Wishart said, if we were going to design a ticket system to be a barrier for people to adopting public transport, this would be it—it is too confusing.
The cabinet secretary made the point that the people who have benefited from the pilot are those who are on an above-average income, but we will not encourage people whose income is below average to start using the railways by increasing prices. Richard Leonard and Alex Rowley made that point strongly. If we look at who gets the trains these days, we see that it is middle-income earners, nurses and front-line workers. They are the people I see on the railways day in and day out, and I know that they are the people Fiona Hyslop sees on her journey to work.
I urge the cabinet secretary to look for opportunities to fund a scheme such as this and to reconsider it. Last week, she made a commitment in the chamber to reconsider the policy if a better budget deal comes from the Labour Government in Westminster. We need to open the conversation about how we fund such measures. I look forward to that coming in the route map for reducing vehicle mileage.
16:56
The debate has highlighted the short-sightedness of the Scottish Government’s decision to reintroduce peak fares. It has shown that positive policies are being sacrificed because of the SNP’s mismanagement of our public finances. It has exposed the fact that the SNP has given up on Scotland’s climate crisis—a crisis that the cabinet secretary did not even mention—with no serious plan to bring down emissions from our biggest emitter, which is transport.
The 6.8 per cent rise in passenger numbers as a result of axing peak fares was positive progress. It should have been built on, and it could have been with proper long-term promotion of rail, a proper timetable of services and a proper review of fares. As Alex Rowley said, we will not get more people back on our trains if they are not accessible, affordable and reliable. Instead, Scotland’s commuters will soon face not a return to pre-pilot peak rail fares but, because of the 8.7 per cent rail fare hike in April, the highest-ever rail fares for peak journeys, alongside some of the poorest-ever levels of service.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will, if I have time.
There is no extra time. It is a matter for the member.
What angers many of my constituents in Dumfries and Galloway is the fact that they will face the biggest hikes in fares in Scotland because of the Government’s failure to change the illogical, irrational and discriminatory way in which ScotRail fixes its prices.
I will give one quick example. From 27 September, commuters travelling between Dumfries and Carlisle will see their day return rail fare rise from £7.60 to £23.50, which is an increase of 211 per cent. How do we explain that a day return on the same line from Kilmarnock to Glasgow will increase from £8.80 to £13.90—which is bad enough at 58 per cent—but that a return journey that is of a similar distance from Dumfries to Carlisle will increase by four times that to almost twice the price of the Kilmarnock to Glasgow return ticket?
What conceivable reason is there for the fact that a 40-mile journey on the Borders railway from Tweedbank to Edinburgh will increase from a £14.50 return fare to £21.70—which is an eye-watering 49 per cent—but the cost of the shorter 30-mile journey from Dumfries to Carlisle will soon be more expensive, at £23.50? It will be more expensive for a journey that is 25 per cent shorter.
The issue is not just about the Dumfries to Carlisle journey. On the same Nith valley line, passengers travelling from Dumfries to Glasgow will see an 80 per cent hike in their day return fare. Passengers on the Nith valley line who travel from Dumfries and Galloway find themselves paying significantly more per mile if their journey begins in Dumfries and Galloway rather than in the former Strathclyde Region. That shows what a mess our fares are.
We have the ridiculous situation that passengers from Kirkconnell in upper Nithsdale are jumping in their car to drive the five minutes to New Cumnock to get the train to Glasgow, because the return fare from there is 25 per cent cheaper than it is from Kirkconnell. From 27 September, that will be a saving of more than £10 per return journey, just by driving a couple of miles up the road. When I have raised those anomalies with ministers, the response has been that there is going to be a fair fares review. However, the only substantive measure in that damp-squib review of rail fares is the removal of peak fares, which has now been ditched.
