Seòmar agus comataidhean

I do not have time, unfortunately.

Choices need to be made. I ask the minister to reflect on the construction of the cross-Tay link road: £120 million is being invested in that transport infrastructure to benefit motorists. However, there are already starting to be congestion issues around Perth and Bridgend, which that bridge was meant to resolve.

We need to move away from going one step forward and one step back. We need to address the issues.

This is not a new debate. Back in 2006, the first ever climate inquiry in this Parliament recommended road user charging. It set the Executive a timescale of 10 years to get it right—the Executive had until 2016 to bring in a fair system of road user charging. That date has passed and we are now nearly 10 years on from 2016—it is nearly 2026 and we still have no more progress in Scotland on road user charging.

It will take calm heads and cross-party working in order to make progress on this. Perhaps it will take the kind of leadership that was shown by Douglas Lumsden when he was a councillor: behaving rationally, taking your party-political hat off and looking at the issues that need to be addressed. We see that kind of leadership in councils from time to time. The conversation with COSLA is really important because it is clear that there are those in local authorities who need, and want, to tackle traffic congestion using a range of measures.

I urge the Government to make progress in areas in which there is consensus. A regulatory review is looking at powers of road charging. We could be looking at simplifying the traffic regulation order process or decriminalising road offences. I think that there are areas of consensus among councils and the Government that we can use to make progress.

I welcome the minister’s support for the re-regulation of buses. I would urge him to make that process as simple as possible. It is clear that we need public transport to be run in the public interest, and we can only really achieve that if we have public and community operators in that mix.

This is a short debate, but I am sure that we will come back to this subject between now and the end of the parliamentary session.

Do you want a pilot to be introduced in an area where journey times are being speeded up through bus priority measures? Does it make sense to bring all these interventions together? I think that that was your earlier point.

Do David or Duncan have thoughts on the pilot? Do you welcome it? Do you want it in your area, or should it go somewhere else? How should the pilot be run?

Paul, what are your thoughts on flat bus fares and on anything that we can learn from England, where they have been introduced?

Duncan Cameron and David Frenz, your companies offer services in England as well as Scotland. Are there any differences between England and Scotland in terms of antisocial behaviour?

However, England does not have a concessionary travel scheme for under-22s.

I am sorry, Joanne, I do not mean to interrupt, but I go back to my very specific question, which related to concerns that the unions have. Will the changes result in fewer staff being available at stations or stations being unstaffed for longer periods? That is the issue that unions, disability groups and others are concerned about—it is the staffing at stations. I am well aware of some of the reasons for the business model changes with regard to ticket sales, but it would be great if you could address that point.

What do you think is the underlying concern from trade union groups? We have heard evidence of concerns that there could be female staff, in particular, working alone at stations, and there is obviously a background concern about antisocial behaviour and what happens if you have a more dispersed workforce at stations. How are you addressing those concerns, and how are you addressing some of the concerns from disability access groups that an automated help point does not suit everybody’s needs? Indeed, it is difficult to access—or even to find, if you have a disability such as sight loss or other issues.

It feels as if this is an unresolved issue. I have heard you making the business case on several occasions in public and private meetings that we have had, but there are still these unresolved issues and concerns. How are you taking those on and resolving them?

Okay. Thank you.

I would like to ask you about the streams of funding that are available not just for bus priority measures but for investment in what I guess you could call community bus services and facilities, particularly in rural areas. We had the bus partnership fund; it was paused, and has now gone. There is now a new bus infrastructure fund, which wraps in not just what that bus partnership fund did but the community bus fund, too. However, it is only about £10 million. Do you think that that is adequate, and how do you think that that spend should be prioritised?

Paul, you are nodding the strongest. Do you want to come in first?