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Indeed.

At the point at which we are discussing this today, local authorities are not yet at the stage of going out to the market. They are still doing the preparatory work that £20 million has gone toward. The private investment has not yet been leveraged and the infrastructure has not yet been built, but that is why it is a programme over many years.

I think that the forecasts for the concessionary travel schemes are the same across the piece, but I will let Alison Irvine come in on that one, because it is technical.

I will hand over to my team to come in on the discussions, but I stress again how much I sympathise with public bodies that are having to make those considerations. Principally, I sympathise because we are having to do that ourselves.

I go back to the critical point that I made at the beginning of our session about the undermining of service provision. The conversations that Alison Irvine has referred to are about exploring that. As I have said, the extent to which services were undermined would be a concern of mine, on which I would look to work with SPT.

However, I will re-emphasise two points. You will be tired of hearing us say it, but I cannot emphasise enough the difficulty of the financial circumstances as we have sought to balance the budget. We have to use every lever to maximise resources, and that includes public sector reserves.

The second contextual point that I think is worth making is that we have increased the local government settlement’s share of the discretionary budget and have delivered record funding of over £14 billion to local authorities to fund the council tax freeze.

None of this is easy, and conversations are on-going. Reserves have to be considered, given the financial constraints that we face. However, I sympathise greatly with SPT, as I do with every public body across the piece that has to consider efficiencies at this most difficult time.

I understand entirely Douglas Lumsden’s question. I stress again that, given the settlement that I faced, my responsibility to the transport network had to be, first and foremost, to keep services running, to keep the network reliable and to keep it safe. To a degree, funds such as the bus partnership fund are additional to the question of keeping the transport system running.

Although we were able to allocate funding to important parts of the bus network—concessionary fares, the network support grant and the community bus fund—regrettably, I was not able to fund the bus partnership fund in this financial year. That is not to say that I will not continue my support for it in future years, because I absolutely acknowledge its value. I clarify that we will continue to fund any projects that are currently under construction, and we will complete any appraisal work that could lead to future investment. However, for this year, with this settlement and, principally, a near 10 per cent cut in my capital budget from the UK Government, I cannot afford it.

Technically, that could be done, but, where that is required and exercisable across the Government, it will already have been done. I should point to the fact that my resource budget is extremely tight as well.

I assure Douglas Lumsden that that is absolutely my intention. As I have said a number of times—I will repeat it for the record—the safe, efficient and continued running of the transport network, including our railways, is a priority of mine.

I will give a bit of colour to some of the figures. There are a couple of reasons for the 10.8 per cent reduction that Mr Lumsden is right to point to. To an extent, it reflects the increased revenue due to passenger numbers recovering and, therefore, the slight decrease in the subsidy that is required for ScotRail. That comes with a significantly reduced capital budget—it is about £90 million down—for the accounting of lease arrangements following the transition of the Caledonian sleeper into public ownership. That is a technical adjustment that speaks to the reduction in that line.

When it comes to the running of our rail services, I always think that the overall figure that we invest is very enlightening. This year, we are investing £1.6 billion whereas, before the pandemic, we invested about £1 billion a year, so you can see how the costs for fuel and staff have skyrocketed. In many ways, that increased cost requirement has necessitated the rail fare increase that will come at the end of the financial year, because the safe running of the services that we currently enjoy would be at risk without the increased revenue from fares.

That is not quite true. Unfortunately, the delivery for a project like this is just not that linear. It is not a case of being committed to something, so that it happens, or of not being committed to it. When budgets are constrained, it is only right to consider the time over which projects can be completed. As I said, the transport minister is undertaking that work, and I will ensure that she updates the committee.

I absolutely understand that, Mr Doris. There are a number of well-used stations in my constituency. My constituents commute back and forth to Edinburgh and Glasgow and I understand their frustration with the changes that were made during the pandemic.

Anecdotally and locally, I am seeing a return to pre-pandemic levels, but I understand that people want to see that across the board. To an extent, though, the question is about local and individual services, and I cannot comment generally on situations that will be different in different parts of the country.

As for ScotRail’s performance, the service that we provide outperforms the UK average. In 2023-24 to date, the ScotRail public performance measure is 90.05 per cent, in comparison with 85.6 per cent in the rest of the UK.

If I remember correctly, since the railways came into public ownership, the overall approval rating has already gone up by 1 percentage point. That might be just one percentage point, but it actually represents a significant jump in two years of progress.