In 16 days’ time, Scotland’s rail commuters will be hit by record-high fares. That is bad news for families at a time when they face a cost of living crisis. In just 16 days, more people will move from using the train to using the car. That is bad news for our environment. In 16 days’ time, after 17 years of inaction by this tired, failing Government, my constituents will find themselves having never been further away from fairer fares when it comes to Scotland’s rip-off rail fares.
17:01
Public transport is a key enabler of economic and social growth, providing a vital link between the places where people live, learn, earn and socialise. Access to affordable and reliable public transport services helps people and communities to unlock opportunities to connect to jobs, education, retail, public services, leisure, recreation, friends and family networks, and Labour’s amendment reflects our transport strategy wording, so I am happy to vote for it.
The SNP Government chose to extend and fund the pilot again in June, after the ending of the Bute house agreement.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will make progress, as I want to address some of the points in the debate.
The pilot was a bold initiative that aimed to simplify complex fares and ticketing options and encourage more people to choose to travel by train rather than by car. However, despite the Government urging all members, the rail unions and others to encourage more work colleagues, family, friends and neighbours to switch to rail for more journeys—as we also did during Mr Ruskell’s debate on 6 June—we just did not achieve the shift that was required to justify the funding to continue the removal of ScotRail peak fares.
The analysis shows that the pilot did not make a significant contribution to the First Minister’s four priorities, particularly tackling child poverty and climate change. Instead, it primarily benefited existing train passengers—I acknowledge that it has been welcomed by them over the past year. On that point, I say to Richard Leonard that I regularly use the train, and I was at Linlithgow train station only this morning.
I want to address the point that Graham Simpson made about cancellations. He referred to 5,000 cancellations, but I am not sure that he realises that ScotRail operates an average of more than 1,800 trains each day and that, last year, when it had 82 million passenger journeys, it had fewer compensation claims than it did the year before, when it moved fewer customers. ScotRail has fewer than one claim per 1,000 passengers, compared with nearly five claims per 1,000 across the rest of the rail services in Great Britain.
The points that Alex Rowley made show why it is important to look at the figures. He referred to the impact that he thinks the introduction of the emergency timetable in July had on the figures. I assure him that the figures that we used were collected in early July, before the move to the emergency timetable.
I want to point out to Mark Ruskell that, as he might be aware, on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line, a weekly season ticket used for four days will result in each return journey costing £24, and the use of a flexipass will bring that cost to £21.25.
Mr Ruskell and Beatrice Wishart made an important point about how to make the process easier for people. Beatrice Wishart talked about people working three days a week. It is in recognition of that working pattern that changes have been made to the flexipass to enable six return journeys to be made over a two-month period, resulting in a 32 per cent saving. I am sure that she and her colleagues will publicise that.
On the timing of the decision, which I am being criticised for, the decision had to be taken in August to enable the ticket process to be amended or the pilot to be continued.
Of course, none of the financial pressures that affect decisions that we have to make here matter to either Scottish Labour or the Tories. They do not care that, first, the Tory Westminster Government and, now, the Labour Westminster Government have imposed financial constraints on themselves, on us and, indeed, on the people of Scotland. As we are told by the Prime Minister, things are going to get worse in public finance. The Westminster Labour Government is warning us of a very difficult autumn budget.
There are big, bold things that we want to deliver and achieve for Scotland’s railway, but we are constantly financially constrained year to year and through in-year pressures. Those are coming externally from successive Westminster Governments—once Tory, now Labour—and, without complete control over all the powers, levers and resources that Scotland needs, we will always be held back.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
Mr Marra, your intervention must be brief.
What would the minister say to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which made it absolutely clear that the issues in the budget are the Scottish Government’s responsibility?
I can say at this point that the cabinet secretary had, in fact, sat down. I call Douglas Lumsden.
17:06
I am pleased to support the motion, which calls on the devolved Scottish Government to reverse its poor decision to reintroduce peak-time fares on our railways. Once again, the SNP Government fails to listen to the Scottish people, Scottish businesses, the rail unions and our tourism sector and fails in its promises. The reintroduction of peak-time fares is, simply, a tax on those who seek to go about their daily lives and to do so responsibly.
