Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

The greyhound racing industry’s governing body recorded that more than 100 dogs died and more than 4,000 were injured while racing at regulated tracks in England and Wales last year. Does the minister recognise that the nature of that activity, with dogs running against each other at speeds of up to 40mph around sharp bends, leads to a similar rate of collision at any track, regardless of whether it be in Newcastle or Fife?

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.

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.

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.

Is there time in hand, Presiding Officer?

Do the witnesses from the SFC and the IPPR think that the Scottish Government needs more information in order to devise the first carbon budget? Is any crucial information lacking?

In many ways, it feels like we have been looking at only half the picture. We have been looking at climate and carbon but we have not been looking in sufficient detail at the action, the planning and the fiscal environment to deliver those actions.

Does the way that the bill is structured provide enough time between the CCC offering the technical advice and the Scottish Government—in a chicken-and-egg way—then having to devise a carbon budget that includes all the considerations about what actions are necessary and whether they are affordable to deliver? Is there enough time allowed in the bill to work up that detail, which is essential to our staying on track? Should a specific timeframe be set out in legislation? Is there enough time at the moment?

Emily Nurse, do you have any thoughts on the process post the CCC advice?

I am not sure where we are with time, convener. Is there time for other panel members to come in?