Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will let Bridget Bryden answer that.

Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to discuss the regulations. As we know, franchising is an important tool for local transport authorities to improve services in their area. However, it is also a significant intervention in the local bus market. The franchising provisions in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 set out a new franchising model that seeks to deliver greater scrutiny and transparency in the franchising process. A key aspect of that is the inclusion of a final approval stage that is external to the authority, which assesses the proposals before the franchise can take effect. The act provides that safeguard to ensure that local authority transport authorities’ franchising proposals have been carefully considered.

Rather than providing for the decision to be made by the Scottish ministers, the 2019 act provides for an independent panel to be appointed by the traffic commissioner, with the intention of depoliticising the final decision-making process. Those measures were included in the Transport (Scotland) Bill at its introduction, they remained throughout the bill stages and they were agreed to by Parliament. Parliament also agreed that detail about the operation of the panels would be set out in regulations. The regulations that we are considering set out that detail and are fundamental to the operation of the franchise process in Scotland, not least because they will give local transport authorities certainty about how their franchising proposals will be considered.

The regulations make provision on a range of administrative and procedural matters in order to provide clarity and legal certainty on how panels should operate, and they include eligibility criteria that preclude the appointment to a panel of anybody who might be employed by operators that are affected by franchising proposals or who could otherwise not act impartially in deciding whether to approve a franchising framework. The approach is designed to secure the independence of the panel’s decision making. The regulations and the 2019 act provide guidance to panels on what they must consider when assessing a local transport authority’s franchising proposals and provide further clarity on what is and is not relevant to the panel’s decision making.

We have engaged closely on the development of the regulations with key stakeholders, including local transport authorities and the traffic commissioner’s office, and their involvement has been crucial in creating procedures that will ensure that the approval process is transparent and impartial. There is a keen appetite among a range of parties and stakeholders—including MSPs, some of whom are sitting here today—for franchising to be available to local transport authorities.

Calling for amendments to legislation or failing to pass the regulations will result in Scotland falling further behind in delivering franchising to improve services for passengers, as any proposal that would seek to significantly amend the panel process as set out in the 2019 act would require primary legislation. As committee members know, policy development of that sort can be significant and would not be completed before the end of this parliamentary session. As I have said, the regulations make important provision on the operation of panels as envisaged by Parliament when it passed the 2019 act, and annulling them could result in local transport authorities deciding to delay any franchising proposals, because of legislative uncertainty.

I am happy to answer any questions that members might have.

Yes, there is time in hand.

Of course they would. They would be looking at everything; that is the point that I am making.

I will try to be as plain as possible.

There is absolutely no desire to hoodwink, play the industry off against itself or create any division; we simply need to get the regulations in place. You have mentioned LFASS again in the context of these regulations, but that is only one part—the regulations are about the entire SRDP. They allow us to put in place legislation that gives us a backstop until 2030. There will be numerous SSIs and therefore numerous opportunities for us to come back here. We will disagree on some points—I have absolutely no doubt about that—but this SSI purely allows us the time and space to go away and do the work that is required in conjunction with other stakeholders.

I picked up in some of the responses to your call for views that some people feel that they are not being listened to. I give an absolute commitment that, as we develop the schemes, I will engage with as many people as I possibly can to ensure that we get them right. That is the most important thing about these regulations—we need a box that we can put the other regulations into. We will, as much as we can, co-design and fully discuss those regulations with the industry as we move forward, but getting this SSI done now puts that matter to bed, because we will know that we have a backstop until 2030. Everything else will come in behind that.

As we develop and grow these schemes, I would much rather spend time looking at and discussing those matters with the industry than have to keep coming back and repeatedly making these regulations. There is no point in doing that; it is not necessary and it is just a waste of time. I would rather that we focused on the things that will be changed, and I would really like to get these regulations done so that we can move on to the next stage.

But convener—

I am sorry for interrupting you.

It is purely a backstop date, and I can guarantee that things will change before then.

I absolutely do not minimise the issues that were raised in response to your call for views. However, there has been a general misunderstanding of what the SSI will do. As I keep reiterating, it will not change anything, other than to give us the mechanism to be able to make payments as the schemes change as we go along.

Convener, I get that you do not agree with me—

I think that they are confused about what this SSI is about.

No.