I have spoken many times in the chamber about how the Scottish people want to do their bit. They want to be environmentally responsible and they want to help us all to achieve net zero, but they are being stymied time and again by this short-sighted and visionless SNP Government.
The SNP amendment sums up a Government that is out of ideas and out of time. It tries to pat itself on the back by calling the removal of peak time fares “pioneering”, but it has ditched it and, of course, is trying to blame Westminster once again.
This Government owns and has full control over ScotRail. It should do anything that it can to encourage more people on to ScotRail to enable the modal shift that we desire, but the SNP Government’s actions are driving—[Interruption.]
Mr Lumsden, I ask you to stop for a moment.
I am aware of conversations, some of which are carrying on even as I suggest that members might like to hold them once we are finished with chamber business this evening.
The SNP Government’s actions are driving people away from the railways. Its reintroduction of peak fares will double fares in some places. Services are being axed—6,000 trains have been cancelled as a result of a temporary timetable.
Let us look at journey times, as mentioned by Stephen Kerr. In 2016, the devolved SNP Government promised to spend £200 million by 2026 to reduce journey times between Aberdeen and the central belt by 20 minutes. That would have provided the north-east with a huge economic boost and encouraged more people to use the railway but, nearly eight years on, less than 5 per cent of that promised money has been spent, and we are now told that the project is under review. That is another broken promise, just like the promises to dual the A96, to dual the A9 by 2025 and to dual the A90 north of Ellon—a list of broken promises to the north-east by the SNP Government.
I will move on to some of the contributions that we have heard today. Craig Hoy reminded us about the temporary alcohol ban on ScotRail that was introduced nearly four years ago. The Government is so weak that it cannot make up its mind what to do about that. A succession of transport ministers seem incapable of making a decision.
Graham Simpson rightly reminded us that the SNP Government has ditched its climate change targets—probably a good job, when they make public transport much more expensive. He also pointed out the flawed survey that his new friends in the RMT highlighted.
Once again, we heard the cabinet secretary pass the buck to Westminster, even though the Scottish Fiscal Commission has said in its publications that the overall budget is up by 0.9 per cent in real terms this year.
Alex Rowley is spot on when he says that targeting drivers and making rail as attractive a choice as possible will get that modal shift. The Government has set a target of a 20 per cent reduction in car mile journeys by 2030, but once again it has no plan.
Mark Ruskell is right to say that fares are extortionate and confusing. We need to simplify, not force people to buy flexipasses or whatever they are called. More time was needed for the pilot.
Ben Macpherson and Christine Grahame both asked where the money would come from. These are political choices, so I will give them some ideas for where the money can come from. The Government should scrap the national care service, scrap the independence unit that it spends money on, trim the constitution budget and grow the economy at the same rate as in the rest of the UK. We would then have plenty of money to spend on things that Scots actually want.
The fact is that only 2 per cent of journeys in Scotland are made by rail. The decision to reintroduce peak fares will not increase that figure, the decision to pause the journey time reduction project at Aberdeen will not increase that figure and the decision to kick new stations—such as the one at Winchburgh that my colleague Sue Webber is campaigning for—into the long grass will not increase that figure.
We have to make it easier for people. We would scrap peak fares and introduce a Scottish smart travel card that can be used on all forms of public transport. The smart card is another SNP broken promise.
The people of Scotland want to do their bit when it comes to net zero. They want to travel sustainably, but they are being prevented from doing so by this SNP Government. The Government is making it harder and more expensive for Scots to use our trains, with cancelled and delayed services, increased fares and poor connectivity. It is not too late for the Government to change its mind on that policy. It is not too late to announce that peak fares will be abolished permanently and that hard-working Scots will not be penalised for trying to do the right thing by using the train.
That concludes the debate on ending peak rail fares on ScotRail trains.
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