Seòmar agus comataidhean

I acknowledge up front that bringing ScotRail into public ownership has been a welcome move by the Scottish Government that has put the public interest at the heart of our rail services.

However, the cost of rail travel is now the critical issue for travellers. It is time for the Government to intervene, to use its power and to act in the public interest to deliver a more affordable service. We all see from our inboxes that rail travel is now too expensive for too many people, and that ticketing is complex and confusing. The fact that rail fares are even higher in England is cold comfort to our struggling constituents, who want to see action here in Scotland.

The return of peak fares in September last year has seen day ticket prices more than doubling in some cases. A peak-time return from Perth to Glasgow Queen Street station will set a passenger back £40.10, compared with an off-peak ticket costing £20. Meanwhile, people heading from Stirling to Waverley station will pay £19.90 on a peak journey, compared with £12.10 for an off-peak one.

Those are prices before ScotRail’s above-inflation increase to ticket prices of 3.8 per cent. That increase in ticket prices will outstrip percentage increases in many pay packets next month, including those of staff who work here in the Parliament. Unless the Scottish Government revisits the decision to increase rail fares, passengers between Perth and Glasgow Queen Street, for example, will pay £41.62. Tickets that are already too expensive will become even more costly at a time when household budgets are already stretched. Those are eye-watering amounts of money for commuters to be shelling out. Peak-time ticket costs are an unfair tax on working people, and they must be scrapped.

Although I acknowledge that some better deals are now available, such as flexipasses and season passes, those all require commuters to dig deep into their pockets up front. In a post-Covid world in which patterns of work are no longer fixed, investing in a season pass will not be an attractive, convenient or affordable option for many people. However, for many, it will be the only option that they have, if they want to get the train. Of course, flexipasses are not even available on all routes, which means that some passengers are barred from cheaper fares simply because of where they live and the journeys that they make.

The cost crisis has not happened overnight: the price of public transport has been steadily rising for years and years. Over the past decade, we have seen an increase of nearly 70 per cent in the cost of public transport, compared with an increase in motoring costs of only around a third. There is a widening gap between people who drive and those who do not or cannot drive, which will structurally build in car dependency for people in the working-age population who are ineligible for concessionary fare schemes. Working people on low incomes will continue to find their monthly outgoings being dominated by transport costs as much as, if not more than, they are by energy costs.

Bus services might be a cheaper option, and I welcome the constructive agreement that we have reached with the Scottish Government on a future bus fare cap pilot scheme. However, buses do not always provide the fast connection that is needed to get to a place of work or for longer-distance travel. For people with caring responsibilities, especially women, spending hours on a bus—or, indeed, on multiple buses—at either end of a day does not fit with family life. When that is paired with a complex and unintegrated ticketing system, the cost for women of travelling by public transport adds up. It is unclear what progress has been made towards delivering an integrated ticketing system that would go at least some way towards reducing the complexity and cost of journeys in Scotland.

I go back to Mossmorran then, which has been in the system for years and is with the procurator fiscal. What is the communication with the surrounding community? Is it a matter of, “Job done, the operators have already invested in the site, therefore not a problem,” or is the expectation that some form of action would still take place that SEPA would support in court? It feels like a lot of those issues kind of drift off to the procurator fiscal and then it is difficult for folks to see where the follow-up action is.

Yes, okay.

I did not ask for a comparator with other parts of the UK. I want to know, on the best evidence that we have, whether the current standards are adequate to deliver a healthy environment.

Your question was useful, convener.

I want to ask about issues with electrical and battery waste, at Friarton in Perth in particular, where we have seen four fires under the site’s successive owners. We have seen similar fires at other waste management sites around Scotland, too. I suppose that that touches on elements of fire safety, which are potentially outwith SEPA’s remit; as with salmon farming, you share regulation of the sites with other bodies.

I just wanted to get your reflections on that, though, because what the public are seeing are the same sites and the same fires, time after time. It would be useful to know whether you believe that the regulatory framework that you work under is enough at the moment to tackle not only those huge pollution incidents but the elements of risk that workers at the sites and local communities face? It seems that we are seeing a vast increase in the amount of battery waste in society, and there are perhaps questions to ask about whether that will be regulated effectively, given that we do not seem to fully understand the risks around fires and other such issues.

Nicole, did you want to come back in on that?

If you have more detail on the status of those conversations, specifically in relation to the WHO guidelines, that would be useful.

On greenhouse gases and ammonia, the CAFS strategy says that you have been working with

“the agricultural industry to develop a voluntary code of good agricultural practice for improving air quality in Scotland.”

You are directly involved in that CAFS workstream. I am interested in what progress you have made towards developing that code, who has been involved in that development and whether you think that a voluntary code is the right way forward or whether we should be moving towards using regulation—or a mixture of both.

It would be useful for the committee to see any update that you have in relation to how you have adopted those ESS recommendations in a timely manner, if we have missed it.

You wanted to come in on this matter, convener. I have another question after that.

I return to Bob Doris’s questions about full-fare-paying passengers and fare increases over time. As I understand it, between 2012 and 2022, fare prices increased by between 65 and 70 per cent across Scotland. That compares with the cost of motoring, which went up by only 35 per cent during that period. There appears to be a gap.

Drawing on Mr Doris’s comments, I am a little concerned that companies might look at the model and think that they will get a higher reimbursement rate if they keep pushing up the fares. Carole Stewart is shaking her head, so maybe that is not the case. Folks who are getting on a bus every day are seeing those increases and they are making a decision about whether to leave the car at home. If it is becoming cheaper to drive, that is an issue.

Is not the wider fare capping an issue with the model? Effectively, it means that higher fares result in more money for the companies. Carole Stewart is still shaking her head. Does she want to come in?

Can you show with the model how that has played out over the period from 2012 to 2022, when adult bus fares went up by between 65 and 70 per cent? Was there a corresponding reduction in that reimbursement rate over time?